The Ultimate Guide to Overcoming Stage Fright

Here at North Main Music, we offer our students many performance opportunities throughout the the year. In addition to our bi-annual student concerts, we also have an acapella group and several rock bands who perform both at our student concerts and at community events throughout the Nashua area.


And while most people look forward to their performance, it’s only natural that many of them also get a little stage fright. Stage performance is a challenging art form. Whether you’re acting out a role in a musical theater setting or playing a solo at an open mic night, the experience can be nerve-wracking even for seasoned performers.


It can be even more anxiety-inducing if you’re a perfectionist, as that can breed a fear of failure… and from there, performance anxiety can feel even stronger.


Performance anxiety (commonly referred to as stage fright) can devastate a performer’s career and enjoyment of their craft, but it doesn’t have to — performance anxiety is a normal human reaction and a completely curable condition if given the right resources, patience, and support system. This article is a guide to learning how to overcome stage fright. If you wish to understand and improve anxiety issues that are holding you back from giving your best performances, read on!

What is Stage Fright?

Let’s start with anxiety, which is defined as a feeling or worry, nervousness, or unease about an upcoming event. Most people have experienced some level of anxiety before, during, or after a performance, speech, sports game, or test. Anxiety differs from fear in that fear addresses a present threat, while anxiety is typically felt in relation to something in the future. Anxiety is a normal, healthy human experience and, in small doses, is beneficial in making decisions and in achieving peak success.


Performance anxiety (stage fright) in particular is nervousness or unease about a specific future event in which you will be required to execute a task, such as a song— and usually when you’ll be in front of an audience. Symptoms may be present during the task, for weeks or months leading up to it, and sometimes after the event is over.



So, how do you overcome stage fright? Even most experienced performers feel anxiety, so it’s more a process of learning how to deal with stage fright. Here are the recommended steps:

Knowing if you are truly experiencing anxiety is critically important, as it’s the first step toward understanding and overcoming it. If you have experienced a few or many of the following symptoms before or during a performance situation, you are experiencing stage fright:

• Excessive sweating (typically in the palms, feet, armpits or face, but could be anywhere)
• Increased heart rate
• Chills, hot flashes, or sudden changes in body temperature
• Shallow breathing, tightness in the chest, or hyperventilation
• Feeling dizzy
• Racing thoughts, obsessive fear of failure during the task
• Inability to concentrate or process logical information
• Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea
• Loss of appetite
• Frequent urge to use the bathroom
• Inability to make small talk or hold a basic conversation
• Shakiness, especially in the hands
• Sensitivity lights, sounds, or textures in the environment

As you can see, this list of sensations is not only unpleasant, but makes performing at your best nearly impossible. Fear of failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Look at the list of anxiety symptoms, and make a mental check mark next to the ones that you have felt during performance situations.


Note when it happened, how often, and any other details you remember. Are your symptoms limited to a specific few, or all of them? Are there symptoms you’d like to solve first as a priority, before others?


Now go back next to each symptom that you’ve checked, and rate it on scale of 1-10 as to how severe it felt (1 being hardly felt it, 10 being you felt it so much you couldn’t concentrate on anything else).


If you are seeing numbers in the 1-4 range, it’s likely that you are experiencing normal, healthy jitters that can actually add to your performance by making you more focused. If you are seeing numbers in the 5-10 range, you are experiencing moderate to severe stage fright and should read on to discover strategies for improvement.
















Before you can properly map a route to overcome stage fright, it’s important to know where you’ve been — and what has caused stage fright in the past. Let’s look at some of the reasons why you are experiencing stage fright, how they might contribute to your present challenges, and how you can utilize them most effectively.


Start by asking yourself some questions about your performing career, starting from the very, very beginning, which might include childhood memories or more recent situations depending on your age.

Recall the first time you performed for an audience, formally. Who was there? What thoughts and feelings do you remember? Were you happy with the outcome of the performance? Was it a positive or negative experience, was it stressful or relaxed?


Recall the first time you performed and experienced anxiety (if different from above). What were the circumstances? Who was there? Did you practice or prepare, and how much? If different from #1, what do you think sparked anxiety if there were previous performances that didn’t?


