How to know if you are ready to perform a song?

Learning a song usually goes through predictable phases. 

I like to view these as continuous embodiment of that song. 

Let’s say you’re learning a cover. 
We usually start by hearing the song, knowing it from the outside as a listener, getting familiar with the sound. 

The feeling that the song brings is ultimately what we are after, but in order to master it to that level we first break it down to individual musical elements like melody, chords, rhythm and lyrics.

A lot of people including me whats to really speed up this phase and play the song fully too quickly pretending that it’s easy for them when it’s not.

Rather than thinking of learning the song think of aligning yourself with the song.

If you can't play it, it doesn’t mean that you are bad or the song is too hard, but that you haven’t found a way through it.

There are two ways of aligning with the song.

1. You can really dedicated to the practice if it feels exciting for you to go there and expand your abilities

2. You can adjust the arrangement to your style and abilities 

In both cases you want to meet with the song in the middle where it feels like yours.

Both are equally valid and there’s nothing wrong with either of them,

I stress this because we can often have ego wrapped up in trying to play the song in the certain, certain speed or a key.

Once you learn the technicalities we’ve entered the song from within so to speak.

You’ve stepped into the perspective of the writer and original performer and it’s almost as if we’re trying to channel what they were doing. 

This phase usually feels a bit like acting, you pretend to be them, you’re learning to relate to the topic etc.

At this point you should be able to play the song through without second guessing and stopping too much, knowing where the next part goes before it goes there and be intentional with your performance choices. 

You’re now working on the expressiveness and not overthinking - thinking too much about the technique, chords that come next etc.

And here’s the weird part that almost everyone misunderstands…

Slowly and surely by refining and practicing the song you’ll get to the point that feels almost boring. 

The song is no longer so challenging for you, you’re enjoying playing it, but it somehow starts feeling less cool than when you started having first breakthroughs into how to actually do it. 

At this point a lot of artists and performers want to move on onto the next thing. 

Learn a new song and don’t feel necessarily so excited about performing the ‘old’ one. 

And this is exactly the point where you’re fully ready to perform it to the best of your abilities. 

The live performance adds pressure so if you’re only just getting the tune right it will likely feel stressful when you play it in front of the crowd. 

It’s when it’s boring at home that you can actually get into the flow on the stage. 

Flow happens when the level of challenge is well balanced with the level of your abilities. 

After you performed the same song multiple times you might eventually wanna move on from the song or reimagine it in a different way.

You could say songs have their shelf or rather stage life. 

But before this you need to be properly bored playing it in your bedroom. 

One step up from playing it just by yourself with no pressure could be playing it for your family or recording yourself. 

So to recap first align with your song, then make it yours and practice it until you get bored. 

That’s the formula, that’s the phases.