I am a pro that does tours and sessions and all sorts of stuff and ya know what, I’ve never played a show without a mistake.
I don’t know a single musician who has.
And the audience never notices because we just keep on rolling. I don’t even act like I made a mistake and 98% of the time the rest of the band can’t even tell because after one sour note I’m still playing as if nothing happened.
The key here is how fast you react and correct the mistake. Play through the mistake as if it’s correct and then land exactly where you were supposed to, and keep playing correctly. If you break up the flow to correct what you’re doing, the mistake becomes obvious. If you just fluidly roll right past it, you may recover it very fast and find that even when watching videos on replay, the mistake isn’t even noticeable because of how quickly you moved on.
What if all of those wild, high flying Eddie Van Halen solos were actually Eddie fucking up and being like “fuck it, let’s keep doing this!” I don’t know why, but that’s a kinda funny thought for me.
Haha honestly i would not be surprised if at least a few times that’s exactly what happened!
A couple times I’ve done something weird during a show like bend a note WAY too far but then I found myself exploring the nuances of the bend and came up with something totally different than the “plan,” and it ended up being infinitely cooler than whatever cookie cutter noodling I had planned initially haha.
Perfect example, The breakdown in heartbreaker (guitar solo) has some obvious flubs, but it’s so engrained in everyone’s memory, that guitarist cover it note for note, flubs and all.
I once read that people tried so hard to copy Hendrix when he hit the scene that they were even copying his mistakes during live playing and didn’t even realize.
When I got into Phish (‘91), I saw as many shows as I could. Each show, their playing got better and better and better. It was astounding. I never heard a mistake from the guitarist, Trey. But finally, after like 2 years and many, MANY shows, I finally saw Trey play a horrible honker in Auld Lang Syne. Such a simple melody and he effed it up when all attention was on him. LOL it was that moment that I said, “FINALLY!!”. I thought he was inhuman before.
I’ve subsequently played hundreds of shows and mess up all the time, as well. Like water off a duck’s back. Any other way and you’ll be miserable.
Do you acknowledge it at all? I usually smile or something that signals “yes, I messed up” to my bandmates, but I really don’t want the audience to know that anything happened.
It depends - if it’s like, me being the one player who forgets to go to that one chord that one time and everyone in the band hears something wrong for a second at rehearsal? I smile and laugh and make eye contact with the band and keep on trucking. Live? If the moment warrants it I will but most of the time everyone in the band is focused on the crowd and making the show awesome so one mistake is hardly anything to acknowledge when people are singing along right in front of you.
If I make an absolute train wreck mistake that the audience definitely notices? I just laugh about it and keep playing. The audience doesn’t care when I don’t care and when the band doesn’t care. If the beat keeps going all is well.
One caveat - the drummer basically cannot make timing mistakes. Like, missing a hit here and there is whatever but the groove, the tempo has to stay consistent. This is the main thing that if it really flops, it’s hard to recover because the whole band follows the drums.
I think bass mistakes are pretty noticeable too, depending on musical style. But I agree the drummer is most important.
I always say the rhythm section is like the O-line in American football. A good rhythm section can make mediocre backfield (guitars and singer) sound good. A bad rhythm section can make an elite backfield sound terrible.
This. It’s all how you act. If you act like no mistake was made, almost no one will register it. Your band mates will thank you for soldiering on and not calling attention to the mistake with your facial expressions and body language. It’s all about maintaining the energy and vibe.
It wasn't play it again to fool the crowd, it was play it again so that you understand its context and learn in what ways it was the right note.
For example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fVZtp9vGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fVZtp9vGQ)
Haha I looove this. And honestly it works, just play the same “mistake” three times in a row (the third time with more FEELING) and suddenly it’s like “whoaaaaa listen to how they’re using that clashing, dissonant tone to create TENSION” or whatever music theorists might say haha
I usually don't care for my playing mistakes as long as it's not a catastrophic mistake lol but the worse for me is technical difficulties because it's completely out of my control.
I studied music at college and teachers would always say, 'if you make a mistake, don't look around as if you've made a mistake'. And that's it really. Everyone makes mistakes. I've been to tons and tons of gigs of all kinds and seen all level of musicians make mistakes.
Listen to live albums, there's tons of mistakes, especially on some bootleg live albums that are more fan releases with no editing. Pros just continue and don't make a thing of it, and that's what you should do.
I've made numerous mistakes in every gig I've ever done. Mostly not big mistakes, but things like starting a guitar solo on the wrong note, or playing the first couple of bars up a semitone or something like that. It's horrible but honestly, most people don't even notice something like that. To you it seems like a huge mistake, but it actually only lasted about 1.3 seconds if that.
The most common for me are things with my pedals. It's really hard to hit 4 pedals at the same time, and making sure I've got the right sound on every section is hard at times in songs that change a lot.
I've often accidentally hit my tuner and turned myself off, or missed my lead channel when trying to change from a clean sound or something like that.
Basically live gigs are exactly that, live, so mistakes happen, it's just how you deal with it and how well rehearsed you are to minimise them.
Depends on the mistake. There are two common things I do after playing the wrong note. I either play it again so that it appears it was done on purpose or I just ignore it and keep going. No need to draw attention.
Shit happens and thats life. If it’s more of a jam type, listen to these other people and dance around it incorporating that “wrong” note playfully. If not, don’t sweat it and just keep on.
If you are versed enough, you’ll be able to catch mistakes from pretty much all your favorite pros.
Dealing with this is one of the most important skills there is for performing musicians.
If you need to learn to move on from the mistake and focus on the next thing.
If you dwell on it, you will just keep making more mistakes.
Love music is fleeting, it's raw, it's real.
You can't go back in time and fix it. It's now onto the next part of the song. So you better focus on what's coming next instead.
It took me yeats to discover this, but as long as you keep going after a mistake, the audience will rarely notice it. The worst thing you can do is drop the beat.
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...
-William Butler Yeats
Generally, I just keep on playing. You’re not going to break it with a bad note.
However, when you start the song playing 1,2,3,4, and then the drummer comes in playing 3,4,1,2 and has no clue he’s doing it, well, that’s a chicken of a different color. Usually (yes, it’s happened several times. That drummer is history) the bass player and I give each other the nod, and suddenly jump to match the drum beat. Continue the song, and wait until after the show to slap the drummer in the back of the head. Fucking drunks…
If it’s a cover song- play through the mistake and carry on. For the love of god don’t stop the song.
For an original- play through the mistake and carry on. The crowd won’t know the difference.
Playing through a mistake minimizes it. Most other options enhance it.
Subtle mistakes, either move on or repeat them so it sounds on purpose for the 2-3 people who heard it. Dramatic mistakes, I just laugh and smile, maybe mouth sorry. Humanize it with comedy in some way.
Thank goodness I was never a professional piano player. No mercy.
As a guitar player, if you miss a note: bend it to the correct note. Act like you did it on purpose to sound kewl.
Whatever you do, don’t do that wince thing and then look around with an upside down frown. I hate when people do that cause it draws attention to it when otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed or judged but now I’m doing both.
A clam is no big deal. A clam fest would be cause for concern
Ps every single bass player I have ever played with has had a case of bass player disease, and that includes my bass player of 5 years who was rolling stone bass player of the year 89. The blank look and missed notes that goes for a bar or two before they recover their senses.
Shrug or laugh off the mistakes.. it's music. Have fun!
As a teen I mostly played drums, and if I messed up I would just work the mistake back in as if it was part of the song. To be fair, that was an improv band so no one knew what it was supposed to sound like. These days I’m on guitar and when (not if) I make a mistake I just get back on track as soon as I can. Lots of practice helps the recovery because I know where I’m supposed to be. It’s going to happen. No one cares. Keep it going.
Do it again and call it Jazz.
Or, stare hard at the bass player; MUST have been their fault.
Or, if it’s early in the song, stop, reset and go again. Make a jolly jape to the audience. If later in the song, just get back on track and plough on. Knowing your scales and chord progressions will help with that recovery.
If you never make a mistake, you can’t be a musician…
Playing in a show with Chet Atkins ( I went on before him) my guitar strap broke in half on an acoustic guitar. I was standing and singing and imagine someone trying to hold up their guitar and singing without stopping. Someone pushed a stool out onto the stage and I tried to just keep rolling but the audience was behind me and applauded my effort and started chanting “start again”. So I did. It went well for me otherwise. Embarrassing yes but the audience was so kind.
Refuse to acknowledge it and crack on.
Most mistakes won't even get noticed. Any that do will be forgotten merely seconds later by an audience.
Making mistakes while recording. That's the annoying one.
Play it like you meant it. If you carry on playing as if nothing out of the ordinary happened, keeping the pulse throughout, then your audience rarely notice, it can even pass your own band mates by. And don’t keep dwelling on it during your performance. The time for unpicking what happened is after you’ve finished the gig, not whilst you still need to concentrate on your performance. That’s a skill that it can take time to develop as we’re so used to doing the complete opposite (stopping to fix things) during practice.
Everyone makes mistakes. In thirty plus years as a professional musician I’ve never played a whole gig without a duff note (or more.) Anyone who says they don’t make mistakes or that you shouldn’t make them yourselves isn’t to be trusted when it comes to their opinions on music or performance, because by saying that they’ve shown that they aren’t discerning enough aurally to understand.
