On Stage!
Many guitar teachers and the institutes they work for consider the so called 'excercise in performance' more or less compulsory: once a year you must come on for a concert night. For many people a straight confrontation with something they would like to avoid at all cost: Stage Fright!
I must admit that a certain liking for performance by a number of class mates lured me into guitar playing myself. They played in a basement of a house in the Amsterdam Jacob Obrechtstraat, not far away from the famous Concertgebouw and the American Embassy. I heard Lesson for Two Lutes, Drewries Accordes and a fun performance of Romance d' Amor. The sheer fact that my class mates were playing it, brought artistry within reach, If they could play the guitar, why shouldn't I try to learn?. Besides that, the simple fact that a nice young lady, I had a crush on, was listening breathlessly with a glance of sheer admiration, not only made guitar playing attractive for me, it also incited a certain attraction of the attention and appreciation of an audience.
There you have one of the important motives for public performance. The desire to actually present the things you are able to, with egocentric or altruistic motives. One likes to steal the show, the other plays in public to share the fun, he or she takes in playing music. In all fairness I must admit that the show element was most important for me in the beginning. It did change over time, however.
Playing in public you get to know an effect which can be both constructive and destructive, the ill-famous Stage Fright. A sense of insecurity which can both sharpen and paralyze your mind. The notion that you are observed, analysed, judged and maybe even condemned.
I clearly remember my first performance experiences. I was on stage with a flush and a heartbeat like a top athlete during a sprint for a world record. I was continuously struggling against a trembling in my fingers which seemed to get worse, while on the other hand my movements seemed to be slowed down if I was moving in viscuous oil.
While playing, I ran through tricky passages with complete contempt for safety at almost twice the speed as would have been sensible, just to leave them behind me. I continuously suffered from my 'critical self', as strikingly described in The inner game of Music by Timothy Gallwey, this ill-famous personal critic who informs you of tricky passages and chances to fail at least two measures in advance, so that eventual failure is inevitable. And to add insult to injury, he or she keeps reminding you of the error in the rest of the piece.
It's a kind of stress most people can imagine when they have to go to the dentist, a stress which gradually increases on the day of the concert, reaching its peak on stage and taking hours to subside, particularly if you analyse your performance to the bone with a sense of ruthlessness, failing to remember the phrases which were all right.
If you read this, I guess you think I have been a bit of a masochist. Maybe you are right. Masochism implies pain and that was exactly what I felt afterwards quite a number of times. The sense that I did not play up to my standards..
Fortunately something has changed since the first shaky steps on stage.
When I performed on guitar for the first time, I was about 20 years of age, hitting the stage after two years of self-education and one and a half year of guitar course. This little performance on the School of Music was the first experience in presentation after a talk on hamsters in my early years of High School.
In those days in my mind my audience was equally destructively critical like me. That's a good start for a lot of stress. I was totally unaware of the effects of stress on guitar playing, I had long forgotten the sweaty hands of the hamster talk.
After a bit of setting up I finally was on stage, safely huddled behind my scores. I must admit that these scores were of little use to me on that occasion, I did not have any reading speed, I just knew what the symbols meant. In fact I played all pieces by heart, memorized as a consequence of studying note by note.
I played all pieces with a casual error and catch, received the applause with a clumsy bow and felt completely dissatisfied. First it appeared a struggle to get all notes in the direction of the audience, second in my mind it did not sound at all. It was soo much less than the guitar records I used to play until worn out! Well, in such moments your impossible and unfeasable expectations clearly show themselves.
It would have been useful to discuss this experience with my guitar teacher. Well, it did not happen, because I had no words to describe my sense of vulnerability, my lack of self-confidence and my awareness of failure which came upon me after this little concert. ;-) The fact that my guitar teacher was a woman, did make it even more difficult (no offense, she was a very good teacher), a bit of hurt machismo, I guess. Well, that was a pity, because most guitar teachers will recognize the experience and the feelings about it and are quite willing to share the solution for this problem, provided they have been able to solve it themselves. Now the only comment I got was "well, it wasn't too bad, most went right" and after that the daily business.
This first experience, however, did not deter me from trying again. I had several other occasions for performance, which did not give me satisfaction either, but still got me the appreciation of the audience for my brave struggle.
Ed Westerik was my first guitar teacher who integrated the techniques and aspects of performance in his lessons. In the first years he limited himself to practical hints when I was preparing for performance. Later on we discussed psychological and emotional aspects of performance, but this was not possible before we integrated the subject of emotion, both in the music and in the player, into the lessons.
He presented a few eye-openers:
- Preparation is half the effort.
- The audience is not your enemy.
- Put off self-judgement till after the recital.
- Concentrate on music.
- Enjoy yourself while playing.