Follow The Leader

I had an exciting day today, so I figured I’d jump back to an anecdotal blog post today.

BECAUSE I’M NARCISSISTIC AND LOVE TO TALK ABOUT MYSELF.

Haha. Just kidding. But really, though. 

Today, I met with the conductor for the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, and in four days, I’ll be performing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with them. Super exciting stuff! If only the date wasn’t so close.

Sometimes, when everyone has busy schedules that are hard to coordinate, we don’t have the luxury of having multiple rehearsals before a concert. I met with the orchestra’s conductor today, we have one rehearsal on Saturday, and then the concert is on Monday. I have half an hour on the day of the concert to run through my piece with the orchestra before the concert in the evening. 

If it were a different concerto I were playing that didn’t involve so much back-and-forth interaction between the orchestra and the soloist, I wouldn’t be as worried. But considering this concerto is so interactive, and I can’t even manage to get some variations to sync up with my single-person orchestra (my orchestral pianist), how do you expect me to feel about syncing up with about fifty or so other people who have never heard me play this piece before?!! Talk about stressful circumstances.

There’s something that needs to be said, though, when working with limited time in collaboration. Of course, when you’re collaborating with an orchestra, you’re dealing with a force of more than fifty people, but there is no reason for you to compromise the way you feel about a piece for someone else. 

“I want to take this variation faster,” the conductor said.

As a student, I know a lot of people who would just immediately say yes and just go with it. We, as students, are used to be told what to do. Our teacher tells us that we’re doing something wrong, and we practice to fix it. But at some point, we have to learn that collaboration isn’t just about going along with what everyone else is saying and playing Follow the Leader. Sometimes it’s important to take charge and do things the way you want them to go. You’re the soloist, after all. Put your ideas on the table, too. Discuss, and then come up with the best solution.

“Let’s give it a shot, see how it goes,” I replied.

After playing through that variation at the faster tempo, he looked at me expectantly. “I don’t really like it,” I said. “Can we go back to the tempo I originally started with?”

The point is that although we didn’t end up going with the new tempo, at least I was willing to try. That’s the beauty of collaboration. Everyone has different ideas; as long as everyone is willing to listen and try out different things, collaboration is a great experience and there’s something to be learned, and to be taught, in every session. Collaboration is about keeping an open mind, and being ready for anything.

Of course, things don’t always go the way you want them to. Be as it may that tempos might have been alright today, but I might end up taking something slower on the day of the concert. Some variations might end up being faster. Being in a concert situation changes the way our minds work, and sometimes it’s not always the best thing for us when we’ve gotten used to playing something a certain way. The best thing to do at this point is to practice the piece in a way that nothing will catch me off guard. Practice things at the tempo I want them to go at, of course, because in the best case scenario, everything will fall into place on the day of the concert. However, that’s not how things turn out in life sometimes. Sometimes, sh*t happens. I practiced the orchestra part so I know it inside and out, so I can catch onto any weird blips that might happen and potentially throw me off. I practiced each variation faster and slower than the tempo I’d like to take it at, so that if anything happens and the tempo doesn’t happen to be where I want it to be during the concert, I can still catch onto it and keep playing as though that was the tempo I wanted. Being ready for any circumstance is a skill that every performer needs to have. Adjusting on the spot to things that were not planned is something we have to always be ready for, and practicing for any possible situation is the only way to be fully prepared. The best the conductor and I can do is to listen actively and fit to each other. There is no leader in this context; we are equals, working together to create a piece of art. With that mentality, I could probably play my concert tomorrow and still feel pretty good about it. 

Four more days, and the stage is mine! (:

Until next week,

Dream big, music-makers!

Rule Number One : Don’t Panic.

This post is a day late… Finals + Recital + Papers = A very stressed out little pianist.

While I should have been writing up a new post yesterday, I spent the whole day moping about, trying to practice and not being able to because once a sound came out of my piano, I thought it was the worst sound in the world. Everything sounds bad. I have a recital in a week. Why does everything sound like crap?!

Rule number one: Don’t panic.

One of my professors at school found me sobbing, slamming the door to a practice room, several pages on the floor from being angrily torn from my book. (I’m not actually tearing them out, they’re photocopies that accidentally get torn by slightly-too-aggressive page turns. Don’t worry, I’m not a Henle-abuser. I love my books just as much as you do, I promise!)

He kept on telling me that it was going to be okay, that I sound better than I think I do. For those of you who find that everything you play sounds bad, here’s some perspective for you. Things only sound bad to you because you’re pushing yourself, because you’re expecting more from yourself. The frustration gives you more focus, pushes you past your former limits. The wall needs to be scaled, and you can’t conquer it without determination and perseverance.