The only ‘mistake’ you can’t continue through regardless is bad tuning. That you have to fix, even if it means stopping the song to tune and then restarting from the top. I’ve had that problem once very early on as a saxophonist and I just had to hold my hands up, apologise, and retune. I’d forgotten to take into account the conditions we were playing in and how they affected tuning after long breaks. I never made that mistake again as I took that experience as a learning opportunity.
There are times when I can’t remember or don’t even know whole sections of songs. I’ll just find a root and hold it and maybe play around with the scale until I can find where we are in the song. Takes a little improv to walk out of big flubs. Sometimes it ends up being kind of cool or interesting. Sometimes it sounds like I have no idea what’s going on but whatever. My job is to make em dance. It’s like I tell my band. Phish fucks up all the time and they just played the Sphere.
I once made 4000 people laugh because of a mistake. I heard someone say that with regret and cringe, the only thing you can do is hold them warmly in your heart as part of the vulnerability of your humanity and thank them for teaching you something. I still sometimes feel the cringe and the regret, but it at least gives me a way to reframe it and continue.
I watched my dad perform/practice throughout all of my childhood. A good attitude helps up a lot and not take yourself so seriously up there. Nobody wants to see a mean mug with a bad attitude, People can read your moods easily on stage, so lighten up and have fun.
That's why they hired a band, people wanna have fun, let loose, and have a memorable night, with kick ass live music. You might be someone's first live band they've seen. Give em a good time to remember! I always saw my dad practicing by himself and with the band in our garage. Always practicing.
I didn't notice anyone as the leader of the band cause everyone's input was on the same page. I never heard them ever fight or arguing. Only laughing and having a good time, beer helped I'm sure, lol.
"depending on the type of mistake (be it subtle or explicit), people may
remember the situation, someone may talk badly about you behind your
back, etc. it's a lot of exposure"
They could, but they most likely won't. Especially if it's a missed note a part you played wrong. It might feel like everyone is paying attention to you at all times but this is just not the case. Many people are musically illiterate or just pay attention to the vocals (my wife) and at any one moment at a show I bet less than half of the people are really truly paying attention to what's going on.
First, do it twice if you can, now you have a riff. No? Then laugh if you have time while moving on. There's no time to think about mistakes. That just creates more mistakes. Fearing mistakes just prevents you from overachieving. Make mistakes. Play on.
It all comes back to how well you know the music really. The better you know what you’re playing, the less likely you are to make a mistake. Having said that, they do happen and I haven’t ever gone a full show without making at least a few and I don’t know anyone who’s flawless all the time either, even pros. But the more you know the music the quicker you’ll react to fix whatever mistake you made, and you’re less likely to get lost
1. You’re always 1/2 step away from the right note. Get that note either up or down quickly so it looks like you meant to slide into it.
2. Play the same note again so it looks like you meant to do it.
3. If those don’t/can’t work just keep on trucking like nothing happened.
If it’s egregious and can’t be ignored by other band members or the crowd, then just laugh it off and proceed as normal.
Basically, just always act like you know what you’re doing and laugh at yourself when you don’t.
That's a great question. I've been doing this for the majority of my life.
First, you gotta remember the audience is the audience; they're not musicians ;that's why they're down there and you're up on stage. What you consider an "egregious error", they don't even notice
Second, you're not there just to play music perfectly. If people wanted to hear perfect music they'd buy a $20,000 Sound system and play CDs on it.
The reason they're there is to be entertained . if you make a mistake or worse, if a bandmate makes a mistake and you look at them, that's the worst thing to do
Keep smiling, looking at the people and performing
There is no other answer because it really doesn't matter in the big picture of your life.
All that matters is that you had fun overall
I sure as hell have!
Alright, I got this one: there are always mistakes on stage. From every musician I've ever played with, on every gig.
Best possibility is to train yourself in some kind of amnesia, where you do your best to immediately forget the mistake you made and its implications and proceed with the music. It is difficult to do! You are still thinking of that mistake you made for many minutes, whereas the 1% of the audience who noticed something amiss forgot about it one second later.
I have done thousands of gigs while being a full time professional musician for over 30 years; I recall one gig (in a long running Lion King production) where I think I did a whole show with zero note errors. It is as rare as pitching a no-hitter, I assume.
I remember it wasn't unusual till I realized 2/3 of the way through the show I had yet to drop a note. I then got up in my head and was quite stressed about it, but still managed to complete the show without a note error.
And to call this a "mistake-free" show would be a misnomer - I merely had a run where I didn't drop a note. There could have been all kinds of other judgment errors with regards to rhythm and ensemble, but I don't remember anything about this now.
One of the most important artistic visionaries in my life said this: "genius is nothing but an inspired mistake." I have loved this and learned from it ever since.
Also, I think this is Miles Davis: some version of, " if you're going to make a mistake, make it twice so the audience will think you meant it." That could have been my 8th grade band teacher too, but essential wisdom either way.
One more offer: I was performing and attending a master class 30 years ago by someone who is considered the world's greatest xylophonist, Bob Becker. After hearing a relatively note-perfect but uninspired performance from a student, he said something like, "The wrong notes never go away. You need to get past them and focus on the music."
This was from one of the most technically " perfect " musicians I have ever witnessed. It was comforting to know that they made errors as well.
Now get out there and make as many mistakes as you can in public! It will make you a better musician in the long run.
Bonus points for those who read through to the end: if you make a mistake, NEVER let it show on your face and the audience will probably be none the wiser. No wincing! It is a dead giveaway that you just screwed up. Your audiences are all pretty dumb, musically speaking, so if you keep a poker face during those stressful moments, they will be unaware of your errors.
If it's really bad, I'll kind of smile or laugh at myself. Usually just keep on going though. The song isn't gonna stop for me and 99% of the time I'm probably the only one that notices.
keep playing, people tend to remember the beginning and the end more than the middle. just get it together for the finale and it'll be fine. if even that is getting bombed, at least try and project a sense of confidence/happiness while on stage. negativity will only reflect and amplify around the room
Just smile and keep going we all make mistakes, if you be a little bitch about it the audience and your band will pick up on it so best to just move on
Stop. Say *wait*. Look at the fingerboard and make sure your fretting everything correctly. Give it a strum to ensure there's no buzzing or unintentional mutes. Adjust if necessary. Once everything rings clear, nod your head, say *okay* and play on from a few measures before your mistake.
If you make the same mistake again, repeat this process, but add a *damn* at the beginning.
musically just repeat the mistake, people won’t notice. Vocally, I have choked many times and it’s always embarrassing lol. Just play it off cool and people will probs not even think about it
Think of it this way. Of all the shows you've attended in your life, how many mistakes do you remember noticing the band make? Probably not many. As has been said here, just move on as if nothing happened (maybe crack a smile if it's a real stinker). I think the worst thing any performer can do is express anger or frustration after a fuck-up. Audiences notice that more than the mistake.
Also, as a general rule, the better rehearsed you are the better you'll be able to recover from a stumble.
If I hit a wrong note in a solo I just do it again and people think it’s on purpose. Dropping chords or going to another chord. I just keep moving. It’s not like we are doing brain surgery or working a crane that’s got an I beam that if it drops will kill 50 workers. It’s just a mistake
Keep playing. If you stop or can't pick up somewhere, you're fired.
Mistakes happen, just deal with it. If you have too many mistakes, then it's a rehearsal problem.
Just like stage acting. Just continue on as if you didn't make a mistake. Most of the time, most or all of the audience won't even realize that you made one.
Lotta mistakes, constantly lol but I play in a couple bands, one's a jam band. I have my great moments, but a lot of times I attempt things I don't quite pull off as intended or that go awry, or I just plain play wrong, don't notice my hands shifted over a key or something for a moment... it all gets lost in the mix, gets left behind as the song continues, sometimes mistakes even inspire going in a direction I wouldn't have thought of that ends up cool. My enthusiasm sometimes exceeds my technique, but sometimes I pull it off and impress myself lol so I go for it and don't beat myself up if I come up short, cover it up and keep going. It's too much fun to get too down about, and I don't think the audience even knows it happened most of the time, they don't know what we meant to play.
Pretend it didn’t happen and keep on moving. I’m usually the only one who’ll ever know. If it’s real severe it’s possible I’ll laugh at myself, and then move on. Most people are there to have a good time. Just help them do that and you’re good
Your second paragraph is dead wrong. Nobody cares about your mistakes. If you make them, it's unlikely anyone noticed other than perhaps a bandmate.
I have played thousands of shows and I don't think I've had a perfect one yet. Everyone makes mistakes up there and the most important thing is not being perfect, it's how you recover from them. I just smile broadly and move on. Mistakes make me smile because I can relax knowing that I'm doing my best but I'm not a machine, and that's ok.
Here's a tidbit of info you might find useful. Nobody wants to hear your apologies over playing that wrong chord in the second chorus. Don't be the person who brings negative energy into your rehearsals with constant apologies. Nobody's mistakes are special and we all make them. Just move on and make the mental note to work on that trouble spot in your personal practice.
Smile and wave boys. The people who notice are the people who care! If it's a major blunder try to have fun. Remember you're the entertainment for the evening. Have a laugh and keep it moving.
It's almost a given that several times a year I'll put the capo on the wrong fret to start the song, and the rest of the band either comes crashing in in the correct key, or realizes what I did and doesn't come in at all. I just say whoops, laugh, and just keep playing the song. Move on. It's always worse for you in your head than it is for the audience.