Recall the next few times that you performed, after #2 above. Ask yourself the same questions and look for patterns.


Recall the 2-3 most recent times you performed. How recent was it? Have you purposely avoided performing in recent circumstances due to fear? Were you with a large group, small ensemble or solo? Were there any post-performance experiences worth noting?


From the above questions, look for patterns. Are there any pivotal events that dramatically changed the course of your performance history? Are there any key people, venues, or pieces that contributed to where you’re at today?

The next step is re-contextualizing key anxiety triggers so that they don’t continue causing problems. Most people can identify one or two key incidents that left a large impact on their self-esteem.


Maybe it was a teacher giving an aggressive critique, a family member telling you not to quit your day job, or a performance in which you froze on stage and ran off crying.


At the time you may not have realized the impact of this key event, but in hindsight you can see that it has undermined your confidence and affected your ability to perform ever since.

The mind is powerful and can distort memories, making them seem bigger and nastier than they really were in real life. As far as exercises that can help you deal with stage fright, this is a great one to try. Pick one of your key incidents that is particularly painful or memorable and jot a few notes about it, sticking to the facts:

• What venue were you performing in?
• What piece were you performing or practicing?
• Who was watching?
• What feedback were you given, either verbal or non-verbal?
• How did you react? Did you shout, cry, freeze up, or laugh it off?
• If you responded verbally, what did you say?
• What did you do after the event?

Re-Contextualizing the Event

Now let’s bring some imagination to it: sometimes taking the gravity out of a memory and bringing it into a lighter, if not humorous, context can be extremely healing. By re-contextualizing this event, you are not dismissing it or minimizing its impact, but re-framing it in a more positive, lighthearted perspective. By giving your brain a new way to interpret it, you will begin to move past it and no longer allow it to block your present performance opportunities. Jot a few notes in response to the following:

• If you could go back and re-live this event, what would you do differently?
• Is there anything positive that has come out of the negative memory?

We’ve spent the preceding sections of this guide processing your past. Now it’s time to move into the present and start thinking about what you can do now, and in the near future, to overcome stage fright.


There is no magic formula, unfortunately; you must expose yourself – you must perform, perform, perform, and this is known as exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a fancy name for the common-sense approach known as “facing your fears,” a technique commonly used by psychiatric doctors to treat phobias of all kinds. However, there is an art to exposing yourself to your fears, and it should be done in careful, small, planned doses that gradually lead up to a major milestone.


Create an Exposure Ladder

Exposure ladders are a technique used widely by the medical psychiatric community to treat generalized anxiety, panic disorders, and phobias of all types.


An exposure ladder is a list of activities that lead you gradually to a big goal (such as performing on your city’s biggest stage, for example), with activities ranked from least to most anxiety-provoking. An individual will work up the steps of the ladder, moving on to the next step only after mastering exposure to the current step with little or no anxiety.


You’ll need to create your own customized exposure ladder, starting with #1, which is your first, tiny little step toward performing — something that you could handle right now, today, with little or no anxiety symptoms. Then you’ll move on to #2, and so on, gradually making steps more anxiety provoking as you go, until you’ve reached a final step which is your final performing goal. You can make your final step as big or small as you want, just be honest with your true performing goals.


One precaution: be careful not to create too big of a jump between steps on the exposure ladder. You can repeat a step as many times as needed, in order to master that level with little to no anxiety. Depending on how often you are working on the steps, it might take months or years until you feel you’ve mastered a step, and that’s just fine. Study the example below to help you brainstorm ideas for your own ladder.


Example Exposure Ladder
1. Imagine yourself performing.

2. Perform alone.

3. Record yourself performing a scene or song and watch it without critique.

4. Perform for a supportive partner or friend.

5. Perform a duet or ensemble in front of family or friends at an informal gathering.

6. Perform solo in front of family or friends at an informal gathering.

7. Perform a duet or ensemble at a venue that is higher caliber, like a talent show for your class at school, a neighborhood barbeque, or karaoke at a bar.

