Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Lesson anxiety

I'm just home from my weekly lesson, and it was another frustrating experience. Not the teacher, the surroundings, the music (all stuff I enjoy, very playable, all at my level) - that's all great. Not lack of practice, I logged an hour to two hours daily this week. It's me.

I have the WORST case of "I played it better at home." Today, I might as well have been trying to play with my elbows. And the harder I try, the worse I get. I just fall apart when the teacher's sitting with me, and feel like a total idiot with the "I practiced! I really did!" line, especially when it's something I have down cold when I'm home. I'm ready, at 63 years of age, to ask my 86 year old mom, who lives with me, to write me a note that I was a good girl this week and played everyday.

Sigh.

What's it take to get over this; liquor, hypnosis, what?!? I've already upped practice time, practice slowly, one hand at a time on new stuff, etc. Help, please!

I still have the nerves a bit, but I read "The Perfect Wrong Note" by William Westney and I changed my whole attitude when playing for my teacher. Now its lets find out the bits I don't know properly to get her to help me with it.

What I have found is that I often have it down cold when practising through muscle memory not a true understanding of what I am playing. Often the bits I struggle with when playing for my teacher really is the bits that I don't know, and with the added pressure of the nerves starting to kick in, my brain doesn't really get to focus on what its doing - monitoring my playing.

What the book did was make me believe that mistakes being made are learning opportunities rather than disasters and the ideal time to be making those mistakes is in front of my teacher. When you move to not worrying if its not perfect then the nerves go away.

As I said I am not perfect at it yet - but a lot lot better than I was - try reading the book.

I think this is common for all of us, playing for your teacher is performing after all.

Try recording your piece and show that to the teacher.

You will still experience recoding anxiety but it probably will be less.

Good luck

Pretty much what akc42 said. The ideal time to make mistakes is in front of your teacher and each one is a learning opportunity. The frustration you express is why I hated piano lessons as a teen. I would practice but then feel so insecure going into the school on Saturdays.

I have changed the order of my lesson. By doing this, I no longer view it as a performance but an opportunity to learn, totally banishing anxiety. Previously, I was, like most of us, starting my lesson by playing through the repertoire I was working on during the week. It felt like a performance where I wanted to demonstrate how much I had learned by practicing at home and how well I was doing. Totally anxiety producing 🙀

So I changed to starting all of my lessons with the questions I had flagged from the week’s practice and all the measures I knew that needed work. Lessons therefore changed from ‘here’s my performance ‘ to ‘here's what I want to discuss’; ‘here are my priblems’. I didn’t ask my teacher I just started doing it, so it quickly became the expectation that is the way we would structure lessons. Anxiety gone. We might or might not play through the scores depending on time.

Give it a try. I also highly recommend Westney’s book.

Try discussing this with your teacher. From your description, it seems like you have a good rapport with him/her.

Jeanie - your signature cracks me up. I too am a "collector of sheet music I can't play."

How does the piano feel at your teacher's studio...is it a lot different than yours? That could be part of it. My teacher may have said this just to make me feel better, but she suspects the spacing of the keys is slightly different on her 100-yr-old piano vs. mine. A lot of my "I played it better home" mistakes are just one note off. Or it could just be that the action is different and throws you off.

I can 100% relate! I will have a work book exercise and work on it all week and be able to play really well when I'm alone then as soon as soon as the zoom connects and it's in front of the teacher it's like I'm playing it for the first time ever. On top of that what I also do to myself is I start of good, then a voice in my head goes "dont mess up now, dont mess up now..." then pressure builds. What I try to do remember is that wrong notes, off beat, happens it's not messing up this is what music is. When I actually remember that and relax it helps.

Thanks all. akc42 (is there a connection to the American Kennel Club?), I added the book to my Amazon wish list; Christmas is coming!

Learux, I'll try that recording idea. I bought a decent mic awhile ago, but haven't located it yet after a recent move. I'll have to go hunting!

dogperson, that's a great idea. Starting off with a "here's what I've had difficulty with this week" and getting that handled first sounds perfect!

Pianoloverus: my teacher's aware. He keeps telling me to relax (like that works) and is patient and understands. However, having been a performer for years, he just doesn't get why I am so keyed up - playing for people is what he does - no biggie. Sigh. He is patient and encouraging though, and makes a point of demonstrating things HE has difficulty with (light years ahead of me, of course) just to show nobody’s perfect.

JB_PW - thanks! 😉 I have a pretty extensive collection of sheet music; I answered a Craigslist ad a number of years ago and bought a piano teacher's entire library, an MGB trunkful, for $10! A relative, who didn't play and had no interest, just wanted to get rid of her deceased aunt's things. I love it - all the handwritten notes on the sheets from years ago. It's like the lady is still helping to teach me. My home piano is substantially different from my teacher’s; he has a Steinway M, lovely to play on! Wish I could do it justice. My home piano is currently a 30 year old, rental Yamaha console upright. I own a vintage Chickering grand, which is right now "on vacation" being rebuilt. I cannot wait for it to come home, but don't expect to see it back until at least February. I do not like the Yamaha. It makes all kinds of clicks and thumps, and one particularly annoying thing - play a note on some keys and a nanosecond after the note sounds, something within that note makes a secondary "twang" sound, like a string was hung up on something and just popped loose. The tech's been out and the thing's in tune, but the store's not particularly interested in putting any further work into it and I don't see spending my money to have a rental repaired, so I tolerate it. If this was going to be a longer term rental I'd find a better instrument.

