1. Bottom part of a soprano falling on stage rolling towards the pubblic...live radio concert!2. Leaving the cleaning stick with it's cotton piece inside an alto recorder while trying to play it in a concert3. Exchanging 440 with 4154. Allergy....sneezing while playing5 A falling music stand with all the repertoire Great videos!
I had in mind some videos to offer. With your inspiration I would do them one day. Great job you do, and great honor to our instrument. Keep on the enthusiasm, depth and fun
Thank you for sharing these stories. I am reassured knowing that even the pros experience performance failures. My biggest failure nearly caused me to give up on my study of music. About 25 years ago, I decided to learn a Quantz solfeggio. My teacher organized a recital for her students, and I decided to perform the Quantz. An hour before the recital I drank a cup of coffee. This was a huge mistake. I almost never drink coffee. The caffeine must have upset my equilibrium, and nothing went right during the performance. I made dozens, maybe hundreds of mistakes. As I approached the end of each phrase, I tried to regroup, but my nerves were sufficiently jangled that I could not pull myself together. From the first note to the last, the piece was a train-wreck! I felt so humiliated that I stopped taking music lessons... FOR 17 YEARS! When my son started recorder lessons eight years ago, I liked his teacher's approach, so signed up for a few lessons. I have been taking lessons ever since. I have since gained a better understanding of how to practice and how to prepare for performances. Last year, I decided to revisit that Quantz, and played it at a recital. I was not particularly nervous, and despite a few flubs, the piece sounded good. PS: I did not drink coffee beforehand!
I did kind of the same thing last Sunday. Our church recorder group was doing most of the music for the Sunday after Christmas. One of the pieces was The Coventry Carol that starts with a tenor solo (me). I had practiced and practiced and played it flawlessly in rehearsal just an hour before we were to perform. HOWEVER, I had had an EXTRA LARGE coffee (it was cold outside and I normally have a small) just before rehearsal so by the time performance time came, my hands and breath were shaking so badly that I make all kinds of mistakes that I hadn't ever made before. It was NOT a hard piece - unless you have the caffeine shakes!
I lost my voice. It was my last big concert in the country where I was living. It was The Messiah and i was the contralto soloist. This was my musical dream come true, but somehow I had picked up a flu bug. The soundcheck was fine, the next disaster was that the zip on my concert dress broke. I hadn't dry cleaned it but gently washed it.big mistake. I found a headscarf that was the same colour and wrapped myself up like a gift. So. Here comes But Who May Abide..no sound came out. This disaster continued until part 3, at which point I fled. The shame will never leave me. 1500 people watched this disaster .
I have had about the same experience with coffe. As I am not an habitual coffee drinker, although I like the beverage, I think it speeds me up too much. I talk too much and I generally feel that I am excerting too much energy after a cup of coffee and thus have noticed that I lose focus after a while and I feel more vulnerable - not great on stage. So coffee only in situations where I need to kick myself in the butt, so to speak, i.e. if I am very tired.
Hello, recorder gang, I recently had a terrible disaster on stage, because of my lack of practice, and lack of pre-rehearsal before the concert. I feel awful and anxious still. That I failed in simple melody line. I recently spend a lot of time on anything but music, and I'm not a musical genius, and this fail was really painful to me. I feel myself disconnected to the one thing I truly love and was passionate about it. Right now I'm rewatching all of your videos, Sarah, to remind myself the true joy of recorder, of what it feels like, how far you can grow, how many things you can achieve. I wish that I will reconnect with my favourite instrument once more, became a excellent professional, and play it as much as I can. Thank you for being great teacher, as you always are and was and will be the greatest recorder teacher for me.
My biggest on stage disaster was a choir performance where the girl standing next to me threw up mid song. We were standing in the back and she puked on the floor behind us, so it wasn't very visible to the audience, but I had to just move my lips to the rest of the song while standing and pretending everything was okay, because I was gagging too much from the smell to be able to sing and most of what was going through my head was "I am not going to puke too I am not going to puke too". Thankfully it was the last song before the choir left stage, but it was unsurprisingly an extremely unpleasant experience.
My face hurts from trying to not laugh out loud. My biggest performance disaster was actually a group effort. As a brass ensemble, we played Christmas carols before a church service. The Pastor asked if we could close out the service. "No problem", we said. As brass players, it's important to warm up the embrasure and keep it warm. After the closing prayer, us two leads looked at each other, counted, and then....nothing. The only thing that could be heard was a rush of air through our horns, as our lips didn't come together as they should of. We completely air-balled it. We looked at each other and laughed so hard. We tried a second time and finished out the service. We have not been asked to play again since then. Apparently, comedy...not good to end a worship service with.
If I had been in the audience, I would have laughed at the sheer delight of the accidental comedic timing, then clapped. They would have probably not been as worried about the two of you playing again, but I likely wouldn't have been invited back. It's fine, though, because I tend to be drawn to churches that aren't quite as serious. I hope you have long since recovered from that experience, and have at times explored your more comedic side.
I was playing the ukulele and singing in front of our uke group (60ish people). A new song I had just practiced the heck out of for weeks, "For Good" from the musical Wicked, and... I lost my place. Glanced at the fretboard to nail a tough chord, looked back up and my eyes went to the wrong spot! 32 chords in that song, and I just got lost. I had to completely stop and start the line again. The great thing about ukulele groups though, is the more mistakes you make, the louder the applause at the end.
