performance – Toucan Piano

Performance Practice – Part 2: Internal Distractions

Practicing any skill, be it the piano, math, reading, or anything we are trying to get better at, requires us to think deeply and focus our minds on the task at hand.

Internal distractions are thoughts that pop into your mind that take your attention away from what you are doing. Sometimes the thoughts are helpful but sometimes they aren’t… and when they aren’t, they can quickly escalate into more thoughts and even result in physical reactions from our bodies (for example, cold hands, racing heart, butterflies).

Imagine that thoughts are the branches on a tree. The mind is a monkey that jumps from branch to branch all day long without stopping. As you can imagine, a monkey would get tired from all this jumping… and so do our minds! And when our minds are tired and distracted, they convince us not to do the things we should.

Practicing requires focus because it is deep work. We need to learn to control the inner chatter and calm our minds. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for internal distractions, it takes time and consistent effort to overcome them.

In part 1 of this performance practice series, we talked about external distractions and how to minimize them. Let’s now talk about different types of thoughts and how we can manage them.

The Busy Mind

The Busy Mind has lots of thoughts all the time. It loves to make sure we are always thinking about everything we need to do and how we are going to do it (for example, our mind might remind us that we have to do the dishes or that we need to get a birthday present for a friend).

Our minds should not be storage units for to-do lists, schedules, or plans. Our minds should be a place to dream up ideas, be creative, and learn interesting things. And when it comes time to practice we should put all our focus on working on our pieces. So what can we do about it?

Meditation: Focus on your Breath

Stopping the internal chatter before starting to practice is so important! Your practicing will only be effective if your mind is actively involved in the process.

A great way to calm your mind is to spend a few minutes doing meditative breathing before starting to play. You do not have to be a Zen master to practice meditative breathing. Find a quiet place, sit comfortably, set a timer for 5 minutes, close your eyes, and focus your attention on your breath. Notice how the air flows into your body. Feel the breath leave your body as you exhale. If a thought pops into your mind, observe it without interacting with it, and return your focus to your breath.

A great technique to try is Square Breathing. Draw a large square on a piece of paper. Place your finger on a corner of the square. Inhale slowly while slowly moving your finger along the side of the square. When you reach the next corner, hold your breath while your finger traces the next side of the square. At the next corner, start exhaling slowly while moving your finger along the third side of the square. At the last corner, hold your exhale while your finger traces the last side and returns to the corner you started on. Repeat the exercise a few times, focusing your mind on your breathing.

A graphic illustrating square breathing. A square is circumscript by the words inhale, hold and exhale.

Square breathing is a technique I have my students practice, but I tell them to use their piano book instead of a square. As they sit in the audience waiting for their turn to perform, I encourage them to trace the outline of their piano book while breathing.

Students have reported back that it really helped center them before performing. Some commented that they did this exercise when the person right before them was performing. It helped keep them calm when they knew they were up next!

Write it Down: Get those Thoughts out of Your Mind!

It can be enormously frustrating to be playing a passage in your music and suddenly have your mind point out that you need to feed the dog! Your concentration is now gone and you have to bring your mind back to the music, which takes mental energy to do.

An interesting thing happens when we write things down though… the mind stops obsessing over what it wants us to remember! The simple act of writing the thought down puts the mind at ease, frees up mental space, and allows the mind to move onto other thoughts.

A piano students writes down their thoughts in a notebook with a pink pencil while sitting at the piano.

Have a piece of paper or a notebook with you at the piano. Before you begin practicing (or if your mind interrupts you while playing), write down any thought that your mind is trying to help you remember.

Show them the Door: In and Out

When we are focused on work, our minds can often try to distract us by throwing random thoughts into our mental space. From the “I wonder what’s for dinner?” to the “I can’t believe my friend said that!”, the brain is trying to hijack our concentration for a quick thrill (who doesn’t get excited about eating some good food?!).

When these random thoughts pop up, imagine that your mind is a revolving door. The thought comes into your mind and immediately leaves through the other side of the door.

A revolving door illustrates the idea of thoughts entering and exiting the mind without being processed.

We can watch the thought come and go without focusing our attention on it. This will allow us to continue playing our music without having to re-focus.

