Biographical Sketch

From a young age, I was encouraged to take up a musical upbringing. The first memories
I can remember around music are my twin sister, Cambry, and I singing at family get-togethers,
holidays, birthdays, and special events, usually to whatever hit new pop song was on the radio at
that time. I was shameless as a child, picking up my fake Burger King meal toy microphone and
screaming Katy Perry at the top of my lungs. No matter how poorly I sang, however, my parents
supported me wholeheartedly. My neighborhood friends, my sister, and I used to make songs in
our backyard during the summer and present them to our parents in a thematic show in the
evening. These performances became almost a ritual, happening every couple of weeks on
Saturday evenings, with a new theme depending on what instruments or music we were
infatuated with that week.
This was mostly how my music learning occurred as a child, through acculturation or
enculturation, listening to songs on the radio, things my friends were listening to, and whatever
my parents played around the house at the time. Most of the music I became acculturated to was
pop music, specifically that of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, and Taylor Swift. This was
mostly due to the fact that my neighbors were elementary school girls who were massive fans of
everything having to do with girl pop stars. As a result of this, these types of songs also became
the type of music that I was really interested in, going to a Ke$ha concert in 4th grade and
bonding with one of my elementary school friends, Bennett, over our shared love of Taylor Swift
in an environment where that was not seen as remotely cool. When driving to school every
morning, my parents would turn the radio to 106.3 KFRX, the most popular pop/hip hop radio
station in Lincoln, Nebraska, just so we could get our fix in before the day started. Once I
became a preteen/teenager, however, I became much more interested in rap, hip hop, and
alternative music. I specifically became super interested in music from other countries, such as
German music, Afrikaans music from South Africa, and Dutch music from the Netherlands.
Everytime I would express interest in any musical pursuit, my parents supported me. In
second grade, I saw a guitar at a yardsale and asked my parents to buy it. They agreed, giving me
a gift I enjoyed fully despite having no knowledge of how to play a guitar. This passion for
music carried into Elementary School, specifically 4th grade, where I had my first proper music
instruction.
My parents had always asked if I had wanted formal music instruction as a child,
especially with guitar, but I never really had interest in it until formal music education in school.
I more so cared about messing around with music and having a good time. However, when given
the opportunity to take formal instruction in 4th grade, I soared. I played the double bass, mostly
because in elementary and middle school it gives you clout (because you have the largest
instrument) but I quickly fell in love with it. I looked forward to my lessons with my teacher,
Mrs. Ladman once a week, and practiced frequently at home just for enjoyment. Unlike many of
the other students, because I was the only bassist at the school, I was able to take classes by
myself with the teacher. This enabled me to establish a one-on-one mentor relationship with my
instructor. Mrs. Ladman definitely became more of a mentor-friend relationship than a master-
apprentice one, as many times we would just talk about our days or what was going on in our
regular lives. I think I learned a lot about musical theory, physical fundamentals, and aural
recognition from the exercises that Mrs. Ladman and I would go over during our one-on-one
lessons every Wednesday. Most of this learning occurred observationally, despite the formal
teaching methods that Mrs. Ladman would attempt, much to her dismay.
 Eventually, after Mrs. Ladman found that I excelled at the double bass, she recommended
that I seek out private lessons. That’s exactly what I ended up doing, finding Mr. Ian Wright to
be my bass instructor in 6th grade. I was a little late to the private lessons game. In 6th grade
most serious players already had private teachers, or they weren’t that serious. Mr. Wright didn’t
seem to care, however, and tried to help me the best he could. In the early days I did well,
excelling from 6th grade all the way through the end of 7th, but by 8th grade I began to waver in
my interest in practicing the bass. While the material I was learning with Ian was difficult,
intriguing, and interesting. The material I was playing at school was boring, always the
background and the baseline, and not very interesting whatsoever, causing me to lose interest in
the bass very quickly, eventually quitting after my 9th grade year.
This wasn’t the only instrument I tried, however, as I also had piano lessons in sixth
grade for a grand total of 3 months, not learning much in the meantime as my parents didn’t
think I was learning enough and wanted me to focus on basketball.
 Motivation Report
My initial feelings toward this project were not necessarily that warm. I was excited to be
in the class, as it was material that I was genuinely interested in, but I didn’t want to have to
dedicate the time and effort necessary to complete such a comprehensive project. I wasn’t
immediately motivated for this project. I hadn’t picked up an instrument in multiple years and
wasn’t necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of picking one up again, going through all of the
effort to relearn it, and agonizing over the musical details like I did in my previous musical
journeys with the Double Bass. One thing that did appeal to me – and somewhat motivated me in
starting this project in the first place – was the open-endedness of the project. I was excited that
the music I was going to pursue was music that I wanted to play, to listen to, and to experience.
The motivation I had in the beginning stages of the project, towards the beginning of
September when I first started really thinking about it, was almost entirely extrinsic. I wasn’t
intrinsically motivated by my emotions I experienced while playing or learning music, but rather
by the grade I needed, or more realistically wanted, to receive at the end of the semester on what
was seen to be a significant proportion of our grade for the class. However, as I went along
throughout the semester, my motivation changed several times. In the beginning of learning my
piece by ear, Billy Joel’s Piano Man, I was very intrinsically motivated, enjoying learning the
different parts of the piece coming together, the melody forming, and everything else that came
along with putting the piece together. As the learning got more detail focused, trying to get the
right tone, the right rhythm, and the specific rifs in the middle of the piece, my motivation
transitioned back towards extrinsic motivation. The music got progressively more difficult as I
focused on detail, became less novel as I got used to playing it, and slowly transitioned to a song
I “had” to play for a grade again, instead of something I truly wanted to do. I went through these
stages multiple times, switching back and forth between the two.
I was able to internalize my motivation for my practice efforts during the beginning of
the project, getting to the “I need to practice”, or identified regulation stage, before coming back
down to the external regulation for the final couple weeks before my performance.
Some ways that I can adjust the performance I’m planning in order to increase my
intrinsic motivation are to have a task-involved goal orientation, focusing more on performing
than thinking that it will reflect on me as a person. I’ve always been one who needs to finish
what they have started and make sure that I fulfill my obligations to their fullest extent, not as a
reflection of myself, but as a goal orientation to not leave tasks undone. I think this will help with
the performance because I won’t be focusing on what my family at Thanksgiving will think of
me as a person for my performance, but rather that I was able to learn and play a piece in front of
them fully and completely. I think I’ve set up many different aspects of my performance that will
help increase my intrinsic motivation for it. I’m only playing by myself, meaning that my
motivation to play has to come from within and not the enjoyment of playing in a group setting.
I’m presenting this performance just to my immediate family at Thanksgiving – no extended
family will be there to see me perform – so I’m not worried about judgement from people I
haven’t seen in a while, and there won’t be a massive audience. I’ll also be performing a piece
that both my family members and I really enjoy, Billy Joel’s Piano Man, so that will help
increase my motivation to play it for them as I know they will really enjoy it and will sing along
and know the tune, unlike if it were some classical piece they had no interest in. The
performance will be very informal. After dinner, I will ask my immediate family if they want to
hear my performance (I’ve shared the goal of this project with them earlier in the semester), and
then they will sit around and listen to me play while cleaning up after dinner. The low stakes of
the performance will also help me stay motivated, they won’t be listening critically to what I’m
playing and critiquing me so I’ll just be able to play for a good fun time. However, the
performance is at my sister’s university in San Diego, California, so I’m going to be unfamiliar
with the specific instrument I’ll be playing, but hopefully it will end up being similar to the one
in the Knoll lobby and at home. I think also the idea that I’m preparing for my performance more
as a de-stressing activity rather than a workman-like commitment will help me stay motivated for
my performance, as it too will resemble this de-stressing like quality.
For this performance to be successful, all I really need to do is play the piece well enough
that it is recognizable to my family. They have already heard me play parts of it in practice, but
as long as it is recognizable to them in the end, I think I will have succeeded. Moreover, if I can
really feel the music in my performance, that is what's most personally rewarding – feeling like I
prepared adequately for the task at hand and accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.
 Weekly Practice Diary
09/26/2021 - This week focused mostly on familiarizing myself with the music at hand. I worked
on listening to the song Piano Man, trying to understand the music, rhythm, and melodies. I
listened to the song on repeat for about an hour, listening to the key, the chord changes, and
analyzing the music video in order to get the best idea on how to play the song as possible. My
practice strategy included specifically listening to features of the piece and writing down what I
noticed or what I needed to stand out. This entire first practice was trying to get a lay of the land
so to speak and create an organized practice strategy for the rest of the semester in order to lead
to a successful performance later on in the semester.
