Isn’t it frustrating when a piece you’ve been practising for a while and feel like you know well comes adrift in performance? It’s one thing to be able to play for yourself in the comfort of your own space, and quite another to perform in front of others (how often have I heard students claim in a lesson that they can play it perfectly at home?). Even if only playing for yourself, do you also sometimes feel that your results fall short of what you would like to achieve?
One common cause of this problem is that many players rely on simply repeating a piece over and over until the physical movements become habitual, creating the illusion that the piece has been successfully mastered. Unless we are exceptionally confident in front of an audience, pure muscle memory can prove unreliable when under pressure. Much of the problem stems from insufficient preparation – not having built
