I note that we have a lot of performers on this forum. I find performing in front of people to be a harrowing and anxiety provoking experience, and as a result, I avoid public performance like the plague. However, I would like to be able to perform in front of people without that feeling of dread.

Do you get anxious performing? How do you cope with your nerves?

Marcus

By having a nervous breakdown.


(don't worry, that's not all........cont'd below.......)

Marcus :

The best - and only - solution that I know is to just do it. That said, there are ways to ease into performance situations rather gradually.

Start by performing for only a small number of family and/or friends with works that you know very, very well. From there you can branch out by increasing the scope of your audience (neighbors, people you know, but less well than your friends) and the size of your audiences.

If possible, find a group of amateurs who can get together to perform for each other; better yet, form such a group and be active in it.

These are long steps from performing in a concert hall filled with music lovers and critics, but after taking the first steps, you may be surprised at how far you can go.

Regards,

....but seriously folks......

IMO the first and main thing is to make sure you really really know the pieces you're performing. There's a difference between sort of knowing them, like being able to just play through them, and really really knowing them. How do we find out if we do? Well, that leads into what is the next important thing anyway......

You need to play in front of people before any performance -- way before. That's how you really find out how well you know a piece and what kinds of weaknesses there are. And there's a simple prior step that you can take, sort of a bridge to playing even just for one friend: Make a recording of yourself. That serves multiple purposes. Besides the obvious thing that it lets you study closely how you're doing, just the experience of playing for the recording is a "stress factor" that helps get you ready to play for somebody, provided you can 'survive' playing for the microphone. And if you can't, that means you're not ready yet.

Even once you're convinced that you "know" the pieces, of course there can still be nerves. I'll let other people talk about what they do about that. For me, what I described is 95% of the battle. The other 5% is mostly reminding myself that I can play the pieces -- that I've succeeded with them before and that I can do it.

Plus reminding myself that we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves and that this is what we love doing, which somehow are easy to forget sometimes.

I also get very bad performance anxiety. My teacher says that everybody does, even concert pianists. I agree with Mark - you need to really really know your pieces. Make sure that you are able to play them when concentrating 100%. We sometimes zone out while practicing, but our minds will be hyper-aware while we're performing. The only way to really test this out, as others have pointed out, is to practice performing. This will let to get used to be feeling of the adrenaline coursing through your system and also the feeling of playing on a foreign piano.

One key point that I've lately learned is that I will rarely give a performance that I'm satisfied with. There will inevitably be little slips. If that happens: forget about it and go on. This isn't the practice room where you stop and correct your mistakes. Always look ahead and never behind. Engross yourself in the music and play expressively, forget about the audience completely. Easier said than done.

Me too... I actually posted a thread about performance anxiety some time ago....
However, these days there are other ways to get to the public, like recording CDs etc...

Yes -- that's very important and you put your finger on it very well.

Sometimes we are told that there's no reason to be nervous about performing because we've been able to play it with no problem while practicing, so what is there to be nervous about. Blah blah blah.

That's sort of good input and it does help to think that way, but it's not exactly valid -- because of what you said. Maybe some people don't have any different kind of awareness when they're performing, but most of us do and I would say hopefully we do. The performing experience is just different. It is a different mental and physical state. We become more demanding of our playing, we focus more greatly..... we might even notice things about the music that we never did before, sometimes in a very good way.

That's all part of why it's so important to work up to performing by, well, working up to it -- in a sequential kind of way, if possible.


Extremely important, and in fact I'd say (and I imagine you'd agree) that even in the practice room, we should often put ourselves in that same mindset: decide that you're just playing through the piece, no matter what, as though it were a performance, and that you're just going to go on. When I'm practicing through a piece, I always (always) make the distinction between whether I might interrupt myself and fix something, or whether I'm playing all the way through the piece no matter what.

Yeah I sometimes get those too, even though I play for people quite often. At least once or twice a week. Still, depending on the piece, my nerves could get so bad that I partly lose vision at times and listening. It's awful, but the best thing to do I've found is to believe in yourself. Especially when you are on stage. So that when things like that happen, you can control them or at least accept that they're there. Amazingly, coming in peace with your nerves usually reduces them significantly.

Also, I've dicovered that the times I don't feel nervous are when I feel 150% prepared. Which means I'm satisfied with the way I've practiced and feel confident about memory (if it's not chamber). Do whatever you can in your practice time to secure that.

One thing that has helped me is to remind myself that I am performing out a love of music and of sharing that music with others - that performing is not something to be 'got through' but is something to enjoy.

That said... it doesn't take away the nerves... but it puts them in perspective.

I will echo the benefits of practising playing your pieces straight through - so you can learn to recover from small slips and errors without falling apart. If you are used to stopping when you make an error... in a high pressure situation you tend to do what is your default behaviour - stopping. So practising without stopping is important to overcome this.