My biggest disaster was all the way back when I was in my first year of high school. At that time I was playing oboe and was second chair. On the day of our concert the first oboe was sick and could not play, so I got to play the oboe solo. Well my nerves got the best of me and I played the solo twice as fast as it should have been.
Thomas Granvold I totally understand you, I suffer from the same thing :( I play the clarinet and if I get nervous when playing the solo parts, I start playing super fast..
Both on violin (I'm new to recorder this year due to multiple surgeries) -- college audition which included Bach's Preludio from Unaccomanied Partita No. 3. Was playing before a panel of all 6 string professors. Memorized the movement - about 3/4 through when I got stuck in a memory loop & couldn't figure out how to get out. Played the same 36 bars over & over until I could figure it out. Each time, the violin professor, who had looked asleep, picked up his head & looked more & more interested. I never had to stop playing, so it may not have been noticeable to anyone else, but by the time I figured out how to finish the movement, he was leaning forward, eyes & ears wide open. I've never played anything from memory since.
Stuff that happened when i was a performer, half a life ago: - Transposing: Countless times getting the wrong thin whistle, low whistle or Bansuri. - Condensation or too cold or too hot instruments: Condensation half concert, mainly on wooden moecks. People ask me why in the last years i would play my plastic altos instead the moecks, or wooden instruments getting too high or too low because the often cool down. - My eyes got dry on so many instances, then i start crying while playing. - Tuning issues: Playing on a folk music group, the tuning is important but really hard to grasp on stage, because you can't hear yourself very well. I learned the hard way the importance of sound stage rehearsals. - Stage falls (with 0 alcohol...): I played piano, bagpipes, recorder and other flutes in this group. At some point in one of our concerts i played piano on one song and had to go to the mic on another place of the stage. In the way from the keyboard to the flute mic, i stepped on a cable, bumped on the drummer's high stage and fell. As we were already in the intro if the song none of the other musicians helped me to get up. While i struggled to get to the flute mixer, some folks in the audience exclamed "he's alive" and started clapping and laughing like i was a circus clown! The show went fine though! I miss it!!!
I went to a church to play guitar in front of the congregation that was silently pious before their Lord. As i went to grab the guitar in a narrow space, my knee hit a button in the amplifier that literally had this text: "insane"! Let's say there was a great awakening that day!
Oh my goodness, I have so many disaster stories. This one is my best. I play the piano. My mother was a volunteer at a nursing home and often cajoled and bribed teenage me to play for the residents. I decided to play Debussy's Clair De Lune because I was preparing to play this as my final recital piece before leaving for college. My audience were quite elderly and mostly comatose so I thought, well, it's a rehearsal. I was getting through the piece and it sounded great but the hard part was coming up. Right in the middle of the hardest part, I heard a tinkling sound as a resident decided to pee on the floor. As I attempted to keep my composure, a second resident decided to yell at the top of her lungs, "Fred's p*****ed himself!". I somehow managed to get through it without stopping. Thank goodness I had that experience because when I played the same piece for my final recital, a whole set of risers with people and chairs collapsed with a huge crash at the exact same place in the song. Despite the banging and screaming, I think the recording came out quite well. And I didn't miss a note.
When I was 14 I was persuaded by my music teacher to play clarinet in front of the entire school. I proceeded to squeak and squeal my way through the entire piece, I don't think I produced a single actual note! There was this horrible silence when I finished and I just kind of slunk off to the side. I don't play the clarinet any more!
To open I must mention I truly enjoy your quite informative videos and I thank you for sharing them. 30+years ago I experience my worst musical disaster. I played cello and thought myself quite accomplished by the time I had reached 7th grade. This was the first year my group of strings players competed for seat position and I was absolutely sure I was much better than the only other cellist (a year ahead of me) Well we competed and he won first seat and I made quite a rear end of myself complaining to our instructor and conductor that she had made the wrong decision. My complaints however had no effect and the night of our first performance there I was in second seat still very arrogant about the idea that I should be first seat. Now the first seat cellist was a very nice young man who took all of my complaining without returning any cross comment at all. He also was (looking back as an adult) a much better musician than I. Sitting onstage behind the closed curtain we were preparing for our performance and I had noticed that my music was slipping off of my stand. I hurriedly gathered my music, put it in order and just as the curtain was rising was digging around with my cello trying to get my end pin back into the donut that I preferred over the rubber end (which I removed) of the end pin. After digging around and trying not to panic I finally looked down only to discover that it wasn't the donut I had been digging around my exposed end pin on but the top of my fellow cellist's foot. Apparently I caused severe soft tissue damage to his foot and nobody believed that it wasn't done on purpose due largely to the fact that I grumbled and complained so much about not being the first seat cellist. This was not only lesson in preparedness but more importantly a much needed lesson in humility. To his credit the young man still never complained to me or even had a cross word towards me.
On my first band concert the director arranged a sort of musical play. I play the oboe and she chose me to be a lamb. So, as I went to go up and do my part I had to pull out the reed, put the oboe down, and go, and then put it all back together again. Then my reed broke and I had to just finger because I had no extras. It was also really awkward do make sheep noises on stage with a fluffy costume XD
Worst disaster: 12th grade - I was privately studying piano with the intention of trying the Admission to the Conservatory, either in piano or composition (i had to decide yet). We gave a performance at School and i had to play the Menuet from Bach's 3rd French Suite. I was prepared, everthing was fine until i crumbled under the pressure and the fear of making some mistakes: i suddenly, almost involountarly took my hands from the keyboard and put them on the head. A complete disaster, but at least that was the time i eventually realized i'd been better off studying composition.