The words of my prof were something like this:

“We’re not in music because we like music. We’re in music because we have to be. Because we are the only people who are willing to put up with the crap that we have to do. Not everybody can make it here, and you did. You can do this. I mean, I can’t play the damn instrument… I’m afraid of it! Just remember, rule number one: Don’t. Panic.”

I’m not going to say my playing miraculously got better overnight, because to be completely honest, my Tchaikovsky still sounds like a messy ball of crap right now. But that’s okay. Because I’m someone who is willing to put up with all the slow practice and all the annoying metronome beats and all the rhythm drills to get things to where I want them to be.

But at the end of the day, Dr. Bob was right. Rule number one: Don’t panic. Take things one at a time. And in the end, you’ll conquer all that frustration. You’ll tear down that wall and you’ll be so, so, so pleased with the work you’ve done and how much you’ve improved.

Dream big, music-makers!

Brain Fart!

As performers, we all know what it’s like to get nervous before a show. We’ve all experienced that feeling before: THE BRAIN FART. Don’t even pretend like it’s never happened to you. It could be anything: nerves, stage fright, fatigue, stress, illness… or just an off-day. You’re staring at the keys – sometimes before you start, sometimes mid-performance – and your mind just draws a blank. And then you panic. Oh my goodness where am I what are my hands doing what are my notes where are my notes what are these chords where is my left hand what is my right hand doing what is the melody – OKAY I’LL JUST STOP.

And then you start feeling around for something that’s familiar. This chord? That chord? Is this my starting note? Okay, beginning of the section. Wait, I’m in the wrong key. Shoot, backtrack a few bars? Oh, no, that’s not right, either. Maybe I’ll skip ahead to the next section…

We’ve all been there. Even if it may not have been as bad, we’ve all experienced some sort of panic attack where we need to think quickly and recover.

Now, I’m no expert on keeping my nerves calm during performances. I get real nervous.  And I mean really, really nervous. There were a few years during high school where I had a memory slip literally in every performance I ever did. I can’t say I got over it; I still get nervous. I still get memory slips… But I have to say, the number of memory slips I’ve had since then has decreased significantly. I can’t tell you how to win over stage fright or nerves, but what I can tell you is just several ways I’ve learned over the course of the last few years to help lessen the chances of having those memory slips. Of course, they will still happen, as we are all human, but having a certain amount of padding underneath your feet will always help cushion your fall if you ever slip.

1) Brain work.
One of the things I’ve been doing with my music for the past few years to help solidify memory, and help speed up recovery time during performances, is to divide up my pieces into a lot of small chunks. Eight bars, sixteen bars, whatever’s logical. These chunks are usually a phrase or two. I would practice each of these chunks over and over, knowing exactly how the chunk starts – the key, the harmony, the melody – so that if I ever have a memory slip, I know exactly where to jump. After familiarizing myself with these chunks, I would start quizzing myself. “Start from H,”, I would tell myself, and the chunk marked letter H is exactly where I’d start. In doing this, you’re getting to know your music inside and out. It’s also reassuring to know that no matter what happens in performance, you can have faith in yourself that you have somewhere to jump and you know it well.

2) Muscle memory.
If you don’t have enough faith in your mind to jump exactly where you need it to, train your fingers to know exactly what to do. This exercise is actually one of my favorites because it’s just so stupid. What I like to do is take a really slow tempo and literally bash out the notes at quadruple forte as unmusically as possible. Obviously one would never perform this way, but playing everything loudly, with confidence, makes sure that your fingers know exactly where to go and what to do on their own. Slowly, turn the metronome up no more than a couple notches at a time and repeat until performance tempo, and you’ll find that your fingers will know what to do even if your eyes are closed and you’re pretty much half asleep.

3) Perform, and love every second of it.
The best way to learn how to recover in performances, is to keep performing. Take each opportunity you have to perform for others. It doesn’t matter whether your audience is one person or a thousand. Perform as much as you can, for as many people as you can. Don’t tell yourself that you’re feeling “nervous”; you’re “excited”. Excited to play for an audience. Why? Because you enjoy the music you’re making. Immerse yourself in the music. Smile. You’re a performer because you love doing what you do. You want people to hear the reasons why you fell in love with the music you’re playing.

I’ve written these words in a previous post before, but they’re important, so I’ll write them again:

Play the music, not the notes.

When you lose yourself in the music, you stop thinking about the smaller things like, “what’s my next chord?” Stop it. You know the next chord. Your head knows it, your fingers know it. Don’t doubt yourself. It’s the little doubts that trigger the big slips. When you’re focused on the right things, magic happens.

Dream big, music-makers! (: