{"id":17428,"date":"2013-02-25T22:35:34","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T06:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/?p=17428"},"modified":"2019-11-05T10:59:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T10:59:47","slug":"tips-musicians-13-ways-combat-stage-fright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/tips-musicians-13-ways-combat-stage-fright\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips for Musicians: 13 Ways to Combat Stage Fright"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an interview with Connie Chung,\u00a0Andrea Bocelli was\u00a0asked,<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWhen\u00a0you perform on stage, are you nervous?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bocelli responded,\u00a0<em>\u201cOh, it&#8217;s difficult to\u00a0explain how much. I\u00a0have big,<br \/>\nbig\u00a0stage fright.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Even the most famous musicians like Elton\u00a0John and Andrea Bocelli still experience performance anxiety up to this day. I hope that fact made you feel better. Almost everyone experiences it to a certain degree. The important thing is knowing how to handle it. Handling stage fright requires knowledge, skill, and specific techniques. If your stage fright is getting in the way of your performance, you have to shake hands with it and learn to live with it because stage fright is always there. The only solution is to train yourself to handle it gracefully.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some tips on how you can handle stage fright:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Quickly \u201cget used\u201d to the space.<\/strong>\u00a0The moment you step up the stage, get a feel of the space around you- the size of the venue, the number of people attending the show, people&#8217;s activities- and connect it to where you are standing and what your goals are for that night. If it is your first time, \u00a0ask the manager if they allow you to rehearse in the venue so you&#8217;ll get used to the performance space.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Before you play a single note, SMILE.<\/strong> \u00a0introduce\u00a0yourself to the audience.\u00a0Establish eye contact\u00a0with a few friendly\u00a0faces in the crowd while smiling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Look for a spot.\u00a0<\/strong>Fix your eye on one spot and sing and talk to it all through the night. This technique is called spotting. This will give you that confident stare. You don&#8217;t have to focus it on one person or they might assume you&#8217;re attracted to him\/her. Just use that imaginary spot as a guide when you&#8217;re talking to the audience. \u00a0Treat the spot as your friend.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There&#8217;s no such thing as &#8220;overpreparing.&#8221;<\/strong> Some performers do not want to rehearse over and over and over again in fear of making their performance stale. That shouldn&#8217;t be a worry because every performance is different. Different people watch you, the venue is smaller\/bigger, the crowd is wilder, there&#8217;s an interference, and so on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Which moment do you find most difficult? Deal with it.<\/strong> Identify the precise moments in a performance that you find difficult and focus on working out some specific techniques to overcome them. Once you&#8217;re confident that you&#8217;re close to perfecting it, you&#8217;d be less anxious.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Create a stage character. <\/strong>To some, it helps if they pretend that they&#8217;re actors playing a role while they&#8217;re on stage. It could help to &#8220;forget yourself and be someone else.&#8221; Who says you should &#8220;be yourself&#8221; while performing onstage? Wear a top hat if it helps you get in the mood of the character you&#8217;re trying to portray, or put on some weird make-up if this makes you feel kick-ass. For some girls, killer heels can do the trick.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Relaxed Tone.<\/strong> Try to use\u00a0a\u00a0warm, relaxed\u00a0tone when you speak. One stutter or dead air could ruin your confidence. If you&#8217;re not gifted in the public speaking department, just work on developing a relaxed manner of speaking.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Laugh at Yourself.<\/strong> You&#8217;re a musician, not a public speaker. Forgive yourself if you blurt out an awkward, totally wrong, totally stupid statement. Just laugh it off. Don&#8217;t take your stage talk so seriously. If you missed a note, just laugh it off and say something funny. They&#8217;ll forgive you for it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Inhale, Exhale.<\/strong> If you&#8217;re the lead singer, put a lot of attention to your breathing. If you get too tensed, just do 3 series of deep breathing to ease your tension. It could affect your performance if you won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Have a performance mantra.<\/strong> If you&#8217;re really so jittery, it could help if you have a performance mantra that you recite while you&#8217;re going up the stage or setting your instruments. This will remind you of why you&#8217;re here and could hopefully reduce your anxiety.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Start out strong<\/strong>: <em>Does\u00a0your piece open\u00a0with a \u201chook\u201d?<\/em>\u00a0The all-important opening must\u00a0establish a certain mood and\u00a0tone that listeners find\u00a0compelling.\u00a0Get their attention for the first 10 seconds and you&#8217;re doing the right thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mind Tricks.<\/strong> There are so many performance tricks that seem silly but actually work. You can find one that&#8217;s perfect for you, for sure. One example is imagining the audience in their underwear. Silly alright but it has worked for so many people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If all else fails, there\u2019s therapy.<\/strong>\u00a0 If these techniques don&#8217;t work, you may consider visiting a hypnotherapist or psychotherapist, who are trained to deal with mental blockages.<\/p>\n<p>Audiences tend to be very forgiving of nerves and a few missed notes. However, you have to play with<br \/>\ncomplete passion and dedication. \u00a0But of course, you have to master your craft. You can&#8217;t keep making missed notes because people are not likely to forgive you the third time. While you&#8217;re trying to achieve perfection in your craft, make sure you also hone your stage fright combatting skills.<\/p>\n<p>Sources:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/music\/2009\/may\/10\/tips-stage-performance-singing\">The Guardian<\/a><br \/>\nMattotto.org<br \/>\n________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unified Manufacturing<\/strong>\u00a0is an L.A. -based one-stop-shop that offers very affordable CD\/DVD\/USB replication, custom printing, promotional products, warehousing and fulfillment and many more. If you need an Instant Quote on a project and you want FREE SHIPPING, simply\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/instant-quote\/\">CLICK HERE<\/a>.    \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an interview with Connie Chung,\u00a0Andrea Bocelli was\u00a0asked, \u201cWhen\u00a0you perform on stage, are you nervous?&#8221; Bocelli responded,\u00a0\u201cOh, it&#8217;s difficult to\u00a0explain how much. I\u00a0have big, big\u00a0stage fright.\u201d Even the most famous musicians like Elton\u00a0John and Andrea Bocelli still experience performance anxiety up to this day. I hope that fact made you feel better. Almost everyone experiences [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unified-manufacturing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27091,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17428\/revisions\/27091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unifiedmanufacturing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}