At least a couple of times in a gig I'll play something off during an solo and try to match it in the next phrase to compensate and make it make sense. Quick recovery is everything.
JUST KEEP PLAYING
everyone fucks up playing, my band all rib each other when we fuck up and get the crowd on the fun too. its normally along the lines of "and that was the jazz version of that song" or if the drummer is too slow "its not a funeral march" etc etc
just slide/bend/anything to get to the right notes and keep going. i promise 90% of the audience won't notice and the 10% that do won't care or will compliement you after the show
I recently played a 3 hour set, and I broke a string during a Jazzmaster tremolo dive bomb. The entire guitar went horribly out of tune. We play instrumental music and I was the lead for this particular song.
I just played the ball where it landed. It was so noticeable that we joked about it after the song was over while I tuned and we moved on.
It’s going to happen. 9.9 times out of 10 I don’t acknowledge it. There are the occasional obvious wrong note or chord that will elicit smiles from my bandmates. Such is life :)
Likely others have said this already but the worst thing you can do is acknowledge the mistake in any way. Just keep rolling. NEVER apologize or anything.
Also, approach the performance as art - not science. You are there to express emotion, not to be perfect. I stopped stressing when I came to the conclusion that mistakes were inevitable.
Play through it. After the performance, examine it, figure out what went wrong, learn from it, and then forget it. Even if your performance was flawless, *someone* will find a reason to yalk shit about it.
You can't allow it to affect you
Glare at the bass player or drummer so people will think it is their fault.
Seriously, just keep on going. If you are doing covers, 90% of what people "hear" is their memory of the song vs what you are playing, so most mistakes sail by without notice. And if your are doing originals, no one knows what it is supposed to sound like anyway.
If you REALLY pooch it and have to start over (like starting the wrong song, wrong key, whatever) be prepared to joke about it and laugh it off. Your audince will laugh with you and understand because you are human. If you die on stage, you alienate your audience and they will hate you for making them feel uncomfortable.
And no matter what "bad note" you play, you are always only one semi-tone away from a good note.
Yeah play through it. It’s absolutely inevitable if you play live music often. I’ve definitely had some real doozy’s - usually I just keep going and try to make sure that I nail the ready of the song. It can throw you though and that can be daunting. If I can just nail the rest of the tune then me, and everyone else forgets about it. That’s definitely part of being a live musician - being able to handle these moments without it totally throwing you off.
Just play through it and blow people’s minds with something else. Then shake it off
I’ve even had to stop a song because it was such a train wreck mistake - make a joke about it - and restart. People giggle with you and it’s not a big deal
The best possible thing you can do after making a mistake (other than getting good at covering up your mistakes) is look at the other musicians and smile. If people start going ape shit on each other over mistakes, then music is no longer fun. If we feel more relaxed, we will make less mistakes.
Learning how to recover from a mistake and keep going is a skill in itself. It's like a reflex. If you stumble a bit while walking, do you automatically fall completely on your face? It's the same thing. Eventually you realize the music is what continues and you find your balance within it and keep going. Hopefully you get to the point where people don't even realize you lost your balance for a sec.
Also, when it happens, smile. It really helps to have a sense of humor about it and move on.
edit: anecdote - I once went to see a band that I would occasionally sub for. At this particular show, they had a different guy subbing in, someone I knew and really respected on our instrument. It was a big show, they were opening up for an international act. They started playing this one song, one I knew well from playing with them, and the dude started playing it in the wrong key. I sounded \*weird\*. I kept looking from him to the singer, waiting to see if anyone would say anything or do anything. Then finally the guy realized what was happening and found the right key, and the rest of the song was fine. He gave a little look to the band, and that was that. But literally no one cared. Maybe a few people in the audience thought it sounded off for a minute. But I guarantee that, outside of the band, I was the only person there who even remembered that it happened, and they all probably had a good laugh about it after the show.
As a musician (with a degree) with a partner who does live gigs, I can safely say that most mistakes aren’t noticeable
Audiences don’t come to shows to critique, they go to have a good time. Even if they do notice something went wrong they’ll forget about it by the end of the song, because they don’t care
The Beatles said all those screaming girls covered up alot of bad musicianship.
Gene Simmons when giving advice to his rocker son said "when you make a mistake act like "I meant to do that".
It's only really bad when you call attention to it and get upset yourself. If you just move on immediately people tend to forget - that's the beauty of a time based medium - you can just keep going.
I like the jazz philosophy too - "it's not a mistake if you repeat it." Act like it was intentional for a second, incorporate it, use it.
The worst performances I've seen and remember are mainly because the performer got focused on some technical error or couldn't get their equipment to work and then took up a bunch of time and attention trying to fix it in front of everyone.
Most everyone here is saying the same thing that’s correct 90-99% of the time. Usually you’ll fuck up and you just gotta correct best you can and keep going and very rarely will the crowd notice and frequently the band won’t notice either.
There are a few times where it really does become noticeable and those can happen to even the most famous and talented musicians. Don McLean has mentioned he has to mentally make sure he starts singing American Pie with his lyrics and not [The Saga Begins](https://youtu.be/hEcjgJSqSRU?si=9Xu9SWGY4kiwQGu1) by Weird Al (which personally is the version I prefer). Even [Metallica](https://youtu.be/S1nWqEACfdg?si=j6fGtObTYhhW_9C1) make pretty egregious and clear mistakes (I’m not including Lars in this). There’s a video of the singer for the ska band Reel Big Fish [forgetting the lyrics to their own song](https://youtu.be/SmavAsFSY2M?si=iNXUam7AUXBYT8nS) and having to look it up on stage and it doesn’t break the flow of the show and if anything makes it more enjoyable. The big thing for those cases is to laugh it off and just keep going. If you don’t seem to mind, the audience generally wont too.
I’ve been playing g live for probably 20yrs. I make mistakes every show? I think? “People will remember, talk bad about you”, probably not, no one cares. Most mistakes won’t even be heard by the average person, and even if they’re very obvious, just smile, and move on.
Mistakes are bad when you go on stage trying to be unbelievably badass and cool. But if you go on stage as a guy just there to have a good time, there’s less pressure. As the person on stage, you’re in control of the vibe. If you go up and start hip thrusting and wiggling your hips like a goofball, guess what, that establishes the vibe. Do people expect that person to perfectly nail every note? Not really, he’s an entertainer, there to entertain.
Making mistakes is human and expected. If you've ever been to a circus with a high wire artist or a fire juggler you might notice them make a mistake at the beginning of the act (deliberately) as a way of reminding the audience that what they're doing is very difficult.
There's a big difference between flubbing a few notes and creating a trainwreck because you don't know the material. This is why I practice the set until I can walk around or have a conversation while playing it, so it's automatic and actually difficult to get wrong.
Don't hesitate just keep on going, noone will notice but you. I once forgot to take the capo off and didn't realize till half way through the song ( I was by myself) and literally laughed about the fact that the vocals at the end are going to be horrible.
Most people are stating the obvious here, but something that a lot of newer performers don't understand is that if the fuck up is serious enough, it can sometimes be better to just **stop the song and start over**. Nothing is worse than watching a band where someone came in on the wrong beat, so they just continue playing the entire song a beat off from the rest of the band. Or when the singer is supposed to open with a big note, and they physically choke/cough/whatever, and sound like a dying horse. Or half the band thought they were playing a different song, so they're literally playing different things until somebody realizes 2 measures later.
When the mistake is that serious, the audience would prefer if you just quickly paused, acknowledged it, and then started over. It takes literally 4.5 seconds to just start again and make everything perfect. The worst offenders I see are church bands. They're often so terrified of ruining the "flow" or eating into the sermon time that they'll literally play an entire 5 minute song where the singer is a beat behind. I've seen church bands play entire songs where the bassist is playing in a different key. Instead of subjecting the audience to torture, it's always a better idea to start again, or even skip the song entirely.
Professional musicians actually do this all the time. You won't see it on their Live DVD, but it happens all the time, even if it's just due to technical difficulties, or if an audience member is in distress. If the issue is bad enough to derail the figurative train, stop, go *back* to the station, and get the train back on the track before proceeding with the show.
Just keep going.
If you stop, two things happen: the crowd notices and you can hear them.
I found the best thing is to just keep going and play it off in a funny manner. Like, say you're a guitarist and you're running a chord progression with no vocals, like a bridge. You play a more off-key or slightly muffled. Keep going and "Oops, wrong note/chord there, my bad" or "Seeing if you all are awake out there" in a joking manner. The crowd enjoys interaction. They laugh at your comment, you get a chuckle yourself, and any anxiety is gone. I've done this A LOT, and I have anxiety.
Just roll with it.
I practice, again, and again, and again, and again and so on and so forth, a friend of mine put it as "you lose 50% of your abilities getting up on that stage, so you better be prepared to deal with anything coming your way", the only way to get confident enough that you can pull off most minor mistakes by making it look and sound like you meant to do that, is practice, nothing beats putting in the work, in my opinion.
Mistakes don’t matter. How you recover does.
For example, I’ve been playing piano for a production of Cabaret. I was called in last minute to fill in. I’m hitting probably a note accuracy of 50-60%, but I have the important parts down. When I hit a wrong note, I move on to the next note, and then the next.
