Lesson #5: Find Your Voice and Let It Be Heard

This is part five of a series titled 6 Life Lessons Playing Piano Taught Me.

“The question is not, ‘Who is going to let me.’ The question is, ‘Who is going to stop me?’” –Ayn Rand

  

As long as there have been people, there have been opinions. And everyone, it seems, has an opinion about music. The age-old debate about what is and isn’t “real” music will never be settled, but as a musician I am free to choose my own path. I play what I like and it brings me joy, but it wasn’t always that way. I wasted a lot of time trying to meet other people’s expectations and become what they wanted me to become.

I once complimented a pianist named Dan Starr on his beautiful rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon by saying, “I’d love to be able to play like you.” He responded with a kind correction, “You never will. You’ll always play like you.” I have often thought about that exchange and used it as a guide to shape my personalized approach to piano.

When I first began giving performances I spent most of my time worrying about mistakes I might make or mistakes I had already made. With all of my attention focused on mistakes, it wasn’t surprising that I made a lot of them. I also spent far too much time worrying about what people thought of my playing skills. When I began to focus instead on the beauty of the music and the process of playing it, my attention returned to where it belonged and my performances improved significantly.

I tell my piano students that a piano isn’t like a computer. There’s no backspace key, and once a mistake is made it can’t be taken back. However, keeping a steady rhythm no matter what happens reduces the likelihood that listeners will notice. It’s also possible to make a note sound right by changing the notes that follow it.
Once, after a performance, a fellow pianist said to me, “You didn’t make a single mistake!” The truth was that I had made several, but I played through them well enough that even with her musical training she hadn’t noticed. Making mistakes with grace is a skill that can be learned, and one that has benefited me far more than my fruitless attempts to play perfectly 100% of the time. I’m not advocating laziness or sloppiness; preparing for a performance takes effort! But when perfection was my goal I often fell short, and when I simply strived to do my best without harsh self-judgments my playing and confidence improved significantly.

Another struggle I faced while performing was being overly focused on what was coming next, such as an upcoming page turn or difficult passage. Sometimes I would get close to the end of a song and think, “Hey, I’m about to finish this song and I haven’t made any mistakes!” Momentarily drawing my attention to that thought and away from what I was doing would then cause me to make a mistake. When I’m playing, my one job is to focus on what is happening right now: the current measure, the current note, the current page turn. Reading a little ahead is okay. But taking my brain on an anxiety vacation, worrying about what other people think or celebrating prematurely is always a bad idea. There is nothing like a high-pressure performance to remind me of the importance of staying present.

In the past, I often allowed fear to stop me from acting on my creative impulses. Fear of criticism kept me from living an authentic life, and fear of rejection prevented me from sharing my true self. I worried that if I created something, I would be criticized. But I was living a quiet, repressed life and I secretly wondered what I might be able to accomplish if I ever found the courage to overcome my fears. If receiving criticism is the price of being true to myself, then it’s a price I’m now willing to pay. I would rather be true to myself and risk failure than have a successful starring role in someone else’s dream. I would rather get lost trying to find myself than forget who I even am. I refuse to be defined by critics, I won’t let haters keep me from doing what I love, and I won't go to my grave with my music still in me.