What is a musical performance and how can we use it as a tool in our improvement? This article will focus on the pedagogical and conceptual advantages of performing.
As music is an endless journey of learning and developing yourself one sometimes feels the need to have a platform to execute and enjoy what he/she has achieved so far. Performing can function as this platform for a musician. It can help you look back at what you have done so far and enjoy the results of the process you have gone through. It can function as a key point for solid advancement and help you design and take the next step.
A performance doesn’t always have to be defined with a big stage, spotlights and a huge audience. It can be playing at home for anyone. Or even for yourself only! The great bassist William Parker once said about why he and his colleagues used to play although no audience showed up was “to keep the Earth spinning”.
Performing is an experience in a special state of mind and it’s more about directing your attention to achieving a goal in a continuous state. It’s a great exercise for learning how to deal with mistakes, unexpected developments and surprises. Anything can happen on stage and you might still need to continue making your music.
Here’s a list of essential things that come to you through performing:
– Repertoire
Learning songs and especially the songs one likes to play/sing is a good motivational source for practicing music. Also with the help of a teacher one can learn pieces that help coming up with a faster development curve. Setting a goal to perform these pieces makes one take them even more seriously! Depending on the requirements of a performance a musician might need to learn new pieces in a completely new style, or come up with new technical strategies to play for a longer time with limited material. All of these goals serve as very clear practice objectives, which is always useful if you want to watch your advancement. Performing and seeing how comfortable they feel on stage, how expressive you can be with what you have learned will make you much more self-conscious about your musical knowledge. So by performing you learn to understand the importance of having and expanding a comfortable and colorful repertoire.
– Self-esteem
With experience one makes a transition from self-judgment to healthy self-criticism. Learning how to treat mistakes is crucial if you want to continue developing and not stopping in every obstacle. Mistakes and difficulties are the best indicators for what needs work. Give yourself credit for things that worked well. Look for positive aspects in any performance and focus on developing an “outsider-eye” about yourself that sees not only the bad sides but everything you are as a whole.
– Communicating through music
Performing for an audience can be both a treat and a stress. A lot of it depends on your attitude. By performing you can learn to create good energy with your playing. This is a miraculous quality of music that you achieve through working on your artistic expression. This will help you see that there are many things you can communicate through your performance and all it needs is getting comfortable with your presence.
– Being in the moment
Playing at its best is meditation. When you’re confident about your repertoire and skills all that remains to do is to lay back and let music happen. It takes time and discipline to get to such moments, but they are good reasons to stay motivated about moving further and understanding why you do what you do.
Performance is an important practice on its own. It can teach you things not only about music but also about yourself. At MyMusicSchool.com the teachers will guide you towards your own performing experience.