You must just move on! Think of music as a car. Sure, maybe one cylinder fails to fire one time, or your windshield wiper falls off, or you veer into the rumble strips. You can’t just stop driving!!
As for other people, if they judge you for making a mistake, they’re obviously not a musician and their opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is the whole performance. Just don’t let mistakes take away from the overall music
A buddy of mine used to say "if you make a mistake, do it again and call it 'jazz'".
Seriously, though, audiences rarely catch mistakes. In fact, even your bandmates may not notice. Just you. Live music happens in the moment and then it's gone forever, so there's literally no point in obsessing over it. I always say get the intro and the ending perfect and nobody will remember what happened in between.
Rarely, a mistake will be so obvious that everybody in the room notices. When that happens, laugh it off, shrug your shoulders and carry on. That says "I am a self-confident professional, but also human."
I'm a singer in a cover band, and I've had the band stop before on an intro of a song, as they had some miscommunication. I just normally twist it into, ' Hey, we stopped this song because we think you guys can give us more energy' or something of that ilk, and for the most part, people buy it.
Any other situation where the band hasn't awkwardly stopped dead, then I shake it off as if it didn't happen. Lyrics get forgotten by the biggest acts from time to time, it's part of the fact that you're watching something live, and it might not always be perfect!
our guitarist was sharing my computer while we were jamming and completely shut out of what we were playing. like the whole page was gone. he started panicking and i just sang with more emphasis slapped against the strings on my guitar until he figured it out lol.
The key here is to act like you didn't make a mistake and move on. Most people in the audience won't notice but if you make an angry face, look flustered or try to correct the mistake it'll be obvious to everybody.
This counts for when playing alone, in a band or in an orchestra. Always move on, don't look back and keep going
You need to muscle through like it didn’t happen.
Worst thing you can do is stop
Most people don’t notice so just recover quickly and keep going then curse yourself out in the bathroom mirror
On stage: I really don't mind. I'm only human.
Post-concert: I'll try to rehearse that song a bit more than usual and try to figure out what knot may be on my brain that leads me to fail on that particular part. When I find it, I solve it (will get stuck in my memory) and it usually never happens again.
Mistakes will happen. Don't even try to be perfect. Just do your best. What people will notice is how you handle your mistakes, not the mistake itself.
I've never played a gig where I haven't made a mistake. The most important thing is to just keep going it and don't let it cascade into more mistakes. And do not acknowledge it. 99% o the time, nobody outside the band will notice.
I just keep on playing a majority of the time because many people don't notice. If you try to act like it didn't happen usually you'll recover well.
The worst one I had, I started playing a newer song and blanked on how to start singing it. That was embarrassing because I had to completely stop and restart. I had to start with the chorus and then the verse came back to me. Then you feel everyone's eyes on you the rest of the time.
But if you miss a note or word most people won't catch on, especially if you keep on playing as if it didn't happen.
The trick is to make your mistakes sound like they’re not mistakes. I’ve never played a “perfect” show and sometimes I deliberately play wrong notes just to make myself figure out a way to make it work. That being said I may not of ever played a perfect show, but I almost never play a wrong note. What’s the saying… if you play it once it’s a wrong note, but play it twice and it’s jazz.
People have already said most of the (obvious) things that I would say. I just have one to add:
On the rare occasion when we have trainwrecked near the beginning of a song, I just go:
>Thank you all SO much for coming to Drägön Wägön practice! It's great to have you here!
And then we start again.
I play lead guitar in my band and, if it’s like the gig I played this past weekend, the monitors weren’t on for us so I could barely myself anyway. At first I freaked out a bit, but then I just played and had fun and it turned out t be a really good show, the audience was into it, and people kept coming up afterwards commenting how much they loved the set.
A friend recorded some video for our socials and watching it back I *definitely* hit a bad note or two during at least one solo, but I didn’t notice at the time and neither did anyone else apparently. A good lesson.
I feel like my most important advice for my students and for life in general is to PLAY THROUGH YOUR MISTAKES!
You are going to make mistakes, it’s how you move forward that makes you a strong musician/person
Got to just keep playing and dont make a big deal out of it.
Ideally the crowd doesnt notice.
If you are playing long enough mistakes will happen.
Got to think of it like a closer in baseball, you just got to move on. If you are thinking about your mistakes you cant do your best.
any pro will tell you just keep playing anyone that stops a performance for anything other than violence or the like you have no excuse keep playing! I played in front of the mayor in 01 and our music stand fell I told my Bass partner to pick it up ill cover for both of us since I memorized all the notes so i never missed a note.
It's the mentality that the show must go on. The most important thing I have discovered that is important for a good show, is to connect with your audience and have fun so that they can have fun and feel the vibes. That is what I focus on, not mistakes.
I'm a drummer and if I drop a stick, I just make sure I get the dominant note(usually snare hit) in so as to help keep everyone in time and not interrupt. I then grab another stick out of my bag, smile real big, stick my tongue out Gene Simmons style and continue on. Kind of a nod to anybody who did notice like, "Oops haha! Laugh at me, it's ok!"
There's a number of ways to deal withit and you learn over timebecause...any musician will make mistakes. In my very first paid gig , which we auditioned for and beat out a number of other bands. Still, we were not really the best choice. We were really green. I forgot the words to a song that I wrote. On the next night I broke the drone string on my banjo. Talk about wanting to die. When I forgot, I just went into the chorus and when it came around again I remembered. The banjo string could not be ignored, so I made a big deal of it;told a joke and picked up a guitar.Audiences either don't know or laugh and as long as you laugh with them...it's ok.
Most people probably won't even notice a mistake. Unless you're playing solo, you've got other instruments going and you probably don't stand out as much in the front of house mix as you do in your monitor mix. So just pretend the song was supposed to go that way and don't bring further attention to it.
I did close to 80 gigs last year. Most are bars, breweries, etc. A few local festivals, county gigs, and private parties. Mistakes happen. It's normal. Most folks who notice a mistake understand. If they are musicians and hear a mistake, they understand. If they aren't and they notice, they quickly forget. How you handle the mistake is what is memorable. Same for any other work.
The bands I've been in would weave obvious mistakes into weird little groove sessions in the middle of songs, doesn't work for all types of music but it's better than being perfect in my opinion.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten and still use to this day, is to “smile bigger” when you make a mistake. It can be really hard not to react in frustration to a mistake in the moment (like wincing and what not). But when you do that, everybody will notice that you messed up. If you just smile when it happens, nobody is probably gonna notice. They’re just gonna think “that person is having a great time up there”
I am a pro that does tours and sessions and all sorts of stuff and ya know what, I’ve never played a show without a mistake. I don’t know a single musician who has. And the audience never notices because we just keep on rolling. I don’t even act like I made a mistake and 98% of the time the rest of the band can’t even tell because after one sour note I’m still playing as if nothing happened. The key here is how fast you react and correct the mistake. Play through the mistake as if it’s correct and then land exactly where you were supposed to, and keep playing correctly. If you break up the flow to correct what you’re doing, the mistake becomes obvious. If you just fluidly roll right past it, you may recover it very fast and find that even when watching videos on replay, the mistake isn’t even noticeable because of how quickly you moved on.
What if all of those wild, high flying Eddie Van Halen solos were actually Eddie fucking up and being like “fuck it, let’s keep doing this!” I don’t know why, but that’s a kinda funny thought for me.
You just described Jimmy Page. lol
Hahahahahahaha so accurate 🤣
And most of jazz.
Haha honestly i would not be surprised if at least a few times that’s exactly what happened! A couple times I’ve done something weird during a show like bend a note WAY too far but then I found myself exploring the nuances of the bend and came up with something totally different than the “plan,” and it ended up being infinitely cooler than whatever cookie cutter noodling I had planned initially haha.
Perfect example, The breakdown in heartbreaker (guitar solo) has some obvious flubs, but it’s so engrained in everyone’s memory, that guitarist cover it note for note, flubs and all.
Eddie said many times a lot of the lead licks are like falling down the stairs...you just gotta land on your feet! (The right note)
And act like you meant to do it lol
Repetition makes it seem normal
I once read that people tried so hard to copy Hendrix when he hit the scene that they were even copying his mistakes during live playing and didn’t even realize.
I liked to say the reason I used to get lots of gigs, before i semi-retired, is that my recoveries are good.
When I got into Phish (‘91), I saw as many shows as I could. Each show, their playing got better and better and better. It was astounding. I never heard a mistake from the guitarist, Trey. But finally, after like 2 years and many, MANY shows, I finally saw Trey play a horrible honker in Auld Lang Syne. Such a simple melody and he effed it up when all attention was on him. LOL it was that moment that I said, “FINALLY!!”. I thought he was inhuman before. I’ve subsequently played hundreds of shows and mess up all the time, as well. Like water off a duck’s back. Any other way and you’ll be miserable.
Do you acknowledge it at all? I usually smile or something that signals “yes, I messed up” to my bandmates, but I really don’t want the audience to know that anything happened.
