Ready, Fire, Aim
By Philip Johnston

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Pilots don't just jump into a plane and then take off. There's a whole lot of checking to be done first - if anything is not quite right they want to know about it before they are cruising at 30,000 feet.

When you are giving a performance, there are things that you want to check before you start too. Because once you have played that first note, it's too late.

How fast should this piece go? Have you remembered to subtract a little for adrenaline? What was your plan for the dynamics? Was there anything in particular that your teacher wanted you to remember? Weren't you supposed to start this piece just as quietly as you can? 

Ooops. If you have already started the piece forte before you thought of any of this, your performance is in trouble already.

What would be ideal would be to have a magic remote control - one that would let you pause an audience the way you pause a VCR. While they are paused, you could play the first couple of bars of the piece, test things out, then unpause the audience and start properly.

The remote control is impossible, but the little test play just described is not. You just do it in your head before you start.

So if you see concert artists pause before they begin, it's not just for show. There's a lot of things to think about. It gives them a chance to "ready-aim-fire", rather than "ready-fire-aim".