the focus on you. how do you handle the pressure?

[Norbert Dengler]

everybody knows it: what works flawless at home, gets messed up in a bandstand situation. are there any tricks or tips to handle this?

[Herb Steiner]

Are you talking about "stage fright?" Or simply playing with other musicians in a casual, no-audience situation?

[Norbert Dengler]

hi herb, I mean, you practice hard, have your solo down at home and when you're on stage you get nervous and mess things up, you normally won't. yes, kind of stage fright

[Ron Hogan]

Thats called the "red light" syndrome. When the red light comes on in the studio saying the recording is on and live.

I've often wondered about this;

https://bulletproofmusician.com

[Eric Philippsen]

This happens to me a lot. It's not stage fright or jitters, at least for me.

What it is is often due to the way we learn. At home you're trying to concentrate solely on the notes, phrasing, etc. of the lick, tune or whatever. Your mind is, too, but it's also linking that with the environment you're in. Put another way, your mind is saying to itself, "Ok, I'm learning this in this quiet setting he calls his practice area." Then you go to the gig and flub it. That's because your mind said, "Umm, I'm kinda confused here. Where's the other side of the equation? Where's the practice area that's supposed to go with these notes?"

What to do? Try an simulate the gig environment at home with backing tracks. And/or play the lick/tune over and over. Eventually the mind says, "Ok, I get it. These notes I'm learning have nothing to do with this here place I'm learning them in."

[Jim Cohen]

Try an simulate the gig environment at home with backing tracks. And/or play the lick/tune over and over. Eventually the mind says, "Ok, I get it. These notes I'm learning have nothing to do with this here place I'm learning them in."

There's an old saying that goes: "The amateur practices until he gets it right. The professional practices until he can't get it wrong."

There's also the story attributed to Pavarotti who was giving a master class and the student who was about to sing a beloved aria said to him, "Oh maestro, I love this aria so much. I must have sung it fifty times."

To which the maestro allegedly responded: "Fifty times? FIFTY times? You need to sing this FIVE HUNDRED TIMES!"

(YMMV.)

[Tony Prior]

Norbert, you didn't say how long you have been playing.

Typically this may be related to thinking we are prepared but in reality we are not quite there yet. If we are just practicing the same licks or phrases 100% of the time without really understanding how the dots are connected , then yeh we can make a huge boo boo in a hurry and loose our confidence right away. One note comes out wrong and the whole thing goes down the drain. We have probably all been there, I know I have.

The solve to this syndrome is knowing how our phrases are constructed and where they come from on the fret board. SEAT TIME. If we miss a STOCK note or two, who cares. We replace them with a couple of others ! But we can only do this with an understanding of the fret board and how those phrases come to be. We play"around" the stock phrase that we initially intended to play.

Being well rehearsed is a very big part of this but equally important is knowing how phrases are constructed so if indeed we miss a note here and there, we just add a few and make a slight change to the phrase. Most times nobody even knows but you !

It all just comes with time.

[Jeffrey McFadden]

...Most times nobody even knows but you ! ...

I remember the "three percent" rule:
If you make a mistake, 97% of the audience won't notice it.
Of the three percent who notice it, 97% won't say anything.
The three percent, of three percent, who say something are jerks and they don't count.

--jeff

[Pete Burak]

It has alot to do with arming yourself with this mindset of... "Total confidence, and the skill to back it up".
My mileage varies

[Richard Alderson]

I would say to record one of your band performances (with your cellphone or other simple recording device). Then play along and practice to the recording of your band at home, as much as needed or that time will allow for. That way you will always be practicing at their pace, with their nuances, with their idiosyncrasies. The set list will even be in the same order generally, and you re-create the whole situation at home, not just a lick or a phrase.

[Norbert Dengler]

I remember the "three percent" rule:
If you make a mistake, 97% of the audience won't notice it.
Of the three percent who notice it, 97% won't say anything.
The three percent, of three percent, who say something are jerks and they don't count.



good thoughts guys, I think its important to really know the fretboard as being said. I play for about 10 years now and have always been lazy about music theory... I play that thing mainly by instinct and sometimes fail. other times it works good...

[Jerry Overstreet]

Something else that happens, especially with groups that aren't all that professional, is the rhythm section rushes the tempo so much that you can't play the proper nice phrases and licks that you've worked on so hard. Shuffles like The Other Woman or My Shoes Keep Walking... either they have forgotten that these tunes weren't all that fast, or they just want to do it their way.

This is no fault of your own, and it happens a lot from my experience. This leaves you with a conundrum of whether to try and fit all those things in at breakneck speed or completely abandon it all and just fight for your musical life to get through it the best you can. Very frustrating and annoying being forced to adapt like that.

Besides that, you have the other band members, the audience, the stage etc., so your environment has changed from your practice room. All this makes a big difference.

[Fred Treece]

There's an old saying that goes: "The amateur practices until he gets it right. The professional practices until he can't get it wrong."

That’s a good one. And what Tony said about learning the instrument to build confidence in addition to learning songs and licks - definitely.

I have often fallen into the trap of practicing something a little beyond my technical abiliity, (even though it is well within my musical understanding) and thinking I can use it on a gig.

