Learn to Play Recorder

Lesson 88: Performance Preparation, Part 3 — Performance Psychology

  • Develop a pre-performance routine that gets nerves under control.
  • Use mental rehearsal — playing pieces in your head, without the instrument — as a preparation tool.
  • Have a plan for what to do when something goes wrong on stage.
  • Lesson 87 — stage presence choreography.
  • At least one prior performance (formal or informal).
  • Pre-performance routine.
  • Mental rehearsal.
  • Arousal reappraisal.

The performer's job is to keep playing. Anything else is the audience's problem, not yours.

Performance anxiety is the most under-discussed part of musicianship. Every player has it; almost no curriculum talks about it; everyone is convinced they are the only one with the problem. This lesson is the practical psychology — not a cure, because there is none, but the routines and strategies that turn nerves from a limit into a resource.

The pre-performance routine

Nerves are at their peak in the thirty minutes before a performance begins. A routine occupies those thirty minutes — not by distracting from the nerves but by giving the body something to do that does not require thinking. The routine becomes a marker of “the performance is about to start.” The body learns it. Standardise it.

A workable routine:

  • 30 minutes before: arrive at the venue. Walk the stage. Sit in the audience for two minutes looking at the empty stage.
  • 20 minutes before: long-tone warm-up. Five minutes of low D, sustained. Slow breathing.
  • 15 minutes before: play the opening of each piece on the program, once. Not full pieces — just the first phrase of each.
  • 10 minutes before: instrument away. Drink water. Walk slowly somewhere quiet.
  • 5 minutes before: stand. Three slow breaths. Walk to the stage door.

Adjust the timings to the venue. Keep the structure.

Mental rehearsal

The day before a performance, play through your entire program in your head, in real time, with the instrument away. Sit comfortably. Imagine yourself on stage. Hear the opening note. Hear the first phrase. Imagine the breath, the articulation, the fingerings, the bow at the end. If your mind hits a passage you cannot imagine clearly, that is a passage you do not know well enough; practise it physically when the mental rehearsal is done.

Mental rehearsal is not a substitute for instrument practice. It is an addition. The brain that has imagined a performance once before has rehearsed it; the body is more relaxed when the real performance begins.

The recovery plan

Something will go wrong. A note will crack. A fingering will slip. The page will turn at the wrong moment. The plan is what you do next.

Two principles:

  • Do not stop. The audience hears the crack or the slip and then hears what comes next. If what comes next is the music continuing, the moment passes; if what comes next is a restart, the moment becomes the performance.
  • Do not show the audience what went wrong. A grimace, a head-shake, an apologetic look — all draw attention to the mistake. Continue playing, expression unchanged. Most of the audience did not notice in the first place; the ones who did will assume they misheard.

If something more serious happens — you lose your place, the page falls off the stand, the instrument breaks — stop briefly, deal with it, and resume from a logical restart point (the beginning of the previous phrase, not the beginning of the piece). Acknowledge nothing verbally to the audience; restart and continue.

Reframing nerves

The physical symptoms of nerves (raised heart rate, fast breathing, sweating, sharpened focus) are nearly identical to the physical symptoms of excitement. The difference is the interpretation. A player who tells themselves “I am nervous” performs worse than a player who tells themselves “I am ready.” The body is the same; the framing changes the experience.

This is not magical thinking. It is an observed effect — sports psychologists call it “arousal reappraisal,” and the research is robust. Try it.

Now play these

No notation, no library piece. The lesson is preparation, not performance.

Apply this week: pick one piece from your program. Mentally rehearse it three times across the week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday), without the instrument. Then physically practise it once. Note whether the physical practice felt different from usual.

When you have a pre-performance routine you have used at least once in a real (not rehearsal) setting, mentally rehearsed one program piece all the way through, and have a recovery plan you have actually practised, move on to Lesson 89.