The Tired Mind

The Tired Mind has been working hard on intense mental activities. It has run a marathon and now it doesn’t even have energy for a short walk. When we are physically tired, a good night’s rest usually resets our bodies and allows us to wake up with renewed energy. But that may not always be enough when our minds are tired…

A tired piano student rubs the temples of her head with her fingers.

A Tired Mind might be more forgetful, stressed, easily distracted, unmotivated to do things, or irritable. When your mind is tired it’s going to try to convince you not to do the things you need to do.

Unfortunately, we can’t always take a mental vacation from our responsibilities, especially when we have a deadline to meet, like an upcoming recital. But we can be gentle and kind to ourselves and still make progress in our practicing even when we don’t feel like playing.

Play Something you Enjoy

Before starting to practice, spend a few minutes just playing music you love! A famous quote states that “Music is a balm for the soul,” it has the power to soothe us and lift our spirits. So play for the pure pleasure of making beautiful music. It will put your mind in a more peaceful, happy, and energized place to start practicing.

Take Frequent Breaks

If we have a lot to work on, it is important to take frequent breaks. A timer is great for this type of practice. Determine how long you want to practice before a break (for example, 20 minutes) and how long each break will be (for example, 10 minutes). Then set the timer and start practicing. When the timer goes off, set a timer for your break period and walk away from the piano. Return to practicing when the timer goes off. Repeat this routine as many times as needed. (I love this cube timer, check out this blogpost for more ways to use it!).

A piano student sets a 15 minute timer on the piano.

Try it for 5 Minutes

We can do most things if we tell ourselves we’ll only do it for 5 minutes. Sit down at the piano and set a timer for 5 minutes. Play through your recital pieces without stopping for 5 minutes. During that time you will notice parts that need work and parts that you have mastered. When the timer goes off, evaluate how you are feeling. Most times you will feel ok to keep going, so continue to practice, this time working more intentionally on a passage that still needs work. If after the 5 minutes you still feel tired, give yourself grace and walk away from the piano content in knowing that doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

Focus on One Important Thing

If we don’t have a lot of time to practice or our mind is tired, we want to make our practice time as meaningful as possible. Pick something in your piece that is important or that you find difficult (for example, a passage with tricky fingering) and only work on that during your practice time. Your mind will fully focus on this one single task without worrying about having to save time for practicing other things. A lot of progress can be made by just focusing on a single difficulty.

A piano student practices using post-it notes to focus in on a specific portion of their piece.

The Unhelpful Mind

The Unhelpful Mind likes to toss negative thoughts into our heads. When we focus on these negative thoughts our minds can quickly escalate the negative self-talk, which oftentimes leads to physical symptoms of anxiety like cold hands, butterflies in the stomach, shaking, heart racing, sweating, stomach pain, etc.

The Unhelpful Mind is exactly that… unhelpful! The thoughts it creates do not help us be better or lead us in the right direction. These thoughts want to see us crash and burn. There are many different categories for these unhelpful thoughts; let’s take a look at a few common ones most musicians hear from time to time:

Mind-Reading Thoughts – our minds tell us what everyone else is thinking (for example, “Everyone thinks I’m playing terribly!”). We all know that we can’t read other people’s minds, but the Unhelpful Mind likes to try to make you believe that it can.
Should Thoughts – our minds tell us what we SHOULD be doing to be perfect and the best player ever (for example, “I should be able to play this piece perfectly without a single mistake by now!” or “I should be able to play this because Oliver plays this and we are the same age!”). We all know that there is no such thing as “perfect” but we are still drawn to the idea of perfection like a moth to a flame… We have to avoid the “flame of perfectionism” at all costs because we will never be perfect.
Overgeneralized Thoughts – our minds tell us something broad (not specific) that it wants us to believe is always true in all situations (for example, “Everyone plays so much better than me! or “I’m never going to get this!”). We know that these thoughts are lies that sneak into our minds when we feel upset, frustrated, or stressed.
Catastrophic Thoughts – our minds take a small problem (for example, “I’m having a really hard time with this fingering.”) and spirals out of control, turning the small problem into a big one (“I’m going to mess it up at the recital and everyone is going to laugh at me and it’ll be the worst thing to ever happen to me!”)

The Unhelpful Mind can be calmed by using a lot of the same techniques we use to help the Busy Mind and the Tired Mind, like Meditative Breathing, the Revolving Door, and Taking Breaks. But sometimes the Unhelpful Mind can be insistent and we need to take a little extra time and effort to transform the unhelpful thoughts into helpful ones.