After this practice I felt much more comfortable about the rest of the semester practice
going forward. I was unsure about the level of difficulty that this piece would have, so I was glad
that I went through the process of analyzing, assessing, and understanding the piece. It gave me
peace of mind for the rest of the semester, a feeling that my goal is truly attainable, and that I can
succeed in my final performance around Thanksgiving. I practiced right after my work shift
which ended at around 8:30pm, going to sleep right after my practice in order to consolidate my
knowledge for the next day.
10/03/2021 - This week focuses mostly on figuring out whether I could play the chord
progression of the song. I first started by diligently listening to the recording and playing the
subsequent chords that I heard in the piece. For the left hand of this, I realized that using the
normal sung version wasn’t quite as effective in determining the chord structure, as the vocals
tended to get in the way of my overall ability to hear the chord progressions. As a result, I found
out that the instrumental version of Piano Man was much more effective at this, and for the rest
of the practice session, which lasted approximately 2 hours, I used just this instrumental track.
For the next hour I worked diligently, playing one chord per measure, trying to get the chords to
line up with the recording by listening to the song, playing the chord, and restarting if it didn’t
match up correctly.
I felt pretty successful after this practice. While I couldn’t play any of the songs yet, I
was able to figure out what the general chord progression was, having a cognitive map of what I
was supposed to do in my head. This gave me confidence that not only was this song playable,
but it was mimicable and I could do it all by ear if necessary. I learned that it would take a lot
more work, however, and that I may need to make new approaches to difficult issues that I may
not have anticipated in order to successfully complete this project in our allotted time period. By
the end of practice today, I was able to memorize the chord progression, although only in quarter
notes, but still an accomplishment nonetheless.
10/10/2021 - This week focused mostly on trying to learn the melody to the song. Here I was
able to learn about a vocal track of the song existing on its own. This is what I used in order to
figure out the normal melody of Piano Man. Cover songs were also helpful, as they gave me a
different way to hear the same melody being sung by just one person. For 3 hours this Sunday
night I listened to the cover songs, playing through as I listened to ingrain in my head the melody
of the song. I played along as I listened to the music, with one headphone in and one headphone
out, so I could hear the difference between the song and the notes I was playing. When I heard a
discrepancy, I adjusted as needed or tried to play through the section again. Sometimes, I was
unable to play the part needed in stride, so I would stop the music and sound out the succeeding
note in order to figure out what the melody was supposed to sound like.
Overall, I think today’s practice session went well, but not necessarily how I would’ve
liked it to. Maybe it was because I just came back from work and was extremely tired, or maybe
it was because of my overall ability to listen to music, but there were several points today where
I just couldn’t sound out the note even if I tried. Furthermore, there were moments where I knew
what the right note to play was, but my brain always kept trying to key a different note, leading
to awkward dissonance and a measure that doesn’t sound all too good. I think as my practice
continues and I increase my automaticity, that these problems will decrease or go away entirely.
10/17/2021 - This week I took a break from practicing, as my normal practice day is on sunday,
but over fall break I was in Chicago, away from a piano and unable to practice.
10/24/2021 - This week’s practice focused mostly on trying to, slowly, synchronize the two
hands together, the left hand chord progression and the right hand melody. After first diving in
head first and trying to gung-ho both parts at once, I soon learned that it was easier to attempt
learning sections of the song together first and then stitch them together when that section was
finally complete and ready to be played perfectly. The different sections that I “chunked” the
piece into were the intro, the verse, the chorus, the bridge, and the outro. I didn’t try to match the
rhythm of the piece, however, and instead I tried to just match the two together while playing
quarter notes on the left hand. Through this process I was able to create a level of automaticity
for the right hand.
Overall, I was very satisfied with today’s practice session. I practiced for only about an
hour after work, but the synchronization of the two hands together went very well. The chunking
strategy was effective, and I was glad that I was able to evolve a new practice strategy on the fly
in order to practice more effectively. I certainly put determined effort into this practice, focusing
hard on the task at hand. I think I made good progress today, setting myself up well for future
practice. I felt a little frustrated while practicing, however, until I figured out my chunking
strategy that helped me successfully complete my objective.
