DOCUMENTACIÓN A PRESENTAR POR EL LICITADOR SELECCIONADO PARA LA ADJUDICACIÓN

for performances is to videotape your playing. You will be surprised at how good and how bad the different parts of your performances are. They are often quite different from what you imagine yourself to be doing: good touch? rhythm? tempo accurate and

constant? What motions are breaking up the rhythm? Do you clearly bring out the melodic lines? Is one hand too loud/soft? Are the arm/hands/fingers in their optimum positions? Are you using the whole body -- i.e., is the body in synch with the hands or are they fighting each other? All these and much more become immediately obvious. The same music sounds different when you are playing it compared to when you are watching it on video. You may be slowing down at difficult sections and playing too fast in easy ones. Are the pauses long enough? Are the endings convincing?

The recording session will reveal how you react in an actual performance. If you make a mistake or have a blackout, do you react negatively to mistakes and become discouraged, or can you recover and concentrate on the music? Some students will smile or make faces at a mistake, but that is not appropriate; the best policy is to ignore it because you want to attract the least attention to mistakes. During a performance, students tend to get blackouts, etc., at unexpected places where they had no trouble during practice. Recording sessions can flush out most of those problem spots. Pieces are not "finished" unless you can record them satisfactorily.

The main disadvantage of videotaping is that it takes a lot of time, because you must watch the recordings — precious time you could have spent practicing. Every time you correct a section, you must re-record and listen again. The videotaping sessions are not a waste of time because that is part of practice time. It is something that every piano student must do, yet is too often neglected. Today, you can videotape on a smart phone and immediately watch it on the computer.

(2) Performance Preparation Routines: Even if a student can play perfectly

during practice, he can make mistakes and struggle with musicality during a recital without a proper performance preparation routine. Most students intuitively practice hard and at full speed during the week preceding the recital, and especially on the day of the recital. In order to simulate the recital, they imagine an audience listening nearby and play their hearts out, playing the entire piece from beginning to end, many times. This practice method is the single biggest cause of mistakes and poor performance. The most telling remark I heard most often is, "Strange, I played so well all morning but during the recital, I made mistakes that I don't normally make!" To an experienced teacher, this is a student practicing out of control without any guidance about right and wrong methods of performance preparation.

Teachers who hold recitals in which the students perform wonderfully and win all the piano competitions keep a tight leash on their students and control their practice routines closely. Why all this fuss? All mistakes originate in the brain. All the necessary information must be stored in an orderly manner in the brain, with no confusion. This is why improperly prepared students always play worse in a recital than during practice.

When you practice at full speed, a large amount of confusion is introduced [(27) Fast Play Degradation, Eliminating Bad Habits]. The environment of the recital is different from that of the practice piano, and can be distracting. Therefore, you must have a simple, mistake-free memory of the piece that can be retrieved in spite of all the added

distractions.

Through trial and error, experienced teachers have found practice routines that work. The most important rule is to limit the amount of practice on recital day, so as to keep the mind fresh and uncluttered. Recall that any improvement in technique and memory occur during sleep [(23) Post Practice Improvement, Sleep, Fast/Slow Muscles], so that

practicing on the day of the recital can only make things worse, something that is so counter intuitive. The brain is unreceptive on recital day. It can only become confused. Only experienced pianists have sufficiently "strong", trained brains and performance capabilities to assimilate something new on recital day. By the way, this also applies to tests and exams at school. Most of the time, you will score better in an exam by going to a movie the night before the exam than by cramming. A major reason why cramming doesn't work is that it deprives the student of a good night's sleep.

The practice routine for recital day is to play nearly full speed once, then medium

speed once and finally once slowly. That's it! No more practice! Never play faster than recital speed. Don't play your heart out, play with minimal expression and reserve your "heart" for the performance; otherwise, you will lose the freshness and find that you have nothing left during the performance. Notice how counter intuitive this is. Since parents and friends will always act intuitively, it is important for the teacher to make sure that any person that comes in contact with the student also knows these rules, especially for the younger students. Otherwise, in spite of anything the teacher says, the students will come to the recital having practiced all day at full speed, because their parents made them do it.

This routine is for the typical student and is not for professional performers who will have much more detailed routines that depend on the type of music being played, the particular composer, and piece to be played. Clearly, for this routine to work, the piece will have had to be ready for performance way ahead of time, at least six months. Even if the piece has not been perfected and can be improved with more practice, the above paragraph is the best routine for the recital day.