Be your own Best Friend

The Unhelpful Mind just told you something negative. Now imagine that your best friend just said those exact words about themselves. When we love someone, we never want to hear them talking badly about themselves. We immediately try to console them, encourage them, and build them up to help them see themselves the way we see them.

Hands hovering over a piano shape themselves into a heart shape.

We need to show ourselves the same sort of kindness and love that we show our best friends. When an unhelpful thought pops into your mind, talk to yourself like you would talk to your best friend.

Triple R Exercise: Record, Rationalize, and Replace

When an unhelpful thought stops by for a visit, write it down (Record). But don’t only write down the thought itself, write down every detail that was happening when the thought came to you (what you were playing, how you were feeling, anyone who was with you, etc.).

Then, if possible, figure out what kind of thought it was (Rationalize): mind-reading thought, should thought, overgeneralized thought, catastrophic thought, or another type of thought.

Finally, turn that unhelpful thought into a helpful thought (Replace). Talk to someone (a friend, parent, teacher, etc.) if you are having a hard time finding a way to make the thought helpful.

If you find this exercise helpful, keep a notebook at the piano when you practice and draw a table, like the one below, and fill it out as needed.

A table exemplifies the concept of recording, rationalizing and replacing unhelpful thoughts.

References

I used many sources for my research and I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few that you may find helpful if you want to dive deeper into the subject:

The Bulletproof Musician – This website is a treasure trove of information about performance anxiety! Noa Kageyama, a performance psychologist and faculty member of The Julliard School and Cleveland Insitute of Music, offers weekly posts, courses, and a myriad of free resources to help musicians with performance anxiety.
Managing Stage Fright – A Guide for Musicians and Music Teachers by Julie Jaffee Nagel: This book is filled with practical strategies for managing performance anxiety. The book is directed at teachers, making it unique in the literature. As teachers, we have to navigate the intense emotions students feel when it comes to performing and the author, a pianist and psychoanalyst, conveys her research and strategies in a wonderfully empathetic manner.
Playing Scared – My Journey through Stage Fright by Sara Solovitch: This is the personal account of the author in achieving her goal of giving a formal recital the day before her 60th birthday. She does research along the way and describes the journeys of famous musicians, actors, athletes, and even a reverend in managing their own stage fright.
The Musician’s Way – A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness by Gerald Klickstein: This book covers a wide variety of topics. Part II of the book on performance is very informative and provides great practical strategies for musicians to try implementing in their performance practice.

Three books lay on a piano bench: The Musician's Way, Playing Scared, and Managing Stage Fright.

Coming up Next!

In the next post we will be talking about the musical mind and how to focus our attention on what matters while practicing for a performance.

Pianists plays the piano. A thought bubble shows her thoughts. She is thinking about music notes.

Performance Practice – Part 1: External Distractions
Recital season brings more than just music—it also brings nerves. While learning a piece is one thing, preparing to perform it confidently in front of an audience requires a different kind of practice. This 4-part series explores strategies to help students manage anxiety, handle distractions, and step onto the stage feeling ready to share their music with confidence. In part 1 we are looking into external distractions.
Slurs & Ladders: The Recital Prep Game
If there is one game my students beg to play year after year (and sometimes when we don’t even have a recital anytime soon!) is this recital prep game. It’s a great de-stressor and it shows students how prepared they are to perform while also injecting some fun and joy back into those recital pieces that may be sounding a little tired.
How to Bow at a Piano Recital
You’ve just finished playing your piano recital pieces and now the audience is clapping, what do you do now??! It’s time to take a bow and enjoy the adulation for all the hard work you put into learning your pieces. Here’s the step-by-step on nailing the perfect piano recital bow!
Positive Notes: Recital Encouragement
Spread some positivity and encouragement to your students this recital season with these adorable Positive Notes! They will help remind them of how hard they work and how much you believe in them.

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March 29, 2025March 29, 2025

toucanpiano1 Comment

Performance Practice – Part 1: External Distractions

Recital season is upon us and a topic that comes up a lot is performance anxiety. As children get older and become more self-conscious, performance anxiety can start to creep in… It affects everyone (there are countless stories of professional musicians who suffer from performance anxiety) but it doesn’t always affect everyone in the same way or even negatively. It can be harnessed as an agent of good to enhance their performance.

