Prepare yourself!
All too often, you see students not prepared for taking the stage, be it a recital or talent show. They get so caught up in wanting to be on stage and putting focus on the performance itself that their focus on the song actually suffers.
I cannot express enough how important it is to be prepared any time you take the stage, no matter how big or small that stage may be. Yes, the actually performance does play an important role too, but if you’re just thrashing through the song to get seen or noticed, that might be what people remember — what went wrong rather than what went right.
The standards of performing have significantly dropped these days, as opposed to when I was first learning music at a young age. It used to be where you would learn the song to the point where you could play the song through without thinking about it, which would then allow your mind to focus on the delivery of the music. Now it seems the mind frame is “well, if I can get under 10 mistakes during this recital, I’ll be ok.” So retrain your way of thinking! Practice and prepare yourself for excellence every time you take that stage!
