How to Deal with Stage Fright

Transcription:

Hello, this week we’re not going to be talking about bass clarinet-specific things. And instead, I’m going to respond to a terrific email that I got from someone name Matthew, who is a viewer of the series. So he writes Mr. Lowenstern:

“How do you handle audition nerve-stress? I find auditions in other high-pressure situations to be amongst the most nerve-wracking and stressful experiences ever. I am terribly afraid and anxiety always gets the better of me. With college auditions coming up, along with All-State auditions, I could really use some healthy advice and could surely benefit from anything your experience in the field has taught you about how to cope with and be at peace with performance anxieties.”

Terrific question. Performance anxiety, playing in front of other people, heck, talking in front of other people, is a really normal, anxiety-producing event, in all of our lives. If you’re a musician or not a musician, this idea of delivering something in front of other people who are watching you deliver it, is cause for all sorts of anxiety. And we as musicians, that’s part of our job, actually. To stand up in front of other people and play music! That’s what we got into it for. If you’re going to be a performing musician, naturally, you want to perform for other people.

So here’s the first thing that you need to remember: When you’re standing in front of an audience of people, they’re here to hear you play. That is if you are standing in front of an audience of people who are there to hear you play in an audition, or if they’re there to hear you play a recital, or if they’re there to watch a football game and you’re in the marching band, any one of those situations where you feel anxiety, here’s the thing you need to remember: Audiences are there because they want to enjoy seeing you do your thing. Now that audience could be your mom and dad, your family, or it could be friends of yours, or it could be a club, but the reality of it is people go there because they want to be there. And you want to be there because that’s partly why you are a musician—you want to share this music with other people.

So I think it’s really important to remember that we got into this because we like it not because we like getting nervous. So remembering that people come to concerts also because they like it and they want to be in there, is something that should give you a little bit of peace. They are not there to watch you screw up. In fact, if you are anxious, if you are nervous, it makes the audience just as nervous. In fact, it’s a really uncomfortable experience for everybody. Not to put extra pressure on you but just try to understand that the whole concert environment is one where people are supposed to be enjoying themselves.

Now, one of the most important things you can do to prepare, getting in front of an audience, rather than an audition or concert, is to actually prepare yourself. You need to practice so that you know the music. If you’re going out there and you don’t really know what you’re going to do, first of all, that is a good reason to get anxious. Because you have set yourself up for maybe not the best success when you do something like that. But let’s say that you have prepared and you have done all the work, you’re ready to go and you are still nervous, here are a couple of tricks that I suggest that you employ to get yourself more comfortable with the whole process of going out and playing:

The best thing that you can do is to gather a few people. Not a huge amount of people, but a few people. Your parents, your siblings, you siblings and your parents, your friends, your grandparents, somebody in school—it doesn’t matter. The process of going from the beginning to the end of a piece of music without stopping is one of the one things that we actually go into a concert having done very infrequently. Think about it, how often have you gone into a concert setting having not played through the piece without stopping? Probably not that many times. So the experience of doing that is really important and the experience of doing that in front of other people is really important. There’s something about those other people there who give you—it makes it more of a ‘charged’ situation.

Now there’s something else that I want to tell you which is pretty fundamentally true and that is: the first, let’s say minute, of your concert, of your performance of the piece, is the most anxiety producing minute. Once you get through that first bit, you actually get more comfortable as you’re performing. Even if something that’s coming up later is hard, the act of starting and getting into it, and feeling like you’ve got control of the situation (stage lights) you’re in control of it and you’re in control of it. Just that momentum, is often enough, to carry you through to the rest and the end of the piece. So that’s something else to think about. Once you’ve started playing, it gets easier.

Ok, those are the psychological things that we can do to prepare ourselves to go out on stage and play, there are also physical things that happen to us when we get nervous. Part of our what we call ‘lizard brain’ the part of us that has evolved from Neanderthal days, to us now, is this fight or flight mechanism. You know, there is a Sabretooth Tiger right over there, and it’s about to come after you and eat you, that part of the brain hasn’t actually changed that much since we were cave people. So what happens to us is our body, the adrenaline that comes into our body and starts flowing through the things that make your hands shake, they’re also the things that make your stomach flutter (you may have an upset stomach), they make your mouth dry, they make you start sweating to cool your body off, those are all things that probably go all the way back to Sabretooth tigers when we were trying not to get eaten as cave people, but they still happen to us now. So here are some things that you should do before you go out and step on the stage, if you are prone to having these problems.

The best thing you can do before you go out on stage is drink a glass of water or drink a bottle. You can also bring that bottle of water on stage with you. Lord knows, I do. I come out with a couple of bottles on stage when I’m about to play a concert, but that hydration prepares your body for the sweating and for the nerves, and the anxiety, and the dry mouth that you’re probably going to have if that’s something that afflicts you when you get nervous.

If your stomach gets upset, that if you eat a banana or two an hour or so before the concert, it’s a good thing to do to settle the stomach down. So drinking the water and eating the banana are terrific things you can do to calm some of the physical manifestations of anxiety.

Shaking and those kind of nerves, those are best handled by taking a deep breath. Taking a deep breath and letting it out. That kind of meditative breathing is super good for just relaxing your body physically so that you don’t have jitters. Obviously, don’t drink coffee before you play.

Ok, you’re finally on stage, you’ve had your water, you’ve eaten your bananas, you’ve prepared, you’ve practiced, you’ve gotten the guts up to go walk out and you start playing, you’ve overcome all this stuff and yet, you make a mistake-- you squeak, you play a wrong note. Here’s the thing you have to remember (and it’s really a great thing). Music, unlike art, which is on a canvas that stays the same, music is on a canvas of time. So, you play a wrong note, it’s over, it’s gone, you need to forget about it. You need to keep going because the rest of the piece is in the future. If you let that mistake make you stumble and trip, the rest of the piece actually is in danger of falling apart like a bunch of dominos toppling over. You cannot afford that. So if you make a mistake, forget it. If it’s a big mistake and the audience is clearly going to know about it, fine. The best thing that you can do is just at the end of the piece, bow a little bit deeper to acknowledge the fact that you both went through this, together. But don’t, for goodness sakes, let it mess-up the future of the piece that you’re going to play. But let’s say you make such a complete mess of something that you have to stop. I’ve done it. I’ve actually had to stop in pieces more than one time. This is the most awkward situation both for you, and don’t forget, for your audience, too. This is one of those moments where everyone is holding their breaths to see how you handle it. The best thing you can do? The best thing, if you’re playing with a pianist, call out a rehearsal number and start playing. Don’t make excuses in front of the audience—it just makes it worse! Don’t talk about, ‘Oh I did this correctly before.’ Nobody cares. It’s about right now that matters. The best thing that you can do is pick up and play the rest of the piece. The audience will respect you for it. You will respect yourself for it. You’ll feel a heck of a lot better than if you made a bad situation worse by stumbling around and making everybody much more uncomfortable. If there’s a mistake, get over it. Everybody else has.

So anxiety and nerves are something we all have to cope with as performers. Again, the best way is to be super prepared. Both physically prepared and mentally prepared. That means that you need to be hydrated, and you need to have food in your stomach if that’s what you need, you need to be taking deep breaths and calming yourself, and above all, go out and enjoy the experience. This is the moment that you’ve done all of this practicing for. It is one of those moments if you don’t play a lot of concerts often, they are something that you remember forever. So please enjoy the moment that you’re in and don’t let your anxiety or your anxiety about being anxious even, mess it up for you. Have a good time, do it often, and we will see you next time.