peformance

[Olly]

I have a drama peformance tommorow,and yeah i know its not really to do with guitar but i'm going to ask anyway.Do you guys have any suggestions for stage fright at all? http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/eek.gif

[Smitty]

Confidence in yourself and confidence in your abilities. If you played well, or performed well in practice, you can do the same on national TV or in front of a large crowd. Think: I am just as good as anyone else out there(you really are you know). Tell yourself that the more you sense fear, the more bold you will be.
Dont concentrate on the crowd, concentrate on what you are doing, it is possible to become so engulfed in what you are doing that your mental energy is all expended on that and before you know it you are in your own little world.
Always have the awareness that things can go wrong and be mentally prepared to deal with it,so IF it does happen you are ready. I've had people trip on my power cords and completely kill everything, it was no big deal, it didnt ruin the performance, we just picked up and kept going, if you have a sense of humour, use it, the idea is to use it to your advantage to loosten everyone up instead of an uptight situation developing. Probably one of the biggest causes of stage fright is fear of failure, go out there telling yourself, hey if I miss a chord, I will keep on playing(unless its a HUGE bungle most folks wont be too concerned about it anyways).If you make a lot of HUGE bungles in practice, maybe you need to get it down a little better first.

[StoneDragon]

I always get nervous performing in front of people... music or otherwise. I still get nervous before teaching a martial arts class or a "live" guitar lesson.... and I've been teaching for many years http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

What Smitty says about being "well rehearsed" is a good point. If you know your parts well enough then you can go on "automatic" for the first few minutes while you settle into performance mode.

Before you go on, you can try some "breathing relaxation". Just close your eyes and take long, slow, deep breaths... in through your nose... out through your mouth... all the way down to your belly. As you exhale, tell yourself, "relax."

[gruzzy]

Another bump for Mick.