Preventing mistakes optimises your recording time

Preventing mistakes optimises your recording time

Preventing mistakes optimises your recording time

The same way we try very hard to avoid any errors when we perform in front of an audience, we should prepare very well before our piano recording session. Quality piano practising can save us a lot of expensive recording time.

As performers, we usually get stressed during a piano recording session. I believe this happens because we realise the innate quality of a recorded performance. This performance is eternal. Well, it is true, we can repeat those passages we are not happy with as much as we want but… Will we still like in 10 years time what we have chosen today? To answer this question positively, we need to make a significant investment in our planning.

When we say planning, we refer to the decision-making process that allows us to define our version of the piece. The dynamics we imprint in our performance, the rubatos, the emphasis on some notes and the decision of positioning some material in the background will constitute our way of assigning a personality to our performance. We need to decide everything beforehand. We should leave no information gap in our performance.

As necessary as the latter “expressive” planning is the technical preparation of our piece’s execution. I’ve chosen the word execution to highlight the technical aspect of the performance. What creates more anxiety is the lack of certainty about what we physically need to do to execute our piece correctly. Both positive and negative movements need to be precisely coordinated, so our hands interact smoothly during our performance, allowing us to express ourselves and without stepping in between us and our imagination. These movements, the movements that produce sounds and the ones that are meant to get our fingers, arms and hands ready to attack the keys precisely need to be studied.