10/31/2021 -This week’s practice focused on learning the left hand at the actual tempo and
rhythm of Piano Man. For the most part, the way I practiced was about the same as I did for the
previous stages when focusing on the left hand with quarter notes. The only difference this time
was that instead of focusing on pitches, I was instead focused on rhythm and tempo. Again I
used a “chunking” strategy, as the rhythms in one section of a song were similar throughout.
Every so often, however, the rhythm deviates, especially at transition areas of the song. These
areas were the most tricky to figure out, requiring severe dedicated effort to learn.
Overall, I thought this practice session went very very well. Practicing the left hand
rhythm for about an hour helped to overall increase my proficiency in the piece. I can tell that I
am gaining automaticity in chord progressions, I understand which chord will come next without
having to think about it. The rhythms, however, aren’t as automatic. While I’m able to play
them, I must put a lot of mental effort into doing so. I felt very good about the progress of this
practice, and I am excited to progress further next week by synchronizing the two real halves.
11/07/2021 - This week focused on synchronizing the two halves again using mostly the same
strategies as when I synchronized before. I knew that it was easier to attempt learning sections of
the song together first and then stitch them together when that section was finally complete and
ready to be played perfectly. The different sections that I “chunked” the piece into were the intro,
the verse, the chorus, the bridge, and the outro. This time, I did try to match the rhythm of the
piece. Through this process I was able to create a level of automaticity for the left hand.
Overall, I was very satisfied with today’s practice session. I practiced for about 2 hours
after work, but the synchronization of the two hands together went very well. The chunking
strategy was effective. I certainly put determined effort into this practice, focusing hard on the
task at hand. I think I made good progress today, setting myself up well for future practice. I felt
a little frustrated while practicing, but once I got the gist of it down, it was smooth sailing from
there.
11/14/2021 - This week was focused on trying to create some expressiveness of the piece. Piano
Man essentially has three levels of volume: medium, loud, and louder. Since I’m not using any
sheet music for this piece, I had to figure out the expressionistic aspects of music based on
listening to the music and the volume in different parts of it. Through this I was able to figure out
that the entire song is essentially one giant crescendo from beginning to end. The beginning
starts off very quiet, as if the club is just beginning to let people in, then transitions to being
louder as more people arrive, and finally the loudest when everybody starts to sing along
drunkenly to the piano man himself. This was fairly easy to imitate while playing. I decided at
this point that when I did my performance, I would listen to the song in my headphones at the
same time in order to hear all of the expressive aspects of Billy Joel’s performance.
This practice went well. I practiced for only about an hour, as I started to understand the
pattern of the different expressive aspects that Billy Joel uses and was able to repeat them in
order to better learn the piece. I felt less successful after this practice, however, because I noticed
I wasn’t necessarily always able to replicate the different expressive aspects that Billy Joel
produced, because I hadn’t been trained in or been as experienced playing piano as he was and
didn’t have the physical technique in order to replicate them. This caused some frustrations, and
I was forced to settle for not accurately replicating the way Billy Joel played the piece.
11/21/2021 - This week was spent mostly trying to hear out the major riff that happens in the
bridge of the song. It is not necessarily easy to play, being very fast, very dynamic, and very
rigorous technically on the piano. My strategy for this part of the piece was very similar to
learning other parts of the piece, chunking. However, this section of the song doesn’t necessarily
have easy to define “chunks”, because it is not structured in the same way as the rest of the
melody. As a result, this was the most difficult part of the piece to sound out, requiring almost 3
hours of effort from me sitting at my piano at home. This session was the most technical yet,
listening almost note by note in order to try and figure out the notes in the bridge. However, I
wasn’t able to successfully determine the notes in a way that made it sound natural or like a
replica of the original. Therefore, I decided to cut it out of the piece.
