The lights go down, the audience begins their applause and you walk out from behind the curtains to perform your solo. As you reach your spot next to the piano, you notice the shaking in your legs and the extreme dryness in your mouth. As you acknowledge your accompanist you realize that you can’t breath or even remember your name. AND THEN IT GETS WORSE!
If you have ever performed in front of an audience, no matter how large or small, you may have gone through a similar situation. It is even worse for trumpet players for we have chosen an instrument which is the least forgiving. The slightest mistake is amplified to a greater degree on a trumpet than on any other instrument. A missed note on a piano is not anywhere near as bad as a wrong note played by a trumpet. To the best of my recollection, I can remember only one performance which was without concerns. Only one carefree performance and I have been performing on the trumpet for more than 58 years. I will try to address as many issues pertaining to performing under pressure and try to offer a few solutions which will help you cope with what we refer to as STAGE FRIGHT.
Stage fright is a very negative term which I would like to replace with a better term- performance anxiety. The amount of nervousness will vary among players just as our level of performance will also vary. There are player who do not get nervous and to those individuals, I am very envious. For the rest of us, we first need to learn the basic truths about performance anxieties and I will discuss several in this posting.
What are the basic reasons we get nervous before, during and after our performance?
- The music is more difficult than our ability.
- We did not practice the music enough.
- We did not practice the music effectively
- Lack of concentration added to our problem.
- Our physical preparation was not considered.
- Our mental preparation was not considered.
- Not enough time was allotted for preparation.
- The mechanics of the instrument was not considered.
Each of these areas will need to be addressed in order for your performance to be at its full potential. I will explain each and hopefully by the end of this post, you will understand the importance of a more thorough preparation for your next performance which in turn will lessen your nervousness.
The music is more difficult than our ability
This statement might seem to many as being a little to obvious but I have coached many players who have chosen material much more difficult than they were able to perform. If you choose a solo which on your best day you can play well, what chances will you have on your performance day if your dog died the night before or you woke up the morning of your performance with a huge split in your upper lip. Just like a successful gambler, you have to be aware of the odds in your favor as well as the odds against you. I’m not saying that you should always play it safe, but if you want to release some of the nervous pressures in your future, take this into consideration. Don’t expect to play over your ability all the time.
We did not practice the music enough
The great cornet soloist Herbert L. Clarke has been quoted as saying, “I would never perform a solo in public unless I could play it one-hundred times perfectly in a row”. This is the reason Mr. Clark was such a fantastic performer. Think back to your last solo you performed. Could you have played it perfectly ten times in a row? Five times in a row? Could you have played it twice in a row perfectly? This is one of the biggest reasons we get nervous before and during a performance. To be perfectly honest, we really don’t know our material well enough to play it in public. We are not prepared enough to convince ourselves that the solo will go as well as we want. In my next posting, I will go through a few suggestions for preparing material for public performances.
We did not practice the music effectively
Many times players feel that if they practice their music often enough, they will be prepared for their performance. We all need to realize that the number of times you play a passage is not what makes you better. Practicing your material efficiently will take less time and energy than practicing it inefficiently. If you are like most musicians, you will start practicing your solo at the upper left corner and continue down the page until you reach the lower right corner. Have you ever started in the middle? Have you ever only practiced the difficult passages and skipped the easy sections. Have you ever transposed your solo up a step or down a step. Have you ever played the material at half speed or double speed or have you tried slurring all of your notes? You might ask why would you want to do that? Changing your repetitiously boring practice routine will add a new life to your solo material as well as forcing you to think more.
Our physical preparation was not considered
Have you ever been out partying all night and get up the next morning wondering why you were out all night partying the night before? I’m sure we all have had that experience and have paid for it the next day. Think back to your last solo performance and ask yourself, did I do everything I needed to do to be physically up for the event. If your performance is important enough for you to spend weeks practicing, your physical condition should not be overlooked. Get plenty of rest the night before your solo for this is where you will gain the physical strength to do your very best on stage. Lack of sleep is one of the best ways to get your nerves on edge and plenty of rest will help you calm your nerves.
