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Awareness Cures

8/25/2020

Awareness Cures.

There are different levels of awareness. We can be aware of the overall quality (or lack of it) of something without being aware of the detail that makes it so. It’s the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is taking in the whole, the gestalt; listening is focusing on the detail. The one is getting an overview; the other is making fine distinctions. The one seems passive; the other is active.

When asked about the intonation of a scale they have just played, students are usually aware of less than perfect intonation (they “heard”), but often they have missed the details - of which notes exactly were out of tune and how specifically. They weren’t really “listening”. As soon as they are asked to identify specifics, they start to really listen to the intonation, note by note, and become aware of where and how specifically they play out of tune (is it sharp or flat, and by how much?). Such focused, zoomed-in awareness usually affects a rapid cure.

Dorothy DeLay used to complain that many players don’t listen intently enough. They vaguely hear what is going on in their own playing, but they only intermittently listen to the detail. Or they might listen to the detail of some facets of their playing, but not to others. So for example, they might play with good intonation, but with one-dimensional sound, or with vibrato too randomly controlled. The ability to really zoom in with focused listening on the detail of all facets of their playing is what separates the masters from the rest.

In a discussion with students at the Aspen Music School and Festival, Itzhak Perlman said that he thought the greatest challenge for a performer is to really listen to themselves. Indeed, to really listen with attention that is both objective and focused on the moment to moment detail is not easy. It takes discipline and practice.

Simple failure to listen intently is one part of the problem. The solution is to understand the difference between different levels of awareness - between hearing and listening - and to develop the skill and discipline of focused listening.

The power of questions
For focusing one’s listening it helps to ask yourself about specifics. When you hear yourself playing out of tune, ask which notes, specifically, are out of tune? Then play it again with laser-sharp focus of attention to find out. Awareness of the details is essential for fixing it. In fact, very often problems seem to disappear by themselves when our awareness is sufficiently sharp. Another example: which notes, specifically, have no vibrato, or need a different kind? Truly listen this time, attentively, so that you can gather the required information for making a change.

Another part of the problem is the limits of our awareness at any given moment. Since our attention is limited, it is impossible to be aware of all the relevant details, and very difficult to be truly objective.

That is why we need tools for supplementing our awareness and changing our perspective. Not only students have such a need, but professionals also do. We have two resources: other people and technology. Your teachers, other professionals, your peers and friends can provide much useful feedback. They can help you become aware of details you missed, and give an objective impression that eluded you. So can your cell phone and other recording devices. To hear and see yourself objectively can be extremely sobering and enlightening. It is surprising how keen our judgment can be when we have a different perspective. Few experiences can be so instantly effective. Make use of it. Play for other people and record yourself regularly. It will expand your awareness and enhance your objectivity immensely.

Awareness does indeed cure. By not simply hearing, but listening actively to the detail, moment to moment; by asking ourselves questions to elicit specifics and make distinctions; and by making regular use of the feedback provided by others and by technology, we can significantly improve our playing.

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Dancing With Your Instrument

8/18/2020

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A fundamental idea in behavior sciences is that rapport is a prerequisite for effective communication.

Rapport is in essence a two step process:
1. Gathering optimum sensory information about your communication partner (what does s/he look like, sound like, feel like? How is s/he communicating verbally and non-verbally?)
2. Mirroring the essential process elements (the how), as distinct from the content (the what), back to your partner so s/he can experience a sense of familiarity which allows for a feeling of ease.

Thus, by speaking the other person’s process language, verbally and non-verbally, a base of mutual understanding is established, allowing people to communicate “in step”, as it were. This is known as rapport and greatly facilitates the understanding of the content of communication. Sensory information about the total spectrum of a person’s communication patterns provides a framework for understanding the content of his/her message.

All the myriad details of a person’s non-verbal patterns (voice-tone, inflection, tempo and rhythm of speech, body-posture, hand- and facial gestures, etc.) constitute the context within which the verbal content of his/her communication finds its meaning.

By becoming aware of a person’s communication patterns and then reflecting it back, or getting “in step” with it, as in a purposeful dance, an efficient process is established for effective communication, with the partners alternately “leading” or “following” in the “dance”, as the case may be.

Comprehensive information gathering is thus the essential first step without which the rest of the process is unlikely to succeed.

Similarly, playing a musical instrument can be thought of as a partnership between the player and his/her instrument. The instrument can be regarded as a collection of information about possibilities of sound, while the player can be thought of as the agent for realizing those possibilities, offering his/her own set of information.

