Festival Preparation: I'm nervous!

 If you didn't read last week's post about memorizing your music, you really should do so. And you can -- by clicking here!

   That feeling. The one you probably get right before an important performance. Your heart races. Your hands are clammy. Meanwhile, your face might be hot, and your mouth dry. And it seems to take forever before they finally call your name. In the meantime, you hardly hear anything that's going on around you. 

   Almost everyone experiences it. It's called being nervous. 

   The big question is, what are you going to do about it?

   Here's my thoughts on what you can do.

• Be prepared. There are two weeks left till Festival. Make the most of them. Be hard on yourself  during those two weeks. Practice for perfection. Be actively listening while you practice. But also be careful; you don't want to strain your hands or wrists while practicing. And, above all, make sure your memory work is really strong. (Those links, by the way, are links to other blog posts that talk about practicing. I encourage you to read them.) The better prepared you are, the more confident you'll feel. 
• On the flip side, you also need to practice performing. Have a separate practice session where you pretend you're at Festival. Have your mom or dad pretend to be the secretary who will call you up. Have a sibling or friend pretend to be the adjudicator, the person who sits and makes notes on you the entire time you're playing. Sit down away from the piano. When "the secretary" calls you up, go to your piano, adjust the bench and sit down exactly like you would do at the real thing, and play through your songs exactly like you would for Festival -- no book, and no stopping to fix things! Don't forget to bow when you're done playing!  (After you're done, make notes of trouble spots you need to work on. This kind of practicing should be done with the attitude of, "What can I make better?") 
• Perform your songs for as many people and on as many different pianos as you can. With your parents' permission, ask everybody you know who has a piano if you can come over and play theirs! Every piano sounds a little different, and feels a little different, so this helps you be ready to play on the piano at Festival. 
• Don't practice your Festival songs the same day you'll be performing them. But, I will tell you something I do: When I have to perform from memory, I read my music on the way to wherever I'm performing. (This is if I'm not driving, obviously. 😂) I pretend I'm playing it, without actually playing it, but imagining how it should sound and how I will play it. I really believe this helps with my memory, and it certainly helps me feel more confident! 
• You want to be hard on yourself while you're practicing, leading up to Festival. But on the day of Festival, the last thing you want to be doing is thinking about your mistakes. So, for a couple of days before Festival, when you do your performance practice, think only about what you love about these pieces. When you're actually playing at Festival, think about the music, how you want it to sound, and what the story you've made up to go with it is. You want your focus to be sharing the beauty and the fun of the music itself, not how many mistakes you made. 
• One last thing: You can't make nervousness go away. But, you can use it. When you're either nervous or excited, your body produces lots of adrenaline. Adrenaline does a lot of weird things, but one thing it does is give you extra energy. Pretend you're excited, not nervous, and use that energy to play something amazing!