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I'm a 15 year old piano student who suffers immensely from performance anxiety. Every time I go up to perform, my mom says I look confident and ready, but I can't help but tell myself I'm not. I practice enough (4-6 hours when I can, 2-3 on school nights), but when I sit down and start to play, I feel out of control. It's like my fingers are moving, but I can't decide what they do. Light hits my eyes funnily, and I feel like I've just hit fast-forward. I try to reign myself in, but then I lose what little focus I have. Does anybody have any suggestions for getting "in the moment" and stopping myself from having negative thoughts about my abilities? I will readily supply other information if it will help! Thanks so much.

I think that this might get better with practice and with the right amount of good old competition (even if inside your head). What helped me when I was much younger was this ugly/awful idea that: "Ha! I'll do better than him/her! I'll make NO mistakes, and I'll show them! Maybe I'll also find a girlfriend this way..."

Honestly though, I think that the more public performances you do (even if it's for your family, or friends, or party) the better you'll do.

Hi! I completely know how you feel. I will write some things that helped me.

I think, this issue has something to do with confidence. So it's important to be yourself. Don't compare yourself to others. You play because you love it, if someone don't want to listen to your playing, they can go away or hold their ears, nobody forces them to be there. If you fail something it's not something unusual, it happens quite often. Everybody can think what they want, there is always someone who will criticize everything and everybody. For you it's important to feel well and play, because of music and your love for it :-)


Practise as well as you can, be sure you can start piece on many many places (that really helped me), so if you get lost, you should start few bars later (just the feeling you can do it helps with nervousness).

When you are playing try to listen as carefully as you can (because the hand knows where to move and can do it automatically, just brain is creating negative thoughts about how you don't know whats next eg.). Focusing on music and feeling it takes away negative thoughts - there is no time for them!!!

And every slip can be very helpful, you'll find why it happened (I often didnt know what is in left hand) , so everything that seems negative will move you further and helps you to become better pianist! So there's nothing to be afraid of!!!

With the idea of "practice" in mind, you should "practice performing" before others as much as you possibly can. Gather sympathetic family and friends around you - in smaller groups at first - and play as often as you can snag an audience, whatever the size.

The more experience you get playing before an audience, the more relaxed you become, the more you can concentrate on actually making good music, and, consequently, the better performer you become.

Regards,

It sounds like you might be a good candidate for concentrated slow practice. Play your pieces so slowly that you have to focus on everything that you do to hold them together musically. Do that several times, and then gradually play them faster and faster, but be sure to maintain that focus.

It sounds as if you are at that place where trust is an issue: You don't trust yourself to do what you know how to do. Developing this self trust comes with experience, but there are specific steps you can take. If most of your practicing consists of playing at tempo, then change that to practicing mostly under tempo. For many pianists, playing from memory is a major anxiety factor. So, take away most of the digital memory by playing so very slowly that you can think of the next notes before you play them and then play them deliberately. We rely on digital memory in speed, of course, but constant repetition in speed sends the other types of memory—aural, visual, intellectual—further into the unconscious. By reinforcing the other memories, you will be able to say to your yourself, yes, I know this piece. I call this giving ourselves permission to do what we know.

I know it's easier said than done, but try to find a still point in your mind before you walk on stage. I call it a safe house. In this place I can control my breathing, which I do by deliberately concentrating on it, taking deep, slow breaths. This will help slow your pulse and increase the chances of finding the right tempos, reducing that feeling of being out of control. Next, I transfer that focus to the first piece. What is the mood and what does it feel like to play the opening notes? Every pianist is unique. You will find your way. In the meantime, I hope the suggestions in the forum are helpful.

Here is a link to some golden rules for dealing with anxiety:
http://www.davidleisner.com/guitarcomposer/noname.html

Thank you all so much for your amazing advice!
I definitely practice under tempo, but I've never gone SUPER slow. I can't wait to try that! I actually just "performed" a Chopin Etude for a family friend (just her alone), and still felt out of control! It was rather disappointing; but I'll incorporate mindfulness and breathing exercises along with your practice tips. If you have any more, I'm always open
~Pianorigami

You can probably work your way up:

1 - being able to play well for yourself
2 - being able to play well for your teacher
3 - being able to play well for a friend
4 - being able to play well for a group of friends
5 - being able to play well for a group of people you don't know in a casual setting

and then there's more stressful performances:

6 - performing and recording yourself
7 - performing for an adjudicator for an audition/competition
8 - performing for a large audience in a formal setting

Which of these are a problem for you?

One thing I would add to the excellent advice above is to consider your choice of repertoire.

Obviously this isn't always something under your own control, but to expand on Bruce's suggestion of performing frequently in front of sympathetic listeners, when you do this try to identify pieces that you feel particularly comfortable with. This is very much a personal thing – maybe it relates to ease of memorisation, the dynamics of the piece when playing under pressure, the ability to recover from errors, the exposure of the performer (e.g. when playing Mozart), and so on.

In effect you're trying to load the dice in your favour, and each successful performance with your 'best bets' in front of an audience will increase your confidence level and ease your path to playing more challenging (for you) performance pieces.

Someday I'll reach level two!

I am up to Kuanpiano's level 5 so I cannot help much.
Other posts are good and I agree much with Luthrin.
When I love a piece and enjoy it I always play better for a crowd then when I do not love the piece.

Play in a piano store!

On that feeling of being 'out of control' in performance: I think that it can sometimes be helpful to embrace that feeling. You will feel different when performing and won't have the same type of controlled feeling that you have in practice. A lot of performance involves letting go and allowing your body and mind to do what they've learned to do, without self-censoring and criticism.

This is not so easy, of course. You might find the exercises in Kenny Werner's book Effortless Mastery to be helpful.

(I'm not an advanced pianist but have lots of experience with performance anxiety!)

Personally, my best performances have come from a state of detachment that is probably the closest I'll ever come to an out-of-body experience. Wonderful (for me, and I hope nice for others) but very far from a feeling of being in control!

It's all about focus. And breathing deeply, especially before going on stage. And focusing!!!!!!!!!! I can't stress this enough. I struggle with it too, but that's the vital part.

This may not be your cup of tea, but try going into a performance expecting mistakes. Expect them and accept them, beforehand. If you do make some mistakes, so be it. You're okay. But if your performance was totally clean, think of how satisfying it would be.

Depends on the piece too. I recently performed Ondine (which I recently learned) and was nervous as heck, and then followed up with Widmung (which I've performed several times) which felt so comfortable.

this too!!!!!!!

One obvious thought is to discuss this issue with your teacher. If you are uncomfortable with this, or your teacher's responses are unhelpful, you might consider doing some outside coaching on performance anxiety. Could be with another music teacher, could be with a drama teacher, could be with an athletic coach, could be with a psychotherapist. Could be with any mentor you trust.

You might also explore the world of meditation.

My guess,however, is that these thoughts are *not* crippling your playing as much as you think. So as others have said, you might try try the path of acceptance. Just keep playing for others.

I would say that 1-4 are fine, as well as 8 (if the stage is light but everything else is dark). However, 5-7 are hard for me.

I honestly don't think I even want to do that. I feel like that's telling myself I'm not good enough to be happy with my performance, so I need to lower my standards, you know?
But thanks- any advice is advice, and I appreciate it