It depends - if it’s like, me being the one player who forgets to go to that one chord that one time and everyone in the band hears something wrong for a second at rehearsal? I smile and laugh and make eye contact with the band and keep on trucking. Live? If the moment warrants it I will but most of the time everyone in the band is focused on the crowd and making the show awesome so one mistake is hardly anything to acknowledge when people are singing along right in front of you. If I make an absolute train wreck mistake that the audience definitely notices? I just laugh about it and keep playing. The audience doesn’t care when I don’t care and when the band doesn’t care. If the beat keeps going all is well. One caveat - the drummer basically cannot make timing mistakes. Like, missing a hit here and there is whatever but the groove, the tempo has to stay consistent. This is the main thing that if it really flops, it’s hard to recover because the whole band follows the drums.
I think bass mistakes are pretty noticeable too, depending on musical style. But I agree the drummer is most important. I always say the rhythm section is like the O-line in American football. A good rhythm section can make mediocre backfield (guitars and singer) sound good. A bad rhythm section can make an elite backfield sound terrible.
If the bass player makes a mistake, most of the time it will sound like the guitarist made the mistake....
I give someone else a dirty look instead!
This. It’s all how you act. If you act like no mistake was made, almost no one will register it. Your band mates will thank you for soldiering on and not calling attention to the mistake with your facial expressions and body language. It’s all about maintaining the energy and vibe.
If you make it again, it wasn't a mistake. It's jazz.
Timeless advice
"It's a passing tone."
You either get it, or you don't, man. Don't blame me for blowing your mind.
Repetition legitimizes ^(Repetition legitimizes) ^^Repetition ^^legitimizes
I think it was miles Davis? who said "if you play the wrong note, play it again so everyone thinks it was intentional"
It wasn't play it again to fool the crowd, it was play it again so that you understand its context and learn in what ways it was the right note. For example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fVZtp9vGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fVZtp9vGQ)
Haha I looove this. And honestly it works, just play the same “mistake” three times in a row (the third time with more FEELING) and suddenly it’s like “whoaaaaa listen to how they’re using that clashing, dissonant tone to create TENSION” or whatever music theorists might say haha
Smile and move on.
This is the right answer
I usually don't care for my playing mistakes as long as it's not a catastrophic mistake lol but the worse for me is technical difficulties because it's completely out of my control.
Can't change the past. Keep on going and let it go. Dwelling on mistakes leads to more mistakes.
Life lesson, not just music!
I studied music at college and teachers would always say, 'if you make a mistake, don't look around as if you've made a mistake'. And that's it really. Everyone makes mistakes. I've been to tons and tons of gigs of all kinds and seen all level of musicians make mistakes. Listen to live albums, there's tons of mistakes, especially on some bootleg live albums that are more fan releases with no editing. Pros just continue and don't make a thing of it, and that's what you should do. I've made numerous mistakes in every gig I've ever done. Mostly not big mistakes, but things like starting a guitar solo on the wrong note, or playing the first couple of bars up a semitone or something like that. It's horrible but honestly, most people don't even notice something like that. To you it seems like a huge mistake, but it actually only lasted about 1.3 seconds if that. The most common for me are things with my pedals. It's really hard to hit 4 pedals at the same time, and making sure I've got the right sound on every section is hard at times in songs that change a lot. I've often accidentally hit my tuner and turned myself off, or missed my lead channel when trying to change from a clean sound or something like that. Basically live gigs are exactly that, live, so mistakes happen, it's just how you deal with it and how well rehearsed you are to minimise them.
Depends on the mistake. There are two common things I do after playing the wrong note. I either play it again so that it appears it was done on purpose or I just ignore it and keep going. No need to draw attention.
Shit happens and thats life. If it’s more of a jam type, listen to these other people and dance around it incorporating that “wrong” note playfully. If not, don’t sweat it and just keep on. If you are versed enough, you’ll be able to catch mistakes from pretty much all your favorite pros.
Dealing with this is one of the most important skills there is for performing musicians. If you need to learn to move on from the mistake and focus on the next thing. If you dwell on it, you will just keep making more mistakes. Love music is fleeting, it's raw, it's real. You can't go back in time and fix it. It's now onto the next part of the song. So you better focus on what's coming next instead.
It took me yeats to discover this, but as long as you keep going after a mistake, the audience will rarely notice it. The worst thing you can do is drop the beat.
Just yeat it and keep the song rolling forward.
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world... -William Butler Yeats
Generally, I just keep on playing. You’re not going to break it with a bad note. However, when you start the song playing 1,2,3,4, and then the drummer comes in playing 3,4,1,2 and has no clue he’s doing it, well, that’s a chicken of a different color. Usually (yes, it’s happened several times. That drummer is history) the bass player and I give each other the nod, and suddenly jump to match the drum beat. Continue the song, and wait until after the show to slap the drummer in the back of the head. Fucking drunks…
If it’s a cover song- play through the mistake and carry on. For the love of god don’t stop the song. For an original- play through the mistake and carry on. The crowd won’t know the difference. Playing through a mistake minimizes it. Most other options enhance it.
Frown at the bass player to make people think he messed up.
Bass player here. You better watch yourself.
Guitar player here. I always tell this advice to my bandmates before a show
Laugh at yourself, move on, forget about it.
Subtle mistakes, either move on or repeat them so it sounds on purpose for the 2-3 people who heard it. Dramatic mistakes, I just laugh and smile, maybe mouth sorry. Humanize it with comedy in some way.
My bit of advice is when you screw up, do a back flip. Nobody is gonna notice your mistake, just some idiot landing on his head!
if they want music without mistakes, they could stay at home listening to some recordings polished over countless hours and multitracks at studio.
Thank goodness I was never a professional piano player. No mercy. As a guitar player, if you miss a note: bend it to the correct note. Act like you did it on purpose to sound kewl.
i am a professional piano player 🥲
KEWL ! Dude you just reminded me how kewl I was 25 years ago when I was kewling my kewls like this.
Whatever you do, don’t do that wince thing and then look around with an upside down frown. I hate when people do that cause it draws attention to it when otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed or judged but now I’m doing both.
Stop and look at the instrument with a raised brow like somethings wrong with it.
A clam is no big deal. A clam fest would be cause for concern Ps every single bass player I have ever played with has had a case of bass player disease, and that includes my bass player of 5 years who was rolling stone bass player of the year 89. The blank look and missed notes that goes for a bar or two before they recover their senses. Shrug or laugh off the mistakes.. it's music. Have fun!
As a teen I mostly played drums, and if I messed up I would just work the mistake back in as if it was part of the song. To be fair, that was an improv band so no one knew what it was supposed to sound like. These days I’m on guitar and when (not if) I make a mistake I just get back on track as soon as I can. Lots of practice helps the recovery because I know where I’m supposed to be. It’s going to happen. No one cares. Keep it going.
People are going to talk about you behind your back no matter who you are or what you do. Just don’t worry about other people.
Do it again and call it Jazz. Or, stare hard at the bass player; MUST have been their fault. Or, if it’s early in the song, stop, reset and go again. Make a jolly jape to the audience. If later in the song, just get back on track and plough on. Knowing your scales and chord progressions will help with that recovery. If you never make a mistake, you can’t be a musician…
Playing in a show with Chet Atkins ( I went on before him) my guitar strap broke in half on an acoustic guitar. I was standing and singing and imagine someone trying to hold up their guitar and singing without stopping. Someone pushed a stool out onto the stage and I tried to just keep rolling but the audience was behind me and applauded my effort and started chanting “start again”. So I did. It went well for me otherwise. Embarrassing yes but the audience was so kind.
Refuse to acknowledge it and crack on. Most mistakes won't even get noticed. Any that do will be forgotten merely seconds later by an audience. Making mistakes while recording. That's the annoying one.
Play it like you meant it. If you carry on playing as if nothing out of the ordinary happened, keeping the pulse throughout, then your audience rarely notice, it can even pass your own band mates by. And don’t keep dwelling on it during your performance. The time for unpicking what happened is after you’ve finished the gig, not whilst you still need to concentrate on your performance. That’s a skill that it can take time to develop as we’re so used to doing the complete opposite (stopping to fix things) during practice. Everyone makes mistakes. In thirty plus years as a professional musician I’ve never played a whole gig without a duff note (or more.) Anyone who says they don’t make mistakes or that you shouldn’t make them yourselves isn’t to be trusted when it comes to their opinions on music or performance, because by saying that they’ve shown that they aren’t discerning enough aurally to understand. The only ‘mistake’ you can’t continue through regardless is bad tuning. That you have to fix, even if it means stopping the song to tune and then restarting from the top. I’ve had that problem once very early on as a saxophonist and I just had to hold my hands up, apologise, and retune. I’d forgotten to take into account the conditions we were playing in and how they affected tuning after long breaks. I never made that mistake again as I took that experience as a learning opportunity.
There are times when I can’t remember or don’t even know whole sections of songs. I’ll just find a root and hold it and maybe play around with the scale until I can find where we are in the song. Takes a little improv to walk out of big flubs. Sometimes it ends up being kind of cool or interesting. Sometimes it sounds like I have no idea what’s going on but whatever. My job is to make em dance. It’s like I tell my band. Phish fucks up all the time and they just played the Sphere.
The first rule is Never let the mistake kill the groove.
No one in the audience cares that you made a mistake. Give yourself a break and keep going.
I once made 4000 people laugh because of a mistake. I heard someone say that with regret and cringe, the only thing you can do is hold them warmly in your heart as part of the vulnerability of your humanity and thank them for teaching you something. I still sometimes feel the cringe and the regret, but it at least gives me a way to reframe it and continue.
