One’s good. One’s bad.
Before their first concerts last week, I drew on dry erase boards the word Autopilot then added a red circle with a line across it. NO AUTOPILOT.
Autopilot in performance is a dangerous situation. When you’re on autopilot, you’re not reacting to the information coming to you, and you risk making mistakes either through not reaction or by missing something you don’t know as well as you think you do.
On the other hand, there are situations when you aren’t getting the information you need. The acoustics are different and you can’t hear what you’re used to hearing. (Or the stage monitors are on help when you’re singing on mic! That’s what happened to Shades of Blue.) In that case, you need to rely on muscle memory, which is related but distinct.
With muscle memory, you are actively doing what you know how to do, even if your ears aren’t giving you the confirmation feedback you desire. You are still actively engaged – not on autopilot! – but you are trusting the reliability of your practice to inform your performance. Even in situations when everything is going well, muscle memory can make your performance better, by freeing up your higher thinking to focus on the finer points of the performance.
Muscle memory can get you out of a lot of tight spots in performance. Autopilot can get you into them.