Noa Kageyama: Managing Nerves and Shrinking the Gap Between Practice and Performance

August 21, 2025, 3:49 PM · When Noa Kageyama was a young violinist, he couldn't figure out why his performances never seemed to go as well on stage as they did in the practice room.

"I would have these random good days on stage," he said. But most were not-so-good, and "some were catastrophically, disastrously bad!"

Kageyama had quite a journey - from studying as a small child with Shinichi Suzuki in Japan, practicing daily (truly) throughout childhood to reaching the highest levels at Juilliard and beyond, performing in top ensembles and as a soloist. But he was dogged by that inconsistency on stage.

Performance Psychologist Noa Kageyama. Photo by Violinist.com.

Things changed when he met sports psychologist Don Greene, whose class on “Performance Enhancement for Musicians” at Juilliard inspired Kageyama to pursue a doctoral degree in psychology at Indiana University.

By now Kageyama, has become a leading expert on the link between practice and performance, teaching Performance Psychology at Juilliard and helping musicians with his well-respected Bulletproof Musician podcast, blog, courses and coaching programs.

In June he shared his wisdom with participants at the Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at Juilliard with a series of classes aimed at "Managing Nerves Effectively" and "Shrinking the Gap Between Practice and Performance." Here are some highlights from his lectures.

Managing Nerves Effectively

It's easy to blame nerves when your performance doesn't go well, but that's not always the direct culprit. "When you mis-diagnose the problem, you'll probably mis-diagnose the solution," Kageyama said, quoting his graduate school advisor, the family psychologist Tom Sexton.

In fact, anxiety actually should be somewhere between low and high for a good performance - and this is different for different people. A good performance "has nothing to do with comfort." You may feel anxiety while giving a great performance.

The thing we call "nerves" is a complicated mix of responses to stress, and understanding those responses is key in finding your individual "solution."

The body and mind each have their own set of reactions to the stress of a performance, Kageyama said, and they also affect the performance in a different ways.

With physical or "somatic" anxiety, we feel things like a shaky bow, sweaty or clammy hands, tension, cold extremities, "butterflies" in the stomach. That is because our body reacts to stress with muscle tension, constricted blood vessels, elevated heart rate, and breathing changes. In some cases, the "non essentials" - like digestion - can go offline temporarily. Senses may also be enhanced, which can cause visual changes (possibly making the music blurry) or make one more attuned to sounds.

The presence of physical stress symptoms, though potentially uncomfortable, are not necessarily predictive of performance - you can still have a successful performance while coping with a degree of physical stress.

However, the presence of mental stress symptoms has proven in studies to be more predictive of performance success vs. failure. There is no "Goldilocks zone" for mental anxiety during a performance - less mental anxiety is simply better.

What does mental anxiety look like? For the performer, it involves things like worry, negative self-talk, or blanking out. Physically speaking it means that your attention is more attuned to threats; you might start overthinking, consciously monitoring things and over-controlling things that are normally automatic.

"If you can manage the mental, the physical will generally come along for the ride," Kageyama said.

So how do you do that?

One way is to have a pre-performance routine.

"Most folks have one, even if it's not conscious," he said. It doesn't actually matter what the routine is, but "the consistency of the routine does seem to matter," Kageyama said.

Ingredients for a good routine include both physical and mental activities. Simply having a routine, however, does not make it effective. You actually have to practice the routine.

Kageyama had the participants at Starling-DeLay get out their violins and scatter across the room. Everyone was to think of something to play, then practice getting started using the following pre-performance routine:

Breath - focus on the sound and feel of the air
Release tension in upper and lower body
Hear the first phrase of the music in your mind
Hear the first note in your mind
Remember/imagine how it feels to play the piece - on a good day
Start the piece

When under performance pressure, it also helps to interpret your feelings in a positive way. One study had a group of people literally say "I'm feeling anxious" while another group said, "I'm feeling excited" before singing Karaoke. It's not surprising that "I'm excited" turned out to be the better mantra!

Kageyama also encouraged "stress inoculation," that is putting yourself under performance pressure more often. But he warned that simply "performing more" is not enough.

"If we simply perform more with no additional tools to cope with the stress, we might have more negative performance experiences," he said. It's important to manufacture positive performance experiences.

So how do you do that?

Kageyama described a kind of "pressure hierarchy": on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 would be "mildly uncomfortable" and 10 would be "very uncomfortable." For example, a "1" might be practicing with the door open so your Mom or roommate or neighbor can hear. You might progress to playing for family or roommates, then playing at a nursing home, busking at the Farmer's Market, playing at church.... You don't throw yourself into "audition for the New York Philharmonic" first thing.