Sebs, YES! I go along, things are flowing, going great and the the instant I notice, hey! this sounds good!, I screw up.

Thanks again for the ideas, I appreciate it!

How to roll over clams is part of learning. Perfection is the last thing on my mind. Rythmn is the first thing. Once i caught myself making music, things changed. I guess, after i learned how to recover in time, it sort of empowered me. Then the clams sort die from being ignored. But a bad note is played, nobody dies. Nobody hurt. It's a head game. Tell yourself what you need to. Best of Luck

+1.

That sounds like a book worth reading.

I would suggest 2 ideas. The first one is physical and the other more of an attitude. On the physical one, you should take a few minutes at the start of the lessons to warm up your fingers by doing simple exercices on his piano, scales or whatever you want (and also do some warm up at home prior to going to your lesson). People tend to underestimate the importance of warming up and his piano being different than yours, it takes a little time to adjust. Being physically comfortable is very impirtant.

Also that would help you to play things for which there is no stake to demonstrate if you are playing well or not. Doing that in itself should lower your anxiety.

The second one, is that you should consider that the lessons are not like an exam where you have to demonstrate your progress. What is the worst thing that can happend, that you completely fall apart, then what ? You take lessons so that your teacher can help you get better, not to show him how well you can play. Instead why dont you work with your teacher on parts where you have a difficulty to play, so that the session is fruitful. The general idea is that you should only play very short passages, a few bars. That is easy to do and will get you used to play and work with your teacher. Playing in front of him should become gradually easier.

You can practice playing for someone else or something, like recording yourself or playing in front of other people. Another good way is go to piano stores where there is a lot of people and no one is paying attention to you (with the covid it is complicated right now, ....). Always start with a warm up and continue with very simple and short passages. The more you play and the easier it will get and over time you can increase the number of bars.

Everyone is different but I will give you my point of view.
I, as a shy person and introvert have always struggled with things like giving presentations to my class (even now at uni) etc.
Sometimes, there is no rational reason to feel anxious or nervous but you just feel this way.

However, I realized that when I play in front of someone, there is an urge to impress that person. There is also the fear of messing up and the thoughts about what will the person think of me. Of course this is our ego. At least for me it was this thing and when I was playing, I felt like this was the time to show others how good I was. This is all just tricks our minds play on us.
What helped me was realizing that there is nothing I need to prove to anyone, I don´t need to show anybody how well I play and it doesn´t even make sense to do any of these things. I didn´t pick my genetics, I didn´t pick my upbringing, my ability to play overall. I practiced and now I´ll do my best and if I mess up then what? These are so small and insignificant things compared to other struggles in life. Plus you need to realize that most people who will ever listen to you (unless you perform in Carnegie hall) will know and care much less about piano and music in general and won´t expect anything extra. Since I accepted these things, everything got better. During the last few lessons I felt almost as if I was playing at home. I should also point out that there was the husband of my teacher (also a musician) so this also adds some pressure. I really recommend thinking about this.

BTW, i'm a fan of Kenny Werner's, Effortless Mastery book. He has many lectures on YT. It's mostly geared for graduate students, but they get "mind messed" as bad if not worse than new students.
I started piano at eight years ago at 50. FWIW

Hi JeanieA,

I know what you feel.....it’s called performance anxiety, at home no problem......is there any person who is listenig.....arghh.

In the past I played as a churchorganist many services etc. Always starting with something easy....and saying hundred times to myself...’keep quiet’. If not, everybody complained about the fast tempi and was asking ‘are you in a hurry, do you have much more to do today? When the first bars were played easy and calm, I always thought it ‘s nice music. And then my audience and I enjoyed all the other music....just getting the flow....

Also helpfull: just think I will perform nice music, don't just press the right keys but think I will make nice MUSIC

Good luck JeanieA.
Kind regards,
Johan B

Holy cow...you won the sheet music lottery!! I am so jealous.

Hi JBPW,

Do you know this site?
Imslp.org the biggest free sheetmusic site

Lurk around and get all your sheetmusic for free......

Kind regards,
Johan B

Haha Johan...yes I do, thanks! But I kind of need to know what I'm looking for...I am there often when I have something specific in mind. I love the idea of just getting a trunk full of unknown music. Could be some real treasures in there that I would never have known to search for.

I mess up if I even pretend someone’s watching - same with recording 🙄

In term of anxiety I think pianos not the easiest of instruments to play in front of people. There’s no real outlet for nervous energy like with the drums/- and othe instruments such as guitar at least your holding firmly onto something.