Now, it must be stressed that there is no absolute dividing line between the information presented by the instrument and that of the player. This is illustrated by the fact that different players can each elicit their own distinct kind of sound from the same instrument.

It is, as in all effective communication, a “dance” between two partners bringing together two sets of information for a common purpose, which is to make glorious music. In effect, the player and his/her instrument “dance” (perform) together to the tune of the music being played.

For the dance between player and instrument to be most effective, the first step of the process is the establishment of rapport. The player must gather comprehensive information about the instrument and its responses to the player’s actions. Sensory awareness is paramount: what does it sound like, look like, and feel like?

The next step is to reflect back, or respond in kind, which is to say that the player has to understand and accept the possibilities offered by this particular instrument, respecting its individuality and its limitations, and then engage in a partnership, a dance, in which the best is evoked from both. With sufficient rapport, the player’s own individual sound conception meshes with the instrument, giving rise to results that may be more than the sum of the parts.

Ignoring this process and forcing one’s idea of sound on the instrument without being exquisitely aware of its unique character and possibilities is too much like rape. Sound becomes forced and harsh, muscles become stiff and bruised, and the love of music is forgotten or lost.

Playing a musical instrument -- playing your particular personal musical instrument -- should be a dance of love, a mutual performance, animated by gorgeous music.

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Multi-tasking

8/17/2020

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We can actually do multi-tasking when we practice! By multi-tasking I mean we can develop more than one skill at a time.

For example, while working on a left-hand issue, we can simultaneously develop our control at different parts of the bow, as well as of different bow strokes. Each time we repeat a passage, we can do it at a different part of the bow (middle, tip, frog, or any place in-between); and at a different sounding point; and we can do it with different bow strokes (detaché, spiccato, martelé, etc.).

That way, for the same time spent, we have multiple gains: we get repetitions of left hand actions, as well as practice of different bow stroke skills.

Practicing this way actually has multiple advantages:

It keeps the mind interested (variety is the spice of life)
Several skills are developed in the same time spent
Repetition value for the left hand is retained
A repertoire of execution possibilities is assembled to choose from for eventual performance
Flexibility is increased
Self 1 is “distracted” from interfering with the smooth actions of Self 2
Independence of the two hands is enhanced

Now that is a bargain, is it not?!

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Surgical Precision

8/17/2020

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We have to practice with surgical precision. This is necessary to save time and to solve problems properly. When we practice in a sloppy manner - letting problems slip by; postponing the necessary work to fix them; working on chunks that are too large and include material that doesn’t need particular focus - we waste time, and often solidify mistakes, making it more difficult to fix them later.

Surgical precision is done by immediately zooming in on trouble spots, not wasting time on passages that we can play properly. Once we have identified and zoomed in on a problematic spot, we should memorize it right away so that we can pay full attention to our interaction with our instrument without the distraction of having to read the score.

The next step is to lower the tempo and intensity of sensory stimuli so that we can make finer distinctions. If we play too fast, loud and tense, things become blurry, preventing us from the quality feedback required for refining how we play. To clean up sloppy playing, we need to slow down, play softer and rid ourselves of excess tension.

Then we should engineer a solution (or solutions) by:

Having a clear idea of the outcome we want (what it would sound like, look like, and feel like)
Noticing what prevents us from achieving it (what kind of problem is it: fingering? Shifting? Intonation? Sound? Tempo? Coordination? Way of thinking? etc.)
Figuring out how to solve it
Experimenting with different potential solutions till we find what works best
Repeating the solution sufficiently to become an automatic skill
Reintegrating it into the larger musical context to test for efficacy there

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Expressive Musical Performance

8/13/2020

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Of course, musical performance entails much more than our theories of it allow.. Complex skills do involve more than we can say in words. As the great Martha Graham said, “if I could say it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.”

But that doesn’t mean we can’t make explicit some key elements of great performance. Even though our descriptions are necessarily incomplete, and fall short of what can only be fully gained through exposure and experience, we can learn a lot by reverse engineering, as it were, what masterful musical performers do.

Let’s start with a basic question: What distinguishes superior musical performance? What are the most striking differences between masterful and mediocre musical performance?

It seems to me that the most important differences can be sorted into three fundamental categories: differences, kinetics, and shape.