I didn’t feel very successful after practicing this session, most likely because I failed to
accomplish my task or objective for the practice. I should’ve known that this would be one of the
more complex tasks of the piece and practiced it from the very onset of this project. However,
hindsight is 20/20 and I practiced it only on my last practice session before I was supposed to
perform on Thanksgiving. This would’ve been a great time to really rehearse and perfect my
piece before the performance, but instead I spent it learning a fruitless part of the piece I didn’t
include. Instead of using the rif of the bridge, I just played the left hand background of it for the
duration, which my parents didn’t seem to notice or mind all that much.
attempting to figure out the major rif
 Expressive/Emotional Communication
Expression became more important later on in my overall practice scheme. While early
on I sometimes excitedly used expression while excitedly emphasizing some of my favourite
parts of the song, or the part of the song where Billy Joel himself becomes very passionate, I
never truly focused on expression as a part of the piece until almost two weeks before the
performance. During this practice I heavily focused on expressive qualities that Billy Joel uses in
Piano Man, practicing his dynamics, his smoothness, and his emphasis in the piece. I think in
comparison to other aspects of the piece, however, it was not as prioritized to nearly the same
extent. I spent every other practice, besides the one two weeks before my Thanksgiving
performance, practicing the technicals of the piece, not the expressiveness. I think this is
something that I should’ve definitely prioritized more, but looking back I can’t change it now.
The first time I was considering the emotional effect that I wanted my performance to
have was when I was first listening to this song in the car with my girlfriend and deciding to play
it. Part of the reason that I decided to pick the piece was in order to instill an emotional response
in the audience, my family, because they love Billy Joel songs, but they particularly love Piano
Man. But in terms of how I wanted the expressive qualities of my piece to affect the emotions of
my audience, it didn’t honestly cross my mind much. Throughout the whole duration of the
project I was so focused on completing the task at hand, learning the project, that I never really
stopped to think about how I was going to play it, instead opting to just focus on learning the
melodies and rhythms of the piece and letting the rest sort itself out. The interesting aspect of my
project in relation to expressive or emotional communication is that because it is learned by ear, I
inadvertently pick up expressive qualities that I’m not intending to, making intent focus on the
expressive qualities of the music not as necessary.
Preparing for this performance, I’m thinking more about what I want my audience to feel.
Part of this comes from the fact that I just want to make my parents and my sister happy listening
to the music coming from the piano. The other part of this is the fact that I’m not necessarily a
type of person who likes to express things through music; most of the time I want to just finish
the piece I’m playing. I’m engrossed within the music. I don’t usually go into a piece with a set
narrative of what I want to express. Indeed, I think I should be, but that’s just not always how my
brain chooses to operate. I think if I’m focusing on how I want my parents to feel from my
performance, it should be a mix of excitement and hype. I think the way the different ways that
music influences emotion can really help cause this. For example, really loud fast tempo music
with small tempo variability, and staccato articulations, all lead to a song sounding happy or
exciting. These are exactly the type of features that the song Piano Man has, and a lot of them
don’t even have to be necessarily concentrated on by me, as they go along with the medium by
which I’m playing the music. The fast tempo is inherent within the song itself, being played
pretty quickly by Billy Joel. Since I’m learning the song by ear, I play the song at the tempo I
hear in the piece, meaning I have learned this part already. The small tempo variability is
inherent to the piece in the same way. The staccato nature of the piece is helped by two factors:
the fact that I didn’t formally learn how to play the piano and that the song is being played on a
piano. Pianos, by their general nature, are not very fluid instruments; pedals need to be pressed
and strengths by which you press keys needs to be adjusted in order to make a piano sound
incredibly smooth. Because I didn’t have any formal music training, I don’t have the physical
playing ability necessary in order to achieve this type of music, effectively giving me a leg up
and making the music I play already staccato. As a result of the Aural modeling strategy, I’ve
effectively been able to mimic the expressive qualities of piano man without really focusing on
them myself. Because I’m not a formal piano player myself, the bodily aspects of my
performance are not very expressive, being almost entirely stern, stiff, and still as I concentrate
on trying hard to play the song.
 Music for the Performance
I came to know Piano Man by Billy Joel through years of listening to it on the radio,
hearing it in popular culture and media, and from my grandparents’ CD player. Therefore, I
could easily recognize the song, sing the lyrics, and hum along to the melody whenever it was
played around me, but I had never actually taken the time to learn the song on the piano and had
never performed it before. I had been talking with my girlfriend quite a lot about the project
towards the beginning of the semester, trying to figure out what song I wanted to perform or if I
wanted to compose a piece from scratch. Were driving in her car, listening to one of her “Oldies
but Goodies” playlists, when a bunch of Billy Joel songs came on. It was then that I got the idea
to play Piano Man, spur of the moment, as my girlfriend and I were jamming out to a bunch of
Billy Joel songs and we sang along to Piano Man.