A student in braids plays the grand piano at a recital.

As pianists we do not always have the luxury of numbers (like other instruments playing in orchestras or bands) and it can feel overwhelming to sit in front of an audience to perform (even if it’s a wonderfully friendly audience made up of family and friends). This is an extremely important topic to work on with students but oftentimes gets overlooked because of the more “pressing” matter of working out the technical difficulties of the performance pieces (and I’ve been guilty of this too!).

In this four part series, I’m going to talk about how students can practice for performance.

But isn’t practicing for a performance just playing the piece from beginning to end like one would on the day of the recital? As we will see, the answer is a resounding no.

The type of practice most students are familiar with is used to learn the piece. Through this type of practice, the student works out the technical difficulties, gains consistency and ease in playing it, increases accuracy and expression. Then when they are “done learning”, they are able play the piece. But this is not enough to perform the piece with confidence in a high-stakes setting like a recital or audition.

Performance practice requires a different set of practice strategies. The suggested strategies in this series are based on research but obviously not everything works for everyone. Students should experiment with all the different strategies to find the best ones that work for them. But, all of these strategies take time and consistent effort to make them useful… They require practice.

As teachers we want our students to approach the piano at the recital feeling confident and ready to share their music with the audience. The performance practice strategies will help prepare students for things that may happen on the day of the recital… intrusive thoughts, performance anxiety, and unexpected and unwelcome distractions. When students have a sense of control over the “unexpected” and are equipped with tools to handle them, they are free to play in the moment with confidence. They have practiced for performance and they know what to do!

References

I used many sources for my research and I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few that you may find helpful if you want to dive deeper into the subject:

The Bulletproof Musician – This website is a treasure trove of information about performance anxiety! Noa Kageyama, a performance psychologist and faculty member of The Julliard School and Cleveland Insitute of Music, offers weekly posts, courses, and a myriad of free resources to help musicians with performance anxiety.
Managing Stage Fright – A Guide for Musicians and Music Teachers by Julie Jaffee Nagel: This book is filled with practical strategies for managing performance anxiety. The book is directed at teachers, making it unique in the literature. As teachers, we have to navigate the intense emotions students feel when it comes to performing and the author, a pianist and psychoanalyst, conveys her research and strategies in a wonderfully empathetic manner.
Playing Scared – My Journey through Stage Fright by Sara Solovitch: This is the personal account of the author in achieving her goal of giving a formal recital the day before her 60th birthday. She does research along the way and describes the journeys of famous musicians, actors, athletes, and even a reverend in managing their own stage fright.
The Musician’s Way – A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness by Gerald Klickstein: This book covers a wide variety of topics. Part II of the book on performance is very informative and provides great practical strategies for musicians to try implementing in their performance practice.

What are External Distractions?

As students prepare for their recital performance, they may be facing lots of external distractions when they sit down to practice (or maybe even ones that prevent them from practicing altogether!).

An external distraction is something that comes from the outside (not from within you) that takes your attention away from what you are doing.

Everyone is surrounded by external distractions… devices, pets, siblings, children, parents, friends and SO much more! It can often feel like the world around us is constantly trying to distract us from what we really need to do. Our students face the same challenges.

Learning a new piece and preparing it for performance takes a lot of focused work. Winning the battle against external distractions may seem challenging but it’s well worth the effort!

It all starts by removing the distractions students can control AND coming up with a plan to handle the distractions they can’t control.

Examples of external distractions include pets, conversations, smartphones, videogames, siblings playing, sirens, and storms.

Although it is important for students to be able to play through the occasional unintended noise during a performance (we’ll talk about that in a later post), for the hard work of learning their recital pieces, students should work in a space where external distractions are minimal.

By learning to protect their focus from everyday distractions, students set themselves up for productive practice sessions while also strengthening their ability to stay focused in any setting.

Types of External Distractions and Management Methods

Let’s talk about four of the most common external distractions that students may run into and different strategies for students to handle them.

Distraction no. 1 – Electronics

I think this is the one most students struggle with… The brain LOVES electronics because they stimulate the brain without the brain having to do any real work. They are instant gratification suppliers and the brain eats it up! Children and teens are particularly susceptible to their siren call. Some of the most common culprits are smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, videogames, computers, and the television.

A piano student plays on her smartphone instead of practicing the piano.

