This one trick will help you not to panic during live performance

By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)​​​​​​

This morning I went to church to practice and found Mindaugas, my student from the Unda Maris studio who wanted me to look at his F minor Chaccone by J. Pachelbel he's been working over the last view months.

Mindaugas usually comes earlier on Tuesdays for our weekly practices and I miss his performance. By the time I show up, he would be done practicing and let other students play.

So this morning I had a first chance to listen to him play for real in a long period of time.

It sounded quite strong. The tempo was stable, the articulation was clear but he had just one variation in the middle which was a little shaky.

Not bad. Out of entire variation cycle, just one which needed some extra attention from my part.

I asked him if he would be freezing in fear in this part when he would be performing live and he said that sometimes it would be hard for him to keep going and he would need to stop.

But stopping is not allowed in life performance, is it?

So I suggested him to write down chord names below the pedal part in this variation and practice just playing the chords without pedals.

These chords were:

Ab-Eb-bb-f-C-f6-C6-f-g65-C7-f

Try applying this in more difficult spots of your practice and you'll see how easier it becomes to keep going.​

Hope this helps.