18: Performance

Two of my most memorable performances went… badly.

When I was about six or seven, I’d been taking trampolining classes for several months, and having a great time with it. The big day had finally arrived: our first public performance. My sisters, parents and grandparents were all in the audience. And as I got a couple of moves into my prepared routine… my mind went blank. I froze, embarrassed to my core, and had to slink off the trampoline in shame and misery.

About ten years later, I was finally given a lead in a high school musical, after years of only ever being part of the chorus. As the title part in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, I had a few solo numbers, and I was so excited and so proud to have my moment in the spotlight.

The first performance went great! The second one, with my parents in attendance… did not. Midway through one of my solo numbers, during an instrumental interlude between verses, I somehow got distracted in my thoughts. Suddenly it was my cue, and my mind was blank for the lyrics to the next verse.

I managed to recover it better than in my trampolining days, coming in on time for the second line of the verse. It made for a slightly confusing moment to the audience, but at least I recovered.

Of course, in both cases, I beat myself up for the mistake afterwards and wondered what I could have done better or differently. Blaming myself… feeling inadequate as a musician… and feeling like a failure for not delivering the perfect performance when my big moment came.

Maybe you can relate?

The mind going blank like this is just one of many problems that plague musicians, when it comes to performance. There’s also nervousness, stage fright, and performance anxiety which can strike before and/or during a performance. There’s making mistakes and playing the notes wrong, getting lost in your music, playing badly because your fingers aren’t co-operating… The list goes on. If you’ve been a musician for a while, no doubt you have a few painful, embarrassing memories of your own.

The traditional advice is to keep doing more performances, and you’ll get better over time. Or that you need to practice more, before the show. Or that you should learn some tips and techniques for helping with stage fright.

All of these “solutions” miss the point.

We have fundamentally misunderstood what a performance can and should be—and turned it into a kind of “final exam” to prepare for.

We’ve all been taught that “you practice, and then you perform.” Actually, it’s more like “you practice, and then when you’re finally good enough you perform.” Performing is set up as “the test” of what you’ve practiced.

Well, that immediately sounds scary, right? Of course you’re going to feel pressure to prove yourself. And of course that threat to our self-esteem and personal identity hits hard.

On top of that, by setting up performing as the “test” of what you’ve practiced—the “reward” you only deserve when you’ve perfected your playing—there’s automatically an expectation that “learning to play perfectly during practice” is how you get ready to perform.

So you slave away, desperately trying to nail every last inch of the song or piece you want to perform. Ironing out every kink. Until finally, you feel like you’ve got it.

And then the deck gets stacked against you. Because as we all know, abilities tend to break down significantly during testing. Being thrust into some new, alien environment—whether that’s in a driving test, a university exam hall, or a concert stage—is going to instantly throw a spanner in the works.

Everything you’ve carefully prepared and perfected in the practice room suddenly feels awkward and unfamiliar. Your fingers don’t function, they freeze or fumble. Your performance begins to collapse. The audience starts to shift, feeling restless and uneasy. They’re mirroring back your own discomfort. With every second, your self-esteem crumbles away.

And it gets worse. If it was only about that “alien environment”, you’d be fine. You would just need to get used to performing on stage, give it a few tries, acclimatise yourself, maybe do a run-through at the venue before the performance, right?

That might well get you over the hump, so that you can step out on stage and not fall apart completely. But even then, you know you’ll never sound good or enjoy it if you’re nervous and timid. So all that time and hard work during practice was a waste.

No matter how good you sounded at home, you can never seem to replicate it when it comes to “the real thing”. It’s painfully ironic, but it seems like the better a player you become, the harder it is to perform well.

And so naturally you start looking for solutions to “stage fright”, to “performance anxiety”, to “overcoming nerves”. You study up on “peak performance” and learn how to engineer yourself to better handle that performance pressure.

Which is all well and good.

But it’s a bit like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. You’re not addressing the problem at its root. Because the real problem isn’t “playing better” or “removing performance anxiety”. The real problem is that we’ve disastrously misunderstood what it truly means to “perform music”.