If, during these allowed practices, you make a mistake that is "stubborn" (most students can recognize these), it will almost certainly recur during the recital. In that case, fish out the few bars containing the mistake and practice those at moderate speeds and HS (always ending with slow play), then test it at almost final speed, and end with several slow plays, just those few bars. If you are not sure that the piece is completely memorized, play the insecure section very slowly several times. At this time, MP is critical -- it is the ultimate test of memory and readiness to perform. Practice MP at any speed and as often as you want; it can also calm nervous jitters because it satisfies the urge to practice on performance day, and keeps you occupied instead of worrying and

getting more nervous.

Avoid extreme exertion, such as playing a football game or lifting or pushing

something heavy (such as a concert grand!). This can suddenly change the hand memory and you can make unexpected mistakes. Of course, mild warm-up exercises, stretching, calisthenics, Tai Chi, Yoga, etc., are beneficial.

For the week preceding the recital, always play at medium speed, then slow speed, before quitting practice. You can skip the medium speed if you are short of time, or if the piece is particularly easy, or if you are a more experienced performer. Medium is about 3/4 speed, and slow is about half speed. More generally, medium speed is the speed at which you can play comfortably, relaxed, and with plenty of time to spare between notes. At slow speed, you need to pay attention to each note; the more difficult, the slower, but preserving the same hand motions required at speed.

Up to the day before the recital, you can work on improving the piece, especially musically and HS. But within the last week, adding new material or making changes in the piece (such as fingering) is not recommended, although you might try it as a training experiment to see how far you can push yourself. The ability to add something new during the last week is a sign that you are a strong performer; in fact, purposely changing something at the last minute is a good performance training method that some teachers use, if you are a sufficiently strong performer.

For working on long pieces such as Beethoven Sonatas, avoid playing the entire composition many times. It is best to practice short segments of a few pages, or one movement at most, always including a few bars of the next section or movement.

Practicing HS is also an excellent idea. Although playing too fast is not recommended in the last week, you can practice at higher speeds HS.

Avoid learning new pieces during this last week. That does not mean that you are limited to the recital pieces; you can still practice any piece that was previously learned. New pieces will often cause you to acquire new motions that affect or alter how you play the recital piece. usually, you will not be aware that this happened until you perform and wonder how those strange mistakes crept in.

Make a habit of playing your performance pieces "cold" when you start any practice session. Of course, "playing cold" has to be done within reason. If the fingers are totally sluggish from inaction, you cannot, and should not, play difficult material at full speed; it will lead to stress and bad habits. Simply slow down to playable speed. Some pieces can only be played after the hands are completely limbered up, especially if you want to play it musically, such as bringing out the color.

Practice just the starting few bars, from several days prior to the recital. Pretend that it is recital time and play those few starting bars anytime you walk by the piano. Choose the first line and practice a different number of bars each time. Don't stop at the end of a bar, always include the first beat of the next bar. You might photographically memorize the first few bars. When you start a piece easily and beautifully during a recital, you will

be surprised at how well the rest comes out; on the other hand, even a small problem at the beginning can ruin the whole performance.

Blackouts are some of the most disastrous events but they can be eliminated by using several procedures. The first is mental play (MP). When practicing MP, learn to picture the entire structure of the composition in your mind and develop the ability to know where in that structure you are playing. Then practice starting from anywhere in that structure, so that you can restart after a blackout.

One cause of blackouts is dependence on hand memory which is dangerous because hand memory is notoriously unreliable. This is because it is a reflex memory that depends on stimuli from previously played notes and largely bypasses the brain. Thus if any

circumstance changes, such as a different piano, or a concert hall, nervousness, or the presence of an audience, the stimuli will change, resulting in a blackout. Once a blackout happens, all the usual stimuli disappear and the pianist is unable to re-start. For a student who has only hand memory, the only alternative is to re-start at the beginning.

Slow play is the best way to reduce the dependance on hand memory because reflexes are speed dependent; this forces the brain to intervene and take over the playing.

Therefore, playing slowly before quitting is absolutely essential for the week before a performance.

Practice recovering from mistakes. Attend student recitals and watch how students react to their mistakes; you will easily spot the good reactions and the inappropriate ones. A student showing frustration or shaking the head after a mistake is creating three

mistakes out of one: the original mistake, an inappropriate reaction, and broadcasting to the audience that a mistake was made. Every practice session must be a practice session for avoiding mistakes, making them unnoticeable. Pretend that you are accompanying a choir or playing a concerto and must pick up the music at the correct spot.

(3) Casual Performances are probably the most effective and easy ways to practice

performing. Common types of casual performances are playing pieces for testing pianos in stores or playing for friends at parties, etc. These are different from formal recitals because of their greater freedom and reduced pressure. Nervousness should not be an issue, and is in fact one of the best ways to practice methods for controlling or avoiding nervousness.

