Mistakes during lessons

[Merak]

I have been taking weekly half hour lessons for the last six months using the Hal Leonard guitar books, just about finished with book 2. I feel pretty good about my progress but am a little frustrated about one thing. I practice about an hour a day and drive 30 minutes to my lesson at a music store, usually arrive 15 to 30 minutes early and try to warm up in the back of the store. I usually go through each piece a couple times and if I am having a good day, I get it without any mistakes on the second or third time through. Bad or average day I can’t get through without a mistake that I don’t make at home. My instructor listens and may have me work on it another week. I like having him as an instructor, but feel embarrassed when I don’t play well.
How come I can play well at home and then an hour later go in and screw up? Common beginner problem or something to fix?

[joemcg]

You’re not alone!
I take lessons from a friend I have known for years. No matter how well I play through a piece at home chances are at least 90% i’ll Screw it up in front of him. 😡

[Riverwolf]

yeah, such is life.
I can own a song at home, play it with my eyes closed...
Go to an open mic and make some rather silly mistakes.

[packmule]

One big factor might be if you don't play out in novel locations regularly. Behavior needs to be actively generalized - if we only every play at home (and indeed if we tend to play in the same location at home) then when we enter a novel environment aspects of it can prove distracting and lead to loss of focus - going to the music store once a week for your lesson doesn't compete with playing for an hour every day in your home, the music store/room where you take your lessons is still more "novel" than your home is. Then on top of that add the pressure of having your instructor watching you - ack!

I used to take tenor banjo lessons with one of the best tenor banjo players in Ireland once a week. For the first 3 lessons I was super nervous and would forget parts of tunes and make mistakes, but as I got to know my teacher better and started to relax more the mistakes faded.

If one of my students is having trouble with something during a lesson that they say they are nailing at home then I don't send them off to "work on it more" for the next lesson - I tell them to work on generalizing their playing of the tune to different locations (even different locations in their house, or if the weather is nice then out in the back yard or on the front porch) and then we come back to that tune in a few weeks time to check in and move on to something else for the next week's lesson.

[piper_L]

Common, and not just a beginner problem...

[DesertTwang]

Originally Posted by Merak

How come I can play well at home and then an hour later go in and screw up? Common beginner problem or something to fix?

Perfectly normal. Same goes for performing. I can rip through a tune with no hiccups at home, only to completely space how the piece even starts in a performance situation. Once you realize this, you adjust your expectations accordingly. In other words, unless I feel I have a piece 150% nailed I don't think about performing it. As soon as I can play it at home with 100% accuracy and zero mistakes, I know that I'm still a ways away from performing it.

It's just the nature of the game. One thing that I find very helpful is something that my teacher, Bryan Sutton at artistworks.com started: He asks each student's video submission to be prefaced as a "practice submission" or a "performance submission." This way, there is no confusion -- if I feel I have a piece down absolutely pat and ready to perform it, I will preface my submission as such. If, on the other hand, I feel i have it sort of down but still am looking for critique along the way to help me improve, I will preface my submission as a practice video. This takes care of the issue completely, and there are no disappointments and no embarrassing feelings.

[BobbyMocha]

This made me feel so much better reading this. I've only been taking lessons for about a year and I'm a later starter (50+) and I'm struggling a bit. I practice a minimum of an hour a day and can get through a section of a song pretty well. I get in front of my instructor and everything crumbles. It's not nerves. I feel perfectly comfortable making mistakes as I learn but they are 10x worse in front of him. I thought 'maybe I just won't be able to after all.'

But...if what I'm experiencing is part of the normal process, I'll keep charging forward.

[rick-slo]

Concentration and expectations issues likely. So likely at home you often play through something that meets your expectations
and don't think twice about what you might have done differently or even hear some issues, yet while in front of your teacher
any little glitch seems relatively glaring and that throws you off - similar to the red light nerves when recording something.

[thechariot1x]

So, I'd describe myself as a mediocre guitarist but i am a doctoral psychology student haha. Yep it's very common. So, there's a few things you can do to help with performance anxiety and focus that are very simple and don't take much time: first, you can check out really brief (like 10 seconds to a minute) mindfulness exercises (body scan and deep breathing/counting breaths work well and are very brief, you can YouTube it if this is to your liking) to get your mind on the present moment and what you're doing and off any lingering frustrations or anxiety, many high level athletes do this. You can also try visualizing yourself doing well beforehand (again lots of athletes do it). But perhaps the most simple trick is that for most people your anxiety is most intense in the first few minutes and tends to level off after 10-15 minutes (depending on the situation of course), so play your simpler stuff first.

[GBS]

Even after decades, I still suffer from this syndrome. Lots of good advice for others above. One item additional: My previous teacher, Peter Lang (yeah, THAT Peter Lang) would not play a piece for others until he got to a point where he could play it through 100% at home...while watching TV. And then only if he could summarize the plot of the show.
That noted, I agree, if you really feel you generally have it down your instructor should not be sending you home to work on it some more. BUT, you should always continue to play it on your own, frequently. Maybe increase practice time to 1 1/2 hrs, with the first 1/2 spent just playing already learned material.

[frankmcr]

If you never make mistakes you probably wouldn't need lessons, hmm?

[FwL]

You can think of it in terms of two different skill levels.

1. Practice room skill level
2. Performance skill level

So long as you don't mistake the two, you'll do alright.

I used to teach martial arts and there is a similar thing in that practice. There's the stuff you pull off without thinking about it when conditions are perfect and there's the stuff you can do on demand, every time. You can't count on the stuff that happens without conscious thought, so your real skill level is what you can apply on demand every time.

For music, your real skill level is what you can pull off in front of an audience or when the record light is on.

.

[JonPR]

Yes, as everyone says, this happens all the time. Your teacher will be well aware of the phenomenon, and should be forgiving!

It's totally natural - adrenalin, or "fight or flight" syndrome. You're under pressure, even if you might not feel it (it's an ostensibly friendly scenario), and your brain goes into a different gear.
Often what happens is you play faster than usual without realising it (because subconsciously you want to get it over with and get out of there ). That's why you make mistakes. Not because you're actually playing worse, but you're thinking faster, so it feels like you're playing at the same speed as you practised but actually it's faster; so you trip up.

The epiphany I had about this wasn't in a teaching or live performance situation. It was in a relaxed practice session at home with my gf on piano. We decided to use a metronome for a change (we never normally did that). To begin with everything was fine, I was just strumming along, keeping in with the metronome with no problem. Then I started to solo - and the metronome started slowing down.
That was really how it sounded. I didn't feel I was playing any faster (or thinking any faster), but obviously I was. It was totally subconscious. It made me realise that was what was at the root of my tendency to get ahead of the beat in live situations. I knew I did that, but hadn't realised how automatic and subconscious it was.

So if there's a lesson from that, it's about consciously relaxing. Take a deep breath before you play, and settle yourself. Maybe try to make yourself play slower than usual. Think of a tempo, a beat, in your head, and slow it a little. Then start. Think about "sitting on" the beat, even "sitting back" on it; don't push it or drive it, let it carry you.

[Merak]

Thank you all so much, great help and tools for becoming a better player. I feel MUCH better about my lessons.

[Golffishny]

The same thing happens in sports. If you think about the result/reward/review you are distracted from the task. That's whether you feel self imposed pressure or not. Just focus on the task at hand and the results will take care of themselves. Just as life, it's the journey that matters, not the destination.