5 Tips for Improving Stage Presence – Part 3 Don’t Show Your Mistakes

Welcome back to our ongoing series of how to improve your stage presence. We’ve covered: #5 Take Your Time and #4 Make Eye Contact so far. This week we will be discussing why you should never show your mistakes.

This is such a common problem. While you’re practicing you probably reprimand yourself in some way for making a mistake and display it maybe both verbally and physically. This is something you never want to do during a performance.

The truth is the vast majority of the audience will never know you made a mistake. They are most likely not intimately familiar with your music and they will not know if a wrong note is played or you messed up on a certain passage. The moment you make any sort of acknowledgment of a mistake, they will automatically know what has transpired.

If an audience is clued in to a mistake they will not think less of you, instead it becomes an uncomfortable experience. There is nothing worse than going to a concert and seeing that a performer is unhappy with their performance. The audience is there to enjoy themselves and by letting them know you aren’t happy with something it will ruin their pleasure of the event.

The best thing to do is to go out there and do your best. You can’t let yourself get down over a mistake, you have to press on and think positively. Your performance will be that much better if you simply enjoy yourself and not worry about what you did wrong. Even if you make a mistake that was noticeable, playing with a good amount of energy and enthusiasm through the rest of the performance will cover it up. By the end of the performance nobody will remember the mistake.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729