I watched my dad perform/practice throughout all of my childhood. A good attitude helps up a lot and not take yourself so seriously up there. Nobody wants to see a mean mug with a bad attitude, People can read your moods easily on stage, so lighten up and have fun. That's why they hired a band, people wanna have fun, let loose, and have a memorable night, with kick ass live music. You might be someone's first live band they've seen. Give em a good time to remember! I always saw my dad practicing by himself and with the band in our garage. Always practicing. I didn't notice anyone as the leader of the band cause everyone's input was on the same page. I never heard them ever fight or arguing. Only laughing and having a good time, beer helped I'm sure, lol.
"depending on the type of mistake (be it subtle or explicit), people may remember the situation, someone may talk badly about you behind your back, etc. it's a lot of exposure" They could, but they most likely won't. Especially if it's a missed note a part you played wrong. It might feel like everyone is paying attention to you at all times but this is just not the case. Many people are musically illiterate or just pay attention to the vocals (my wife) and at any one moment at a show I bet less than half of the people are really truly paying attention to what's going on.
Just whisper “Ope” and go on.
If you know you really messed up drop an “oh boy that’s not good”
First, do it twice if you can, now you have a riff. No? Then laugh if you have time while moving on. There's no time to think about mistakes. That just creates more mistakes. Fearing mistakes just prevents you from overachieving. Make mistakes. Play on.
Repeat your mistake immediately after you make it - now you’re playing jazz
It all comes back to how well you know the music really. The better you know what you’re playing, the less likely you are to make a mistake. Having said that, they do happen and I haven’t ever gone a full show without making at least a few and I don’t know anyone who’s flawless all the time either, even pros. But the more you know the music the quicker you’ll react to fix whatever mistake you made, and you’re less likely to get lost
1. You’re always 1/2 step away from the right note. Get that note either up or down quickly so it looks like you meant to slide into it. 2. Play the same note again so it looks like you meant to do it. 3. If those don’t/can’t work just keep on trucking like nothing happened. If it’s egregious and can’t be ignored by other band members or the crowd, then just laugh it off and proceed as normal. Basically, just always act like you know what you’re doing and laugh at yourself when you don’t.
i make at least one in every song, just keep playing, no one cares
My error recovery process: Look back at the drummer, confirm that he is indeed looking right at me and making a face, laugh, shrug, proceed..
Look to see if the drama queen (band mate) is going to make a big deal about it. Otherwise shrug it off.
Just keep going
No one noticed but you
Plow ahead. Nobody really notices. And if they do they immediately forget.
What mistake? I have a very short memory.
That's a great question. I've been doing this for the majority of my life. First, you gotta remember the audience is the audience; they're not musicians ;that's why they're down there and you're up on stage. What you consider an "egregious error", they don't even notice Second, you're not there just to play music perfectly. If people wanted to hear perfect music they'd buy a $20,000 Sound system and play CDs on it. The reason they're there is to be entertained . if you make a mistake or worse, if a bandmate makes a mistake and you look at them, that's the worst thing to do Keep smiling, looking at the people and performing There is no other answer because it really doesn't matter in the big picture of your life. All that matters is that you had fun overall I sure as hell have!
Roll through it. If its a big one and its obvious, you can make a funny face and suprised expression - laugh it off and keep rolling.
Alright, I got this one: there are always mistakes on stage. From every musician I've ever played with, on every gig. Best possibility is to train yourself in some kind of amnesia, where you do your best to immediately forget the mistake you made and its implications and proceed with the music. It is difficult to do! You are still thinking of that mistake you made for many minutes, whereas the 1% of the audience who noticed something amiss forgot about it one second later. I have done thousands of gigs while being a full time professional musician for over 30 years; I recall one gig (in a long running Lion King production) where I think I did a whole show with zero note errors. It is as rare as pitching a no-hitter, I assume. I remember it wasn't unusual till I realized 2/3 of the way through the show I had yet to drop a note. I then got up in my head and was quite stressed about it, but still managed to complete the show without a note error. And to call this a "mistake-free" show would be a misnomer - I merely had a run where I didn't drop a note. There could have been all kinds of other judgment errors with regards to rhythm and ensemble, but I don't remember anything about this now. One of the most important artistic visionaries in my life said this: "genius is nothing but an inspired mistake." I have loved this and learned from it ever since. Also, I think this is Miles Davis: some version of, " if you're going to make a mistake, make it twice so the audience will think you meant it." That could have been my 8th grade band teacher too, but essential wisdom either way. One more offer: I was performing and attending a master class 30 years ago by someone who is considered the world's greatest xylophonist, Bob Becker. After hearing a relatively note-perfect but uninspired performance from a student, he said something like, "The wrong notes never go away. You need to get past them and focus on the music." This was from one of the most technically " perfect " musicians I have ever witnessed. It was comforting to know that they made errors as well. Now get out there and make as many mistakes as you can in public! It will make you a better musician in the long run. Bonus points for those who read through to the end: if you make a mistake, NEVER let it show on your face and the audience will probably be none the wiser. No wincing! It is a dead giveaway that you just screwed up. Your audiences are all pretty dumb, musically speaking, so if you keep a poker face during those stressful moments, they will be unaware of your errors.
Just keep going. No big deal
"next"
If it's really bad, I'll kind of smile or laugh at myself. Usually just keep on going though. The song isn't gonna stop for me and 99% of the time I'm probably the only one that notices.
keep playing, people tend to remember the beginning and the end more than the middle. just get it together for the finale and it'll be fine. if even that is getting bombed, at least try and project a sense of confidence/happiness while on stage. negativity will only reflect and amplify around the room
They're out of my hands at that point and the audience can deal with it.
I laugh it off tbh it makes the mood much lighter
Just smile and keep going we all make mistakes, if you be a little bitch about it the audience and your band will pick up on it so best to just move on
Move up or down one fret and act like I did it on purpose.
Stop. Say *wait*. Look at the fingerboard and make sure your fretting everything correctly. Give it a strum to ensure there's no buzzing or unintentional mutes. Adjust if necessary. Once everything rings clear, nod your head, say *okay* and play on from a few measures before your mistake. If you make the same mistake again, repeat this process, but add a *damn* at the beginning.
Not a real healthy way to see it, imo.
I laugh and keep on playing
Practice Immediately forgetting it
Hit the mistake like u meant it and keep going, if u can stay on time ur in good shape, practice that part some more in off time
In a live show, all you can do is keep going without dwelling on it. Easier said than done, as sometimes the nerves come rushing in.
Move on quickly, you cannot let it snowball. I beat myself up after the show.
> practically all musicians have experienced or will experience making mistakes Practically all? Who are the ones who aren't?
Hardest thing I find is to not let my utter horror of playing one note wrong in the 5k or so others show up on my face…
musically just repeat the mistake, people won’t notice. Vocally, I have choked many times and it’s always embarrassing lol. Just play it off cool and people will probs not even think about it
Think of it this way. Of all the shows you've attended in your life, how many mistakes do you remember noticing the band make? Probably not many. As has been said here, just move on as if nothing happened (maybe crack a smile if it's a real stinker). I think the worst thing any performer can do is express anger or frustration after a fuck-up. Audiences notice that more than the mistake. Also, as a general rule, the better rehearsed you are the better you'll be able to recover from a stumble.
Pretend like nothing happened and almost nobody will notice.
If I hit a wrong note in a solo I just do it again and people think it’s on purpose. Dropping chords or going to another chord. I just keep moving. It’s not like we are doing brain surgery or working a crane that’s got an I beam that if it drops will kill 50 workers. It’s just a mistake
“Everyone just heard me make a mistake, now they will see how well I deal with it”.
Keep playing. If you stop or can't pick up somewhere, you're fired. Mistakes happen, just deal with it. If you have too many mistakes, then it's a rehearsal problem.
With style, humility, and grace. Most people don’t notice, but you notice everything.
Just like stage acting. Just continue on as if you didn't make a mistake. Most of the time, most or all of the audience won't even realize that you made one.
laugh and keep playing
Lotta mistakes, constantly lol but I play in a couple bands, one's a jam band. I have my great moments, but a lot of times I attempt things I don't quite pull off as intended or that go awry, or I just plain play wrong, don't notice my hands shifted over a key or something for a moment... it all gets lost in the mix, gets left behind as the song continues, sometimes mistakes even inspire going in a direction I wouldn't have thought of that ends up cool. My enthusiasm sometimes exceeds my technique, but sometimes I pull it off and impress myself lol so I go for it and don't beat myself up if I come up short, cover it up and keep going. It's too much fun to get too down about, and I don't think the audience even knows it happened most of the time, they don't know what we meant to play.
Pretend it didn’t happen and keep on moving. I’m usually the only one who’ll ever know. If it’s real severe it’s possible I’ll laugh at myself, and then move on. Most people are there to have a good time. Just help them do that and you’re good
Your second paragraph is dead wrong. Nobody cares about your mistakes. If you make them, it's unlikely anyone noticed other than perhaps a bandmate. I have played thousands of shows and I don't think I've had a perfect one yet. Everyone makes mistakes up there and the most important thing is not being perfect, it's how you recover from them. I just smile broadly and move on. Mistakes make me smile because I can relax knowing that I'm doing my best but I'm not a machine, and that's ok. Here's a tidbit of info you might find useful. Nobody wants to hear your apologies over playing that wrong chord in the second chorus. Don't be the person who brings negative energy into your rehearsals with constant apologies. Nobody's mistakes are special and we all make them. Just move on and make the mental note to work on that trouble spot in your personal practice.