How funny! Yes that's now will happen. I am a woodwind player and the first time I was to play a recorder in front of a audience I was nervous. It was a concert band setting so flutes, clarinets brass and percussion. Well I'm over there counting my rest I pick up my sopranino recorder off my instrument stand, I think to myself wow this feels lighter then it usually does. I sit there for about a bar rest and finally look down. I was looking at my recorder and finally realize the foot was missing and I had about 3 counts to find it and shove it back on. I did make it and in tune. Mind you this was a big solo part and all me ha.
I've got a few good ones lol My senior recital (on horn) was last semester and I was so nervous that I missed the first pedal C in the Beethoven sonata. I was so caught up in that moment that I whispered f*ck to myself...forgetting I was on a stage that projects really well during a recorded degree requirement. They still passed me though! The worst was probably in high school. I picked up my horn after receiving an award at my last concert that year but cut my hand on the springs around the valves so I had to finish the last piece of the concert with blood running down my arm. Got some great looks from the conductor for that one! The funniest was when I was playing a church gig with a couple marimba players. They asked us to lead the choir in with the organ for the closing hymn... But the organist forgot to reset the modulation and we came in a half step apart. Crunchy music doesn't go over well in Catholic churches but my buddies and I thought it was hilarious.
1. My conductor recalled his younger times as a pianist doing accompaniment with the choir, and he was a marvellous sight reader on the piano - and then the strange gust blew the score to the ground and he had absolutely no idea where he had been on the score before it fell to the floor!!! 2. In my choir a very nice bass guy sang a third lower than the bass score - which was the melody - the harmony was great though - my friend later said it never occurred to him that the bass was the melody line ... 3. At a concert, we performed like a few pieces before we got off stage and sat for like 20 minutes. The weather was very cold and most of us didn't wear enough clothes to keep warm - then suddenly we had to be on stage again - there was just one more piece to go. As we treaded nervously onto the stage, our vocal chords were tense and we were all frozen - no warm up of our voices .. and that was an a capella piece and at the first chord we could see the conductor's face turned green hearing the awfully sound chord. 4. At a performance, we did the a capella piece "She's like the swallow". Everytime the sopranos came it they literally accelerated the tempo and each time we altos came back in we put on the brakes to slow the tempo down. This speed up / slow down tug of war went on through the entire piece.
Final exam in piano, playing 144 beats a minute, roll in the left hand that goes on for two pages. I'm FLYING. The young man who was turning pages for me couldn't keep up. He misjudged the count, and turned the page too early. Pure reflex, I stopped, turned the page back, and kept going. Finished the sonata, resisted the urge to kill the poor guy, cried all the way home. My mother -- also a musician -- told me about stage disasters, "it only hurts once." She also told me my favorite story that kind of eased my mind about screwing up. Supposedly (this is apocryphal), a young Mozart was giving a concert. Somehow, something went wrong. As in, he was playing one hand in one key, one hand in another key. Don't ask me how he managed it, leave it to Mozart to even be a genius when he's screwing up. But he finished the piece, bounced up for his bow, and cheerfully said, "Never missed a wrong note!" If Mozart can mess up that much and still be so positive afterwards, who am I to weep over my petty mistakes?
At one of my first recitals, I had to play the Minute Waltz by Mozart. In the middle there is a repeat. I duly repeated, but then when I got to the end of the repeat, rather than continue on to the 2nd part, I got stuck in a loop, repeated it again, and then once again before I stumbled on to the last part in the worst transition possible. Probably the only case in history where the Minute Waltz latest 4 minutes. I thought my mother was going to have a heart attack.
Many, many years ago, my husband and I would compete - reluctantly but our teacher was adamant - at a competitive music festival. He ALWAYS came first and I always came second. So, I prepared really, really well the last one we were entered for and started off playing - but not from memory. First page went well but, when I moved on to the second page, it was upside down. I managed 4 or 5 bars before I broke down. I stopped, made a show of sorting my music out, apologised and started again. Not surprisingly, I came only second again.
In college, I was playing von Weber's Clarinet Concerto, 2nd movement. I was playing the sixteenth-note runs and my Adam's apple popped up above my collar. I tried to continue on but I ran out of air, had to stop and free up my Adam's apple before continuing on.
Playing the bass recorder in an amateur ensemble with 5 recordes and a mandola we did a performance of 5 short pieces. At one piece I had the wrong score in front of me, but from the same composer. It was a weird experience! Afterwards we played the same piece again, but with the right scores.
