Music Video Lesson: How to Stay Engaged in Your Musical Performance

Do it! You will always learn things from that score. And this process is a way to really engage in the music in a new way.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Your host, Robert Estrin, here. How to stay engaged in your musical performance. This is such an important topic. And you can tell when a performer isn't engaged. You know how you can tell? Because your mind wanders. You can't listen to a performer who isn't engaged in their own performance. The secret to engaging an audience is yourself being engaged in the performance. So how do you do such a thing? Think of the challenge. Let's say you're playing a piece or a whole program. And you've practiced maybe for weeks or months, hours on this music. You can play it without even thinking about it because you've gone through it so many times, your fingers just know where to go. And that's the problem. How can you possibly concentrate on something that you've done so many times? How can you hear it? How can you listen to it? Well, that is the number one key, is listening to what you're doing. Really focusing on the sound as if it's the first time you're hearing it. Now that's a hard thing to do. Are there any things you can do in your practice to help with the freshness of the musical score? Absolutely. And what I'm going to tell you right now is the greatest thing you can do.

If you have pieces you can play, but they just feel kind of lackluster. You've played them many times. You can play them. But there's just no spark anymore. You've almost gotten tired of them. But you finally got it where you could play it. And now you've lost the enthusiasm. And you wonder, is there any way to regain that without having to drop it and come back to it months later, which is, of course, that could work? Well, yes. And here is what I recommend, something that I do incessantly in my practice. It's so satisfying to play through pieces you can play with all the expression and the pedal and all the nuance. So you flip it. You go back to the score. You put it on the music rack. There's a piece you've memorized or a piece that you play with the music. Either way. And you put the music up there. You take out your metronome. And you play without any pedal, slowly and absolutely faithfully to the score with exactly what's written, no more and no less. Just play with precision. And that's it. I'm not saying to play unmusically. You can play musically and still play exactly what's written. But no schtick.

If you have little nuances of things you like to do, maybe the second time around of a repeated phrase, you play a little softer. And maybe you do a little other gyrations or ritardandos that aren't written necessarily. Get rid of all that stuff. And just play exactly what's written. Just taking your foot off the pedal is going to make you work harder to get a halfway decent sound. And practice this way a great deal so that when you finally add the pedal, you get rid of that metronome. You free yourself from the score if it's a piece you've memorized. It's so refreshing to come back to it that it's, ah, it feels good. It sounds great. And you will become engaged in your musical performance again. That's why, yes, sure, I play through my music. But I play it more, much more, without the pedal, without the pedal a great deal, and with the metronome a great deal. I do probably more of my practicing without the pedal, definitely, than with the pedal. Metronome, not as much as I do without the pedal, but a great deal of metronome work and pieces that are memorized, constantly revisit that score. Now, this could be extraordinarily difficult, particularly for those of you who might not be very good readers. Your sight reading is a very low level. So maybe you have a piece you've memorized, and you can play it fine. But you go back to the score, and you can barely play it. Well, guess what? You need to play it with the score.

Now, if that means going back way under tempo, do it. You will always learn things from that score. And this process is a way to really engage in the music in a new way. So in a nutshell, put the metronome on, open your music, play slowly, and take your foot off the pedal. Practice that way. And when you get to musical performance, if you have an audience and you're nervous, yet let that energy inspire you to new things. Listen to the sound of each note. Maybe you'll hear inner lines you haven't noticed before. Particularly when people are watching you, things seem different, don't they? Go with it. Don't be afraid to follow a line that you haven't really paid attention to before in your musical performance. And you may put you a little bit out of your comfort zone, but that's the way to become engaged in your own musical performance and draw in your listeners.

Once again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Click the bell. Thumbs up and subscribing helps the channel reach more piano lovers around the world. Thanks again for joining me. Thank you.

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