Great performers make more differences than lesser performers. If one could tally the number of differences made, you would find that master performers do so much more than lesser performers. These are differences of many kinds: dynamics, articulation, voicing, timbre, tempo-rubato, rhythmic flexibility, timing, etc.

Great performers also have a much more active sense of kinetics (movement or momentum). They know how to manage, or present, the energy curves of the music, by speeding up and slowing down in proportion to the inherent harmonic and other tensions and resolutions.

In addition, compared to less accomplished performers, great performers “shape” the music in ways more curvy than square, and congruent with the ebb and flow of tensions and resolutions in the music.

Proportion

To achieve this, they present the different elements in just the right proportions. In fact, the essence of musically satisfying performance is proportion. If the different elements are presented in the right proportions, the result is aesthetically convincing. If the proportions are inappropriate, the result is not satisfactory. What are those elements?

To play expressively, performers apply various proportions and gradations of

loud and soft
fast and slow
foreground and background
articulation
timbre
Punctuation
expressive devices (like vibrato and portamenti)

Applying the appropriate proportions of these elements allows the performer to create the desired differences, sense of kinetics and shape required by each piece.

Differences

A law of information has it that information is news of difference. Blandness is absence of information. A blank sheet of paper contains no information. As soon as coherent differences are added– elements that contrast with each other and with the background - a message or a picture starts to emerge.

Likewise, noise that is too uniform is called white noise, because like a white sheet of paper, it carries no information. Introduce differences in the form of pitches, articulations, rhythms, loudness, and voila!, speech or music becomes discernible.

It’s the difference that makes the difference. Differences carry information. For example, it’s the difference between one’s and zero’s and their sequential arrangements that allow computers to be such effective processors of information.

In musical performance too, it is the differences that make the difference.
Due to the greater number of differences in superior musical performance compared to lesser performance, more information is communicated.
Such differences enhance definition. The musical elements are presented in sharper relief, more clearly etched out, delineated.

A key factor in how convincing a musical performance is, is the extent to which all channels of communication carry the same information or message. In a word: congruence. Is the phrasing congruent with the character of the music? Does the visual appearance of the performance match the character of what is heard?
If there is incongruence – if incompatible information is communicated, the audience is not convinced. They may not know exactly why, but will unconsciously pick up any mismatch in what is communicated, and will experience indifference or even unease.

It could very well be that the spell-binding, mesmerizing, entrancing, or riveting (note the words associated with the phenomenon of trance) quality of exceptional performances result from the “hypnotic” power of congruence.

When the totality of people’s attention is occupied with congruent information, i.e. information that carries the same or closely related meaning, they tend to go into trance. When people are “entranced” during a “spell-binding” concert performance, they exhibit the typical signs of trance: enhanced facial symmetry, defocused eyes, slower breathing, softer muscle tonus, and a narrowing of attention to the exclusion of other stimuli, etc. And as we’ve already noted, the words they use to describe their experience have strong associations with trance.
Related to congruence is the idea of closure. Closure means that musical utterances, on all levels from small to large – from phrases to whole compositions – are concluded in ways that are congruent with the character of what was played. Principally, it has to do with timing and gesture at points of conclusion. For example, abruptness following the last notes of a piece can disturb the character, preventing the natural dissipation of the atmosphere.

Proper closure could be described as providing sufficient psychological space for affective experience to run its natural course. Interrupting the natural flow of affective experience toward conclusion or dissipation has the undesirable effect of cancelling out, or neutralizing, much of what has been experienced until then. Masterful performers provide closure that is congruent with the character of the music played. It sets the seal on the musical message they communicated.

Kinetics

In addition to more differences, superior performance shows a keener sense of kinetics, of movement toward and away from musical high-points, like rubber bands that attach the performer to it, drawing him faster toward the goals, and slowing him down on the other side.

Beginners and lesser performers tend to play straight, square, rigid, stocky, mechanical. Uniformity and rigidity prevail, rather than variety and suppleness.
Masterful performers know that mechanical is soulless. Instead, they convey a sense of movement that is organic. They understand that if everything is equal – if all beats are divided exactly equally, if all rhythms are played absolutely straight, and if tempo remains metronomically static - then nothing is special.
And if nothing is special, then there is no anticipation of musical pay-offs, or climaxes, or high-points, no expectations that can be satisfied or denied, no organic curve of tension and resolution, nothing exciting in wait for the musical traveler.