I play the Recorder in a church group and one day a renowned singer came to sing a piece during which there were two parts where the music dropped sufficiently for my Recorder to add something to the piece ... I was playing both my Descant and my Alto recorder and because i was swapping between them i kept both of them in my suit pockets ... now before i went onstage someone offered me a mint and after eating it i put the wrapper in my pocket. So come the song and i start off by playing the verse on my Descant and then as i pull out my Alto for the chorus i blow and my recorder just goes pffft ... i try again and its just pffft .... of course the song moves on and no one notices the lull not really but come the chorus the second time time and my recorders just goes pfft pffft .... by now i am going crazy thinking my Recorder has died ......But How. mmm remember that mint wrapper ... when i put my recorder in my pocket somehow the wrapper got into my beak ... the moment when i realised what it was... was a moment of divine clarity ... I actually think the people who got the most confused were the sound engineers who could clearly see me trying to play but all they could here was pffft pffft the fun part was when they later came to apologise :-)
I was playing in a concert with a Bamboo Pipe quartet and we had our music arranged in those black plastic document folders. Half way through one piece I turned the page - to find the final page was upside down ! Somehow my fingers just kept playing and I finished the piece. After the concert I confessed to the others - but no-one had noticed !!
Great video! You should read the Checklist Manifesto. It explains how and why a checklist can turn a complicated situation into a simple one (that's my takeaway). A checklist can't eliminate all disasters, but it would help you (and your students) make sure they have all the pages of their music, their microphone, the correct instrument, etc. I don't use a checklist for performances ... but after seeing this great video I'm going to! Thanks for sharing!
The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande, is a GREAT BOOK; everyone should read it, especially if you work in a safety-critical industry. Not sure whether music counts, but I am sure that for professional musicians it does.
I play the viola, and it was my first concert for the year. (Not first ever.) I put my viola into rest position after one song, and then I played the next song after it was introduced. I noticed that my viola seemed WAY out of tune, and when the conductor (my teacher) was for some reason in the back, I told her it was out of tune and she tuned my freakin instrument in front of the quiet auditorium with legit no sound, and gave it back to me. It’s not much of a disaster, but it was still embarrassing. :’)
Viola here too!!! I was playing outside with a group, no one played it well, fortunately, the wind began and blew away our music. I blamed how we sounded on the music blowing away 😄
I was in the middle of a concert playing the oboe and the top of the reed cracked in half. I, in my infinite wisdom, had no spares. So all I could do was sit there and finger the notes to look like I was doing something.
I play the bassoon in a professional orchestra. A few months ago (october 2019) we went on stage, I sat on my chair and I stared, terrified, at my music stand... It was EMPTY. I had to leave the stage, I went to the clothing and I picked a bunch of papers with sheet music. When I went out again and sat on my chair, I noticed that I had taken the wrong sheet music, so I had to repeat the whole procedure again, until I finally got the right scores. Of course, the whole orchestra, the conductor, concertino, the public... Were waiting for me during all this odissey. My bassoon colleage told me "Germán, you'll never stop to amaze me".
Hello Sarah, a big thank you for doing this video (and much others)! I am a self taught amateur recorder player and sometimes I play as busker in the pedestrian area in Heidelberg/Germany. There is no big audience watching only to me but there is a stream of hundreds of people who pass by that I could become dizzi and the difficulty is, that I never know, what happens in the next second. In my beginning, more than 20 years ago, I was only able to play in the dark and not to close to the pedestrians, because that made me nervous. While I was playing, suddenly a father with a little child on his arm came very very close to me, stopped less than 1 meter in front of me and pointed to me: Ah, look at this interesting recorder player and listen to his romantic christmas songs... Help! My heart was in my mouth and I felt that I must die.... Meanwhile I have more experience and I am brave enough to play in the afternoon in the daylight close to the pedestrians and I experience a lot.: - I play by heart and in the middle of the song I got the chop. At once I started at the beginning again till at the same position happened the same... :-( So I started with an other song. - While I was playing my little soprano recorder 50 m away the big church bells started to ring and sound during 5 minutes: Diiinggg, dooonggg, diiinggg...... - While I was playing the wind changed his direction, came from ahead and blow into the labium: At once the recorder didn't play any more. - Two policemen came and ask me for the special permit for this place and this time that I not had.... :-( - Three (!!!) policemen came and ask me the same, but this time I had one :P - Taatüüü taaataaah...from behind me some big fire engines rushed and passed by, turned right and disappear with a lot of noise in the pedestrian area. - While I was playing a taxi driver came driven very very slowly from ahead, stopped very close near my little donation plate, wind the window down, looked from above into my little plate aaannndd.... dropped a coin from above into it. :-) - Two woman, talking without taking a breath, drove their baby carriage into my donation plate, that some coins jumped out and rolled around... They got fraightened and blushed. While I kept playing they picked the coins up, opened their purse and donated some money, too. And so on... Best regards from Germany und good luck for the birth of your baby! Joachim
LOL!! I cried with laughter :D Thanks for sharing! I remember playing flute and my upper lip started moving so much.. you can imagine the particular vibrato I got...
Singing in a folk club, with my mate Andy doing backing vocals and guitar. Started a piece we both knew very well . . . a bar and a half in . . . (me) "Andy - what the hell are you playing?" (Andy, looking totally bewildered) "Um . . well . . . I don't know . . . " (me) "Andy?" (Andy) "Yes?" (me, fortissimo) "SHUT UP!!" Got to the second verse - a capella - before he got his butt in gear. The audience thought it was part of the act, and fell about! We had words on the way home. I think, on a quiet day in Telham, East Sussex, you can probably still hear the echoes . . .