As a child learning the Double Bass in school, I had become familiar with music
notation, first learning to read and write bass clef, and as I progressed further I learned how to
read treble and alto clefs on the bass as well, having to play music that was actually meant for
cellos and violas in my private lessons with Mr. Wright. However, after I quit taking private
lessons in 9th grade and stopped playing the bass altogether, I pretty much stopped using my
ability to read notation at all. Furthermore, when I was taking piano lessons, for the brief stint
that I did, I had learned to read sheet music for the piano as well, being able to combine the two
clefs and play them simultaneously. That was sixth grade, though, and I haven’t picked up any
piano sheet music since. Therefore, my ability to read and write sheet music since then has gone
down drastically, to the point that if I even tried to effectively learn to play a song with sheet
music, I would first have to reteach myself how to read sheet music and then embark on learning
the actual song itself, as I could not rely on any of my previous knowledge of reading sheet
music so far to get me through it. I still loved playing the piano, learning by ear multiple
different pieces I heard on the radio and pop songs that I really liked. Sometimes, I just liked to
mess around and play whatever I had come up with as well. So when it came time to learn Piano
Man, I did it almost entirely by sound, not using a single piece of sheet music throughout the
entire duration of practice. Usually, I would listen to the song and play along on the piano at the
same time, trying to match it as best as I could. If anybody can show that you can learn a song
without looking at any sheet music, it is this performance, as I entirely used my ears to figure out
all of the different melodies and chord progressions, which is probably why it doesn’t sound
entirely correct.
In my preparation, in order to ensure that I will remember the music, I’m playing the
music without sheet music, and before each practice session as a warmup I play the entire piece
all the way through. This ensures that I’m able to encode the piece into my head and have the
entire piece memorized by the time I have my actual performance. So far this strategy is working
well, as I’m able to play the entire piece fully by memory. However, even though I think I could
probably get away with this for my performance and play the whole song from memory, I may
misremember certain aspects of the song such as dynamic shifts and expressive qualities. I plan
on having an AirPod in my ear while playing with the music video playing on my phone – that
way I can have the music right in front of me and notice every detail. For the most part I will still
be relying on the automaticity I have developed throughout the semester, but it’s a handicap just
for my own peace of mind. The only cues I will be using will be from the sound of the music
being played in my ear and possibly whatever motions Billy Joel is making in the music video as
that can sometimes be an indication of where there are dynamic shifts and expressive qualities
throughout the song. None of these, however, will be written pieces of sheet music, cheat sheets,
lyrics, or section orders –only the phone in front of me.
 Performance Anxiety Management
My management of stage fright for this performance will focus on the three different
aspects of performance anxiety management: the person, the situation, and the performance task.
Personally, I’ve noticed that I suffer from performance anxiety in a variety of situations, both
musical and non musical. For example, when I ran Cross-Country in high school, I almost
always broke down badly during races due to performance anxiety, as it was tough to manage the
expectations of my parents,peers, and coaches. Furthermore, when dealing with a new procedure
or task at work, I always become anxious that I might fail and have to work through that anxiety
before I can effectively proceed. I’ve always had a lot of performance anxiety for most bigger
tasks in my life, including the different musical performances I’ve been involved in. I would
always sweat very profusely before every individual Orchestra concert and tremble at the
thought of a solo. I think that I’m just an anxious person in general and have been treated in the
past for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I don’t really have any anxious thoughts about this
performance specifically, however, because of the fact that it is only around my parents. Most of
my anxiety, in my belief, has specifically to do with the audience around me focusing on me and
possibly judging me. As a result, I tend to do really well in situations where I don’t care about
the audience or how they feel and instead focus on how I feel. The best anxiety management
strategies that I have had for myself in the past have been goal visualization and a task-oriented
mindset. Most of my performance anxiety comes from me equating how well I perform at the
task to how good of a person I am, and that’s simply not true. Therefore, when I’m able to focus
only on the task, like through task-oriented mindsets, I’m able to disregard how it will impact
people’s perception about me and move along with what I need to do. Additionally, goal
visualization is really useful in showing exactly how I need to carry out a task so that I don’t
have to think about it as heavily while I’m doing it. Therefore, the formulation of my thoughts
about doing the task can’t be hindered by my anxiety levels, as I’ve already done the formulation
ahead of time.