As on a journey, in music there are destinations, high-points, resting places, diversions, detours, pit-stops. There are periods of urgency, requiring quicker forward motion, more momentum. These are alternated with periods of relaxation, where an ambling pace is more appropriate. Sometimes, the music rushes urgently toward a destination; at other times it relaxes to enjoy the scenery; and there are times when it comes to a complete standstill.

Since music is an event unfolding in time, it is always going somewhere, at least in the traditional Western tonal harmonic system. It is in essence a system of tensions and resolutions that creates a sense of movement – a journey, if you will – away from and eventually back to “home base”.

That sense of movement characterizes not only whole compositions or movements of a composition (note the word, “move-ments”; and note also that we speak of being “moved” by music), but also smaller parts like melodies and phrases and sub-phrases. There also, subtle quickening of momentum towards high-points with relaxation thereafter enhances the affective power of the music.
When conveyed by expert performers, movement is seldom mechanical, stocky or rigid (unless, of course, the music has deliberate mechanical character). Mechanical is cold and lifeless. Rather, musical movement is usually organic. It is fluid and supple. Music moves and breathes like an organism, in contrast to mechanically rattling on like a machine. Like expressive speech, it is nuanced, not stiffly measured. It’s like dancing as opposed to marching. Seducing, not commanding. It is smoothed, rounded and poised, not clipped and clocked; curvy, not square.

Another insight of masterful performers that contributes to their sense of kinetics is that notes can often be more meaningfully grouped, musically speaking, than is apparent from notational conventions. Musical groupings can transcend bar-lines and beats. For example, it often makes more musical sense to consider the last note/s of groups that are notated according to beats, as belonging to the next group of notes notated as if they were a separate unit. Playing it that way contributes to the sense of forward motion, or momentum, so fundamental to a satisfying musical journey.

The idea of up-beats and down-beats, notated on either sides of bar lines, but actually together forming indivisible units, comes from ancient Greek dance, where the arsis and thesis (up-beat and down-beat) are parts of one smooth movement, that of the leg going up in preparation of coming down for the next step. Lifting the leg is not a separate movement from putting the leg down – that would be disjointed movement. It is one flowing action. Arsis and thesis belong together, as if there is no bar-line separating them.

So a crucial element in the process of shaping a performance to “move” people, is to have a sense of organic movement, of kinetics. That sense is enhanced by looking beyond bar-lines and beat-groupings, to find a more musically satisfying way of regarding notes as belonging together as units. It’s a question of not being imprisoned by the bar-lines and enslaved by metronomic beats, both of which are results of notation convention rather than intrinsic musical sense.

Shape

Another way to express the nuanced characteristic of masterful musical performance, is to describe it as the “shaping” of the music. This “shaping” essentially has to do with proportion: how much of each expressive factor is employed relative to others.

In fact, it could be argued that the essence of musical “shaping” is proportion. The most fundamental criterion for decisions about relative loudness, tempo, timing, articulation, timbre, etc., of any element in a composition is its relation to other elements and to the whole. Getting the proportions right is the main musical challenge.

That’s why structural analysis is the starting point. It is the process of identifying musical elements, or units, their character, and their relationship to the rest of the system. Yes, it can be called a “system”, because in a musical masterpiece, everything is somehow interrelated.

The most basic “shape” in music is probably an arch, or a curve. Why? Presumably because we live in a “curvy” world. Think of the horizon, of the sun and moon, of the glide-path of any flying object, of the swing of a limb, of the uterus, of mommy’s breast, of the female form. We are a sexy species! Roundness, curves, arches are what turn us on and what sustain us. In music, as in life.

Think of the tension curves of metabolic processes like hunger and sexual arousal. The curvy nature of life is reflected in music – both the parabolic shapes we see, as mentioned, and also the tension and resolution “curves” of our basic biological drives.

Musical utterances, on all levels from motifs to whole compositions, can thus be thought of as a series of arches, with each arch representing an increase followed by a resolution of tension.

In the presentation of musical utterances, the laws of nature are followed, where opposites define each other and together form wholeness, like the concept of Yin-Yang in Chinese philosophy: Up-and-down, high-and-low, fast-and-slow, light-and-dark, heavy-and-light, etc. So in music, opposites tend to alternate and compliment one another in order to engender a sense of balance, of wholeness or completeness.