Nerves: I was up on stage with my quartet once, and right before starting to play on a Ren soprano, saying to myself, "Why didn't I figure out where the holes were before I got up here?! How can I check now, without anyone noticing?!" Then during the piece, "Oh jeez here comes an F! Gaa! It's a high G#! (Whew, that went OK) AAAA now I'm the third of the chord!!! AAAA!!" etc. etc. etc. I never dropped the recorder and didn't faint or anything, but it was highly unpleasant. I'm better now, thanks. LOVE your channel!!!
Omg I love you Sarah My biggest disaster was last summer, I had to perform one of the most difficult piano pieces I've ever played. I was practicing for several months and I could literally play with my eyes closed. Minutes before going on stage i was extremely nervous, sweating, my hands were shaking like crazy. I knew in my head that I have nothing to worry about because I know the piece perfectly, but yeah, I couldn't help myself. On stage, my teacher sat by my side because she realised I was not feeling very well, and as I was playing, I just forgot EVERYTHING. So I messed up, I played random notes in order to save it but nah, I just couldn't. I looked at my teacher and she whispered "play it again from the beginning, you can do it girl!". So I started again, screwed up again in a other section now, as my hands were shaking EVEN MORE. I stopped, looked at my poor trembling fingers, and decided that it was impossible for anyone to play the piano like that. Stood up, for a weird reason my audience applaused, I did an apologizing gesture, and left. I collapsed on my teacher's hug (sorry teacherrr, I know you love meeee). It SUCKED. I don't think I will ever get on stage again. :P
Dear MarsLos. Don't give up on it! You can learn to overcome stagefright and many top musicians do so every time they perform. Read a book, go to a course, talk to other musicians. Sarah has done a great video on the subject: 5 ways to beat STAGE FRIGHT and NERVES! Things that help me: knowing that nearly everyone feels that same and that you just have to deal with it AND managing my own expectations - don't expect it to be perfect. Good Luck!
Naomi Reifenberg thank you for your encouraging words. I will definitely check Sarah's video of the topic, thanks for mentioning it! Though, I'm still not interested in performing xD
In my first performance in high school, one of the pads fell off of my clarinet half way through. It was either the pad for the key between low A and G or the pad for the Eb key.
My musical disaster: similar to yours. I broke my hand in 2015 a week or so before I would take my final exams. I had to write all my exams with my left hand. Couldn't play any musical instrument either, because most of them inconveniently require the use of hands. Anyway, some friends had previously talked me into playing with them on stage the day we would graduate, and i said yes, because the plaster cast would have been removed by then. The problem was I would play a whistle in the key of B-flat, so I needed my fingers to stretch quite a bit, and this wasn't to pleasant considering they were still quite rigid. Somehow, I managed without screwing up too bad. Also, I think your videos are great! They are a real help. I have only just picked up the recorder, and whilst I have been enjoying it, I have definately struggled with it as well. Greetings from Flanders!
worst thing that happened on stage for me is when I was in high school orchestra, there were three no shows in my section, so I went from being in the third row to the front row, it was cool to be a second chair violin for that moment, until I tried to tune in violin, fyi I never tuned before but I was like, it can't be that hard and broke my A string right before a really complex Mozart piece. I tried to play all the A string notes on d string. It didn't work out so well so I tried to play as soft as I could. The piece was so long and I was just hoping it would end. That ended up being my last concert because I had to transfer schools and my new one didn't have a music program.
1. Forgot to tune my melodica before the concert (school band) I played more squeaks than notes 2. I played the entire band concert one note off 3. This wasn't embarrassing I just did it for fun, instead of playing the correct song, the piano and I decided to replace our duet with the office theme song. Our band teacher was laughing I love the melodica more than life lol
Lips stuck to the baroque flute while wax from an overhead chandelier dripped into the harpsichord below. What can go wrong will go wrong - bells and whistles optional......
I was feeling so sad today but you have made me chuckle so much I can't remember why I was so sad.Oh I've just remembered but now I don't care! If you ever damage your digits again you could maybe earn money doing Stand up. You are so funny!
Music disasters: Calgary Stampede, playing piccolo in a marching band. Midway through the parade, I noticed that I couldn't play Eb. The note no longer existed. So I had to carefully be silent every time I had an Eb. After the parade, I looked my piccolo over, and realized one of the wires connecting the keywork had come loose. I moved it back into place, and it then played fine. A week before the first big parade of the season, I took my piccolo out and played... nothing below about G worked. I looked at the keys and discovered one of the pads in the G F area had fallen out. Cue hurried trip to music repair and hope they got it fixed in time. They did. Last week at church, I was playing the intro on my harp. Halfway through, everyone else came in. I switched where I was to match them, but it threw me for a loop and there were a lot of sour notes for a few bars. And I'm not completely sure I wasn't the one confused about where they came in, because surely one person is more likely wrong than many... There were also a few times at church where my brain just refused to function and I had to start over from the beginning. I'm a much better wind player than a harpist, and playing hymns on my harp pretending I'm an organ for the choir has been quite an uphill battle. I'm getting the hang of it now, but the first month or two was pretty rough. There wasn't anyone else, so it was me or recordings. I think live music at church, created the congregation is really important as part of worshipping the Lord, so I'm glad I stepped up. Everyone has been really supportive, and the people singing seem to be having fun, and I'm having fun even it's a lot of work. I'm getting better at playing the harp, too.
