Calming Solo Nerves

[charlieJ]

What is your approach to calming your nerves when doing a solo?

Charlie

[Highams]

Can't say I'm really nervous, just a few butterflies, enough to make you give that bit extra in a performance.

If you are well rehearsed (I mean really well rehearsed!) then you should be able to enjoy the moment.

The audience are really on your side, honest.

www.euph9.freeserve.co.uk/recitals.htm

[Roger Lewis]

I did a 2 ½ year study on this while doing my undergrad in psychology and published a 175 page monologue on it. After interviewing many performers in a number of arts areas the common threads as to the cause of the apprehension seemed to stem from the perception of evaluation by the audience and the “unknownsâ€

[TubaRay]

Having had a great deal of difficulty with nerves in the early years of my playing, I have studied and experimented much in this area. Roger's post is excellent! Thanks, Roger.

[Alex C]

Some years ago I finished a decade of nerve battles. The solution for me was based on two things.

Initially, I got a prescription for Inderol. I was still nervous but the autonomic responses were controlled.

The more often I performed, the less effect the nerves had. Eventually, the need for Inderol lessened. I use it rarely now. (In fact, I'm out and I'm not paniced.)

To make frequent performances beneficial, I suggest that you start performing in conditions where success is almost guaranteed. Easy pieces, short pieces. Play with small groups (quintets, quartets) where you are exposed but have the "protection" of an ensemble so that you can make music.

Following that path, I was eventually able to control what was happening to me.

By the way, my nerve problems started in an audition where I played great until I got to the Mahler 1. I totally folded. The committee asked me to play it again (I guess they couldn't believe it either). I picked up my horn with total confidence and folded again. It was 10 years before I could play the Mahler solo well (even in a practice room).

My sympathies for your nerve problems but know that you can beat it. Being nervous is OK. "Nerve problems" can be solved.

[Mark]

Sorry for the long post but this is a deep subject for me.

Roger,

This is not the first post you have made that makes me think you should write a book on tuba playing. Great stuff and about 299 pages too short.

[Dean E]

. . . . One respondent stated visions of the chair collapsing under him and lights falling from the ceiling and hitting the horn – every possible disaster you could imagine. Of course most of the time nothing like this happens but you have established a pattern for thinking from the negative. . . .

Marvelous, Roger.
Especially for public speaking, I have two rules:
1. Visualize success, and
2. No caffeine for four hours.

[Captain Sousie]

First, eat two bananas, don't laugh, it helps.

Second, tell youself the following:

"I am the best player in this room and if any of you sons of b*tches think that you can play it better, you can walk up here on this stage, take my instrument, and try it."

These are the words that my private teacher said to me and they boosted my confidence level greatly.

My 0.08 bits,
sousie

[Roger Lewis]

I am in the process of documenting my 35+ years of teaching experience into a method book that will have a chapter dealing with performance apprehension and the ways around it. I hope to have this done over the Winter.

The ultimate challenge for any player is one of my "specialities - what I call "white knuckle" work - going in and and sight reading performances without any rehearsals. I have done this as many as 11 times in one year and I average about 3 white knuckle jobs a year. The survival secret - confidence. If you have done the practicing (10 years - 10 hours a day at one point in my life), there isn't a note in existence that they can put in front of you that you haven't played a million times - why should this time be any different? To quote Nike - Just Do It! Don't think about it because you get in your own way mentally, and don't doubt your abilities because it sows the seed of failure and that's not an option in our business. Music is a "produce on demand" business. When the red light goes on you have to be brilliant - no matter how you feel.

(The other secret is to realize that someone else's name is in the program and if you REALLY screw up, the audience is just going to think that he was having a bad night).

Interesting comment above about Inderol. It used to be that the art culled itself. Those people who did not have the courage to perform in public left the field. Hence 20 years ago there would be 60 - 150 people at an audition. Now with better living through chemistry, the culling has stopped and the field is overcrowded. Now there are 350 - 500 people trying to get into the auditions.

Just another observation.

[DHMTuba]

Song and Wind has some good information on the subject.
I think it's important to understand that nerves, tension, dry mouth etc. result from your body getting ready to deliver a maximum effort. A little bit of that edge is a very good thing. The trick is to have enough edge so that you're focused and alert, but not so much that your body gets in the way.
Slowing down your breathing really works! Before I go on, I sit down in a quiet corner backstage and take several slow, easy breaths. I can feel my body getting the "fight or flight" response under control. Then when I go on, I'm focused yet relaxed, if that makes any sense.
Of course you have to be prepared too, as other posters have pointed out. If you haven't played the notes many times in the practice room you won't play them on stage. Preparation breeds confidence.
HTH

[MartyNeilan]

IMHO, the first note is always the hardest. Listen to it bounce back from the hall, and realize that everything will be allright. Once you get past the first phrase of the music, the song will play itself.

P.S. Depending on the environment, I have found that telling jokes beforehand loosens up both the audience and the performer. Works for the CanBrass!

[Tom B.]

I too had horrible nerve problems when performing. It started my senior year in high school at the state solo-ensemble contest. Never had problems before that, but I dove into that nerves-play badly-more nerves-play worse downward spiral in one performance, and it plagued me right into and through the end of college.

It became a learned response. Everytime I had an exposed part--it didn't matter if it was one middle range whole note at a medium volume--it kicked in. I have to disagree with anyone who argues that being completely prepared will solve the problem. It certainly is a huge help, but if the response is ingrained enough, it recurs even with something you can play 1000 times perfectly in the practice room.

After leaving college, I didn't play an instrument for about 12 years (I was not a music major). In the meantime, propranolol (trade named Inderal) became available. When I resumed musical performance, I got a prescription and used it for every performance at first. I started relearning what it was like to play as well as I should, based on my preparation (it doesn't make you play better than you should!). Then I started playing some of the easier gigs without it. Still no problem. Now, I'm in the same situation as one of the previous posters--I don't use it very often at all, and could probably do without it entirely--but why push my luck on those really tough gigs?

There seems to be an undertone that this is somehow "cheating", but all I know is I am an amateur with a passion to perform, who derives great pleasure from expressing myself in music, and enjoys entertaining others. Now I can do that again.

Tom