> > 'You have to tell yourself how good you are before you sing - you have > to > pump yourself up.' >
Alas, in many student recitals, students are performing pieces that are at their technical limits. The necessarily skills needed to perform a particular piece may not be sufficiently nailed down by performance day . Under such situations, It's hard to think of one as being good or even adequate. I 'm a very nervous performer. I find it more beneficial to look at my short comings straight in the face. If I find in practice that I find that goof up a lot on a particular passage, I have no reason to expect that it will be any different during a recital. So I learned to covertly work on alternative, graceful ways to recover from expected problems. I figured it was better to not let my teacher know. For piano recitals, I would even spend considerable time practicing my "alternative" versions. Ironically this helped. Only once do I remember having to use one of my "alternatives" and that was in a voice recital where I skipped the (added) high notes at the end of a piece. Notes that were just not going to happen that day. Once I got over being terrified about potential mistakes, my method helped me to relax enough to avoid devastating, recital blowing mistakes.
"Perfection is the enemy of the Best. (Attributed to Voltaire) Barbara Roberts mikebarb@n... mikebarb@n...
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