Overview

In this chapter we’ll begin by re-evaluating and defining anew what we mean by “Performance”. We’ll introduce the Performance Free-Flow framework and its 3 C’s: Conversation, Creativity and Connection, and look at the difference these can make to your experience of performing.

Before going further into the framework, we’ll lay out an approach to practicing performance and a flexible blueprint for creating a “performance pathway” for yourself. This will let you gradually take steps forwards into a wider range of performance situations: from being alone in your practice room by yourself, through to any live stage you might wish to step onto one day. Even before adopting the Performance Free-Flow approach, these principles of Performance Practice and having a clear Pathway can help transform “performing” from a scary, intimidating, seemingly-dangerous thing—into something that feels as easy, fun and natural as any music-making you currently do.

Then we’ll dive into the framework itself, by examining each of the 4 H’s of our H4 Model (Head, Hands, Hearing and Heart), how the 3 C’s of “Conversation”, “Creativity”, and “Connection” relate, and how you can improve and enhance your performance with each one.

Together, Performance Practice and Performance Free-Flow can provide the solution to all the common performance woes mentioned above, and allow you to bring your full musicality into every note you play.

So whether you’re already a seasoned performer, or you could relate all-too-well to everything I described above (or perhaps both!) this chapter can help you to become a performance powerhouse.

Let’s begin by asking the fundamental question:

What Is Performance?

I had mixed feelings about letting this be the last chapter in the book. On one hand, performing is ultimately what music is all about, and so it makes sense as the culmination of all the other musicality topics we’ve covered in earlier chapters. On the other hand, as you’ll soon see in this chapter, we are big proponents of two somewhat unusual perspectives on “Performance”:

1. Performance isn’t just about the “big show”

“Performing” doesn’t just mean standing up on stage in front of an audience of strangers and delivering a carefully-prepared rendition of certain repertoire. It is an all-encompassing term, covering every type of musical performance. Any time you are expressing yourself musically for someone * That “someone else” could even be you, reviewing a recording of a performance you did alone in a room by yourself! else to enjoy, that counts as performing. So “Performance” really boils down to sharing your music-making.

2. Performance is about much more than “getting the notes right”—and our preparation must reflect that.

When we misunderstand what Performance is all about, it naturally leads to also misunderstanding “how to get good at performing”. In particular the big misconception that “if I get good enough at my instrument, THEN I can put on amazing performances”.

This misses the point entirely. In terms of our H4 Model of Complete Musicality, it’s a “Hands-only” approach, neglecting the Head, Hearing and, most crucially, the Heart.

Deep down we know there must be more to a great performance than just getting all the notes right, at the target tempo. Otherwise by now all concerts would be performed by robots, playing from digital sheet music. We know instinctively that getting every note right is really only table stakes for a great performance.

We’re taught from a young age that the greatest performances of all time came from “talent”. If you’ve been reading through this book’s chapters in order, by now you understand well how every aspect of apparent “talent” actually breaks down into simple, learnable skills. Performance is no exception.

So how do we acquire those skills?

The traditional idea of “practicing and practicing until you’re ready, and then finally performing” is a broken model. By blurring the line between “practicing” and “performing” we can not only remove the intimidation factor of “giving a performance”, but learn to actually develop the skills needed to perform well. And we can do this in the practice room, right alongside all the rest of our musicality training.

The Performance Free-Flow framework consists of three parts: Creativity, Conversation, and Connection. It is designed to transform “performing” from a high-pressure event into a sheer delight, by returning us to the true roots of music’s power to move us. Instead of being constantly fixated on “getting the notes right”, you’re able to take for granted that the right notes will come out—and put your energy and focus into what will turn that “technically correct” performance into one that your audience will never forget.

What’s more, you’ll discover along the way that the ideal performance can even allow for a “wrong” note or two—something which should come as no surprise if you’ve read Chapter 17: Expression!

Before we dive into Performance Free-Flow itself, we need to first set you up with an environment and mindset which will allow for you to make that transformation.

We’ll do this by establishing a new relationship with “performing”, including how it relates to “practice”, and what “practicing performance” could look like.