Tag: nerves

Blowing Performance Nerves Out of The Water! My Top Five Tips

Nicole Neal3 Comments

Well, there’s only really one real sure fire way of blowing your nerves out of the water, and that’s to get lots of performance in. Do it over and over and over again. Normalising it, normalising the activity of getting up in front of others and laying your soul bare (or so it feels like sometimes!) to those that will listen. The more you do of something (generally) the easier it becomes and the more natural it becomes too.

Do you remember when you first learnt to drive a car, or ride a bicycle, or any other new skill in fact? It was really exciting right?! New possibilities, new movements, new ways of doing things. All very positive. Sure it probably felt a little clunky and more than a little bit awkward at times too, but you knew it was all adding up to the experience of learning to drive (or whatever skill you’ve imagined here!). And then soon enough you’re driving without really thinking about it – well, you’re obviously thinking otherwise it would be a rather dangerous activity, but you know what I mean. It just becomes “situation normal”. Something you can do every day with ease.

Well, the same is true for performance. The more you can get yourself out there, get yourself “match fit”, and used to playing in front of others instead of to the cat or the blank wall then the more normal it will feel. The more it will begin to feel like you’re driving the car instead of it driving you.

So what happens in the meantime whilst you’re clocking up the driving hours?

There are a number of things you can do to help manage and work with your nerves….. Here are my top five tips of the moment*:

(1) Realise that you absolutely, 100% choice about the way you feel about a situation.

No one makes you feel nervous, excited, happy, sad, joyous or poo-your-pants scared. These reactions are all learnt by us in our formative (and sometimes not so formative) years, and are adapted as strategies that we then run unconsciously, without even thinking about it. By drawing your attention to that fact, and to the unconscious strategies you might be running – by raising your awareness of how your mind and body are operating, to follow on from a recent blog post on here – you can begin to change how you react to certain situations.

(2) Think of that nervous, slightly fluttery tummy feeling as “excitement” rather than nerves.

Because you love to play guitar, right?! Or you probably wouldn’t be reading this, or care about getting out there and playing for or with others? So give this a go. Next time you’re about to step up and you get that kind of jittery feeling tell yourself that you’re just very excited – excited to be playing your guitar, excited to get to play it for others, excited to share the awesomeness that you’ve been working on and excited to cut loose and get some more experience under the belt! Yeah!

(3) Get back down into your body!

Yep, that sounds weird doesn’t it?! What I mean to say is that, when we’re very nervous we tend to get all up inside our own heads. Thinking of all sorts of different scenarios. What ifs. Can Is. And so on. This takes us away from (a) being aware of what our body is doing, how we’re holding it and (b) reduces our body’s availability to play, to move as freely as possible to make the music and translate our movements into music. I know for sure that when I relax my torso my tone actually changes, it’s like my body allows the guitar to resonate with a greater ease, so getting out of my head and into my body is very important.

(4) Focus your attention on something in your music. For me I find it really helps to really hone my concentration in on two things – the tone quality I’m creating and my sense of musicality. If my conscious brain is actively tasked with these two things it finds it very difficult to have any other kinds of thoughts, let alone those potentially destructive negative thoughts.

(5) Think into the future and how fantastic you’ll feel five minutes after your performance. Yes, there is work to be done, but imagine how you’re going to feel immediately after you’ve finished! Regardless of the outcome, and any lessons to be learnt or improvements to be made or otherwise, I’ll bet you’ll feel fantastic. And you’ll have another live lesson, another experience from which to learn.

*bearing in mind that I’m totally open to learning new things, and more than happy for these to get replaced by more effective methods. These are what work for me currently.

Adult Students Getting Into Performance – Part One: Argh! I’m scared! What do I do?! Dealing with anxiety

Nicole NealLeave a comment

This post is one in a series of posts designed to assist adult students getting into performance for the first time or after a bit of a break, although the principles and ideas are pretty much applicable to any performer.

 

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I, of all people, know what it is like to be an adult student of the guitar (i.e. not necessarily a young whippersnapper coming up through the Conservatory system) and facing performance for the first time in a very long time….It’s bloody scary!

 

Although I’d had quite some training in the performing arts (dance as well as music) throughout my youth, when I came back to my classical guitar studies some time in my mid-ish twenties (I’m kind of giving my age away now!) the idea of performing again at once excited me (getting to share my rekindled passion with others again) and bloody scared the pants off me! 

 

 

What if I sounded terrible? What if I couldn’t do it? What if I stuffed up? What if people hated it and I should really just forget this idea of picking up the guitar properly again? What if I forgot what I should be playing? What if I lost my place in the music?

 

There were some serious levels of anxiety and nerves there.

 

Over the last five years or so, however, I have tried and tested numerous techniques for dealing with that anxiety. Some of them have worked really well for me and I still use them today; some have worked less well for me and I have consigned to the “errrr, not quite for me” bin.