Our mental preparation was not considered
I have seen many gifted players walk on stage and before they play their first note, I can tell how the performance will go. Many years ago while I was judging a jazz festival in Iowa, I had a very unusual situation unfold. The first band to perform took to the stage and one student caught my eye. She was the bass player for the band and the moment she hit the stage, I knew there was something different about her. She marched to her spot in the rhythm section, placed her music on the stand and began to tune. She checked her settings on her amp, adjusted her stool as well as her stand and I knew that she was a player. At that time, we were recording our comments for the directors and on ta My recording began ” There is something about your bass player that caught my eye. She is focused on what she is here for and for some reason; I feel she is a real player”. This was recorded even before the band had played their first note. At the end of the day, we gave that same bass player an “outstanding musician award” for her performance. This is the best example I can give for what you need to do to be mentally focused on your performance.
Not enough time was allotted for preparation
We all are guilty for letting things go to the last minute and this is one of the main reasons we get nervous. Here is a simple exercise which will help you to be better prepared and also release some of your nervousness before a performance. If you are to play on a certain date, move that date ahead two weeks and tell yourself that you have to have your material learned by the earlier date. In this way, you will be prepared two weeks early which will take some of the pressure off and in doing so, relieve more nervousness.
The mechanics of the instrument was not considered
DON’T DECIDE TO CLEAN YOUR INSTRUMENT THE NIGHT BEFORE YOUR PERFORMANCE. Many players think at the last minute that their instrument looks a little tacky and decide to clean it the night before. This is not a good idea for the instrument will not play the same way it did before you cleaned it. This will really rattle your nerves when you play your tuning note and the horn feels like a different horn. You also run the risk of temperamental valves. One of the worst conditions a trumpet player can be in is not knowing if the second valve will come back up after you push it down. Clean your instrument a week before you perform and you will not have this situation weighing on your mind.
I have listed several areas where you could improve your confidence before, during and after your performance and each is important. The most important area is your time spent efficiently practicing and due to the limited space in this post, I will address this area in the next posting. Be sure to stop back for I will give some suggestions on how to most effectively practice your material which will in turn lessen your performance anxiety.
This makes very interesting reading! I’m a brass player and currently preparing for a brass band contest this coming weekend. i’ve been playing cornet/flugel for 24 years and it doesn’t seem to get any easier. I seem to have lost my confidence on stage. Rehearsals are great and I end up being asked to play for other bands because I’m such a ‘good’ player.. However, once on stage I feel only what can be described as terror.. and the lips are the first to go! I’ve had many disasterous solo moments in the past which just seem to add to the ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ of how rubbish I must be as a player once on stage. I have a continuous ‘knot’ in my stomach for at least two weeks prior to a forthcoming contest. The thought of making a hash of things on stage fills me with dread and despair. I know it’s a negative outlook but it’s an over powering feeling. Once off stage after the performance I’m a blubbering wreck, tearful and mentally exhausted. I seem more at ease with village fetes and carnivals as I know that people are much too busy buying icecream and cakes and so aren’t ‘really listening’. The pressure of performing well is greatly reduced resulting in a well performed performance! Bizzare I know! Thanks for your posting Bruce. I’ll seriously consider taking a leaf out of Herbert L Clarke’s book!
Greetings and thank you for visiting our site.
Your concerns about nervousness is very common among trumpet players, more so than say, piano players because we are very exposed in what we play. If you miss a note on trumpet, everyone knows it. This is one of the problems we are faced with. If you play well when you know people are not listening to you, then the problem is that your concentration is not on your music or your playing, it is focused on what you think the audience is thinking. This spells musical death to a player. You have to concentrate on what you are doing, not on what they think. That is easy to say but I think that this is the core of your problem.
When I was in fourth grade, I was the cornet soloist for the Moline (Illinois) Boys Choir. I had two solos to play and from an early age, I learned that you have to isolate yourself FROM the audience and play in your own world. Any energy directed to your audience takes away from the energy you need to apply to your playing. YOU MUST STAY FOCUSED TO YOUR MUSIC NOT WHAT YOU THINK THEY ARE THINKING.