I’m a pianist. Somehow with hardly any notice I was given the challenge of playing an organ for the first time at a funeral for the first time. The organ was hopefully thrown away after because it was in the dying process as I attempted to play it.
Im not even a recorder player (I'm a horn player haha) and I love this video and your vlogs! They've really opened my eyes to a bunch more lovely baroque and contemporary music Cheers from Michigan!
I broke the pianos two times on stage. First time, Szeged National Theater, full house, I was playing piano solo after a camara consort. In short, they need a closed piano (the top cover is closed) and before the solo, you have to open the top. This is the heavy massive part of the piano top that covers all the mechanics and stringboard. This is a routine, of course, it opens as a door, but, there are two hinges that keep the cover at the side, and one of them, the closer to me was missing! So I just lifted the top, it went far to the side, crashed onto the piano, cracked the music stand and some other parts, too, there was a damage of several hundreds of dollars if not even more, and the piano was ... not ready for anything. I ran behind the scene, asked for curtain (even the stage manager was so shocked that he forgot to curtain the stage!), then called a guy, we two removed the cover entirely, fastly reported about what happened, and after a break of 4-5 minutes, the curtain went up, there was the remnants of the piano, and I started to play my Debussy program. I got a huge applause when came back (honestly, more than _after_ the program)... The other situation was at a competition; my last piece was the Epitaphium by Kodály, last minute, after the musical drama and everything died and lost, there is the last appearance of the mourning song and a recorder-like(!) figuration is in the sopra, but the music goes step by step to the deep depth, modulating downwards and downwards and fading out, and then, because some hinge was loose again, the key slip has fallen out onto the ... not the floor, but my legs! Here you are using heavily both pedals, the damper and the una corda too, for coloration, which are exactly at the center... so the key slip has fallen onto my feet, my shoes practically, and just like a seesaw, it was librating slowwwly from up to down, and from down to up, and this again, lying on my shoes. And I still had to change the pedals accordingly, that I tried to do softly, but o course it excited the libration of the key slip more and more. After the performance, I took the slip with me, we were bowing together, it was epic. (As it turned out lately, I won that competition. :) )
Ok, I'll add one more because this is just so fun. Our church organist and pastor's wife wanted to do a special organ/piano duet for the big Christmas service. Something very baroque, some Gloria that I can't remember now. I was 17 and about to go to college for music so I had the skills, just not the interest at that time. I knew the performance was fast approaching but in typical teenage fashion, I procrastinated. A week or two before the big performance, I was asked to come in for a dress rehearsal. Uh oh. I had barely looked at the piece and I was a terrible sight reader. My mother had already talked me up and the pastor and family plus a bunch of laypeople were going to be there to listen. I got to the piano and absolutely muddled through it. My performance was horrible. It was clear I didn't know the piece. The organist was angry, I was embarrassed and the silence coming from the attendees was defining. I ran out of the church while my mother did damage control. My mother assured the organist that I. Would. Be. Ready. She knew that I wouldn't ever let myself be that unprepared again. So I practiced. Night of the big concert, my playing wasn't flawless (to my ears) but It sounded really good. The organist was happy, the pastor was happy and I was just happy to never play that Gloria again.
Wow! The mozart one was funny... I used to sing in a choir and sometimes I didn't have the time to memorize all the pieces we were supposed to sing, so I would just pretend I was singing through almost the whole half of a song while performing live... I wish I could have memorized them back then, though. I wouldn't commit to singing in a choir if I didn't have the time anymore.
As the only decent piano player in my tiny high school, I often got conscripted to accompany everything. I was accompanying the chorus for a choir teacher who was known to be dramatic and had a bad temper. Right in the middle of dress rehearsal, she lost her temper. She was standing right next to me and to make a dramatic point about how angry she was, she threw her arms out to either side and clotheslined me. I was sent flying backwards, off the piano stool. The choir erupted in laughter, the teacher turned beet red and stalked off. Aside from getting hit in the face, it was a good time for all.
The biggest was the entire trombone section lost it's place right before a section solo. The bass trombone picked it up, but the rest of us were foundering. Oh, and how does a slushpump player end up with a recorder? Looking for a play-anywhere instrument that's less offensive then my harmonica.
My friend & I rehearsed for a couple of guitar duets, Elizabethan stuff, I skipped lunch so I could go straight to the concert from work..(this was on the second day) after the first piece my hands turned clammy & I started sweating profusely.. turned out I was hypoglycemic!!I was OK after I had some coffee & puff pastry..Harry
I just discovered your channel, and I really enjoy it. I am an amateur musician who primarily played brass instruments, and for years I concentrated on tuba with a very good caliber local band. This was many years ago, and we were playing an Independence Day concert outdoors. I had a decent used tuba with string actuated rotary valves. We are in our final number, Stars and Stripes Forever March, when the string on the first valve breaks. Most tubas that are more modern than the one I owned have mechanical action, not strings. This resulted in that valve becoming useless. Fortunately, it was only out of commission for a period of the concert totaling two minutes. At least I was not the only tubist in the band. When we concluded, I told the director what happened, and we had a good laugh, and when I returned home I changed the string on all four valves. That's the worst performance disaster that I had in more than forty years of performance. Unless you count the time that the chair that I was sitting in slowly collapses under me, depositing me and my tuba unceremoniously on the ground during a concert, but that time it happened between numbers.