Here are five suggestions to protect practice time from electronics:

Put the device in another room.
Put the device in Airplane mode.
Turn off notifications.
Turn off the device.
Use these distractions as rewards for practicing.

With electronics, the easiest method is distance. Students may think about their electronics during practice, but if the device is out of reach, they’ll be less tempted to stop.

Distraction no. 2 – People

Our friends and family mean well, but sometimes they can unintentionally distract us from our practicing. Most of the time parents will be so delighted that their child is practicing that they will not interrupt them (unless there is a real reason). The true culprits are usually siblings and friends.

In order to handle these distractions, a student could:

Let everyone in the house know that they are practicing and don’t want to be disturbed.
Practice when siblings are not home (for example, their sister is at a dance class).
Ask siblings to do their activities in a different room of the house (this may require parental intervention).
Set aside a specific time to answer texts or FaceTime friends (a student could even go so far as to let friends know that they are practicing and will only be available at after a specified time).

Usually a conversation is enough to get these external distractions under control.

Distraction no. 3 – Practice Space

A student’s practice space should have everything they need for a successful practice session, which could include but is not limited to their instrument, their instrument’s accessories, proper lighting, comfortable ambient temperature, metronome, and a pencil.

A piano and its bench are covered in books, a blanket and stuffed animals.

To set themselves up for success a student could:

Make sure their instrument is always ready for practicing (tuned, not convered in clutter, etc.).
Keep everything they need at their instrument (sheet music, metronome, pencil, timer, etc.).
Make sure their space is well-lit, whether with natural or artificial light.
Make sure they are comfortable (wear clothing that is season appropriate so they are not too hot or too cold, ensure that their outfit is not restrictive and allows them to move freely while wearing it, etc.).

If the practice space is ready to go without the need to tidy up or move things around, it’s easier to just slip into practice mode. Taking a few minutes at the end of practice to reset the space makes the next session easier to start.

Distraction no. 4 – Noise

As musicians our sense of hearing is extremely important! Our ears need to focus on the music we are practicing. Students in particular are still developing their listening ear so external noise is even more problematic.

Noise can come from every source imaginable… pets, siblings, background house noise, conversations, neighborhood noise, devices, etc.

A black labrador dog lays its head on a piano student's lap as she tries to practice the piano.

In order to keep focused and not be distracted by external noise sources, students can:

Use headphones while practicing (if they are using a digital piano).
Put pets in a different room.
Ask family members to use their devices in a different room.
Turn off machines that generate a lot of noise (dishwashers, fans, robot vacuums, etc.).

Spot the Distractions: What’s Stealing your Focus?

Last year, when my students and I worked through this four part performance practice series, they occasionally had a little extra homework beyond the performance practice strategies. Since external distractions are something students can easily recognize, the following activity empowers them to take control of their practice environment by identifying and addressing the specific distractions that interfere with their focus.

We drew a table and labeled the columns:

External distraction – If the student identified an external distraction, they would describe it here.
How did you manage the distraction? – The student would then explain what they did to eliminate/minimize the distraction or refocus on practicing (if the external distraction was beyond their control).
Did it work? – A simple yes or no answer.

Table of external distractions, a strategy to manage them, and whether or not the strategy worked.

It was very interesting to see the variety of distractions my students were facing (every home is different!) and the creative solutions they came up with to handle them. I was very proud of them!

Coming up next!

In the next post we will be talking about internal distractions – thoughts that pop into our heads – and strategies to calm the inner chatter and refocus our minds.

A piano student thinks about a cheeseburger while practicing the piano.

Slurs & Ladders: The Recital Prep Game
If there is one game my students beg to play year after year (and sometimes when we don’t even have a recital anytime soon!) is this recital prep game. It’s a great de-stressor and it shows students how prepared they are to perform while also injecting some fun and joy back into those recital pieces that may be sounding a little tired.
How to Bow at a Piano Recital
You’ve just finished playing your piano recital pieces and now the audience is clapping, what do you do now??! It’s time to take a bow and enjoy the adulation for all the hard work you put into learning your pieces. Here’s the step-by-step on nailing the perfect piano recital bow!
Positive Notes: Recital Encouragement
Spread some positivity and encouragement to your students this recital season with these adorable Positive Notes! They will help remind them of how hard they work and how much you believe in them.