Performance Reflection

 Reflecting on my performance using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Description

Last Wednesday I performed Voodoo child (slight return)- Jimi Hendrix for my music class at Westland High School on the electric guitar.

Feelings

Before the performance I was feeling pretty good but i wanted to get it over and done with. During the performance I felt like I was in the moment and confident the whole way through besides when my G string slightly slipped. Later in the performance when I was finished, I felt relived. 

Evaluation

Overall, I felt the performance went good. From a technical perspective, the followings areas worked well for me: tone, rhythm and confidence, whilst I felt I could work more on these areas: keeping my guitar in tune.  The main areas raised by my peers as positives were basically everything, they thought pretty good things about my performance and I felt quite humbled. The main areas I need to work on, according to my peers are: introducing my piece, I remembered to do it after I started. This aligned with my own observations.

Analysis

Before the performance, I had focused on improving the following aspects of my technique: equipment and phrasing.  To do this, I had been working on the following practice techniques: mimicking the vocalist. I have practiced improving these techniques for an long time constantly. I've been practicing the entire piece since I started guitar. In the performance, I felt that the practice I had done in these areas aided my performance in the following ways: experience and I felt my phrasing was on par. During my performance, I also noted the following areas that I could still improve: keeping my guitar in tune. To improve on this I will rub some graphite on my guitar nut, I also thought maybe a fuzz pedal could of been included in the equation to make the lead parts more prominent. During the performance I was feeling good - this effected the areas I had worked on before the performance in the following ways: It made me confident and made me feel more effective.

Conclusion

It's apparent that I now need to work on the following areas to improve my performance of my piece: to lubricate my guitar nut. Looking at the amount of time I had put into preparing the performance and how it went overall, I think that I need to do the following things in my practice routine in order to improve my performance for next time: take two minutes probably in the next week to put some graphite on my guitar nut, as I have a gig in Christchurch on Sunday. Based on how much time I put into preparing my performance and the progress I made, I think I need to allow the same amount of practice time to see improvement in these areas, cause no matter how much I practice there is always room for improvement.

What next

When considering my own observations, and that of my peers, I'm going to take the following actions in order to prepare for my next performance: Improve tuning stability by lubricating my guitar nut and after that, keep rocking👍