 

There are a heap of things I could share with you about dealing with performance anxiety, but wanted to share some without turning this into a book of Ben Hur proportions. So I have condensed down some crucial thoughts and ideas on techniques that have been more successful for me.

 

What is making you anxious?

Can you identify what is the most prominent or over-riding cause of your anxiety? 

Recognising the answer to this question can help you address it. 

 

One big issue for a lot of people is worrying about “stuffing up”. However, that in itself is not really a considerable issue, as most people, myself included, are pretty happy playing along in their lounge room or bedroom when we fluff a note or two.  “Ah well”, we say to ourselves, “no great shakes”, and keep on playing.

 

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Most often the key source of anxiety related to “stuffing up” is the embarrassment factor and worrying about what people might think of you. We don’t want to look or sound bad in front of our audience. We don’t want them to judge us badly.

 

Have a think on these:

 

  •  So you fluff a note or two – big deal! It’s the whole piece that counts. You don’t tend to look at every single brushstroke of a luscious Monet landscape; you admire the image as a whole. Similarly, I’ll bet your performance of the whole is gorgeous and fantastic and you! In five minutes time no one will even have remembered any fluffs or stumbles (or what you think is a stumble or fluff…).

 

  •  Chances are, the mistake is super-amplified in your own mind; I’ll bet you it doesn’t sound nearly as bad as you think it sounds.

 

  •  Most people probably won’t even have recognized that you made a little fluff. Just don’t screw your face up and start swearing! Just tell yourself that’s how it sounds.

 

  •  And even if they do recognize a little fluff, so what?! Your audience are hardly likely to say to you during or after the performance “oh my god, you so stuffed up that section!” are they?

 

  •  If it were you listening to someone in your position performing, you enjoy listening to the whole thing. As a listener you’re probably not really worried at all about a few glitches here and there are you?

 

  •  What is the absolute worst thing that could happen if you stuff up? Are you going to die? Are you going to be injured? Possibly not.

 

It’s all about our poor old ancient brains!

All this performance anxiety stuff we feel comes from a primeval part of our brain – the amygdala – which produces a fight or flight or response in us. 

 

Now that was a pretty useful self-preservation tool back in day when we went out hunting for our dinner and had to face-off with potentially deadly prey or protect ourselves from predation from a massive large bear, for example.

 

Less useful when faced with performing on the guitar in front of live human beings.

 

It makes us feel butterflies in the tummy, sweaty, shaky, blushing and so on.

 

Being aware that this response is our “reptilian” brain, and not our logical “human” brain can help make sense of the feelings. By being aware of anxiety’s cause and accepting it helps to better control it.

 

Put the control back to your logical brain and remind yourself you’ve played the piece numerous times, you’re well practiced and you love to play it.

 

 

Accept your anxiety and nervousness

It is not a bad thing to be nervous or anxious. It is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of or something you need to try and hide. How can it be when it is programmed into every single one of us?!

 

Everyone feels it to a greater or lesser degree. A lot of professional performers have learnt to harness the energy and channel it into their performance.

 

Simply give yourself permission to be nervous; accept that it is there. Blocking it out is not the way forward! I do this by actually saying out loud to myself “yes, I feel slightly nervous – hello my old friend- and that is ok”. You might feel a bit of a banana saying that to yourself, but I find it helps me to accept those feelings.


 

Your audience is on your side

Unless you’re performing at a vitriolic meeting of Live Music Haters Anonymous, remember that the audience is most definitely in your side. 100%. 

 

We like to see people succeed. Especially those that are stepping up to the plate for the first time, or after a bit of a hiatus.

 

Think about it again from the perspective of you in the audience – you’re not sitting there to make harsh judgements, or otherwise, on players are you? You’re there to listen, to learn, to experience live music, to support, to enjoy. Well, that’s what your audience are there for too.


 

Trust Yourself

How long have you been practicing and playing your piece or pieces? Chances are it has been a reasonable amount of time, in that you feel you can play it reasonably well. It flows, it moves along, you really enjoy playing it. We’ll come to the subject of piece selection in another blog post.

 

Trust in yourself that you can play the music. You know you can and you’ve proved it to yourself countless times.

 

And remember that your interpretation or way of playing something is just as valid as anyone else’s. It doesn’t really matter what others think about your interpretation. How you play it is your unique style. That’s what ultimately makes it “good” and a heartfelt performance.

 

 

We are all different and act and behave in different ways so you may find different techniques work better for you than others. There is no silver bullet to dealing with performance anxiety; its a process of discovery about what works for you personally.

 

 

Before I sign off, there’s one final note to leave this post with.

 

You do tend to achieve what you focus on. In spite of all this talk above of fluffed notes and so on, put your energies and focus on the shape, character and musicality of the piece/s you’re playing – and most importantly focus on enjoying yourself and having fun! This is what you love to do right? Don’t let a bit of anxiety get in the way of a good time!