Jeanine R Barrett Piano Studio, 708 Elm Street E, Saint Joseph, MN (2026)

11/14/2025

Ensemble Festival was last weekend. Our studio had 10 piano duets on stage. 👏🏻 Pictured: Roger performing two duets.

06/01/2025

Honors concert 2025

06/01/2025

10/29/2024

Halloween Musicale 2024

08/05/2024

I remember my teacher repeatedly reminding me to not make faces when I made mistakes on stage.

I eventually stopped doing this. But I always wondered…how big a deal is this really?

A 2017 study (Waddell & Williamon) recruited 53 musicians and 52 non-musicians to serve as audience members, and asked each group to watch and evaluate video of the same performance - but with a few modifications to each video.

Two of the groups saw videos in which the pianist stops playing and fumbles around for a moment before resuming. It’s an obvious enough mistake that even non-musicians noticed that something went wrong.

In one version of the video, the pianist makes a face, shakes his head, and looks frustrated.

In another version of the video, he has no reaction to the mistake at all.

So…how would this affect the audience members’ impressions of the performance?

To find out, the researchers used a continuous rating system. Where listeners rated the performance from the beginning and made adjustments as their impression changed.

The mistake led to a drop in performance rating of ~7 points when the pianist made no face.

But it led to a ~19 point drop when he did make a face!

Also, when the pianist made no face, his final score was pretty much the same as his performance score before making the mistake.

As in, the audience seemed to forgive/forget the mistake, and didn’t penalize him.

However, when he did make a face, his final score was significantly lower than his score prior to the mistake.

It’s as if the mistake stuck in the listeners’ minds more deeply, and was reflected in a lower overall score.

So…if your teacher ever gave you the same advice that mine gave me, it’s because they are totally right!

An audience is often more forgiving than we might expect – so long as we can keep our face from ruining the moment for them!

Get all the nerdy details here: https://bulletproofmusician.com/why-every-performer-needs-a-good-poker-face/