Saturday, April 25, 2015

Practice Performance Notes

This was such a good thing to do.  I got really nervous, and I had completely forgotten everything that goes along with that, like turning bright red and then getting even more nervous because of that. And being really tense and shaky.  Maybe nervousness is like pain - you forget how bad it is and get tricked into thinking "Hey, it's not so bad!"

Things to consider:
- tie down my hair so it doesn't get caught in the sharping discs and make a really distracting "plink!" noise EVERY TIME I change a pedal.
- wear lip balm/gloss/stick/ANYTHING so I don't like my lips while playing. Not attractive.

- Make a setlist and stick to it, even if it's just the order I have my music in on the stand, with sticky tabs.
- if playing on hardwood floors, make sure I have quiet shoes.
- when I make a mistake, don't laugh. Reeeally not professional.
- I need someplace to put my music after I'm done with it.

Things that went well:
- I managed to force myself to relax a few times when I noticed I was really tensing up. I managed to do that by both physically relaxing, and asking myself why I was getting so tense since I clearly knew the pieces. Even the pieces that I didn't know well went ok.
- I relaxed more when I chatted between some of the songs.

I'm scared to watch the video recording, though.

ETA: I also forgot about the post-performing post-nervousness blah feeling. Even my eyes hurt.
ETAA: I can play for about 45 minutes before I need a break.