To Musicians: How do you....?

Question:learn to hear what it is the audience hears. There have been many times when I play a piece (I play classical piano), and I'll think it was a horrible performance and the audience will think it's the best I've played the piece. My question is, can you train yourself to hear what it is the audience is hearing? If so, how did you do it? I sit erect and rather far back from the piano in an attemp to listen while I play, however I never seem to be able to receive the sound the audience receives.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: learn to hear what it is the audience hears. There have been many times when I play a piece (I play classical piano), and I'll think it was a horrible performance and the audience will think it's the best I've played the piece. My question is, can you train yourself to hear what it is the audience is hearing? If so, how did you do it? I sit erect and rather far back from the piano in an attemp to listen while I play, however I never seem to be able to receive the sound the audience receives.

Earl D makes a good point.

You've probably listened to yourself play the piece a thousand times in practice. You know, in minute and perfect detail, EXACTLY what you want the piece to sound like, and you're acutely aware of EVERY mistake, however small (but they probably don't sound like small mistakes to you!).

But the audience doesn't hear the perfect music playing in your head -- all they hear is the music coming out of your piano. Keep in mind that most people probably don't know the piece as well as you do. You've heard it a thousand times in practice but they may be hearing it for the very first time. At the very least, they're probably hearing YOU play it for the first time. The audience gets caught up in the flow of the piece and in the emotional content, not in the note-to-note minutiae, and simply won't notice most mistakes, as long as you simply continue playing through them without tipping them off with frowns or verbal comments when you make them, or stopping to "fix" them.

So what sounds to you like a horrible, mistake-ridden performance will sound like a beautiful, heartfelt rendition to your audience. It has little to do with the actual sound coming out of your instrument and everything to do with where your attention is focused, vs where your audience's attention is.

I don't think you can because you always see what you should have done or could have done but didn't.

Record yourself playing the piece and close your eyes and relax while you're listening to it.

One of the most annoying things to me, as a musician, is that I can't hear what everyone else hears. I focus on my part as I play it, and not others. So one of the greatest devices invented to me is a recorder, of any kind. Whether it be a recording studio or just a video camera, I can go back and listen to the whole performance.

So ask somebody in the audience to record the piece for you, or buy an inexpensive recorder, set it on the piano, and play!!!

Good LUCK!

No such thing sorry! humans generally cannot look objectively at something that they are personally involved with! Its all a matter of opinion! That is why we have music teachers! You could try and record yourself and listen to it with your teacher! He/She can help you hear things that you havent heard before!

You will always think of the mess- ups that you do, and the audience will only want to hear the good arts. You are hearing the same thing, just from a different perspective. Try recording yourself and listening to it afterwards. That way, you can learn from your mistakes and do even better next time. I hope this helps! Good luck!!! =D

The bad news is that you can not hear what the audience hears acoustically. The room becomes part of the instrument, and your location in the room does not give you the same resonance, equalization etc. So from a purely technical point of view, it's simply not possible.

The good news is that if you have the money to buy the equipment, you can have a monitor or headset that takes a feed from somewhere in the audience and delivers it back on stage to you. That might distract some people and detract from your performance. Rock bands do this all the time. As a soloist, it might not work for you. But dont despair. Most great classical artists from days gone by had this problem. They figured it out sooner or later.