And as everyone has said - knowing your pieces inside out and back to front is essential. I used to practice with my eyes closed... and/or in the dark... before performances to make sure I could play my pieces without relying on particular visual cues.

That's just a few things that have helped me in the past. Oh... and jumping at any opportunity to play for people when asked That way any nerves I felt before a performance was just due to the big occasion - rather than because I was scared of or unfamiliar with playing in front of people.

If you're well prepared, I think a state of moderate anxiety actually promotes your best performance. You don't want to be shaking, or perspiring so much it makes the keys wet, but within reason that nervous feeling can enable you to play a piece better than ever before. If I feel relaxed and confident before stepping out there, that's when things start going haywire. (I guess I should learn to get nervous when I feel that relaxed sensation. :-)

One other thing, if you want to be extra-prepared, is to make sure you can start the piece not only at the beginning but at any point (or at least lots of different points) in the middle, so that if you do make a mistake or get lost, you can immediately get going again. Being able to do that is also a good acid test for memorization.

One last thing (I promise) is to have every aspect of your performance planned. This may be going overboard, but when preparing a piece with a lot of leaps, I sometimes even plan where to be looking with my eyes at certain times.

I agree about that being extremely good. Aside from being useful 'just in case,' it helps enormously in giving confidence, because you know that even if something happens, you'll be able to cope fine.

Although of course you need not to be thinking, while you're performing, "OK, if I screw up I'm going back to there......"

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone. There have been many good ideas for me in this thread. I find that anxiety state of "what if I screw up..." really gets my heart racing, and when I do eventually slip up (which is sort of inevitable) that I find it hard to let go of that and it interferes with the rest of my playing.

I have seen Tori Amos play a few times, and one of the things that amazes me about her, is that she will sometimes forget her own songs, or forget where she is up to and will stop and make a joke of it, then go on.

At the end of the day, do you all get that 'rush' from performing that makes you want to keep heading back to the stage?

M

I've been reading about The Inner Game of Tennis. There is an equivalent called The Inner Game of Music, you can find it on Amazon. The books deal with Self 1 "what if I screw up".

Marcus :

A couple of other thoughts :

Every one in a while, during your practice sessions when you are relatively relaxed, go through a routine imagining that you are performing. Do everything that you would do in a performance situation down to the last detail :
- wearing appropriate clothing
- approaching the piano from out of the room
- bowing to your unseen audience before you play
- taking the appropriate time to "center" your mind before beginning
- going through your piece(s) as though it were a performance (no stopping to correct mistakes, no starting over, etc.,)
- bowing to acknowledge the silent applause when the piece is over.

Another intermediate step to performing, before you get to the audience level, is to record yourself. The "red-light syndrome" is something that builds up the anxiety somewhat - although not as intensively - as does performing for an audience. It may help you channel some of the nervousness that you feel into a positive performance factor.

Regards,

Anxiety has its roots on several issues, usually happenings in the past.

I'd say that for me, anxiety dissappeared, when I decided I was ready to perform in public and I was also very proud to do that!

If you can't find reasons to perform in public, you won't make it. IF you do have the reasons then amplify them.

What do you do when your feet start shaking? I had that happen to me once and it was truly awful. I coudn't figure out if it was nerves, heels or too much espresso...

A lot of good comments here. I've gone through this myself, and so I think it takes a lot of time to get to the point where you know how to deal with it. Forget about getting rid of nerves, you won't be able to, but you will be able to manage performing without the nerves destroying your hard work. (Warning: This is very long)

Before the Performance (preparation):

In the weeks/months prior to performing, as others have said, know your music well. There's nothing like being confident you know your piece inside and out. Never go into a performance thinking "If only I had another week to prepare." It's almost better to not perform at all if that is the case.

Also, about 1-2 weeks prior to the performance, you will have to stop trying to fix issues, or rather, as you continue to work on them, expect them to come up in a performance. But really, there does have to be a cut-off where you practice playing straight through the piece no matter what problems arise. If you practice playing through with always stopping to fix mistakes, then that is what you'll do in a performance, which is probably the worst thing you can do. It draw attention to the mistake rather than keeping the flow of the music and glossing over it. Practice playing straight through, knowing where you are most likely to make errors, and then have a Plan B in place that you can do if and when you make that error.

That's the physical preparation, and now for the psychological preparation.

As I mentioned above about mistakes, you have to 1) expect you will make mistakes, 2) trust in your abilities to keep the piece going and know that your Plan Bs that you've prepared won't totally ruin the whole piece, and 3) Allow yourself to make those mistakes! This is huge. With all the notes that you have to play, a few notes out of place won't bother most listeners if you can keep the flow going and keep your focus on the overall expression of the piece.