My first recital in my undergrad, I was playing this easy little piece of which I forgot the name, I was extremely nervous because for whatever reason I thought it would be a good idea to invite the girl I was seeing at the time to watch me play. Fast forward to my piece, I got through all of it fine until this really pretty little 6/8 kind of swingy waltz section that my professor told me to be as “romantic as possible” with so in my sheet music right next to the tempo change I wrote her name. Low and behold I somehow got 2 bars ahead and THANKFULLY that section ends with a fermata so I was able to get back in with my pianist for the last section of the piece. I’m pretty dramatic so I was overly humiliated thinking I just botched this piece at my first recital in front of the girl I liked and I just broke out laughing on stage after the bow. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy as I was walking off stage and then my professor gave me a very stern talking to, me and him didn’t have the best relationship to begin with so it didn’t help much BUT to my benefit said girl was running super late and missed my piece so I didn’t even embarrass myself in front of her, but she heard my quartet play which was much better and I was in a better headspace for. Gotta love freshman year angst!
Somebody asked me to perform a song with him , we didn't practice it before the performance. He said in which key it was but I accidentally picked the wrong score in the wrong key and it sounded horrible on stage so I had to stop.
I was once asked, by a wealthy local friend of mine, to play keyboard at an old folks' tea dance. At the time, I used to play a lot of synthesiser, on an expressive pro instrument, and I had once been a collector of ancient 78rpm records, so I knew loads of suitable tunes for tea dances. I was setting up the synth at the venue, when she suddenly spoke up, saying "No; not the synth. This, please". I assumed she meant piano; okay, fine, I thought, but instead, she led me round to a huge Wurlitzer style electronic organ in her care home. I nearly had a heart attack. I'd never so much as seen an instrument like this close up, and hadn't a clue which buttons, stops and tabs gave what sound, let alone how to get musicality and expression out of it. How I got through that gig I will never know...
You won my heart for the recorder, even though it lacks strings, and a corpus produces very timid sounds, even when played with a very good bow, and needs permanent CPR when played...
Well, long story short, my guitar teacher invited me to play with him and his band. I have practiced for weeks, more than 8 hours a day. The night before my pickup selector broke. I was so nervous when the gig came. My friends invited me for a drink or two. (Not to mention that I don't drink at all...) After quite a few drinks I got to perform. I have absolutely destroyed the solo. The rest of the song was ok because it was a miracle that I could even stand on my feet. That was the.worst.disaster.ever for me. But the good thing is that I'm only human, right? 🤣
Of course, pandemic to recorder playing is playing a F recorder but dyslexically reverting to C recorder fingerings. We call that a "seizure" (C-zure). Conversely, playing a C recorder and falling into F recorder fingerings is called a "F-zure." After having enough of these in concert, I vowed to play only C or F recorders in a program, never to alternate and risk confusion... but sometimes that didn't even work!
One time my trumpet mouth piece fell out of my case and i almost didn’t see it on my room floor until i stepped on it and i was like omg i almost left it
I was leading and producing a fundraising concert with some friends and family for a nonprofit a couple years back. The plan was for the lead guitarist (also my father) to play the first song in drop D tuning (where the low "E" is tuned down a full step to "D") and to switch back for the rest of the show. Unfortunately we forgot to switch it to drop D before beginning so the buildup for the first song sounded really off.
I laughed throughout your video, I just couldn't help it! Love your expression! 😂🤣😆 Well, my musical disasters were, once I entered too early in the music on the viola (an instrument I was dragged into and never had a lesson on) and it was so obvious! Argh! Having to struggle through the alto clef, confusing it with treble sometimes! Argh! Last year, a small performance at church, I was playing the violin and with a guitar accompaniment, in the key of Dflat, he forgot to put on his capo and I was like, panicking and making mouth messages while playing. Lol. Another time in church, I was doubling someone on the piano (yet another instrument I'm not qualified to play, just barely scratching the basics) and the other piano played in the wrong key because she was using the digital piano auto transpose. Phew, I recognized the key she was playing so I also played in that key, albeit, uncomfortably since I didn't practised in that key, I was, okay I chord, IV chord, V chord vi chord. Argh! Hahaha, scary but good learning experience. Recently, a church Mass, was playing the violin, then it was recorded, wasn't a disaster per se but when I listened to it I was like. 😱 Sounded a bit off pitch and sounded dry, I also regretted added gliss, it didn't sound as I'd like. The general audience liked it but I didn't, so another lesson to learn. Having said that, I think your stories are more intense and interesting. Mine are pretty controlled in a way, on the violin and oboe (minor instrument), the rest are self-taught instruments.
In high school I played guitar in jazz band. We did a concert at a fair outside on a mobile stage. I was the very first instrument to play in the very first song. About 8 solo measures. Instrument cable died, no sound.
Not only was your video enjoyable, the comments were hilarious too - performing with the cleaning stick inside the recorder, playing repeats repeatedly on a loop, swinging from the curtain while saving your violin, as the conductor glares at you - I can't stop laughing!
I played a solo guitar Bach piece once in a big church as part of services, my buddy was in the balcony watching, we had a bit too much of a party the nite before and I started making big mistakes, and he was rolling on the floor laughing- I got through it but i shredded it-good thing the minister didn't say my name:)
Once we had a concert and I'm a flute/picc player, but only played on like one song. I completely walked offstage, and accidentally brought everything back except for the piccolo. Everyone was yelling my name, telling me to go back, so I did. My friend, a bassoonist, was packing up very slowly, and she started chatting to me, "did you drop your piccolo? Did you drop your piccolo?" "No, no" and the director yelled at us. The end.