8. Perform solo within the same circumstances in #7.

9. Perform with a semi-professional ensemble, such as an audition-only community chorus or community theatre.

10. Arrange an opportunity to perform solo for your peers or an audience, within the group you’ve identified in #9.

11. Enter a competition.

12. Continue finding opportunities similar to #11 with gradually higher caliber venues (or even paying gigs!).

Once you start working the steps on your exposure ladder, there are going to be successes, and also setbacks. It’s important to arm yourself with relaxation techniques so that when setbacks occur, you have a strategy in place to deal with them in a healthy way. Try these:


Meditation


Find a quiet space, sit or lay in a position that is comfortable enough to sustain for 10 minutes minimum, close your eyes, and stop thinking. It’s as simple as that; meditation is simply a state of thoughtlessness. Your mind will wander, and when it does, just bring it back to a blank space. (If this idea seems daunting to try on your own, there are lots of free meditation apps out there which you can try.) If you can commit to meditation as a daily practice for 10-20 minutes, over time you will be able to push aside thoughts that distract you during performances, including anxious thoughts.



Progressive muscle relaxation
Find a quiet space and lay down with your arms naturally at your sides and legs fully extended. Close your eyes. Prepare with three slow, deep breaths. As much as possible, focus all of your attention on the task at hand; don’t let your mind wander. Tense your forehead muscle, holding it as tight as you can for about five seconds. As you do this, inhale and hold the breath while the muscle is tense, and then exhale and breathe normally as you let the muscle relax. Enjoy the relaxed position for about five seconds.


Repeat the above process with the following muscle groups: your face/cheek muscles, neck muscles, shoulders (pull them up and tight), back muscles (pull your shoulder blades back and in), abs/stomach muscles, arms and hands (make a fist while you do this and tense it all the way down to the fingers), glutes, thighs, calves, and then finally feet.

Acceptance is a final and critical step in learning how to overcome stage fright, as resistance will only make a problem grow stronger. It’s important that you stop criticizing or judging yourself for having fears or challenges on stage, as it is one of the most common types of anxiety, and you are definitely not alone!


Acceptance is not declaring that stage fright is “just a problem you have” and that you’ll have to deal with it for the rest of your life. Acceptance is realizing you have some uncomfortable symptoms that are occurring and allowing the process of change to unfold, even if the process is difficult. Acceptance is allowing setbacks to happen, refraining from self-criticism when they do, and celebrating the small successes along the way.



Conclusion

Public speaking and performances of all types continue to be the number one fear of most adults. By reading this article, you have embarked on a journey that very few are brave enough to take – congratulations are due just for starting!


Your reading has given you initial tools for understanding what stage fright is, how you experience it personally, how your past is affecting your present, and beginning to learn how to deal with stage fright.


Performing is one of life’s great joys and you too can enjoy sharing your unique gifts and stories in front of an audience, free of fear, paralysis, or uncomfortable feelings. Don’t give up, and remember that psychological change is a gradual process. Good luck, and happy performing!


What are some of the ways have you learned how to overcome stage fright? Let us know in the comments!




This article was inspired by and adapted from this article on takelessons.com.

Sing with Confidence: Helpful singing tips for vocalists

Feeling nervous about an upcoming performance? It’s a completely normal feeling! Getting used to being in the spotlight takes time. Learn how to sing with confidence using the tips in this article. 

How often do you listen to your favorite bands and pop stars and imagine yourself in their place, singing to an adoring crowd? Lots of people dream of unleashing their inner rock/pop star, but few actually take the bold step of doing so in real life. It takes a lot of courage to learn how to sing and, whether you’re an experienced performing artist or planning your on-stage debut, it’s always helpful to practice a few tips and tricks that will help make your performance the best it can be. 


1) Be Patient--Give Yourself a Minute
It’s natural to get nervous or feel overwhelming anxiety before you perform. This simply means that you care about what you’re about to do! The problem is, anxiety tricks your body into a fight or flight state—your heart beats faster, your breath quickens, and your muscles tense up.

When this happens, find a quiet place, close your eyes, and take a slow, deep breath. Hold it in for 10 seconds and then let it out. Repeat 2-3 times until your heart rate slows. A shorter version of this is helpful on stage, too. Take a second before your song starts (your audience won’t mind a 5-second delay) to center yourself and it will make *all* the difference.