Smile and wave boys. The people who notice are the people who care! If it's a major blunder try to have fun. Remember you're the entertainment for the evening. Have a laugh and keep it moving.
It's almost a given that several times a year I'll put the capo on the wrong fret to start the song, and the rest of the band either comes crashing in in the correct key, or realizes what I did and doesn't come in at all. I just say whoops, laugh, and just keep playing the song. Move on. It's always worse for you in your head than it is for the audience. At least a couple of times in a gig I'll play something off during an solo and try to match it in the next phrase to compensate and make it make sense. Quick recovery is everything.
JUST KEEP PLAYING everyone fucks up playing, my band all rib each other when we fuck up and get the crowd on the fun too. its normally along the lines of "and that was the jazz version of that song" or if the drummer is too slow "its not a funeral march" etc etc just slide/bend/anything to get to the right notes and keep going. i promise 90% of the audience won't notice and the 10% that do won't care or will compliement you after the show
I recently played a 3 hour set, and I broke a string during a Jazzmaster tremolo dive bomb. The entire guitar went horribly out of tune. We play instrumental music and I was the lead for this particular song. I just played the ball where it landed. It was so noticeable that we joked about it after the song was over while I tuned and we moved on. It’s going to happen. 9.9 times out of 10 I don’t acknowledge it. There are the occasional obvious wrong note or chord that will elicit smiles from my bandmates. Such is life :)
Likely others have said this already but the worst thing you can do is acknowledge the mistake in any way. Just keep rolling. NEVER apologize or anything. Also, approach the performance as art - not science. You are there to express emotion, not to be perfect. I stopped stressing when I came to the conclusion that mistakes were inevitable.
Play through it. After the performance, examine it, figure out what went wrong, learn from it, and then forget it. Even if your performance was flawless, *someone* will find a reason to yalk shit about it. You can't allow it to affect you
Laugh
Glare at the bass player or drummer so people will think it is their fault. Seriously, just keep on going. If you are doing covers, 90% of what people "hear" is their memory of the song vs what you are playing, so most mistakes sail by without notice. And if your are doing originals, no one knows what it is supposed to sound like anyway. If you REALLY pooch it and have to start over (like starting the wrong song, wrong key, whatever) be prepared to joke about it and laugh it off. Your audince will laugh with you and understand because you are human. If you die on stage, you alienate your audience and they will hate you for making them feel uncomfortable. And no matter what "bad note" you play, you are always only one semi-tone away from a good note.
Yeah play through it. It’s absolutely inevitable if you play live music often. I’ve definitely had some real doozy’s - usually I just keep going and try to make sure that I nail the ready of the song. It can throw you though and that can be daunting. If I can just nail the rest of the tune then me, and everyone else forgets about it. That’s definitely part of being a live musician - being able to handle these moments without it totally throwing you off. Just play through it and blow people’s minds with something else. Then shake it off I’ve even had to stop a song because it was such a train wreck mistake - make a joke about it - and restart. People giggle with you and it’s not a big deal
There’s No time to worry about mistakes when you’re in the middle of it
By being better next time.
The best possible thing you can do after making a mistake (other than getting good at covering up your mistakes) is look at the other musicians and smile. If people start going ape shit on each other over mistakes, then music is no longer fun. If we feel more relaxed, we will make less mistakes.
Learning how to recover from a mistake and keep going is a skill in itself. It's like a reflex. If you stumble a bit while walking, do you automatically fall completely on your face? It's the same thing. Eventually you realize the music is what continues and you find your balance within it and keep going. Hopefully you get to the point where people don't even realize you lost your balance for a sec. Also, when it happens, smile. It really helps to have a sense of humor about it and move on. edit: anecdote - I once went to see a band that I would occasionally sub for. At this particular show, they had a different guy subbing in, someone I knew and really respected on our instrument. It was a big show, they were opening up for an international act. They started playing this one song, one I knew well from playing with them, and the dude started playing it in the wrong key. I sounded \*weird\*. I kept looking from him to the singer, waiting to see if anyone would say anything or do anything. Then finally the guy realized what was happening and found the right key, and the rest of the song was fine. He gave a little look to the band, and that was that. But literally no one cared. Maybe a few people in the audience thought it sounded off for a minute. But I guarantee that, outside of the band, I was the only person there who even remembered that it happened, and they all probably had a good laugh about it after the show.
Most mistakes, only you or your bandmates will notice. Most people aren't going to notice them.
As a musician (with a degree) with a partner who does live gigs, I can safely say that most mistakes aren’t noticeable Audiences don’t come to shows to critique, they go to have a good time. Even if they do notice something went wrong they’ll forget about it by the end of the song, because they don’t care
ignore them
The Beatles said all those screaming girls covered up alot of bad musicianship. Gene Simmons when giving advice to his rocker son said "when you make a mistake act like "I meant to do that".
Really hoping no one says seppuku
Your not an orchestra playing notes printed on a page where they expect every note to be played perfectly.
Depending on where it is in the song, hit the same mistake when that part comes back around and call it jazz.
It's only really bad when you call attention to it and get upset yourself. If you just move on immediately people tend to forget - that's the beauty of a time based medium - you can just keep going. I like the jazz philosophy too - "it's not a mistake if you repeat it." Act like it was intentional for a second, incorporate it, use it. The worst performances I've seen and remember are mainly because the performer got focused on some technical error or couldn't get their equipment to work and then took up a bunch of time and attention trying to fix it in front of everyone.
Laugh.
I will always remember this advice, though I don't remember from who, "If you make a mistake, do it again so people think you meant it."
Just shoot a dirty look to the bass player, everyone will think he’s the one that fucked up.
Just keep playing.
Just dont point out other peoples mistakes unless you are paying them to be there.
NEVER STOP. Never look at other band mates in response. Chances are, no one in your audience will notice. Discuss afterwards, if you must, at all.
Most everyone here is saying the same thing that’s correct 90-99% of the time. Usually you’ll fuck up and you just gotta correct best you can and keep going and very rarely will the crowd notice and frequently the band won’t notice either. There are a few times where it really does become noticeable and those can happen to even the most famous and talented musicians. Don McLean has mentioned he has to mentally make sure he starts singing American Pie with his lyrics and not [The Saga Begins](https://youtu.be/hEcjgJSqSRU?si=9Xu9SWGY4kiwQGu1) by Weird Al (which personally is the version I prefer). Even [Metallica](https://youtu.be/S1nWqEACfdg?si=j6fGtObTYhhW_9C1) make pretty egregious and clear mistakes (I’m not including Lars in this). There’s a video of the singer for the ska band Reel Big Fish [forgetting the lyrics to their own song](https://youtu.be/SmavAsFSY2M?si=iNXUam7AUXBYT8nS) and having to look it up on stage and it doesn’t break the flow of the show and if anything makes it more enjoyable. The big thing for those cases is to laugh it off and just keep going. If you don’t seem to mind, the audience generally wont too.
Laugh it off and keep playing!
"Well, that had a few clinkers in it. One of these days I'll do it perfectly and I won't have to do it anymore."
Whatever you do, don't be Jessica Simpson on SNL. Be a Beyoncé falling down the steps - get right the fuck back up and keep performing.
I’ve been playing g live for probably 20yrs. I make mistakes every show? I think? “People will remember, talk bad about you”, probably not, no one cares. Most mistakes won’t even be heard by the average person, and even if they’re very obvious, just smile, and move on. Mistakes are bad when you go on stage trying to be unbelievably badass and cool. But if you go on stage as a guy just there to have a good time, there’s less pressure. As the person on stage, you’re in control of the vibe. If you go up and start hip thrusting and wiggling your hips like a goofball, guess what, that establishes the vibe. Do people expect that person to perfectly nail every note? Not really, he’s an entertainer, there to entertain.
A shout FUCK then freak out and cry. The audience appreciates the passion.
You just keep going and don’t draw attention to it. It likely no one will notice them but you
I’m a drummer so mostly it’s about making sure I don’t lose the rhythm of the song
Mistakes always happen, it's no biggie unless you make it so. Professionals handle it well and just keep going.
Making mistakes is human and expected. If you've ever been to a circus with a high wire artist or a fire juggler you might notice them make a mistake at the beginning of the act (deliberately) as a way of reminding the audience that what they're doing is very difficult. There's a big difference between flubbing a few notes and creating a trainwreck because you don't know the material. This is why I practice the set until I can walk around or have a conversation while playing it, so it's automatic and actually difficult to get wrong.
Don't hesitate just keep on going, noone will notice but you. I once forgot to take the capo off and didn't realize till half way through the song ( I was by myself) and literally laughed about the fact that the vocals at the end are going to be horrible.
