Hi. My kid is taking his grade 5 piano exam this Sept. After months of practising, his teacher finally says his 3 pieces are good and told him to maintain the standard (about 3 weeks ago). However, he kept playing wrong notes recently. He says sometimes his mind just goes blank. What should I do to help him? Anyone experienced this before? Thanks.

Nearly everyone plays wrong notes. A few wrong notes do not make a lot of difference to a performance.

The most important thing when performing (or doing a trial run-through of a whole piece) is to keep going.

Halts, hesitations and unevenness of tempo and rhythm are much more disturbing to the listener than a wrong note or two.

Practice is different. A large part of practice time should be done slowly enough that there are no mistakes.

Where the same wrong notes are habitual that section needs to be isolated, the exact point at which the intention goes wrong needs to be found, and the fault corrected. Then the corrected passage needs to be repeated as many times as necessary to ingrain the new, correct movements, and obliterate the old.

Hi. Thanks for the reply.

It just happened suddenly. He was practising slowly for certain bars and after sometimes, he just couldn't even remember how to play the beginning part. Not those a few wrong notes and still able to continue playing. He practically couldn't play the notes out. He would play and got stuck and just couldn't continue anymore. It's like on and off thing. Some kind of mental block?

Sounds like he is relying too much on "motor-memory" and not enough on knowing the music.

In that case he needs to work from the score and spend a few days re-learning it as though it was a new piece, paying attention to the structure, the harmonies, and so on. It will come back quickly, and the memory will eventually be stronger than before the lapses.

The answer is always the same. Slow, careful practice with intense focus.

Also, recall works better after a few good night's sleep.

Thank you so much for your advice, Mad Tom.
Really appreciate that.

MT is absolutely right (when isn't he?). I have had this problem occasionally and I tell my pupils they are playing on automatic pilot and will certainly crash if they don't go into manual mode pretty quickly. In other words, motormemory is not enough and the brain must stay wide awake.

Lapses often occur just after a passage has been well played and the pupil has lapsed into euphoric over confidence. This is particularly true of weak readers. If you follow MT's advice I think you will find things will get back into place. But in the long term I would encourage your child to work on the intellectual side of learning as well as the physical.

This may be sound like terrible advice but sometimes a pupil can over-practise a piece. The piece may be perfect and then it seems for no reason that everything falls apart. In this case I tell pupils to leave the piece alone for a few days and when they go back to it the mistakes are gone. They may be just going through the motions while practising and a break might bring back the energy they need. I will probably be given out to for this advice but it has worked for me in the past.

In the run-up to my G4 exam, my mind went completely blank on scales. I couldn't even remember A minor, which is a scale set for G1 on clarinet and which I'd been playing on and off for about 3 years A break did me good - about a week I think, in my case

Really appreciate all the kind advice. Ya.. I told my son to stop practising for few days and also to learn them as if they are new to him..... slow and line by line... thank goodness he's back to 'normal' again... (finger cross)

It can also help to just play the pieces two or three times a week only - play them well of course, not just "rattled through". I tell pupils to do this sometimes about 6 weeks before an exam, just for a week or maybe two, but it's less drastic than not playing them for a week. It has the effect of making them have to read the music again - just another version of bumblebee8's remedy.

My son will routinely give his worst performances just before and exam! He couldn't play a week before his grade 8, not a note, so he and the teacher played football in the garden and talked about the music. He's not an emotional boy, doesn't get uptight, just said his brain was full! He had prepared well, getting up early to practice before school every day and then another session in the evening etc

He got 140 in the Grade 8 - think his teacher knew what he was doing!

Well done to your son (I don't know whether that's a recent result or not, so belated congratulations if it was any time ago ) As you say, his teacher must've known what he was doing and must understand your son very well. What a brilliant approach

Wow, that's certainly quite an innovative and enlightened approach! I'd be a bit concerned about the parent's reaction if I tried something quite that unconventional, especially just before an exam, but I guess the circumstances were a little extreme. And it clearly didn't do any harm!

I find that if you over practise this can happen. It's really annoying.

Have your child play some other pieces just for fun and relaxation and perhaps get some fresh air and exercise just to take his/her mind off it. By all means practise the exam pieces, but not over and over again. You can play a piece to death and that's when silly mistakes start to appear - usually only a week before the exam.

Good Luck.

Even better, the last lesson before his diploma, they drank coffee and watched dreadful youtube versions of his diploma repertoire pieces posted by various people round the world, the pair of them roaring with laughter. Diploma result came - Distinction again. Quite a teacher!

Tomorrow is the 'big' day.... today, my son suddenly 'forgets' quite a few of his scales while he was practising on the exam piano. All along, he remembers all his scales. OMG! His pieces were good also....the only thing his teacher asks him is to improve on a specific part on his left hand for his third song, and now, he plays worse than before....

In fact, nothing unusual happens since the last 'mental block'. Really hope he will be back to normal tomorrow....

I hope all goes well tomorrow. Sounds like normal pre exam nerves to me. It also sounds like your son has worked really hard, so I'm sure all that hard work will pay off!

Thanks Halka.

Ya, I must say that he has been a wonderful boy..... has been working really hard (need to be pushed at times.... but who doesn't). So I really hope his hard work will pay off <he deserves it >