I often see my students get obsessed with speed. You get the little shrimp, seven years old, ready to take on the world, and trying her best to speed the crap out of every exercises. Of course, some of them do it to get rid of said exercise as fast as possible, musicality be darned. But most of them do it simply because they have the beast devouring them inside and it calls for more and more speed.
That’s for the practice.
But then comes the time to perform and, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of that experience, you know that a performance is almost never about speed. You might have to watch your dynamics, or your transitions, you might have to make sure you stay with the rest of the band, you might even have to think about your mum who will be taking pictures from the first row and still hasn’t figured out how to turn off the flash. But speed? No.
Isn’t it strange that our priorities change from practice to performance. We prepared so hard, we tried to anticipate everything from the difference of instrument (for piano players), to the kind of shirt we’ll wear. And yet, we never ever planned correctly. Does that mean that even if everything is written on the chart, music is and will always be an improvisational art? In some sense, yes. The musicians feed off the crowd they play for, the room, the atmosphere. Heck, you even have people like Barbra Streisand who are famous to make comment about current events and politics during her shows.
I love performing, I do. I don’t like the traveling and carrying my gear and waiting for hours before the curtain goes up, and coming back in the middle of night and emptying the car of all the stuff in 3 feet of snow or in a 100 degrees heat, that’s all. But the part where people watch me and shake their booties, I love that.
And I am surprised that none of the shows I’ve ever done resembled what I imagined them to be. Ever. So, I took another approach: I stopped imagining what the performance will be. I just play as I go. As simple as that.
