As a person / musician who is dealing with a lot of self- pressure, I
assumed it would be fun trying to explain why I put myself in such a state
and also relate it to my different stages of excitement, motivation, etc. I
find this topic quite interesting, especially because I assume every musician
is different. In order to show the differences and similarities between
us, I decided to ask some of my friends and classmates, how they rank their
stages of excitement and motivation.
At the beginning I mentioned self- pressure. Where does it come from? Well,
the answer is quite simple. As long as I can remember, there was always a close
relationship/ bond between performance and perfectionism on stage. In order to
play brilliantly and creatively and to show a sense of musicality, you had to
be extraordinarily prepared. Mentally and physically. Countless hours of
preparation give us feeling or even expectations that we need to present
ourselves as best as we can, without any flaws. But at one point that
becomes self pressure. Through years I realized that the only way to deal with
it is reminding myself that I am a human, and I am allowed to make mistakes on
stage. Luckily in my case, I started to notice differences in my playing,
simply because of the change in my way of thinking. Not feeling the pressure
anymore, I acted more spontaneously on stage, feeling relaxed, and most
importantly I enjoyed every second of my performance.
But how can we relate all this to stages of excitement
and motivation?
The connection between those is quite strong. The more motivated and
exited we feel, the more we are usually capable of doing and
creating. But what happens when that stops you from rational thinking and
our expression and interpretation becomes a over exaggerated one? In my opinion
this is quite normal in the process of practice. Especially at the beginning,
when you choose a piece you want to play. You feel so overwhelmed, that you
just want to practice and repeatedly play your favourite phrases of the chosen
piece. Sometimes we listen to the other artists playing their own
interpretation of the very same piece, and imagining how we can play
it at the same level as they do, or even better, differently, with the same
expression, or completely change it in order to fulfill our perception of an
ideal execution of the piece. But this stage is just temporary. At the second
stage, when we need to focus on the technical and musical execution, our level
of excitement drops a bit, because we have to make so much more effort to
actually make things sound good. Now, we can mention self- pressure. We start
to push ourselves to the limits of our technical and also musical abilities we
posses, in order to make an excellent, unique and exquisite performance.
We fail to convince ourselves that something we played is good enough. Even
if it is, we still manage to seek for every little "mistake" we can
find. A lot of those flaws in our playing become more significant simply
because of our inability to relax, and listen to what we play. Our tendency to
perfection makes us completely oblivious to what is really important when
we perform on stage.
This stage is also much longer than the first one. It
takes much more energy and makes us emotionally empty, sometimes confused.
The third stage is in my opinion mental preparation. If you overcome your
fears of bad performance, which are sadly chronic fears for a lot of
younger musicians, you automatically act much more confident on stage.
Knowing that you made everything you possibly could to be excellent, gives us a
major feeling of satisfaction. A lot of times we need to remind ourselves of
that.
It is interesting and also a bit hilarious how many times we have to
convince ourselves that it is worthy all that work. But, when you overcome
your fears, mental walls that you built around yourself, you grow as a
musician. At the end, when your performance becomes flawless because you
stopped worrying and focused on spontaneous playing, that is the biggest
satisfaction you can get. Pure happiness.
xoxo, Ana
