How to Hide Your Mistakes So No One Knows You Made Them
As harpists, what we all want is to be able to play beautifully. And when we hesitate or make mistakes, it feels like we’re falling short of that goal, and that can hurt.
But what most students misunderstand is that successful performances aren’t free of mistakes - they just sound like they are.
Because the biggest thing that makes a pro sound like a pro is not a total absence of mistakes - it’s how well they can hide it when they do.
The Critical Performance Mindset Shift
When it comes to learning to hide your mistakes, you need to start with the right mindset.
If you go into a performance with the mindset of, "I must not make any mistakes" - to be honest, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Because the second a single thing goes wrong, you’ve already lost.
And the truth is, as harpists, we are humans, not robots, and we are imperfect. In my opinion, that’s the beauty of live music.
But that doesn’t stop us from trying.
That’s why there’s a famous saying among musicians: Perfectionist in the practice room, realist on stage.
The trouble is, we spend so much time during our practice trying to get everything right, that it’s hard to turn that off and we get frustrated when we aren’t able to play perfectly in performance.
But let’s zoom out and think of the audience’s overall perception of a piece of music.
Here's a picture with 100 squares. 96 of them are blue; 4 of them are yellow.
As a whole, would you say that this image is yellow overall?
No. You wouldn’t. If someone showed you a painting that looked like this, and you had to describe the colour in one word, you would probably say blue.
In the same way, a few mistakes here and there do not ruin a performance overall.
And this is the critical thing to understand and believe.
Two things can be true at the same time:
You can make a mistake, AND you can give a beautiful performance. They are not mutually exclusive.
Just like a few yellow dots doesn’t mean this isn’t a blue image.
But I know what some of you are thinking right now: Yeah, but the yellow is still there. And they’re kind of obvious.
Well, you’re right. But what if instead of those bright yellow squares, they were purple instead?
They blend in a lot more now, right?
You might not even notice them if you weren’t looking for them.
And that’s what I’m going to teach you to do by learning to hide your mistakes and blend them in so that no one will notice them.
Developing the Skill of Hiding Your Mistakes
Now I’m going to show you 3 ways you can develop this skill.
#1: When you play and you make a mistake, try to keep going instead of stopping in your tracks.
See if you can find your way forward to the next notes and just continue rather than letting it completely derail you, or getting spooked and just freezing.
Because the most noticeable thing you can do is stop playing. That silence is much more obvious than a few incorrect notes.
A lot of us have an instinct to just drop everything the moment something goes wrong, and if you always let that instinct win during practice, that’s what will probably happen on stage as well.
It’s not the end of the world if it does happen, but by prioritizing moving through mistakes,
We can develop a tolerance for things going wrong, and an ability to think on our feet to figure out what to do next when something unexpected happens.
Even if all you can manage is to play a long G and maybe repeat it until you can figure out where you’re going next, that’s still preferable to stopping completely.
It’s fine if you want to go back and practice the spot where you made the mistake, but try to play for at least another measure or two before going back.
#2: Create a Plan B
During your practice, when you do make a mistake that you’re unable to play through without stopping, create a plan B, and practice that.
What I mean by that, is if the same thing were to go wrong again, figure out a plan for what your fingers could do in that scenario, and actually play through that alternate plan.
This way you’ve got a backup that you're ready for, so you don’t have to stop should the same mistake happen again.
#3: Practice wrong on purpose
Generally you should only really do this once you’ve more or less learned the song and you’re at the end stage of performance prep, and not while you’re still learning notes.
The reason this can be effective is because usually when we practice we try to do things the same way every single time, so that we have a reliable roadmap through the piece.
If you always do it the same way, you’ve repeated that a lot of times, and your brain will be more likely to remember it because you’ve done it more than anything else.
The only problem with this is that we can become inflexible and unable to deviate from that roadmap. If anything happens that we don’t normally do, we freeze and don’t know where to turn next.
So by practicing something that is technically wrong on purpose, you’re turning on your problem solving skill and creating flexibility to pivot in the moment.
This is kind of similar to creating a plan B when you make a mistake, it’s just you’re doing this ahead of making a mistake and planning for it in advance.
Here's a few examples of how you can do this:
play with different fingerings (even if they're not good fingerings)
leave out one measure in the left hand
leave out one note per measure in the left hand
only play the first note in each measure in the left hand
The biggest concern students usually have about this is that they’re going to learn the music wrong and not be able to play correctly anymore.
But if you do this at the end stages of learning a piece, I don’t really see this happen. That’s because in order to practice like this, you actually have to really understand what IS correct in order to play it incorrectly intentionally.
And this actually deepens your understanding of the original material, and you may find that the sections you practice wrong end up being some of the strongest sections in the piece.
And if not, you’ve developed the flexibility to keep playing anyway.
What to do if all else fails
All right. So as I said earlier, we must be realists once we get to the stage. Something could distract you, you might get more nervous than you expected or you might forget something.
So in the event that you make a mistake and you can’t keep playing through it, I’m going to show you how to create a failsafe so that you don’t have to either start over from the beginning or give up and get off the stage.
What we need to do is create something called repair points.
These are waypoints throughout the song that you can restart from and keep going.
There are 2 requirements for a repair point:
You need to know how your pedals or levers are set at these points, and you need to be able to start playing there without a leadup.
First, mark several places in your music that make sense to start from.
Then, write a pedal chart or note which levers need to be set at that point in the song.
Lastly, practice playing starting right from each of those places you marked.
Will this feel harder than starting at the beginning of the song at first? Yes, probably.
But the more you do it, the easier it will feel, and the more equipped you will be to continue on from one of your repair points during a performance if you need to.
So now if you're performing, and you fall off the strings and can’t find a way forward, you can either go back to the closest repair point previous to where you stopped, or the next one coming up.
This is especially important if you’re memorizing your piece, because without a repair point, you don’t have many other options if you lose your place.
So, if you do all that you’re going to be well prepared for any mistakes that might happen during your next performance.
At the end of the day, mistakes aren't the end of the world! Make sure to be kind to yourself on and off the stage.
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