With that said, I would like to give you some additional advice that I purposely left out of my post on nervousness. Because of your apparent age, I feel that I can make this suggestion to you. Contact your local physician and share with him your concerns about your apparent stage fright. Ask him if he has any experience with Beta Blockers. http://www.bystolic.com/beta-blockers/?WT.srch=1&guid=134590790. I chose not to discus this alternative in my original post for I was not sure what age my readers might be and I would like the younger players to learn to cope with their nerve issues as they mature. There are cases where all of the confidence building in the world will not help and I feel that you should look into this alternate solution. Most of the faculty at my university were taking Beta Blockers regularly. Most major symphony players use Beta Blockers. With that many musicians using them, it stands to reason that you should look into them, under your physician’s recommendation.
You obviously enjoy playing and if you have tried everything else, look into their use and let me know what you find.
Just remember one thing; music is to be enjoyed both from the player’s side and the listener’s side. I start a new show this Sunday and I can guarantee that I will be nervous (at least for the first show). Nervousness can be an advantage to your playing but when it interferes with your performance, you either find a solution or you quit. I do hope that you don’t quit and I also hope you find your solution.
Bruce Chidester
Branson Trumpet Ensemble
I’m not disagreeing with what you wrote Bruce, but for some of us, it’s much deeper than just being prepared. Stage fright has only been a problem for me the last 15 years or so. From Jr. High through college, I would get nervous, but it did not negatively effect my performance at all. Now, my adrenalin goes berserk, which results in a fast heart rate, along with the most common symptom; an involuntary quivering of my lower jaw. A few years ago, I played along with the handbell choir in church. The music was Jr. High level difficulty. My whole body was shaking. Preparation was not the issue.
There are more than a few players, not just trumpet players, that I know of who are in major symphonies who absolutely cannot do their job without beta blockers. If someone is good enough to play in a major symphony, lack of preparation is not the issue. A former high school classmate of mine who is a symphony oboe player told me just a few weeks ago that when students arrive at the Curtis Institute, they are given a prescription for beta blockers. He said everyone uses them for auditions.
Here are some great thoughts I found just the other day on Eddie Lewis’ blog. I’m going to be trying to have this same kind of mindset, and see if it helps my stage-fright.
http://eltigredo.com/blog/2012/12/04/my-bad-attitude/
It sounds as if you have looked into this in a intelligent way and my next recommendation would have been bet blockers, but you are already knowledgeable in this area.
Most of the performers I had worked with at the college level were using them and I didn’t even know they existed.
Some times our lives can be enhanced or at least made easier with medication.
Thanks for reading my material and I agree that you have a unique situation that might require a slight medication.
The best of luck to you and let me know what works for you.
100% in agreement with the above Bruce and that addresses maybe 50% of the problem. The tough part is in the head of the player. Performers need to learn to love standing in front of a crowd – embracing the opportunity to strut their stuff. A great teacher I had in a totally unrelated field once told me that if you don’t feel just a little edgy about standing in front of a crowd then you’d stopped caring about your audience.
You need to embrace the extra energy that performing provides. Self-actualisation is useful. Visualise playing, knocking their sox off, hearing the applause. Then go out and enjoy an experience that the majority of people will never have.
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I have similar issues. I was fine playing solos in concert and marching band thru high school. Then I joined the Marines, and was in the Marine Band. At the School of Music I had to play a final audition to proceed to the field bands. During that audition, for the first time, my lips started quivering while playing. It wouldn’t stop. I passed but it was embarrassing. It was like having a ridiculous vibrato. Ever since then, 30 years later, if I have to play a solo( in my community band) my lips do the nervous quiver thing. I take beta blockers for a heart thing. I’ve tried downing a beer to relax me before the performance. Nothing helps. I actually quit the band after being in it for 20 years because of it. I’m back with them now..and guess what? I have a solo for the upcoming Christmas concert! Any suggestions?