Jobineries

Blogue de Gilles G. Jobin, Gatineau, Québec.

samedi 7 août 2021

Quota : la perfection ?

Je tiens à garder une trace de cette réponse à une très bonne question :

Curtis Lindsay
pianist, composer.Updated July 14

Why do I play the piano perfectly fine when I am by myself but around other people or during a performance I play very badly? I get very nervous even though I am skilled at the piano. How do I fix this?

I’d like to suggest something which may sound a little harsh; hopefully you’ll understand that it’s meant to be constructive, and take it in stride while giving it some thought.
Okay, here it is: if you really feel that your playing is perfectly fine at any time, that’s kind of a red flag or an alarm bell, and it’s probably directly related to why you’re having difficulty in performance — because, in fact, you’re probably not playing “perfectly fine” regardless of who’s in the room.
It happens to all of us. People have been paying me to play, sometimes a lot (suckers!), for many years now. I rarely if ever play “perfectly fine,” by my own assessment. All I ask of myself is that I do a little better every time, if possible, to set up a generally positive trend. It mostly works. I’m sure you’re far better than you used to be, too, which is great. That’s the right direction.
Peak performance is an immensely complicated subject — entire books have been written about it. The Inner Game of Tennis is a popular one.
The thing is that we are not terribly reliable judges of how we sound. Of course we can listen carefully to admire and build on what we’re doing well. We can detect and address some problems, yes. These are the things musicians do, and it’s those diagnosis and treatment skills that a good teacher will be most intent on helping her students to nurture before they fly away from the studio nest.
Still, there’s an awful lot we will miss. We’re prone to get into routines, stuck in ruts, immersed in repeating patterns of behavior at the instrument. We become robotic in our approach without realizing it. This is why many seasoned professionals still like to take lessons with respected coaches from time to time, to help take stock of what may be getting missed.
Sometimes, when capturing a live performance in a less than ideal space, an audio engineer will record a few seconds of any faint ambient sound happening in the room: buzzes, hums, and so on. They will use this snippet as a tool to help subtract or cancel any unwanted room noises in the final product, should they arise.
Your process as a musician is bound to be plagued by unwanted ambient noise that you may not be aware of, because it has become part of the general background of your everyday musicianship. A great way to capture and assess this junk is to record yourself playing, let a few days or a week pass, and then listen to the playback as studiously, impartially, and critically as you possibly can.
This is a good beginning for self-improvement. You will discover in your playing at least ten quirks you didn’t know you had, and from that point you can diagnose each of them and work on improving them. While generally no fun at all to go through, especially at first, this meticulous self-care will return huge dividends in your performances — not just in the apparent musical quality, but in your confidence and mental stability during the act of performance. It will eventually make performing a less exasperating, more comfortable experience for you.
This command and conquer attitude is the diametric opposite of everything is just fine until people show up.
The other thing is that you simply have to get more practice performing. It’s the best way I know to help control nerves and to cultivate a confident, relaxed vibe. I don’t doubt that the quality of your playing does take a hit when there is an audience present — this is very common, and it certainly isn’t a disorder or anything of the sort. So you need to do it more often.
I’ve encountered many music students who seem to believe that a great performance is going to be the natural end result of a lot of time in the practice room, like a cake coming out of the oven. All done, let’s eat!
But this is almost never the case; a great performance is the optimal end result of having undertaken a large number of less-than-great performances beforehand, just as a delicious cake may have been preceded by many oddly shaped, dry, less tasty ones.
Too many of us simply don’t perform enough. We learn a piece in order to perform it only once or twice, and then we move on. This is the classic hometown piano recital model, and for many pupils it continues into college or conservatory.
It’s likely that, when we hear a career soloist slay a concerto, they’ve already performed it publicly somewhere between dozens and hundreds of times before. And the very first one of those was after all the time in the practice room! It’s also likely that they’re still nervous about performing — there are plenty of world-class performers who continue to experience stage fright, as it’s called, to varying degrees. But because of all that hard-earned XP, they gradually learn to deal with nerves more smoothly; they can play well no matter what kind of day or week they’ve had.
That kind of consistency and professionalism is not a gift. It is a learned and practiced skill in and of itself, quite apart from the music.

jeudi 29 juillet 2021

Piano lover from Canada !

lundi 26 avril 2021

C. Malecki : Easy New Classics #22

C. Malecki : Easy New Classics #9

C. Malecki : Easy New Classics #7

C. Malecki : Easy New Classics #19

samedi 17 avril 2021

Kornelyuk : Le ville qui n'existe pas (tiré d'une série russe)

Une version très intense. De toute beauté !

samedi 2 janvier 2021

Gramophone Waltz (Doga)

dimanche 20 décembre 2020

Neige sur Leningrad

Parfois,on tombe sur des trucs qui nous bouleversent. C'est le cas de cette interprétation d'une pièce de Mikaël Tariverdiev (1931-1996).

samedi 28 novembre 2020

Irina Bulakhova

J'aime beaucoup le travail d'Irina Bulakhova. Sur sa chaîne Youtube, elle arrange plusieurs pièces qui sont vraiment agréables à jouer.
Çi-dessous, on l'entend chanter (5m24s). Et je suis sous le charme !

vendredi 13 novembre 2020

Just Like Your Tenderness

Dans une version simplifiée, évidemment !

jeudi 12 novembre 2020

Song from A Secret Garden

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