For an easy start, play snippets (short segments from a composition). Start with simple ones; pick out the best sounding sections. If it doesn't work out too well, start on another one. Same, if you get stuck; time to move on to a new piece. This is a great way to experiment and find out how you perform and which snippets work. Do you tend to play too fast? It is better to start too slow and speed up than the other way round. Can you adjust to a different piano -- especially one that is out of tune or difficult to play? Can you keep track of the audience reaction? Can you make the audience react to your playing? Can you pick the right types of snippets for the occasion? What is your level of

over mistakes without being bothered by them?

Another way to practice performing is to teach others, especially youngsters, to play. Teach them how to play the C major scale, or "Chopsticks" or Happy Birthday. Duets are perfect for this.

Playing snippets is effective because most audiences are impressed by the ability to stop and start anywhere in the middle of a piece — only concert pianists can do that, right? Most people assume that the ability to play snippets requires special talent. Start with short snippets, then gradually try longer ones. It's much easier to play snippets mistake free. Once you have done this type of casual snippet performance on 4 or 5 different occasions, you will have a good idea of your performance capabilities. One of the routines you should practice "cold" are snippet playing routines — they need practice too.

There are a few rules for snippet performances. Don't perform a piece you had just learned. Let it stew for at least 6 months; preferably one year. If you had spent 2 weeks learning a difficult new piece, don't expect to be able to play snippets that had not been played at all in those 2 weeks -- be prepared for surprises, such as blackouts. Don't practice the snippets fast on the day on which you might be performing them. Practicing them very slowly will help. Can you still play them HS? HS play can be one type of snippet performance, and you can play them very fast! Make sure that you can MP everything -- that is the ultimate test of your readiness.

In general, don't expect to perform anything well, casual or otherwise, unless you have performed that piece at least three times and, some claim, at least five times. It is certainly not going to be like the best run you made during practice. Without this mental expectation, you can end up disappointed after every attempt at performing and develop psychological fears.

A few mistakes or missed notes go unnoticed in practice, and your assessment of how you sound during practice is more optimistic than the assessment if you had played exactly the same way for an audience. After a practice, you tend to remember only the good parts, but after a performance, you tend to remember only the mistakes. Usually, you are your worst critic; every slip sounds worse to you than to the audience. Most audiences will miss half of the mistakes and forget most of the rest, unless you make a big deal out of it.

Classical music is not always the best venue for casual performances. Thus every pianist should learn popular music, jazz, cocktail music, music from fake books, and improvisation. They provide some of the best ways to practice for recitals.

(4) Benefits and Pitfalls of Performances/Recitals: The benefits and pitfalls of

performing should determine our daily piano learning programs. Technique is never really acquired until it is demonstrated in a performance. For young students, the benefits are immeasurable. They learn what it means to complete a task, and they learn what "making music" means. Most youngsters (who don't take music lessons, etc.) don't learn

these skills until they go to college; piano students must learn them by their first recital, regardless of age. Then they repeat this (59) Project Management process with every new piece of music they learn. Successful pianists become masters of project management, a skill that is useful everywhere, not just for piano.

Students are never as self-motivated as when preparing for a recital. Teachers who have held recitals know those enormous benefits. Their students become focused, self- motivated, and results oriented; they listen intently to the teacher and really try to understand the meaning of the teachers' instructions. They become deadly serious about eliminating all errors and learning everything correctly -- it is capitalism at its best, because it is their performance. Teachers without recitals often end up with students who practice a few times just before lesson day.

Because the psychology and sociology of piano playing is not well developed, there are pitfalls that we must consider. Most teachers are not trained in psychology and expect the students to be able to step up to the piano, sit down, and play without proper training. The most important consideration is nervousness and its impact on the mind, especially for the young. Nervousness can make recitals a frightful experience that requires

attention in order to avoid not only unhappy experiences but also lasting psychological damage. At the very least, reducing nervousness will alleviate stress and fright. This subject will be treated more completely in the section on [(56) Origin and Control of Nervousness]. There is active research in the science of performance optimization

(Kotier). At this writing one major principle of performance enhancement is based on the concept of "flow" (Csikszentmihalyi), but it has not been applied to piano performance. Thus piano pedagogy is behind other disciplines in understanding and applying advanced concepts in performance, in spite of the fact that piano is a performing art.

There are numerous psychological and sociological implications of recitals and competitions. The judging systems in music competitions are notoriously unfair, and judging is a difficult and thankless job. Thus students entered into competition must be