In the heat of battle, and with 50 other songs to manage in one night, I have learned that I will only be able to execute what is already in my technical DNA. It doesn’t matter that I have practiced it with backing tracks. As Jim’s quote implies, if it is something I have just “learned” how to do, it is probably not ready for prime time.

So I take whatever that thing was that I was practicing and had no hope of muscle-remembering on the gig, and log it on to the woodshed list. Eventually, it will become part of the battle-ready arsenal.

[Kevin Fix]

Playing live to me is a adrenalin rush for me. I play some at home to rehearse but I don't care for it. Played in front of 60 thousand once. My heart was pumping big time!!!! I did a televised show once years ago, took the stage fright right out of me!!! It was either crap or get off the pot!!!

[Earnest Bovine]

Played in front of 60 thousand once. My heart was pumping big time!!!!

I'm fine playing for a billion people on live TV, but last night I fell apart playing for 10 people in somebody's living room. I don't quite understand it.

[Fred Treece]

Played in front of 60 thousand once. My heart was pumping big time!!!!

I'm fine playing for a billion people on live TV, but last night I fell apart playing for 10 people in somebody's living room. I don't quite understand it.

LOL!
I’m fine playing in front of my TV....

[Skip Ellis]

I've played the "Always...Patsy Cline" show probably 150+ times and and screwed up the intro to 'Walkin' After Midnight' last night! It also doesn't help to have a mic'd acoustic piano 18" from my right ear trying to play my licks along with me - I just back off and let him go for it.

But....you do hear your own mistakes more than the audience - don't dwell on them - just keep on going. That goof up is gone - do it better the next time.

[Doug Beaumier]

I tend to agree with Earnest, the larger the audience, the easier it is to play. I think it's because a huge audience is not as personal as a small group of listeners in a small room.

Here's what I do... besides lots of practice... right before my solo, I relax by breathing slowly, deep breaths, and I imagine that I'm at home in my practice room, not at a gig. It really helps. I also think about the practice session I had the day before that gives me confidence.

[Dave Mudgett]

For me, sometimes it's red light syndrome, but many other times it's what Jerry alludes to - playing with people that change the tempo, the feel, or otherwise %$&# it up. The worst is a pickup band or jam session where the players don't understand the music or know the tunes. Rhythm section can't find 1, plays the wrong feel, wrong chord changes, and/or speeds/slows the tune to the point of unrecognizability. There is no point in trying to replicate something that works with the original tune when they're basically playing something very different.

But the performance anxiety thing is real. I don't have to just "freeze up" to have performance anxiety affect me. It can be a bunch of little, subtle things - I might mess up the notes or I might get the notes out but the feel is not good. But for me, the bigger issue is that when improvising something on a new tune, especially when recording, I'll play it too safe to avoid the spotlight of messing up and having to do it over. For me, it's more a matter of thinking too much about it - or put another way, not having everything so together that I feel that I have to think about it.

On the practice thing - I played my first steel guitar show (a local thing) in March, and only had a week to get some new tunes together. I had workmen in the house the entire week before the show. Word got back to me that they were surprised that I practiced the same 8-10 new-to-me songs over and over again all week, from 9am until after they left. What many people call OCD is just time-on-task to me. But that obviously wasn't enough time to get this ready - I still screwed up the first verse of Walk Away Renee at the show. 500 times indeed.

[Bobby Nelson]

It's not stage fright for me. I spent 25 yrs playing 6 string/bass/singing in live situations, usually leading the whole show and it got to be so old hat for me that I'd almost lost inspiration. When I played my little gig in October, with the some of the same guys I've been playing with since I was 15 or so, and to the same audience (a lot of them there to see me) I'd been playing to for decades, at the first note, I knew I was totally lost. Now, I'd been out of it for about 15 yrs, except for the occasional vocal thing or to play bass, but there was no stage fright what-so-ever.

It was that, I'd misjudged how alien this instrument is to me. It's like starting all over again, except that I already know the music part of it. It's a guitar yes. But, I may as well have taken a french horn out there with me. I believe it's about knowing the instrument you are playing - which I obviously did not.

[Larry Carlson]

How do I handle it?
Well, I throw up a lot........

[Marty Broussard]

“All those people aren’t here to see/listen to me—they’re here for the star or the cute guitar player”. (97% effective tactic)

“You’ve done this thousands of times——this is the same ole thing”

If those dont work a half glass of Malibu Coconut on the rocks about 10 minutes before downbeat gets it done....Lol

The three above also work for small intimate settings. LOL

YMMV

[Brint Hannay]

“All those people aren’t here to see/listen to me—they’re here for the star or the cute guitar player”. (97% effective tactic)

Unless you give in to the other 3%: "What if somebody out there is a steel player, or is a musician who's played with a steel player, or has heard [one or more] steel player, and knows the difference?"

The other two work reasonably well for any setting. But the above?

[Henry Matthews]

Having steel player in audience makes me play better but that damn red light in studio just kills me. I get fumble fingered and can’t play crap. I’ve tried to ignore it but like ignoring a plane crash in your front yard, lol

[Jerry Dragon]

nine out of ten people in an audience, unless they are musicians, will never know you had the worst clam ever, but you know, nothing to get hung about. As a lead singer I hate when I can't remember the first line and have booba da ling ling it.