{"id":7063,"date":"2017-04-24T21:35:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T04:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=7063"},"modified":"2017-04-24T21:35:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T04:35:28","slug":"getting-over-your-stage-fright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/getting-over-your-stage-fright\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Over Your Stage Fright…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost everyone goes through it at some point… you’re about to get up and play with a band, or maybe you’re just going to play a song for your family – and it happens.<\/p>\n

Your palms start sweating, you get nervous, your heart starts racing and you would swear that this thing in your hands is called a guitar – yet it feels about as comfortable as a boat oar right now!<\/p>\n

So how do you overcome what is, for many people, a fear literally worse than death (in studies, people have actually said they are more afraid of public speaking than death – and playing guitar has to be worse than speaking, right?)<\/p>\n

Turns out, we have an expert among us. One of your fellow BGU’ers (Elio on the forum) works with undergraduate students at CSUN (California State University, Northridge if I’m not mistaken) and graduate students at Pepperdine on, among other things, how to give good presentations and deal with their stagefright.<\/p>\n

Elio was kind enough to share some\u00a0fantastic tips with me that I’ve edited slightly below based on my experience with music as opposed to speaking (though they aren’t as different as you might think!)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Make sure you are physically comfortable beforehand. Have a light snack to level your blood sugar, take a bathroom break beforehand, stay hydrated. If you are singing or speaking, don\u2019t drink a lot of carbonated beverages. A lot of us like to have an adult beverage to calm the nerves… and while one little drink may help calm you down, resist the urge to have any more. And if you can, walk around a couple of minutes before you go up to get the blood flowing.<\/li>\n
  2. Remember to breathe. A common stress response is to begin taking short, shallow breaths, which only exacerbates the sense of breathlessness and anxiety. Remember to take regular, full breaths. I’ve actually gotten light headed after a solo because I’ve held my breath and didn’t realize it!<\/li>\n
  3. Even if you are nervous, try not to behave<\/em> as though you are. Looking\/acting visibly nervous will end up reinforcing and escalating the feeling, and ultimately the audience will sense it.\u00a0In other words, “fake it til you make it.”<\/li>\n
  4. Accept that there will be anxiety. If your definition of success is that you will not be at all anxious, that is an unreasonable expectation. The key is to manage the anxiety and channel the energy into what you are passionate about sharing with the audience. Make that the focus of your attention rather than nervousness.<\/li>\n
  5. Assess your physical environment in advance. Surprises are always bad and stress-inducing, so the objective is to minimize or eliminate surprises.\u00a0Try to know what amp you’ll use, which side of the stage you’ll be on, how you’ll get to the stage, what you’ll need to do in order to tune up. All of those little things can help reduce the possibility of surprises.<\/li>\n
  6. When you are nervous, it’s typical to assume the worst about what the audience is thinking. It\u2019s like thinking you are getting the silent treatment from a significant other. You tend to assume the worst until you actually talk about it, you find they had a bad day at work and it isn\u2019t about you, and then everyone feels better. But trying to ignore the audience almost always makes it much worse. Rather than ignoring them, keep in mind that the audience wants you to like you, so give them a smile or a friendly wave or some simple gesture that they can easily reciprocate. That little bit of positive feedback to get you going will go a long way.<\/li>\n
  7. Make eye contact with the audience immediately, and re-establish it periodically throughout in order to maintain an interpersonal connection to them. Try to avoid staring at your fretboard or sheet music as a crutch.\u00a0A good technique is to pick out a few friendly faces and then periodically cycle through, making eye contact with each one individually.<\/li>\n
  8. Smile and acknowledge the applause after a solo. Not just for your ego, but to continue the interpersonal interaction with the audience. The more you and the audience exchange eye contact, comments, applause, quips, or whatever, the less anxiety you will feel. Acknowledging the applause also makes the experience more fun and enjoyable, which is the ultimate objective.<\/li>\n
  9. Anxiety will cause you to speed things up and go faster than you normally would. Take a deep breath and, if you are counting the band in, imagine the song in your mind as you would like to hear it – NOT as you intend to play it. Count the song in at that tempo, as if you were just counting along with the song on a radio.<\/li>\n
  10. Interact with those on the stage with you. Human interaction with friendly people always helps dissipate anxiety and nervousness, especially when those people want to you to succeed and have fun. It also sends a positive vibe to the audience, who will be less likely to sense your nervousness. Try making eye contact, facing other band members during their solos, trading a lick or two, etc.<\/li>\n
  11. When things get really bad, what you are doing is not working so you need to change something, anything. Sometimes, just taking a couple of steps, slowing down a bit, looking at someone, or changing position will be enough. Often, just a small physical change is needed to change the dynamics.\u00a0If you stop playing and reset yourself, the band will carry on just fine without you for a bar or two, even if it’s in the middle of your solo. Don’t be shy about taking your time.<\/li>\n
  12. Never apologize to your audience or the band ahead of time (unless maybe you fall off the stage and into someone\u2019s lap). I have a lot of students who actually start off a presentation by apologizing. Most of the time, they sound perfectly fine, but by apologizing they are drawing more attention to their anxiety and reinforcing their lack of self-confidence.<\/li>\n
  13. Don’t be so hard on yourself… accept who you are, your strengths, limitations, and what you can do in front of an audience. If you are there, it is because your level of performance is up for the task. Get used to seeing and hearing yourself in terms of your voice, playing style, and mannerisms. This usually means watching yourself on video and not cringing. If you watch and cringe, it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that you aren\u2019t good enough, it means you haven\u2019t accepted yourself. If others think that you are good enough, you just need to accept what you look and sound like. Watch objectively and look for the positive things that you like, and try to dispassionately find things that you can improve without being too hard on yourself.<\/li>\n
  14. Set reasonable objectives based on your ability. If you’re a beginner trying to play “Pride And Joy” you’re pretty much setting yourself up to fail. Your audience will enjoy it more, and you’ll enjoy it more if you play something that is within your grasp and play it well instead of reaching too far.<\/li>\n
  15. Some people find they do better playing a “completely scripted” solo, and some people find they prefer improvising something or maybe just having a roadmap in mind, but not the particular notes and phrases. It doesn’t matter which type of person you are, it matters that you find out. So try approaching your solos each way and maybe video the experience so you can look back on them and see which one you prefer.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In a nutshell, be as healthy and comfortable as you can be, and remember that the audience wants<\/em> to like you (that was the big tip for me, personally.) If you can keep the songs within your abilities as a player and learn to accept that you will be nervous but it will be OK, you’ll probably have a great time.<\/p>\n

    And remember to soak up the applause when it is over. It’s a great feeling and you really do want to enjoy it for a moment.<\/p>\n

    Thanks again to Elio for this list and if you have any other suggestions or comments leave them below for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Almost everyone goes through it at some point… you’re about to get up and play with a band, or maybe you’re just going to play a song for your family – and it happens. Your palms start sweating, you get nervous, your heart starts racing and you would swear that this thing in your hands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7065,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7063\/revisions\/7065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}