The Difficult Details

JUL 17, 2012:  To me, one of the maddening things about performance is the details that get messed up during performance---as well as the details you didn't expect to get but came so effortlessly.  How do you figure it?  I wish I could come up with an explanation.

One thing I'm pretty sure of:  the more quality practice time you do, the less those little mistakes will mar your performance.  But what do you do about those tricky details that refuse to fit in with the rest of it?  They often seem to have a life of their own.  After a while, the selection I'm performing will feel smooth and safe for me to play, but these little trouble spots always give me cause for concern as I come up to them while I'm in front of an audience.

Hard as it is to relax, I think just letting go mentally could do a great deal to solve the problem passage.  One thing that seems to happen over and over:  these problematic details seem to come in bunches.  And they are often bunched together.  It's as if the composer was thinking "difficult", and difficult music came out---technically, musically, intellectually, or any other way.

The problem is that if you don't master these details by a certain time, you tend to think that you never will.  This is true of everyone.  I absolutely refuse to try a passage up to tempo over and over again if I know that it's difficult. The worst thing that could possibly happen in this situation--I'm beginning to believe---is that you get the passage perfectly after doing it wrong seven or eight times.

I really think the best thing is to go back and take it as slowly as you need.  Sometimes the composer even makes it easy for you by dividing the note values squarely so that it's all divisible by two----sixteenth notes, eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes.  Once triplets get in there, or anything that's not divisible by two, it becomes much harder to practice something slowly.  At any rate, you certainly can't break it down as easily.  Even so, I think it really needs to be played slowly enough so you as a performer can get all the notes.

After that, it might be a good idea to go back and put that passage into the context of the section where it came from.  Play the whole section, including the difficult spot, at a slow enough tempo where you can get it all even and consistent.  That's a tall order right there.

But what if disaster happens?  For instance, you did all this and the passage was going correctly when it was up to tempo.  You play it in front of an audience and it starts to fall apart again.  Somehow you manage to hold it all together so that the performance keeps its continuity, but inside you're thinking, "I may never get this passage."

So you go back and relearn the section.  That works for a while.  But later----same old thing.  Maybe that's just the passage talking to you, saying something like, "you need to get back to me and find out where the specific problem is."  And THAT may take some time to figure out.