2) Practice Often and Be Technically Prepared
Think of practicing as an insurance policy for you voice--the more you practice, the more you know your voice. The more you know your voice, the more confident you are singing in any situation. Preparation is the backbone of self-confidence.

Well ahead of your performance, think about your strengths and weaknesses, and work with your voice teacher to create a plan so that you feel fully prepared. Fumbling around with your instrument? Practice your piano or guitar parts until they become muscle memory. Worried about forgetting lyrics? Hand write them over and over until you don’t have to think about them. Not feeling vocally consistent? Break down the issue with your instructor in lessons leading up to the performance. Feeling like your song just isn’t clicking? Workshop them with a mentor or fellow musician. At North Main Music, we host Performance Workshops a couple of weeks before our student concerts, to give performers an opportunity to test out their song ahead of time and get valuable feedback from the workshop facilitators and attendees. 

Most importantly, be sure to warm up your voice on performance day!


3) Take Risks
You may have heard the quote, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” When applied to singing, the same rings true!

We often hear this voice in our head when we first start singing that sounds much different than the voice that actually comes out. When applying the building blocks in practicing scales, exercises, and simple tones and in mastering them one step at a time, we then feel comfortable enough to take risks in the creation and formulation of new exercises. If you hear something in your head, but don’t know exactly how to create the sounds, try anyway. 
Taking risks in singing means stepping into uncharted waters of sound and testing all of the different sounds available to you. This can be as simple as humming a line to your favorite song out loud.

Every great singer has to know how to hit the “bad” notes a few times before they understand what it means to hit the “good” ones. In the end, confidence in singing comes from knowing both the “good” notes and the “bad” notes and how to move more fluidly and comfortably between all of them. The truth is, you will never know unless you try and it takes more courage to try than not to. Having the courage to take risks will build confidence in knowing your voice.’’


4) Remember Your “Why” 
Connect with your song and your purpose, and the audience will feel you. Whether it’s a cover song or an original, we must remember the emotion, experience, or memory that brought us to the song in the first place. As singers, we’re often performing the same song over and over. It’s easy to fall into a routine and go through the motions, but your audience will see right through this. There’s nothing worse than watching a performance and the singer is clearly just phoning it in. No matter how many times you’ve sung a song, dig deep each time and remember *why* you wrote these words or *why* you were drawn to this particular song. Find that emotion and use it to express yourself—That is your job as a singer.


5) Enjoy Yourself
For one song, you’ve got 2 to 4 minutes on stage, so make the most of it! If you spend the entire time rushing through, or focused on what could go wrong, you’ll miss the magic. Be present for these moments, enjoy being on stage and connecting with your music and your audience. This is what being a musician is all about!

When it comes to voice lessons, it takes patience, practice, and a little bit of risk-taking! Ultimately, you are the captain of your own ship. Learning how to sing is an art and a balance of all of the above tips and advice. With the combination of all of them, you will find yourself well on your way to singing even more vibrantly and confidently in no time.
Want to put these tips to the test? Then sign up to sing at our next Student Concert! Talk to your instructor or stop by the front desk to learn more.



This article was inspired by and adapted from this article on takelessons.com and this one on songbirdsf.com.https://songbirdsf.com/five-tips-for-singing-in-front-of-a-crowd/ 


Photo credit: Doug Guarino

What if I forget the words?

We promise, the show will go on--and you’ll live to tell about it

No matter how much you prepare for your moment in the spotlight, anything can happen on stage! This unpredictability makes performing lots of fun, but it can also be scary. However, if you prepare for your performance the right way, you can even forget the words to the song you’re singing and still deliver a top-notch performance. Professional musicians and North Main Music instructors, Lizz Potter and Sibvon Rose, have experienced their share of performance blunders and lived to tell about it. In this article they share some of their experiences and offer advice to musicians who may be worried about making mistakes while performing live.

Tell us about a past performance during which you made a major blunder.