I’m also planning on optimizing the performace setting in which my performance will
occur. In a way, there is a bit of the self-handicapping phenomenon occurring, as I will be
playing in an unfamiliar place, my sister’s university dorm, which will be an unfamiliar setting
for me to play the piano in. This makes me less anxious however, because the expectations for
me are also lower as a result, because I haven’t practiced on this piano at all! I also am used to
dorm room pianos, having played in one here in Knoll for many of my practice sessions. The
audience being family members, and only my immediate family at that, helps to decrease my
anxiety about the situation as well. I’ve played the piano badly in front of my family many times,
not really caring what they think about it because of the fact that I have played in front of them
so many times before. This should hopefully reduce the amount of anxiety that I will have in my
performance about the situation. There’s nothing riding on this performance. If I fail, the world
will keep going and no one will know the wiser. I wasn’t able to simulate any dress rehearsals
for the performance conditions because of the fact that the piano is in San Diego, along with the
rest of my family. However, I did do a few practice runs ahead of time in the Knoll lobby, an
arguably more anxiety-inducing situation, so the performance at her dorm should be a better
situation. I think it genuinely helped.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t consider at all how performance anxiety would affect the
music I would be performing when I first chose my music. I was more focused on what I wanted
to play and if my parents would enjoy it; whether or not performance anxiety would impact
anything was less important then if I liked the song. I think the balance between the challenge of
the performance task and my own musical skill was adequate. I had done projects similar in
nature to this in the past, although never exactly like this one before. This familiarity helped to
decrease my performance anxiety and made it almost a source of confidence. I think the weekly
practice has helped to ensure that the performance task won’t be a source of anxiety for me.
Furthermore, my memorization encoding session at the beginning of each practice session will
help me by giving me confidence in my background knowledge of the song and my ability to
play it at a competent level. It might not be the greatest, but I always know it will be good
enough.
 7. Performance-Related Considerations
Because my performance was very informal, the clothing I wore for the performance
wasn’t very stylish, just my lounge clothes I decided to wear for that day. There was no
coordination between the dress I had and the performance music or anything else. Facial
expression and bodily cues are important in musical performances. I’m a big swayer when I play
the piano and in the performance I will as well, as I have so far in all of my different practices. I
can’t do any arm gestures or moving around because I am stuck at the piano and will be unable
to take my arms off or move around and continue to play the piece. The other issue is that facial
expressions are not as effective in the setup for my performance as they may be for others. My
sister’s dorm has an electric piano in the main area that faces a few chairs that my parents and
sister will sit in, but the electric piano has a stand-like feature for music notation, blocking the
view of my face and body from them. This makes any expression I make with my body not as
effective, as they won’t be able to see the expression that I will be making. Before going into my
performance, I haven’t planned out how I will communicate emotion in my performance through
facial expression and body movements. That is the reason why, however, as it is almost
impossible for my family to see whatever emotional communication that I would be engaging in.
If I were to engage in these visual aspects of performance, I would do a lot of things differently
than what I’m going to do for my own performance. First of all, I would dress up nicely in a suit,
dress shirt, or business casual, because audiences rely heavily on visual information in order to
analyze the quality of music. If I could, I would also play without a stand, as there are a
multitude of benefits to playing in a situation without any “stand.” It makes it seem like it
requires greater practice and therefore people see it as a higher quality performance. They would
also get an unobstructed view of any bodily and facial causes I decided to do, specifically closed
eyes. They would also get the impression that the music is coming from the performer, not the
page. Because my parents and family are not highly trained musicians, they aren’t necessarily
more sensitive to the sounds of a performance, but still focus more on the various aspects of the
visual information to determine the emotional intention. If I had used more visual cues in my
performance, it would’ve been very beneficial as easily seen visual cues of expressivity tend to
coincide with easily hear aural cues of expressivity. This would help emphasize the parts of my
performance that I want to emphasize and There will be no direct interaction with audience
members while I am performing, as in order to actually play the piece that I would like to
perform for my family, my entire concentration has to be focused on the music at hand. There
also will be no general stage presence in my performance. The only things I will really be doing
in my performance in terms of talking to the audience will be telling them what I am going to
play before I play it. I won’t be playing multiple different pieces throughout the time so there
will be no need for any talking between pieces, as there won’t be any, and as a result, there won’t
be any spontaneity. There won’t be any planned remarks or any interesting elements to my
performance that will enhance its impact on the audience. The only drama that will be there will
be the drama that happens at family gatherings on Thanksgiving, and the only decorations that
will be there will be the Pointe Loma Nazarene University memorabilia that hangs all over the
common area of her dorm.