I had a big concert participation. I play the flute and I had a piano player playing along. We played Vivaldi Winter second movement ... we started and well, BUT... when I had to do the trills one of my fingers just went rigid and stiff so I could not use it well... Somehow we managed it and it was as bad as I thought!
The Mozart and low singing parts made me laugh so much. I thought a little monologue from Midsummer Night's Dream would be great for an audition. I sweated profusely and paced quickly back and forth on the stage. The singing portion didn't go any better. Yeah, prep is important. :0)
My biggest performance disaster was when I did a piano summer school at Birmingham Conservatoire. It was the last day and we were doing a performance for family and friends. It was my big moment, playing a Steinway for the first time, and I got half way through the piece and completely lost it. It tried to carry on but I was that lost that I had to go back a page and start again from the start of the phrase. My mom was recording it as well and it was really embarrassing. Kinda put me off performing in front of people.
Ohhh, I feel you! I did exactly the same on piano in a school music competition- I tried to play from memory and kept getting lost, in the end had to make the very long trek across the stage to get the music out of my bag. Not a good memory! But get back on that horse and keep going! 😄
I had a bassoon quartett concert where one of our players got sick the day before the performance so we had a substitute and changed the pieces to make it "easier to play for the substitute". Unfortunitly we haven't practiced the new piece (two movements from a baroque suite) a lot beforehand. So the first movement is a slow one and a bit like a fuge. It gets a bit tricky to play your part at the correct bar and so one of us missed his cue, I tried to continue to play but did not know where I was anymore either. So the other two completed the piece on their own with us standing there awkwadly for the other half of the movement. In the following fast movement the 1. bassoon starts on its own and because he was quite embarrassed in front of a lot of people he knew started to play very fast which made everyone mess up their fast staccato passages... in the end I thought it was pretty funny and we ended up performing the same piece for a competition later and it went really well :)
Once I played a piece I knew by heart and at some time I forgot to pay attention where I am on the sheet, but my fingers knew it so well I just continued - until I didn't know further and we had to restart somewhere. So basically no one noticed my "genius" of playing it without looking on the sheet, instead they only noticed when I didn't know further and where I was on the sheet^^ but I was so in the flow and proud that I played it without the sheet at first. what a pity..^^
hey, thanks!(forgot your name) you forgot to put the article you mentioned and pointed at 1:30 or so. have a great day. thanks for your work and tips and encouragement. love your voice and expressive way!
My biggest "fail" was when I was singing in Carnegie Hall (with an 80 voice choir). We were coming onstage after intermission...and I slipped and fell. ALL THE WAY TO THE FLOOR. In a dress. My colleagues had to help me up. It was horrifying. "Luckily" I was in the front row, so the biggest injury was to my pride.
I play saxophone, and on a saxophone you have a button on the back called an octave key for switching to a higher octave. I was on stage at a VERY formal Christmas concert to play the alto sax part of Let it Snow. The VERY first note, a high G, I pushed my octave key and it just wasn't working.... It was stuck. There were only 6 flutes and 3 saxes with the melody and one of the essential elements of this was gone. What happened? I decided to play only the lower octave notes( a total of 6 in 2 bars) and miraculously my octave key unstuck and all was good again.
in my second year of Teacher Ed (USA) I took the mandatory Music for School Teachers, which included: learning to play recorder. I was diligent in practicing, but all our learning went on alone and unsupervised - just follow the book. Not particulary happy with the sound of the provided recorder (cheap plastic soprano) I decided to buy an alto recorder. Unsupervised no one explained it was in a different key. Music final exam: me alone with 3 or 4 examiners. I play my alto as if it were a soprano. Examiner silence... They exchanged looks that imply worse than total disaster, then offer me a deal: I pass if I promise to never ever play or teach music. That was 1972. I kept that promise until 2012.
My last year of high school, during the annual variety show, I had a huge flute solo with the jazz band. I stood alone on the elevated stage while the rest of the band was down on the gym floor. I played my heart out, but the band director kept looking at me kind of funny. Turned out the idiots backstage who were running the sound board had turned off the microphone I was playing into. So nobody could hear me. One little flute didn't stand a chance against 4 saxes, 5 trumpets, 4 trombones, piano, guitar, bass and drums.About halfway through the song the guys asleep on the sound board finally woke up, realized somebody was trying to use that microphone, and turned it back on. My big moment, and half of it went missing because of someone else's mistake. I was devastated.
True story: in my first year of studying music education in college I was about to step on stage for our last band concert. (I was playing 1st French Horn which is an extremely important part). As everyone was sitting and getting their stands ready before the curtains opened, I realized I forgot my entire concert music, folder and all, back at home. Then I had to panic when my director was looking around to see if everyone had stands. Luckily she didn’t notice mine and I played the entire concert from memory 😅😅
- at concert with an orchestra we played a "bis" ; I forgot to change the recorder and played with sopranino instead of soprano - at an audition I was so stressed I couldn't even read the notes, only was seeing black dots on a white sheet - at a concert, forgot my glasses :-D
