Preparing a piece for performance

15 Oct 2026

You can practice a set piece for a long time at home only to have things get weird during performance or recording. Sometimes it feels like it’s a totally foreign piece! Here are some things to try – and these are notes just as much for me as they are for anybody else!

These notes are accumulated from various books, sites, YouTube videos – not much here is original thought.

ps - this is a draft piece, hopefully I’ll get some feedback and I’ll tweak it further.

Some things to try:

• Change your practice environment/location. Usually, when you practice, you have a very controlled environment that you’re used to: your usual room, in your usual chair, the usual acoustics. Playing live will change all that, so change things during practice: play the piece in a new room, with different acoustics, different lighting, etc.
• Do practice runs of your piece in front of one person or a camera, and then a small group, etc. Playing in front of people adds new energy.
• Run through the piece only in your memory. Here and feel things as clearly as you can. If something is foggy, that might need a little bit more attention.
• Play through the piece extremely slowly, with your eyes closed. When you play slowly, you are not relying so much on the reflexes that might otherwise be in control.
• Start the piece at different sections, especially at transition points – don’t just play from beginning to end. Sometimes you might only be able to play parts of a piece if you play everything before it: you can’t start the B section until you finish the A section, for example, because you have formed some kind of association, physical or mental, that joins the two things. You should be able to start each section cold, and if you can’t, then that’s a weakness which will definitely show up when you try to play it live. Transitions (key changse, position shifts, theme entries) are often where breakdowns occur, because you can’t rely as much on autopilot.
• Start and stop the piece at arbitrary points. Obviously this won’t work with a backing track, but if you’re just working with a Metronome click, you can start and stop you’re playing whatever you want.
• While practicing, aim for higher than final performance speed, as long as it’s under control! Then you’ll have something on the tank for the real day.
• Try completely different feels while practicing. Soft, loud, angry, sad, swinging, straight, silly, etc. – exploring it so you’re playing the piece instead of it playing you. When you perform it, it will take over anyway.

A final thought:

Recitals and recording can feel big, heavy, and stressful. But, really, it’s supposed to be fun. Fun for you, and for everyone listening. Nobody cares about a missed note. Everybody cares about a missed groove, a concentration lapse, missed rhythm, all of these things are the important things. It’s easy to get caught up in notes, but see if you can beyond the notes (if the genre allows it).