Perform Your Best Anytime, Anywhere: A Guide for Classical Guitarists

The Goal: Play Your Best Anytime, Anywhere

Imagine being able to sit down and play your classical guitar beautifully, regardless of the circumstances.

Whether you’re tired, nervous, cold, hungry, or distracted, you can still perform at your peak.

Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not just a dream – it’s a skill you can build with deliberate practice.

Practice to Be Your Best When At Your Worst

The key to playing well anytime is to practice in hard conditions.

It’s not about pushing yourself to the brink of exhaustion every day. Rather, it’s about putting yourself in uncomfortable scenarios and then playing through them.

This approach is not new. Many great musicians and performers have used similar techniques.

For instance, Mozart’s father would wake young Wolfgang in the middle of the night to perform for him and his drunk buddies.

And Chess master Josh Waitzkin would blast annoying music and have someone blow smoke in his face.

These may seem extreme, but they illustrate an important point: by practicing in difficult conditions, you prepare yourself for anything that might come your way.

Benefits of Training in Challenging Circumstances

1. Builds confidence: When you know you can play well even when things go wrong, your overall confidence soars.
2. Helps you master your emotions: Playing through discomfort teaches you to manage anxiety, fear, and other emotions.
3. Increases your ability to focus: By focusing through distraction, you strengthen your concentration muscles.
4. Makes you more resilient: You’ll develop the ability to recover quickly from unexpected setbacks during performances.
5. Lets you know what breaks: When you can play well in tough conditions, any persistent issues become more apparent. This allows you to address them in your regular practice.

How to Practice at Your Worst

Now, let’s explore how to put this approach into practice:

1. End of a long day: When you’re mentally exhausted, sit down and play a piece before bed. It doesn’t have to be long – even a few minutes can be beneficial.
2. First thing in the morning: If you’re not a morning person, challenge yourself to play right after waking up.
3. When hungry or tired: These states can cause brain fog and irritability. Use them as opportunities to practice focus and emotional control.
4. During or after a workout: With your heart rate up and muscles fatigued, try playing a few measures. This simulates the physical stress of performance.
5. Mental practice in a cold shower: This might sound extreme, but it’s excellent for simulating performance nerves. Try visualizing your piece while letting cold water shock your system. Poker face!
6. Perform amid distraction: Practice with other music playing, or with a metronome set to the wrong tempo for your piece. This builds your ability to concentrate in less-than-ideal conditions.
7. Play a piece when sick: While I don’t typically advise this, playing for just a few minutes when you’re under the weather can be powerful training. (Of course, use your judgment and don’t push yourself if you’re seriously ill.)

Remember, the goal isn’t to practice for hours in these conditions. Often, just a few minutes or even seconds of focused playing is enough to reap the benefits.

Creative Approaches

You can also get creative with this practice method.

For instance, you might try mentally rehearsing a piece while on a challenging hike. Author Steven Kotler speaks of rehearsing his speeches this way in his book, “Art of the Impossible.”

Or you could practice with cold hands, as suggested by guitarist Marco Tamayo, since performers often have to play with cold fingers.

The key is to find ways to challenge yourself that are relevant to the situations you might encounter in real performances. This includes tight muscles, short breath, distraction, or low energy.

Conclusion

Training to perform at your best when you’re at your worst isn’t always fun in the moment.

But the payoff in terms of improved resilience, focus, and overall performance quality is immense.

Plus, it gives you a way to reframe bad days as great training opportunities.

This approach has been used by top performers across various disciplines for years.

By adding it into your practice routine, you’re following in the footsteps of some of the greatest musicians and performers in history.

If you find yourself in less-than-ideal circumstances, don’t shy away from your guitar. Instead, see it as a chance to strengthen your performance muscles.

With time and practice, you’ll develop the ability to play beautifully anytime, anywhere – regardless of how you feel or what’s going on around you.