The Performance of My Life

Although learning how to play a musical instrument is difficult, the real challenge is presenting your acquired skills in front of an audience. The fact that a single mistake in my performance could undermine my true playing ability almost made me reconsider playing in front of my family. Furthermore, I suffer from performance anxiety and I have the tendency to dig my nails into my skin until I bleed to calm down my nerves. However, I powered through my fear and carried out the performance.

My cousin played alongside me in a duet as we primarily focused on harmonization to mask minuscule mistakes. To avoid further mishaps, we decided to play the same piece we worked on last week, Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.”

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Our audience constituted of my grandparents, her parents, my parents, and my brother. It was quite a full house. When we were finished, every single person gave us a standing ovation, which was nice after such a stressful week. Despite having difficulty in the past, we managed to carry the correct tempo and rhythm throughout the piece. However, we still need to work on our transition from quarter notes to the sixteenth notes in measure 21. I also realized that the faster I play the notes, the less distinct they sound since I tend to play the notes too quickly, producing a scratchy tone. My intonation improved, but my E string notes were still not high enough. Overall, I need to work on bow technique to produce a fuller, richer tone, and intonation to prevent others from cringing when listening to my higher notes.

During the performance, I learned that it is good to only focus on one aspect of the piece to divert attention away from the mistakes. For example, although my intonation was not perfect at some parts (i.e. measure #18), I was able to hide the mistake by making our harmonization stand out. Additionally, I learned that it is more important to improve intonation before perfecting rhythm because a piece that is in tune at a slower pace sounds better than a piece that is out of tune at optimal speed.

For myself, I learned that I do not fare well under the spotlight, even if the audience consists of people who know me best. I knew that I had performance anxiety, but I did not realize the severity of it until I finished playing. For instance, I was shaking during the entire piece, which worsened my tone. Next week, I will try to perform in front of other audiences to see if I can improve my performance anxiety through repeated practice. Additionally, since Christmas is rolling around, I will be on the lookout for Christmas duets to learn with my cousin so we can perform in front of our family once again.