Anther preparation that you need to do in your head is to not work yourself into a frenzy in the weeks prior. You can worry something to death about the unknowns in a performance, and it doens't help at all. I understand that some do not get nervous until they're on stage and others get nervous up until the point they're on stage, and some are nervous before and during.

In preparation, if you get worried and/or nervous thinking about the performance, you need to force those thoughts out of your mind. Force yourself to think of something that always makes you smile. Non-music related often helps in the beginning stages.

The problem is that we fear what we don't know, and we don't know how we'll do, how the audience will be, perhaps how we'll feel that night, how the piano will feel, etc. Lots of unknowns, and that coupled with not trusting ourselves to be able to handle it builds anxiety. Especially when you've had bad performing experiences to draw from. Anything you can do to eliminate these unknowns is wise: practice on the instrument you will perform on with the lights as they will be, practice performing the music for others in a less formal setting, etc.

Again, this whole thing is a process, and so for the first few performances that you do, the goal is to simply force those thoughts from your mind, and tell yourself, literally, that you will do fine and that you are well-prepared.

As you get a few positive experiences under your belt, then you want to try building off of those and thinking about how those events turned out to be not as bad as you thought. Here, instead for simply thinking of something that makes you smile, you will think of those past positive experiences and realize that you *enjoy* performing and you are *excited* to share this music with others.

During the Performance

What happens here quite often is that there is this inner voice that is throwing darts at you. With any mistake, any distracting noise or movement from the audience, will put your mind "what do they think of me?" or "Wow, my hands are so shaky! Can they see that?" rather than "listen to this great music I discovered". Essentially, your mind is on things *other* than what it should be on: the Music! And so it comes to no surprise that you then make more mistakes than usual, perhaps more than what you prepared yourself for, and most likely in places you thought were solid. That completely throws you off and you go into panic mode to try to recover. And all this time, that inner voice tells you how bad you're doing.

Of course, that inner voice is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you are at home practicing, you are focused on your playing and what you're doing, but when you perform, you are thinking of pretty much anything *other* than your music. Therefore, it is important to maintain your focus on your job. Have you ever seen those pieces of leather that they sew onto a horse's bridle to prevent them from seeing out of their peripheral vision and get scared? That is what you need to do: put those blinders on and focus on your job. Do not let that voice distract you from what you're there to do.

One other thing to realize that is that unless someone is paying big bucks to hear you play and it is obvious you are not prepared (or show up drunk or something outrageous like that), the audience will not be angry with your for your mistakes. People just want to be entertained. Even if they've heard that same piece a thousand times before, they haven't heard what *you* think of it. They want to know what you like about the piece and what you choose to do with it. They love music or they wouldn't be there, and they *want* you to do well. I don't think I've ever encountered a situation where the audience felt angry at the performer. Usually, their heart goes out to hem when they're having trouble with nerves. Why? Because most of them respect the performer for what they're trying to do. Even though it always looks like its performer vs. audience simply by how they are facing you, they're pulling for you to do well.

If you rest assured knowing that your audience wants you to do well and are forgiving of mistakes, that helps you to forgive yourself of them as well.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly during a performance, you must keep your attention on playing a musically as possible. Your audience doesn't really care about exactitude when it comes to notes. They just want to be moved. I've heard some pretty poor technical performers just wow a crowd by their musicality, and I've also heard some great technicians put their audience to sleep. Yes, to have both is the ideal, but when technique fails from anxiety, the only thing that will bring you back is to focus on the feeling of the music and throw yourself more into it. Trying to reign yourself in from a mistake by trying to get the right notes, being correct, perfection, etc. is antithetical to creativity and musicality. It just doesn't work. If your focus so on being precise, then one wrong note will ruin your whole performance and cause an avalanche of more wrong notes. If your focus is on the feeling that the music is trying to convey and what *you* are trying to convey through it, then the flow of the music will keep going and most people won't even notice the mistake, or if they do, it won't bother them. Wrong notes in a performance ruled by exactitude really bother the audience, because that is where their and your attention is.

After the Performance

This part is very important, so that you can build upon a foundation of positives. It is also often neglected. Your first time performing and working on handling your anxiety, you probably won't be 100%. Maybe you'll be about 20 or 30% better. Then the next time, maybe 40 or 50% better. The key is to build on the positives from it. Even if it wasn't perfect or your hands still shook, you need to think of what actually worked well. Perhaps you went into the performance feeling more prepared than ever. That's a plus. Perhaps you found your mind wandering while you were playing and reigned it back to the music.

The most important thing is to remember how the performance actually was compared to how you anticipated it would be. Often we exaggerate everything in our mind in anticipation of a performance because of that fear of the unknown. After you've performed, it's no longer unknown, and usually when you reflect upon it you see that it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be. Remember that the next time you perform. You might even realize how *good* you felt afterwards, and hang onto that thought in the weeks coming up to your next performance.

