Put me in, coach.... I'm ready to play

 

As I write this column, spring is in full bloom across the state of Georgia. Dogwoods, azaleas, and Bradford Pears are coloring the landscape, brown lawns are getting greener with each passing morning, and enclaves of tall trees are emerging from their winter sleep and filling out with leaves.

There are two time-honored traditions that my children and countless other children will participate in this spring — Little League Baseball games (other children may do soccer, softball, tennis, or another sport) and “The Recital.” By the time you read this magazine, Little League will be in full swing and many of you will be making final preparations for “The Recital.”

James, my older son, had his first Little League practice the other day. At the age of 7, he has “moved up” to the 7-8 year old division, where they hit pitches from a machine. I thought he would be anxious about this change and about playing with bigger kids, but the first words out of his mouth after practice were: I can’t wait to play in my first game! If only all of our piano students excitedly announced I can’t wait to play in the next recital!

Recitals and Little League games share some common ground. In each, children gather to “perform” in front of a group of parents, family, friends, and other spectators. Each event involves practice of a set of skills that will be integrated in the game or recital performance. In each setting we expect that our children’s skills will improve with age and practice.

Now, before you start to write me letters (I can’t believe he would compare sports to music performance!) , I’m well aware that there are a lot of differences. I’m not making a value judgment on either activity, nor am I necessarily trying to equate them. I am, however, interested in exploring the psychology and motivation behind each event.

Bench-warming?

To begin with, I’d like to examine “the bench.” An honest assessment of “the bench” in a piano recital and “the bench” in a baseball game leads me to a disturbing conclusion: children often want to get off the bench in both settings! In the baseball game, kids are anxious to get in the game and play. At our recitals, I’m afraid that too many of our students are anxious to get off the bench and as far away from the stage as possible.

A piano student wanting to get off the bench at a recital is likely fearful, anxious, and insecure. A baseball player wanting to get off the bench and into a game is excited, motivated, and ready to go have fun. How fantastic would it be for our profession if all of our students brought that level of energy and enthusiasm to our recitals and performances? Do we really want our recitals to be associated with fear and anxiety? Are there any lessons we can learn from the baseball games that might help out our recitals?

An honest assessment of “the bench” in a piano recital and “the bench” in a baseball game leads me to a disturbing conclusion: Children often want to get off the bench in both settings!

Perils of perfection

I think one of the first and most significant differences is an emphasis on perfection. Like it or not, most students (and many teachers and parents) feel like a recital performance needs to be note-perfect. Professional baseball players have a career year if they get a hit 3 out of every 10 times, never mind the fact that they get multiple swings to hit the ball with each at-bat. The best sports players routinely make mistakes — they are part of the game. As a result, most sports players don’t approach every play from a perspective of abject fear. Unfortunately, many of our students approach performances with a high level of fear, and they allow even a slight mistake to negatively impact their performance and cloud their feelings.

I’m not encouraging students to lower their standards, but what if music performances and recitals (particularly those for students who should be learning how to perform) came without the pressure and expectations of note-perfection? Could we place less emphasis on technical perfection, focus more on expression and musicality, and acknowledge that mistakes will be part of performing and should not be feared?

Multiple opportunities

In a Little League season there are many games, each with many at-bats and fielding chances. Recitals, on the other hand, are often a singular, annual event. I bet kids would feel a lot more pressure if they practiced baseball for an entire year, and then were asked to step to the plate for one swing , which would prove to be the main measure of their year’s worth of practice. One swing with no “do-over.” That sounds scary to me, yet that is the situation many of our students face when they walk onstage for the annual studio recital.

If, on the other hand, children performed frequently and throughout the year, then there would be much less pressure on each performance. Scores of world-class pianists have noted in interviews that they only feel comfortable with a piece after they have played it in public many times, often over the course of many years. If pianists of that caliber need so many opportunities to feel good about a piece, why do we often put our (much lessexperienced) students in a difficult “one-and-done” situation? Why not have them perform the piece many times, and create many low-stress opportunities for performance? The act of just “doing it” and learning how to deal with all of the things that happen in a performance is valuable education. Play in studio classes, at nursing homes, at friends’ houses, in church, etc.... If we want to teach them to perform, let’s give them opportunities!

Happy together

One of the things that makes Little League fun is the teamwork. You play with kids your age, old friends from your school, and new ones from schools in other parts of town. You learn to work together, cheer for each other, and help each other out. Triumphs are shared and defeats are commiserated as a group. Piano, on the other hand, is often a lonely activity. Practice is solitary, and most recital performances are done completely alone. What if there was more sharing in the piano studio? More four, six, and eight-hand pieces? More group activities? More working together, with our friends, instead of having students who feel like they are the only ones in the world who have to practice piano. I know the rehearsals are hard to schedule, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

Leveling for success

In Little League the small children aren’t asked to hit 60 mph fastballs — in fact they don’t even count outs in the field at the youngest ages. Kids gradually work through levels of difficulty as they age, but skills are matched to age and ability and they generally walk on the field feeling comfortable that they can do what will be asked of them. They don’t doubt that they will barely be able to swing the bat or run to second base. Professional ballplayers don’t go out on the field to try out new skills in front of thousands — they go out to perform the same skills that they’ve been refining for years.

I think kids would feel a lot better about piano recitals if we eased off on the level of difficulty of their repertoire. Instead of giving them a piece that shows off the newest technical skill they can just barely do — thus creating anxiety — step back to a piece that feels easy and let them really feel good about playing it well. How about playing the piece that they’ve known for six months, rather than three weeks? Keep working on the piece that is a big step up in difficulty, but plan the performance for next year’s recital, not this one.

Fun, fun, fun

Finally, let’s continue to think about what we can do to put the fun of sports games into our recitals. Think about changing the model, using a theme, involving other media, and breaking the mold of scared students timidly approaching the stage with trembling hands. For some good ideas about this, talk to your colleagues (or see a great article in the Autumn 2008 issue of Keyboard Companion by Susan See) and your students — you’d be amazed at the good ideas they’ll have for making recitals more fun for everyone.

None of what I discuss above is new, and many of you do some of these things in your studio. Nonetheless, if we are honest with ourselves (and if we think about all the recital horror stories we routinely hear from adults) there’s a lot we can do to make our performances more enjoyable and successful. Instead of complaining about competing with sports for those precious spots on the calendar, what if we made our events so much fun that students wanted to choose the recital over the game? If we get creative, set up students for success, provide them with opportunities, and rid ourselves of some of the conventional recital traditions, we might be able to do just that and have our kids say Put me in teacher — I’m ready to play!

 

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