And when you are working on performing under pressure, be sure that you are testing your "skill," not your "self." If you are not entirely successful, it simply means you need more work on your skill at performing, not that you have failed as a person.

Shrinking the Gap Between Practice and Performance

"Why can't I play as well in performance, as I do in the practice room?" Many people find themselves in that situation, and here is one key reason:

"We're not very good at knowing if what are doing in the practice room is leading to good learning," Kageyama said. "When we feel like practice is easy and we are improving, the amount we are actually learning and retaining might be poor." How much are you "forgetting" between practice sessions?

Interleaved Practice

Often we practice by playing something until we "get it right," then moving on. However, that's not how performance works - you don't get multiple do-overs to "get it right," you need to nail it the first time. So how do you practice in a way that you can work on "the first time"?

Studies suggest that using random or "interleaved" practice can help - though this style of practicing can feel less comfortable (and as Kageyama said - "generally when we do things this way our parents will think we've lost our minds!"). In this style of practicing you would, for example, choose three things to practice, then set a timer and practice only 5 minutes on one, then switch to another. For example, five minutes of scales, then etude, then back to scale, then on to your piece, scale again - this sort of bakes in the "forgetting," so that when you go back to something it's like the "first time."

"This forces you to move on before you feel ready - it gives you permission to move on before you have gotten it," Kageyama said. It creates a little more urgency for solving the problems, and it means you have to be more organized in your goals.

Of course, "this will not feel as good, in the moment," Kageyama said. "The net gain will be more, but you won't know it until tomorrow."

Dialing it up to 11

Kageyama also talked about really going for it, dialing it up not just to 10, but to 11 (a reference from Spinal Tap!). He had us try this with our violins, to pick a piece, and then also pick an aspect of it - dynamics, or articulation, etc. First play it normal, then "dial it up to 11," that is, exaggerate. It might feel silly, but when we really go for it, "it helps you identify what is going to go wrong." Things really have to be in place, if you are going to dial it all the way up to 11!

Psychologic Halloweenism

Pretending to be someone else can help you gain freedom in performance. Kageyama then had us play a game - try imitating a famous violinist. In fact, TwoSet violin has a great video where they do just that, with their guest friend Ray Chen. For our purposes, Kageyama had a volunteer - (Susie, she was a good sport and did a great job!) and she was to play the first line of a concerto - first like Itzhak Perlman, then like Gil Shaham.

"If you do this with your students, they are immediately freed to do something else," Kageyama said. Of course, "You might find that some students have no concept of other people's playing," and if that is so, then there is a learning opportunity.

It is helpful to have an audience for this, maybe to even have them guess who you are imitating.

The problem with automaticity

We use different parts of our brains for learning (practicing) and for performing. This is true in any task - we learn something, then it becomes automatic - we don't think in the same way about automatic tasks (for which we use the cerebellum) as we do for tasks we are still learning (for which we use the pre-frontal cortex of the brain).

We want that automaticity for performing, but the problem is this leaves us a little too much "cognitive bandwidth" in the brain - for worry and second-guessing. Thus "you need to find ways to monopolize your attentional resources," Kageyama said.

How to do that? You can focus on your collaborator(s) or the conductor, or you can focus on what you want to hear - sing internally. You can trying literally singing, humming or vocalizing while playing, but you probably don't want to do that in performance. In performance you will want to "audiate," or hear the music in your mind. Kageyama suggested imagining performing for "deaf psychics," that is an audience who can only hear what is in your head at that moment.

Recording yourself can also be very helpful, because this allows you to delegate the self-monitoring to "future you." You can let go and simply perform, and you can look at any mistakes or problems later, when you look at your recording. Kageyama suggested not just recording when you are performance-ready, but also doing so months before. It can be part of a practice routine - even try recording right after warming up, before actually practicing your piece.

"This will not be easy on your ego," he said, "but it will tell you what you need to practice!"

To check out Kageyama's thought-provoking work on managing nerves and practicing effectively for performance, visit his website at Bulletproof Musician, where you can also find his podcasts and blogs, as well as other courses and individual training that he offers.

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Rupert Guenther

August 25, 2025 at 02:33 AM · I loved reading about the breathing and relaxation here, and also the concept of the interleaved practice style as positive steps musicians can take away and use right away for better wellbeing. My hope for classical music is that sometime in the future musicians can perform for their audiences feeling as relaxed, at home, and enthused as they are when showing photos of their most recent holiday to family and friends - in the spirit of sharing what we love with others - without need for any mind games in order to be relaxed and present. Best wishes, Rupert

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Noa Kageyama: Managing Nerves and Shrinking the Gap Between Practice and Performance

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