Of course, if there is a complete disaster, total memory loss or what have you, where the music actually stopped, just remember that can be a positive too. Every performer I know has at least one of these in their lifetime. When that happens to you, you can always say in the future, "Well, at least it wasn't as bad as that *one* time!"

This sort of thing takes time to get accustomed to, and some days will be better than others. Keep a sense of humor and perspective about what you're doing. If you only performed once in your life, then all would depend on how you did that one time. But you should perform many times, and preferably the same music in a condensed amount of time to give yourself some perspective. It's not the end of the world, and there will be a next time and it will be better if you learn from mistakes in previous performances.

To the adults who perform, do you do it in the context of your teachers' recitals or do you seek out performing opportunities in your own amateur groups?
Is there a reason you would favor one or the other, especially if the teacher's recital is mostly geared towards the much younger performers?

That happened to me at a competition when I was 11, during a slow, romantic piece. I was convinced that the audience could see it, but apparently it wasn't noticeable. It goes away if you don't think about it and focus on it.

Morodiene: Great post! Regarding playing as musically as possible and not worrying about technique - I would say that it depends on the audience. If I'm playing for an examiner or adjudicator, I have to pay attention to both technique and expression to keep myself from rushing or fumbling notes. I don't think there's anything wrong with paying attention to it as well, because it is part of the music - in fact, I don't really separate technique and interpretation in my mind when I'm performing. Sometimes interpretation mistakes can occur as well, like certain voices not coming out correctly. The important thing is to not be fazed by mistakes.

I'm going through this right now. I am playing a solo on the cello with an orchestra two days from now.

Luckily, it's a short piece. It'll be like going to the dentist: over before I know it.

I've been doing this for years, and I still get nervous.

I think it's just the nature of the beast.

What piece?

Good luck! And remember -- you're supposed to enjoy it!
As I said, sometimes it helps to remind ourselves. I've sometimes even written myself a note which said:

"Remember: ENJOY!"

I do both. I certainly favor performing in a group of like-minded adults. However, I also take the opportunity to play in my teacher's casual recitals. It's sometimes a little humbling to do so, but all playing experiences are good ones, I think.

My teacher invites me to perform at her in-house recitals; she thinks that it's good for her young students to see "old folks" still pursuing piano studies and often exposing her students to works that they themselves have not yet heard.

Tonight, for my teachers casual in-home recital, for example, I'm playing Scriabins' Prelude and Nocturne for left hand alone, Op 9, which I doubt any of the students (mostly teen agers) will ever have heard. They may not even have heard a work for left hand alone, which might be intriguing for them.

Regards,

That sounds really good Bruce. I have never played any LH alone repertoire but I do enjoy Scriabin's piece. I could not pull it off at my stage of training..yet.
Have you recorded it?
AS for performing, I think it will take me a long time to garner enough courage..

I agree that almost all of us suffer from this. I didnt used to until I performed a piece I wasnt 100% ready to perform and was always self concious from then on.

Upon deeper reflection I noticed a few things that have helped me come back into the realm of performing.

0. KNOW MY PIECE: Be able to play the song starting from any random/all measures, by memory. Be able to play each hand's part with the opposing hand, hands seperately (thus its not muscle memory but brain memory).

1. I try to down play my abilities when people ask about my playing. "Under promise and over deliver". That way if I make mistakes I know they were probably expecting them anyways, and the pressure to have 100% perfection is reduced if not eliminated.

2. I stopped performing to be lauded and praised as an excellent pianist, but now I perform to inspire others to want to practice and to turn people onto Classical music. So its not about me, its about the music.

No, I have not yet recorded either piece. The cadenza in the Nocturne sounds pretty lame, yet. Until I get the cadenza up to where I feel it should be, I'm trying playing it more like a free-flowing introspective moment rather than the sparkling cadenza it should be. In the meantime, I continue to try to bring the cadenza up to tempo.

Regards,

Dvorak's "Silent Woods." (You'd know that if you'd been reading my blog . . .)

I am frequently surprised that people actually do perform live in front of an audience at all, considering how unpleasant the experience can be. Back when I did it, it often seemed like a penalty I had to pay in exchange for all those hours of enjoyment I had while alone at the keyboard. It was a punishment for spending so much of my time doing something inherently frivolous and useless. My thinking has changed since then (but I still don't perform).

Yeah, I don't know why I keep doing this.

Right now I should be practicing but the tips of my fingers hurt.

It may surprise some - not necessarily speaking directly to wr - that performing can actually be both a pleasant and a rewarding experience. When you know your piece(s) well and the performance comes off well because you were able to put your all into communicating what you feel, it can be a very satisfying experience.

Regards,