How to Recover From Embarrassing Mistakes

We might as well face it. None of us are perfect, and as much as we might wish otherwise, mistakes are an inevitable part of auditions and live performances. Whether it be a missed note or an embarrassing memory slip, the probability of having some sort of error is pretty high.

Naturally, most of us spend the majority of our time trying to improve our chances of a perfect performance by practicing – especially as we get closer to the day of the performance. This is a very good idea of course, but it should not be the only thing we do.

What? Why not?

Mistakes vs. Unnecessary Mistakes

For one, we don’t have much control over what mistakes occur in the heat of the moment. Often, we don’t even make mistakes where we expect to. For instance, I can recall many times when I nailed the difficult passages, and as soon as I let my guard down, messed up an easy section. Ultimately, there’s really nothing we can do in the practice room that will completely eliminate all mistakes with 100% reliability.

However, there is something you can do to eliminate unnecessary mistakes.

What is an unnecessary mistake? These are mistakes that could have been prevented had you only responded more effectively to the initial mistake. Let me explain.

Understanding Our Natural Reaction to Mistakes

When we make a mistake in pressure situations, two things tend to happen. We experience both a physical response (heart starts pounding and our muscles tense up) and a mental response (we shift from thinking about the music and the music-making process to “oh, crap” thoughts about what others are going to think, how embarrassing or awful the mistake was, whether we should just give up now and go home, etc.).

As problematic as the physical response is, the mental one may be even more devastating. The longer you dwell on the mistake, analyze it, and perhaps even beat yourself up about it, the harder it becomes to re-immerse yourself in the music, the harder it becomes to get back into the zone, and the more likely it is that you will make another mistake, which then leads to more frustration, disappointment, and yet more mistakes.

But I have to be perfect in an audition – it’s already too late once the mistake has happened, no?

Well, not necessarily.

Being Memorable Does Not Require Perfection

I once participated in a competition where I was way over my head. The people I was competing against were better than I was, even though I made it to the final round. Midway through the concerto, the pianist and I got completely off. I had no idea where she was, and it was all I could do to stay focused on my part. I could feel my face getting all hot, and my mind was racing with thoughts about what I should do. But I resolved to keep playing instead of stopping. I still don’t know what I did, but somehow things worked out and my pianist and I converged again about a half-page later right at a big arrival point.

There were three of us in the finals. I knew I wouldn’t be getting 1st prize in the competition, and I didn’t, but the jury ended up awarding me a share of 2nd prize. They could have just given me 3rd prize, but in talking with them afterwards, they were completely blown away with my ability to focus and recover. In all honesty, the person I shared the prize was way more skilled and played better than I did (in fact, she went on to be the youngest prizewinner of one of the biggest competitions in the world a few years later).

For better or for worse, the thing the jury remembered most was not my playing, but my recovery from a mistake. They shared their comment forms with me later, where I saw notes such as “incredible save!” and “great faking!”

My favorite example of this ability to recover and save a performance is Midori’s now-legendary performance at Tanglewood in 1986. Watch this video to see what some have pointed to as the defining moment that launched her career.

What to Do

Heifetz once remarked that he didn’t play any more in tune than anyone, he just made adjustments more quickly.

Similarly, the key to eliminating unnecessary mistakes is to recover quicker. To train yourself to move past the mistake so immediately and completely that you almost don’t even notice or remember that you made a mistake in the first place – and thereby keep the mistake from causing even more mistakes.

How to Recover Faster

First, you must gain awareness of your current “oops reflex.” Get to know how you respond to mistakes. Set up a recording device, and pick a difficult piece to play through. Play until you make a mistake and continue playing for at least another minute or two. Stop, and write down the details of your “oops reflex.”

• What do you say to yourself?
• What thoughts went through your mind?
• What emotions did you experience?
• Where did your attention go?
• What happened to your muscle tension?
• How long did it take you to refocus?

The key here is recovery time. How much time did you waste focusing on things that only delay your getting back on track – and in the meantime increase the likelihood of another mistake. 30 seconds? 15 seconds? 1 second? 20 milliseconds?