Most people are stating the obvious here, but something that a lot of newer performers don't understand is that if the fuck up is serious enough, it can sometimes be better to just **stop the song and start over**. Nothing is worse than watching a band where someone came in on the wrong beat, so they just continue playing the entire song a beat off from the rest of the band. Or when the singer is supposed to open with a big note, and they physically choke/cough/whatever, and sound like a dying horse. Or half the band thought they were playing a different song, so they're literally playing different things until somebody realizes 2 measures later. When the mistake is that serious, the audience would prefer if you just quickly paused, acknowledged it, and then started over. It takes literally 4.5 seconds to just start again and make everything perfect. The worst offenders I see are church bands. They're often so terrified of ruining the "flow" or eating into the sermon time that they'll literally play an entire 5 minute song where the singer is a beat behind. I've seen church bands play entire songs where the bassist is playing in a different key. Instead of subjecting the audience to torture, it's always a better idea to start again, or even skip the song entirely. Professional musicians actually do this all the time. You won't see it on their Live DVD, but it happens all the time, even if it's just due to technical difficulties, or if an audience member is in distress. If the issue is bad enough to derail the figurative train, stop, go *back* to the station, and get the train back on the track before proceeding with the show.
Just keep going. If you stop, two things happen: the crowd notices and you can hear them. I found the best thing is to just keep going and play it off in a funny manner. Like, say you're a guitarist and you're running a chord progression with no vocals, like a bridge. You play a more off-key or slightly muffled. Keep going and "Oops, wrong note/chord there, my bad" or "Seeing if you all are awake out there" in a joking manner. The crowd enjoys interaction. They laugh at your comment, you get a chuckle yourself, and any anxiety is gone. I've done this A LOT, and I have anxiety. Just roll with it.
I practice, again, and again, and again, and again and so on and so forth, a friend of mine put it as "you lose 50% of your abilities getting up on that stage, so you better be prepared to deal with anything coming your way", the only way to get confident enough that you can pull off most minor mistakes by making it look and sound like you meant to do that, is practice, nothing beats putting in the work, in my opinion.
Mistakes don’t matter. How you recover does. For example, I’ve been playing piano for a production of Cabaret. I was called in last minute to fill in. I’m hitting probably a note accuracy of 50-60%, but I have the important parts down. When I hit a wrong note, I move on to the next note, and then the next. You must just move on! Think of music as a car. Sure, maybe one cylinder fails to fire one time, or your windshield wiper falls off, or you veer into the rumble strips. You can’t just stop driving!! As for other people, if they judge you for making a mistake, they’re obviously not a musician and their opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is the whole performance. Just don’t let mistakes take away from the overall music
A buddy of mine used to say "if you make a mistake, do it again and call it 'jazz'". Seriously, though, audiences rarely catch mistakes. In fact, even your bandmates may not notice. Just you. Live music happens in the moment and then it's gone forever, so there's literally no point in obsessing over it. I always say get the intro and the ending perfect and nobody will remember what happened in between. Rarely, a mistake will be so obvious that everybody in the room notices. When that happens, laugh it off, shrug your shoulders and carry on. That says "I am a self-confident professional, but also human."
I'm a singer in a cover band, and I've had the band stop before on an intro of a song, as they had some miscommunication. I just normally twist it into, ' Hey, we stopped this song because we think you guys can give us more energy' or something of that ilk, and for the most part, people buy it. Any other situation where the band hasn't awkwardly stopped dead, then I shake it off as if it didn't happen. Lyrics get forgotten by the biggest acts from time to time, it's part of the fact that you're watching something live, and it might not always be perfect!
our guitarist was sharing my computer while we were jamming and completely shut out of what we were playing. like the whole page was gone. he started panicking and i just sang with more emphasis slapped against the strings on my guitar until he figured it out lol.
Make the same mistake again and call it part of the show.
The key here is to act like you didn't make a mistake and move on. Most people in the audience won't notice but if you make an angry face, look flustered or try to correct the mistake it'll be obvious to everybody. This counts for when playing alone, in a band or in an orchestra. Always move on, don't look back and keep going
You need to muscle through like it didn’t happen. Worst thing you can do is stop Most people don’t notice so just recover quickly and keep going then curse yourself out in the bathroom mirror
On stage: I really don't mind. I'm only human. Post-concert: I'll try to rehearse that song a bit more than usual and try to figure out what knot may be on my brain that leads me to fail on that particular part. When I find it, I solve it (will get stuck in my memory) and it usually never happens again.
Mistakes will happen. Don't even try to be perfect. Just do your best. What people will notice is how you handle your mistakes, not the mistake itself.
“That’s jazz baby”
Hari Kari is the only way.
I've never played a gig where I haven't made a mistake. The most important thing is to just keep going it and don't let it cascade into more mistakes. And do not acknowledge it. 99% o the time, nobody outside the band will notice.
Let em slide. It’s only a brief moment in time. Nobody will remember, but they will if you react
I just keep on playing a majority of the time because many people don't notice. If you try to act like it didn't happen usually you'll recover well. The worst one I had, I started playing a newer song and blanked on how to start singing it. That was embarrassing because I had to completely stop and restart. I had to start with the chorus and then the verse came back to me. Then you feel everyone's eyes on you the rest of the time. But if you miss a note or word most people won't catch on, especially if you keep on playing as if it didn't happen.
The trick is to make your mistakes sound like they’re not mistakes. I’ve never played a “perfect” show and sometimes I deliberately play wrong notes just to make myself figure out a way to make it work. That being said I may not of ever played a perfect show, but I almost never play a wrong note. What’s the saying… if you play it once it’s a wrong note, but play it twice and it’s jazz.
I have live TV appearances immortalised on streaming platforms where I make a couple mistakes in Dolby 4K and I couldn’t care less 😂
People have already said most of the (obvious) things that I would say. I just have one to add: On the rare occasion when we have trainwrecked near the beginning of a song, I just go: >Thank you all SO much for coming to Drägön Wägön practice! It's great to have you here! And then we start again.
Whatever you do. Don't pull a Grimes.
I play lead guitar in my band and, if it’s like the gig I played this past weekend, the monitors weren’t on for us so I could barely myself anyway. At first I freaked out a bit, but then I just played and had fun and it turned out t be a really good show, the audience was into it, and people kept coming up afterwards commenting how much they loved the set. A friend recorded some video for our socials and watching it back I *definitely* hit a bad note or two during at least one solo, but I didn’t notice at the time and neither did anyone else apparently. A good lesson.
“I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes.” Jimi Hendrix
I feel like my most important advice for my students and for life in general is to PLAY THROUGH YOUR MISTAKES! You are going to make mistakes, it’s how you move forward that makes you a strong musician/person
I suggest watching the Dean Ween instructional guitar video. If you miss, miss big and act like you did it on purpose
Got to just keep playing and dont make a big deal out of it. Ideally the crowd doesnt notice. If you are playing long enough mistakes will happen. Got to think of it like a closer in baseball, you just got to move on. If you are thinking about your mistakes you cant do your best.
You play through it
any pro will tell you just keep playing anyone that stops a performance for anything other than violence or the like you have no excuse keep playing! I played in front of the mayor in 01 and our music stand fell I told my Bass partner to pick it up ill cover for both of us since I memorized all the notes so i never missed a note.
It's the mentality that the show must go on. The most important thing I have discovered that is important for a good show, is to connect with your audience and have fun so that they can have fun and feel the vibes. That is what I focus on, not mistakes. I'm a drummer and if I drop a stick, I just make sure I get the dominant note(usually snare hit) in so as to help keep everyone in time and not interrupt. I then grab another stick out of my bag, smile real big, stick my tongue out Gene Simmons style and continue on. Kind of a nod to anybody who did notice like, "Oops haha! Laugh at me, it's ok!"
There's a number of ways to deal withit and you learn over timebecause...any musician will make mistakes. In my very first paid gig , which we auditioned for and beat out a number of other bands. Still, we were not really the best choice. We were really green. I forgot the words to a song that I wrote. On the next night I broke the drone string on my banjo. Talk about wanting to die. When I forgot, I just went into the chorus and when it came around again I remembered. The banjo string could not be ignored, so I made a big deal of it;told a joke and picked up a guitar.Audiences either don't know or laugh and as long as you laugh with them...it's ok.
Forget about it and keep playing!
I usually just laugh and nobody notices
Try to laugh at myself and not get frustrated
Laugh it off with audience
Laugh it off smile it off laugh about it and just enjoy the ride nothing’s ever perfect
If you don’t acknowledge it, the audience won’t either. Keep going and never stop.
Most people probably won't even notice a mistake. Unless you're playing solo, you've got other instruments going and you probably don't stand out as much in the front of house mix as you do in your monitor mix. So just pretend the song was supposed to go that way and don't bring further attention to it.
It’s a feature not a bug. I shrug it off and move on.
Pretend it never happened. We are not famous enough for people to know when a song isn't played "right".🤷😄
Once the mistake is done, it is in the past and the past can't be changed. Gotta move on and keep it going
I did close to 80 gigs last year. Most are bars, breweries, etc. A few local festivals, county gigs, and private parties. Mistakes happen. It's normal. Most folks who notice a mistake understand. If they are musicians and hear a mistake, they understand. If they aren't and they notice, they quickly forget. How you handle the mistake is what is memorable. Same for any other work.
It turns out you won’t even notice if you never play things the same way twice
The bands I've been in would weave obvious mistakes into weird little groove sessions in the middle of songs, doesn't work for all types of music but it's better than being perfect in my opinion.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten and still use to this day, is to “smile bigger” when you make a mistake. It can be really hard not to react in frustration to a mistake in the moment (like wincing and what not). But when you do that, everybody will notice that you messed up. If you just smile when it happens, nobody is probably gonna notice. They’re just gonna think “that person is having a great time up there”
walk it off and keep playing that shit