Because it was just me involved in this project, and I didn’t want to involve my sister or
family in work that wasn’t for their benefit, I didn’t have any co-performers for this project. I
could’ve considered it, however, as in class for my performance I ended up having a co-
performer with Mason and his harmonica. Here I learned what it takes to truly coordinate
between two different performers with a zero-history performance. But since this wasn’t part of
my actual Thanksgiving performance, I won’t mention it here.
 Post Performance Report
The perceptions and feedback from my audience at my performance were almost entirely
positive. Most people said very good things about it and that they really liked my performance.
My Mom told me, “That sounds really good Kai!” I think that her evaluation was slightly
skewed by her having heard me play the song on my piano at home before as well, because the
performance at my sister’s dorm wasn’t nearly as good. My sister said “it sounds really good for
an Organ,” and my Dad followed it up with, “better than at church!” All in all I think they were
pretty pleased with the performance. The most specific part of the performance that people
commented on was the fact that it sounded like a church organ. This was because of the fact that
I played the piece at my sister’s university in San Diego. She had assured me ahead of time that
the electric piano in the main lobby of her dorm would work for my performance, and I believed
her. However, on the day of the performance, I learned that her electric piano had multiple
settings on which you could play, but was stuck on the organ setting. As a result, the entire piece
I played sounded like a sad church organ.
The parts of the performance that people specifically commented about were the ending
parts of the Billy Joel song where everyone is singing in the bar along with him. These parts,
with the dynamics and expressive qualities I aligned with it, were the most enjoyable for my
family to listen and sing along with. None of the parts were all that surprising to me. No one in
my family expressed that the performance was particularly special or iconic to me, because they
have all seen me play the piano before. In a lot of ways this is really comforting to me. They had
never seen me take on a task like this before but still believed in me and my abilities.
In terms of my own evaluation of the performance, I was fairly pleased overall. What I
remember most about the performance, however, was just laughing from the fact that the song
was being played on an organ essentially instead of on a piano. There weren’t really high or low
points throughout the piece as it was just pretty low-key and no one was really too invested in the
music. It felt great to finally life the weight off my chest that this piece had been giving me for
the last several months, though, and I was glad to just be over. My parents gave me a lot of great
feedback and were very supportive of my performance, but it wasn’t necessarily that important
for me to hear it. A lot of my motivation for this project was just to see if I could do it, and at the
performance I showed I could. As a result, this feedback didn’t really paint a picture as to
whether or not my performance was a success, since my measure of success was whether or not I
could accomplish the task at hand. I accomplished it. I succeeded. In many ways, this made it
feel like the performance experience itself was rewarding enough to the point that the audience
members’ reactions were secondary to me, not in my forethought.
This project showed me the power of will, determination, and perseverance. There were
many points where I wanted to quit, where I wanted to go home, and where I didn’t want to
practice after my 12 hour shift at work. At some points I was sick of the song Piano Man,
cursing out Billy Joel as I messed up the tune he so effortlessly performs over and over again in
concert and his music video. But I learned that I can do what I put my mind to. I wanted to play
my song, and I did. I also learned, however, that it isn’t easy to do so. My natural state of being
is not to take a challenge head on and face it, instead it is to try until the going gets hard and quit
before I lose. This project showed that if I get past that initial hump, try my best, and persevere
towards my goal, I can achieve it, even if at some points I don’t want to. In the end, that was the
biggest meaning that this project gave to me. It gave me self-confidence in my ability to achieve.
While my takeaways from this project weren’t the most directly related to music, or even related
to music at all, they still taught me valuable lessons that are useful for ALL of my future
ambitions. Whether it is medical school, a foreign language, running a marathon, or learning to
paint, if I want to do it I can, and I learned it all from my friend Billy Joel.