Lizz: I recently had a gig in Boston. It was a 3-hour solo set and it went well overall, but as I was both singing and playing piano, I was trying to read lyrics and chords at the same time, so I screwed up both a couple of times and panicked. However, I recovered as quickly as I could and as strongly as I could.

Sibvon: I can’t recall a specific performance with a major blunder, but I will say that I’ve learned from past mistakes that you have to learn to cover them really well—don’t let the mistake show on your face and in your body language. The audience won’t have a clue that you’ve screwed up unless you show it in your facial expressions and body language.

How do you recover from mistakes during a performance?

Lizz: Finish strong—people won’t remember a flub in the middle of a song if the rest of the performance is solid.

Sibvon: I always tell students to “own the mistake.” In other words, if you do a part wrong, one great way to cover it up is to purposely mess it up again. It’s a way to stay in control of your performance.

What advice would you offer to budding musicians who may be scared about making mistakes when performing live?

Lizz: Even if you’ve practiced a song 1000 times, mistakes can still happen, and that’s ok. Throughout my career, I’ve found that using breathing exercises as a method of relaxation is very helpful and important. Breathing helps me to be less in my head and more in the song. And, remember, have fun with your performance no matter what happens.

Sibvon: Audition for everything you possibly can. The more your audition, the less scary performing live will be. And use that nervous energy to your advantage; harness it and use it to take your performance to the next level.

Lizz and Sibvon teach piano and voice at North Main Music and both have been studying and performing music since childhood. To learn more about their musical backgrounds and teaching philosophies, click here for Lizz and here for Sibvon.


The above article was inspired by and partly adapted from this article on takelessons.com.

Playing well with others: How to find people to jam with

Whether you want to be in a famous band or just play a special song for a loved one, jamming with other musicians is a great way to learn and get closer to your goal. Once you’ve mastered a few easy songs on the guitar or gotten the hang of a basic drum beat, it’s time to start looking for other musicians around your level who are interested in playing music together.

Jamming is more about experimenting and learning than showing off, and this sort of open creativity can be really appealing and fun. Don’t wait until you’re “perfect”; even the most talented and accomplished artists have certain skills they want to improve. You’ll learn more and have more fun if you start sharing what you already know. So how do you find people to jam with?

Use your NMM & social networks

Are you looking for a drummer to jam with but you don’t know any drummers? Reach out to other musical friends and see if they can introduce you. Talk to your NMM instructor—he or she might be able to introduce you to another student with similar interests. If you’re looking to join a band or choral group, NMM has several teen bands and an accapella group you can get involved with, and we’re also looking to start some duo and trio groups in 2015. Throw up a post on Facebook or Twitter if you don’t know who to reach out to directly. You never know who will know someone who will be perfect for you!

Phone a Friend

Playing music with your friends is one of the most fun things you can do on this planet. When you’re jamming with someone you already know and trust, you feel more relaxed and more open to try out new ideas and let the creativity flow. If you have a friend who’s also learning an instrument, why not get together with your instruments and see what happens? Even if you sound terrible, you’ll still have a good time!

Hit the Open Mic Nights

Going to open mic nights is a great way to meet new musical collaborators. Play a few songs and see what happens! Or, if you’re feeling shy, you can go and watch the performers and chat with the ones you like after they play. A good open mic night should be a positive and friendly place where people at all levels have the chance to share what they’ve been working on, so you may see seasoned performers and total beginners all in the same night. Riverwalk Café in Nashua and Tupelo Music Hall in Londonderry have regular open mic nights, as do many other businesses in the Nashua area.

By now, hopefully you have some good ideas that will help you reach out and find people to jam with! Remember to keep it fun and don’t be too hard on yourself, especially if you are just beginning. It’s totally normal to feel nervous about playing music with new people. There are plenty of seasoned musicians out there who still feel nervous when they walk into a room to play with new musicians for the first time. Once you start playing, your nerves will most likely melt away and you’ll leave every jam session knowing something new about your instrument, a song or music in general that you didn’t know when you walked in.

How do you meet people to play music with? Share your experiences with us in the comments below!

Adapted from this article on takelessons.com.

Photos by Robyn Neville.