Lesson 88: Performance Preparation, Part 3 — Performance Psychology

• Use mental rehearsal — playing pieces in your head, without the instrument — as a preparation tool.
• Have a plan for what to do when something goes wrong on stage.

The performer's job is to keep playing. Anything else is the audience's problem, not yours.

Every player has performance anxiety. There is no cure — only the routines and strategies that turn nerves from a limit into a resource.

The pre-performance routine

Nerves peak in the thirty minutes before a performance; a standardised routine gives the body something to do that does not require thinking.

• 30 minutes before: arrive; walk the stage; sit in the audience for two minutes.
• 20 minutes before: long-tone warm-up; slow breathing.
• 15 minutes before: play the first phrase of each program piece, once.
• 10 minutes before: instrument away; water; walk somewhere quiet.
• 5 minutes before: stand; three slow breaths; walk to the stage door.

Mental rehearsal

The day before, play the entire program in your head, in real time, instrument away — the breath, the articulation, the fingerings, the bow at the end. Any passage you cannot imagine clearly is one you do not know well enough; practise it physically afterwards.

The recovery plan

Something will go wrong; the plan is what you do next.

• Do not stop — if the music continues, the moment passes; a restart becomes the performance.
• Do not show it — no grimace or head-shake; most of the audience did not notice.
• For serious failures (lost place, fallen page) — stop briefly, fix it, resume from the previous phrase; say nothing.

Reframing nerves

The physical symptoms of nerves and excitement are nearly identical; telling yourself “I am ready” instead of “I am nervous” measurably improves performance — sports psychologists call it arousal reappraisal.

Now play these

Pick one program piece, mentally rehearse it three times this week without the instrument, then practise it once physically and note the difference.

When you have a pre-performance routine you have used at least once in a real (not rehearsal) setting, mentally rehearsed one program piece all the way through, and have a recovery plan you have actually practised, move on to Lesson 89.