The Performing Unit: Skills and Communication

The floor, and the ceiling

Almost everybody preparing a performance believes the mark is for playing the right notes. Accuracy matters, and it is the FLOOR rather than the ceiling. Think of a page of music as two documents printed on top of each other. The first document is the notes: which sounds, and how long each one lasts. That tells you WHAT to play. The second document is everything else on the page: the words, the symbols, the marks above and below the notes. That tells you HOW, and that is where the marks separate people. A performance that gets every note right and ignores every instruction around them is a correct performance that communicates nothing, and it is marked as exactly that. So carry one question through this module: if I played this exactly as written but ignored every word and symbol that is not a note, what would be lost? Everything here applies whatever you perform, including if your instrument is your voice. Nothing in it needs an accompanist, a particular instrument, or years of lessons behind you.

Five words a performer needs

These are about what you DO, not about naming what you hear. That difference is the whole reason this part of the course exists separately.

Two that are not notes

Five things appearing on a page of music. Tap the TWO that belong to the second document: they tell you HOW to play rather than WHAT to play.

• A note sitting on a particular line of the stave
• A letter printed under the stave telling you to play loudly from here
• A note written so that it lasts twice as long as the one before it
• A curved line drawn over a group of notes, joining them into one smooth shape
• A symbol showing that nothing is played for one beat

Two pieces, one decision

A student can play a hard piece with several stumbles and no time to shape anything, or an easier piece cleanly and with real expression. Difficulty does count towards the mark. Which should they choose?

• The easier piece, because difficulty is only rewarded when you can still control and shape it, and a performance spent surviving demonstrates almost nothing else
• The harder piece, because difficulty carries marks and stumbles can be forgiven
• It makes no real difference as long as they practise enough
• Whichever their teacher prefers, since they know the syllabus

Two documents on one page

Almost every weak performance is the result of reading the left column and stopping. Both are printed in the same ink and only one of them is usually practised.

Five instructions, five different things you do

How a performance gets prepared

A student is preparing a piece properly rather than just learning it. Put the stages in order.

• Choose a piece you can control, not the hardest one you can nearly play
• Learn the notes and rhythms until they stop taking your attention
• Go back and read everything on the page that is not a note, marking what you had missed
• Decide where each shape starts and ends, so the loud parts have somewhere to grow from
• Record yourself and listen back as a stranger would, once
• Fix the one or two things that were most obviously missing, rather than all of them

What separates performances at the top

Three things, and none of them is about playing harder music. Keep going. Fluency is worth more than cleanliness. A performance that runs from start to finish with a handful of wrong notes reads as a performance; one that stops, restarts and hesitates reads as a rehearsal, however accurate the parts between the stops. Do the second document. Almost nobody does it fully, which means it is the cheapest place to gain. It takes an afternoon to read a page properly for its directions, and it changes how the whole thing lands. ⭐ And decide what you want the listener to notice. Not a general wish to play well: one specific thing, in one specific place, that you have shaped so it arrives. A performer who can say what they wanted a listener to feel, and where, has understood what this unit is for, and that is true whether you are playing a violin, a keyboard, a drum kit or singing unaccompanied.

Accuracy, communication, or neither

For each thing a performer does, decide what it mainly demonstrates. Three lives.

Two actors, one script

Two people are handed the same page of a play. Every word they will say is already decided, and neither of them may change a single one. The first delivers every line correctly. Nothing is missed, nothing is added, the words arrive in the right order at a steady pace. It is completely accurate, and after thirty seconds nobody in the room is listening. The second says exactly the same words. But one of them is left hanging before the next arrives. One is thrown away almost too quietly to catch. One sentence speeds up until it trips over itself, and then there is a silence that goes on slightly too long. Same words. Completely different afternoon. ⭐ And here is the part worth taking away: the second actor did not do anything the first one could not have done. Everything they used was available on the page, in the punctuation and the stage directions, which the first actor had read and not thought about.

What would actually raise the mark

A student plays their piece accurately, evenly and without stopping, and is told it would score in the middle. Select every change that would genuinely raise it.

• Going back through the page and doing the directions they had read but never acted on
• Deciding where each phrase grows and where it gives way, so the piece has a shape
• Picking one moment they want a listener to notice, and preparing it so it arrives
• Swapping to a harder piece to pick up the difficulty credit
• Playing the whole thing faster to sound more confident

Finish the performing sentences

Any instruction on the page that is not a note is a performance _____, and acting on those is where a correct performance starts becoming a good one. Keeping going from start to finish, rather than stopping to correct things, is _____, and it is worth more than playing the notes perfectly in pieces. Being able to do a thing reliably rather than when you are lucky is _____, which is also why difficulty is only credited when you have it. Making a listener feel or notice something is _____, and candidates assume it cannot be assessed when in fact it is. Turning the page into actual sound, including the decisions the page leaves open, is _____. And the decision that sets the ceiling on everything else is which _____ you chose in the first place.

Build the performance plan

A student is planning how to prepare a piece. Assemble the plan that would earn most.

Four decisions before the recording

A student is preparing a solo performance. Each stage sets out where they are and hands you the decision.

• They have six weeks. They can just about get through a difficult piece, or play a moderate one comfortably. They want the difficulty credit. Decide.
• The notes are secure. They have four weeks left and their instinct is to keep playing it through until the day. Decide what to do with the time.
• They record a practice run and there is one clear wrong note near the middle. They stopped, went back and corrected it. Decide.
• A friend says all this only matters if you have had lessons since you were six, and that they will never compete with people who have. Decide what to say.

Plan a performance

Think of any piece you could perform, on any instrument including your voice. Explain how you would prepare it so that a listener notices something, not just that the notes were right.

• Say how you would decide whether the piece is the right level for you
• Name TWO things you would look for on the page that are not notes, and say what you would do differently because of each
• Identify one moment you want a listener to notice, and say where it is
• Explain how you would prepare the passage BEFORE that moment so it lands
• Say what you would do if something went wrong in the middle of the performance
• Finish by explaining why playing the notes correctly would not be enough on its own