Checklist
Last month, I had breakfast with a friend. It was the week after I had both hosted and performed in two house concerts. It was the week before my fall studio recital. My mind was cluttered with to-do lists involving ice and punch rings and recital programs and student seating charts. She asked me how I was doing, and I said, “Well, let me tell you about the dreams I have been having all week.” Every night for a week I had one of those dreams where I had forgotten to do something. Like go to math class or learn a piece on a concert program. One night I had a final to take but forgot where the classroom was located. Another night it was the evening of my studio recital. The first child got up and played and then went to the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, now for my encore.”
In case you were wondering, my students don’t do encores.
It doesn’t take an expert to analyze these dreams. Clearly, my brain was breaking down over minute details; I felt out of control, and suspicious I was going to forget to do something important. Like make a punch ring. Or assign a student to design the recital cover. Or buy ice. “Your subconscious really should get more creative,” my friend said.
This reminds me of the time my sister came to visit and the two of us went to Taos for a sister getaway to find as many hot springs as possible. It was awesome. But somehow I managed to leave town without a comb or a hairbrush, a toothbrush, or a swimsuit (luckily Sarah brought two.). Yeah. Unbelievable.
This was my baby sister’s response to the situation: “Amy, don’t you have a travel checklist of items that you always refer to so that you don’t forget anything?”
Uh. No.
Even a casual reading of my dreams these days would suggestion that it might be a good idea to embrace the idea of lists in every area of my life. Punch bowl, check. Ice, check. Recital cover, got it. Seating chart, yep. ‘Tis the season for lists of all kinds, certainly: holidays cards addressed and mailed, yes. Alumni Christmas Tea invite texts sent, done. White lights hung around the front door, yes. Red berries and pinecones tucked into the little live evergreen by the sunroom door, done it.
It’s not that punch bowls are a matter of life or death. Sometimes details matter, and sometimes they don’t. Ice and napkins and white lights are a nice touch, but there is more significance and meaning, perhaps, in our daily work and practices. And given the amount of pre-performance preparation polishing and memorizing music that has happened around here in the last month, it occurs to me that Santa and I are not the only one needing a reliable checklist. A detailed performance checklist could be a very good idea.
After all my years of teaching and putting on studio recitals, some things on that list are easy to name and to practice. Performance classes in the weeks before the recital are required so that students can get used to playing their pieces in front of an audience and on the piano where the recital will take place. We overlap lessons as much as possible in the weeks ahead of recitals, so kids have the opportunity to play for one another in the studio. We practice walking up and bowing and talk about fancy recital clothes and reception cookies. All this is good.
But perhaps there are other performance practices to consider as well. Here’s a few ideas…
Ghosting means “playing” silently on top of the keys. This is a great thing to do to teach one hand to play quieter than the other, but ghosting also tests memory because it activates our muscle memory, while producing no sound. That seems simple enough, but it can be super disconcerting, and therefore forces us to really know what our hands are doing without the cue of the sound.
There are three different ways to ghost: 1.) RH ghosts, LH plays; 2.) RH plays, LH ghosts; 3.) BH ghost.
(Often around here we find that playing LH and ghosting RH is the most difficult. Just sayin’.)
Memory spots are markers in the music where we can start on command. When playing through a piece these places can act as signposts, spots in the road we can recognize and wave at as we go roaring past.
Practicing memory spots is something else entirely. We can do this by scrambling the various sections that start with a memory spot (Play first Memory Spot 1, then 5, then 2, then 4, then 3.). That is really good work.
We can also practice memory spots by playing what I call the Stop Game. This has two versions and requires an additional person (a friend, a sibling, a parent….it does not need to be a someone who plays the piano. In fact, it is often better if they don’t.). Here’s how it works:
The pianist (Let’s call her Lucy) begins playing her piece. The additional person in the room (Let’s call him Sam) randomly shouts STOP! Lucy stops. Sam then shouts GO! Lucy begins again either exactly where she left off (version number one) or jumps AHEAD to the next memory spot (version two). It is very important that Lucy jumps forward. No jumping back. (This seems like a small point until you have sat in a recital and watched a student have a memory problem in which they repeatedly jump backward, hit the small problem spot, crash, jump backward again, crash, jump backward again, crash…you get the idea. It is painful to watch.)
Hands separate.
It is always a good idea to be able to play your memorized piece hands separately. I have to confess, I almost never do this myself. This is bad. I should change my ways.
Octave Displacement.
If hands separately (see above) wasn’t enough of a kick in the butt, this is. Move one hand (or both hands) to a different octave and try playing your piece. Yeah. It’s weirdly tricky. Suddenly everything feels (and sounds) strange. Kind of like when you visit a place you lived 30 years ago. It seems familiar and not at the same time. The trees are bigger, the house is now painted yellow, there’s a new flowerbed next to the driveway that didn’t used to be there. Weird.
I’ve talked about this one before (ColdPlay has nothing to do with the popular British rock band), but start every practice session with a cold run-through of the memorized piece. Or play the piece every time you walk by the piano. Or even a random section of the piece. This mimics a performance situation much more accurately than practicing for a while and then playing through our recital piece, because we don’t have that luxury that in real live performances. Performances are, by their very nature, ColdPlay situations.
(For more on the value of checklists in our work and practices, read Atul Gawande’s thought-provoking book The Checklist Manifesto.)
Happy Seasonal (and Life-Sustaining) List Making!