Again, the more quickly you can get your mind and body back on track, the better.

Once you’ve gotten a clearer picture of your response to mistakes, it’s time to reprogram yourself to respond in a more effective manner.

Pre-program a New Recovery Reflex

Try this 4-step strategy for recovering more quickly.

1. Leave the mistake in the past; get back to the present
Oops. You’ve made a mistake. Whether it was a big huge mistake, or a little bitty one doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s already in the past and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to change it now.

Don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for you to analyze what happened later. For now, however, the more time you spend thinking about it when you should be focused on what’s coming up, the more likely it is that you will make another mistake before you know it.

If you like video games, there is one in particular that I feel is a tremendous tool for developing the kind of disciplined focus that keeps us in the zone. It is called Guitar Hero. Click here if you have no idea what I am talking about.

The key to becoming a good sight-reader is to be able to keep your focus just slightly ahead of what you are currently playing, right? Because if you allow your mind to go either too far forward or backwards, you end up stumbling and fumbling about until you can get your focus back where it needs to be. This is exactly what I am referring to when I say get back into the present moment. And Guitar Hero requires this exact skill. Look too far ahead, and you miss the notes. Look backwards to see what you missed, and you miss what’s coming up.

2. Relax
Most individuals will have a tendency to tense up after making a mistake. Drop your shoulders, relax your key muscles, and try to regain control of your body by letting go of the tension.

3. Refocus
Get your mind back into the music. Focus on your sound, the feel of your instrument, or anything that helps you remember what it feels like to be playing your instrument fully under control. The key is for this to be sensory, rather than analytical and overly technical in nature as this will tend to slam you into left-brain processing mode (more on left-brain vs. right-brain and why this is an important concept for musicians here).

4. Don’t be a hero
You don’t need to try something spectacular in order to make up for the mistake you just made. Just get back on your feet and ease back into your comfort zone before trying anything truly stupendous.

How to Automatize Your New Reflex

It’s critically important to make this new reflex automatic, if you hope to recover more quickly from mistakes when the moment of truth arrives.

Let me tell you a story about someone who understands programming reflexes. Are you familiar with Jerry Rice? He was a football player for the San Francisco 49ers, and is widely considered to be the greatest wide receiver of all time. His work ethic was legendary, and one of my favorite stories about him is of how he would run every catch for a touchdown in practices. In other words, while most receivers would catch a pass in practice and ease up, Jerry Rice would catch each pass and run it all the way to the end zone as if it were a real game.

This is a brilliant tactic, that relates to how musicians ought to practice when preparing for a performance or audition. Think about it. While the other players were conditioning themselves to slow down after catching the ball, Jerry Rice was conditioning himself to accelerate and look for openings after catching the ball. So when game day arrived, and Jerry Rice caught a pass, there was no hesitation. The other players, on the other hand, were a fraction of a second slower in reacting and going for the end zone. At the highest level, this fraction of a second makes all the difference in the world.

Be Like Jerry

As your performance or audition approaches, start doing more run-throughs, where you play through entire excerpts without stopping (no matter what happens) and record these with a recording device.

There are two primary reasons for doing this. One, to train yourself to play through a piece without stopping, hesitating, or losing your focus even if you make a mistake. Two, to train yourself to listen to your playing so you can make adjustments (not corrections) as you play.

What do I mean? Most of the time when we practice, we have one ear listening for mistakes. We are looking for mistakes, so that we will know what to fix when we go back and practice the material. This is ok when we are practicing – but not when we are performing.

When we are performing, we should be listening to how we sound so that we can make fine-tuned adjustments on the fly, not so we can stop, redo, and correct what we have just done. The difference between the two may seem subtle, but it actually produces a very different mindset and performance experience.

At the end of the day, if you can learn how to stay focused on the present, and develop the ability to return to the present more quickly after you’ve made a mistake, you will find yourself not only making fewer mistakes, but being more courageous and less afraid of making them in the first place.

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