If the first phrase or a sub-phrase goes up in pitch, the following one tends to come down. If there are jumps in pitch, it tends to be followed by step-wise motion. A quickening in tempo is followed by a slowing down. Louder is followed by softer. Legato (connected) sounds are followed by staccato (disconnected) articulation. An increase in harmonic dissonance (tension) is followed by more consonance (resolution). Rhythmic complexity is followed by simplicity.

What goes up must come down. I like to say that what you take away, you must give back. If you speed up, you must balance it out by going slower; if you play louder, you must become softer again; and so on.

This can be accomplished through any of the musical elements, or any combination thereof: pitch, rhythm, tempo, volume, harmony, timbre, articulation. Often, this is a succession of opposites. Pitch rising, then lowering; louder followed by softer; faster balanced out by slower. What goes up, must come down. It’s about balance: an increase followed by a decrease.

While all notes are important, at least in master-pieces, not all should receive equal emphasis, or have equal weight. Some notes or harmonies (combinations of notes) are indeed more special than others. Not all destinations on a journey are equally significant; not all events in a drama are equally pivotal; not all elements of foreplay are equally titillating; not all parts of a building are equally impressive; and so on.

In musical events there is usually a whole spectrum of significance. There are the major pivotal points/moments, but often there are also lesser points of gravity, more or less regularly spaced. These are like telephone poles, or pillars, between which the other notes may flow less anchored.

Part of the performer’s task is to identify not only the major high-points, but the other more regular points of gravity, or anchors, or pillars, or telephone poles, between which the music is strung.

Motifs, phrases, themes, melodies, movements – these are names for musical utterances of various lengths, much like clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters in language. And like language, musical utterances have their own rhetorical devices and nuances. Notes can be emphasized, rhythms can be bent a little, silences can be lengthened or shortened somewhat (or entrances can be anticipated or delayed), etc. – all to heighten the musical message.

These factors are mutually supportive. For example, a rise in harmonic tension with an increase in loudness (crescendo) can be supported by a quickening in tempo, followed by a slowing down with the harmonic resolution – all in proportion of course, and within what Dorothy DeLay called, “the channel of style”. The scale of proportions depends mostly on the context and the overall style of the piece. For example, the scale of the differences admissible in Romantic music is generally much larger than that in Baroque music.

The striving for balance in musical performance can be thought of as having two dimensions, vertical and horizontal. The vertical dimension represents the expressive factors of loudness, timbre, articulation; the horizontal dimension represents movement, i.e. tempo and rhythm. The two categories, vertical and horizontal, should be in proportion. The scale of differences in one should be matched by those in the other.

The reader may have noticed the mix of metaphors. Musical richness translates uneasily and insufficiently into words, refusing to be reduced to single metaphors. Music can be variously thought of as:

a journey
narration/communication (poetry, story, drama, dialogue)
architecture
art (painting, sculpture)
nature
sex
any combination of such metaphors.

At one moment the music can be gaining momentum toward a specific destination or high-point, as in a journey; the next moment different musical voices can be engaged in a dialogue between different characters, as in a drama. Our awareness can be drawn to the elegant shape of a phrase, as in a drawing or painting or sculpture, or expand to admire the imposing overall structure of the piece, as in architecture. Then again, harmonic, rhythmic and dynamic tension can build towards glorious climaxes and resolutions, very much as in sex!

These metaphors are discernible in our language:
we speak of musical “movement”, of “where the music is going” (journey)
of musical “drama”, of “voices” having a “dialogue”, of musical “questions” and “answers”, of the “character” of a theme or melody or a movement, of “tone poems” (narration)
of the “shape” of a phrase, of the “structure” of a piece, of making its “architecture” audible (architecture)
of “male” and “female” “voices” and cadences, and of “tensions” building toward “climaxes” (sex)

The richness of the musical message performers communicate is informed (inform-ation) by the richness of the metaphors they use to engage with the music.

These fundamental ideas, gleaned from reverse engineering masterful musical performance, are encapsulated in the following questions, devised to help performers focus on the crucial elements for presenting music in “moving” ways.

1. What’s the structure of the piece? [identifying musical ideas] (What are the main themes, phrases? Where are the cadences? Transitions? Sequences? Patterns? Modulations?)
2.What's the character (of a phrase, melody, section, movement, piece)?
3. Where is it going (where are the high-points and climaxes)?
4. How can opposites be highlighted and balanced?
5. How can notes be grouped musically (as opposed to notationally)?
6. How can momentum be used to support the other indicators of tensions and resolutions?

Many years ago, the violinist turned conductor, Alberto Bolet, taught me his four “C’s”:
Colour
Contour
Character
Contrast

Considering our investigation, we might add three more “C’s”:
Climax
Congruence
Closure

That gives us Seven “C’s” for representing the ideas offered here for masterful musical performance:
Contour, Character, Contrast, Colour, Climax, Congruence, Closure.

Proportion
In the final analysis, the art of musical performance lies in how the performer proportions the elements of music to achieve the desired measure of differences, kinetics and shape - or, if you like, the seven “C’s”. Proportion is the fundamental essence of satisfying musical performance. If the proportions are right, the music moves us. If not, we feel uneasy.

All of this is not to suggest that performers invariably go through such complicated conscious procedures with every composition they are preparing to perform. It's similar to the difference between having an impromptu conversation and preparing a complicated speech. Expert performers know the musical language, can speak it fluently, and sometimes, depending on the piece, they are simply having an impromptu musical conversation, intuitively following the musical rules of grammar and rhetoric. At other times they have to thoroughly plan for delivering a complicated musical "speech". And of course there is a whole spectrum in between. Their conscious cognitive engagement can vary considerably on that spectrum, depending on the challenges posed by a particular piece.

To summarize: In order to entrance audiences with masterful musical performance, we need to consider the differences we make, the sense of kinetics we provide, and the ways we shape the musical material.
To help us do that we can ask six fundamental questions about the music we are preparing to perform, and ponder the presence of seven key elements in how we perform it.

To conclude, there is good news, and there is bad news.
The good news is that we can learn much from masterful musical performance. There are indeed patterns and structure to what great performers do. This has been an attempt to verbalize some of it.

The bad news is that there is a lot that remains unsaid, and that can be acquired only through intense engagement with a particular composition over an extended period of time. For that there are no short-cuts. It is the musical, non-verbal discourse between you, your instrument and the composition. Only by living with a piece, by engaging it with your instrument over a long period of time, can you begin to discover the depths of its inner workings and its meaning to you.

Musical interpretation involves both objective and subjective processes. The objective processes involve the “science” of music: the theory, analyses, rules, practices, techniques and procedures of musicianship. The subjective processes are what transpire in your personal engagement with the music through your instrument. Both processes are essential.

In the final analysis, what you end up offering an audience, when all is said and done, is your personal experience of the music. The end product of all your objective and subjective preparation for performance is what the music means to you. You are in effect saying to the audience, “having studied this music objectively with all the tools available, and having lived with is through my instrument, this is what it means to me, and this is how much I value it.” Providing personal meaning and value is essential for truly engaging an audience.

For the immense privilege of having an audience, we performers have the responsibility to do all the objective and subjective work required to provide a compelling experience of intense personal meaning and value. That is no mean task. It requires intense study and engagement.

May the differences you make carry much musical information; may the kinetics you employ take listeners on an exciting musical journey; and may your musical shapes be truly elegant. In short, be musically articulate, mobile and sexy!

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Stage Fright: Advice From An Expert

8/9/2020

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In a master class long ago, legendary pianist Krystian Zimerman gave the following advice for overcoming stage fright:

1. Be well prepared. Doubt about our preparation - even the slightest doubt - easily translates into nervousness. Eliminate any doubt about your preparation for performance by making sure that your practicing for performance has been more than adequate. Remember, as we practice so we perform.

2. Change your thinking about the audience to something positive. Realize that people spend time and money to share in your love of the music you are performing. They are present at your performance to share in something special. It is a privilege to share wonderful music. Give the music as a gift.

3. When you are practicing, imagine the performance situation as realistically as possible, so that you can learn to cope with whatever anxiety arises. Weak spots will become obvious. Sort them out especially well when you practice. Similar to Zimerman, Itzhak Perlman related that as a teenager when practicing at home, he would pretend an upcoming performance situation so vividly, that he would actually experience the same nervousness, allowing him to learn to cope. He would enter the living room from the bathroom as if entering the stage from the green room, and then perform as if in the actual concert. In this way he practiced performing. Doing this allowed him to discover passages that needed extra preparation, as well as providing opportunities to get used to nervousness and learn to control it.

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Awareness Cures

Dancing With Your Instrument

Multi-tasking

Surgical Precision

Expressive Musical Performance

Stage Fright: Advice From An Expert

Piet Koornhof

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