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Every time I get on stage, my hands are shaking like a cerebral-pulsy kind of shake. This shaking usually causes me to miss a few notes during the performance. Then, I can play through the piece ten times in a row perfectly at home, then I get up on stage I freeze and lose memory at a place I had down 100% memorized ten minutes prior. I find that this is troublesome because I tend never to give my best performances on stage, which is generally the only times that count / people pay attention to / etc.

I also can't seem to express nearly as well musical ideas on stage. It's like, all I think about is not screwing up. I have decided that this isn't just a matter of imagining the audience is not paying attention, or focusing on the performance, or this or that. It's a subconsious thing that requires effort outside of the stage to combat. Some people perform better under the lights than others, and unfortunately, I have not been naturally gifted to perform under pressure. I feel like if I can lift this vice I can actualize my potential onstage and give a performance that I can be proud of. That's all I want is to be able to give a performance and look back and say, I did my best and no regrets.

I have decided that this needs to be remedied, because it's inconvenient when you work so hard only to find a performance trashed by memory lapse when it really counts.

yea that realyl sucks. Days and days of working on it and then just screwing it up. You have to perform more often. I play pieces in my school in the auditorium whenever i get a chance and most of the time there are only a few people, maybe at most 5 people there. And i realized the more i did it the less nervous i got. But i've realized that i always get nervous playing in front of my dad. I dunno why

That actually happened to me the last time I performed! It does not usually happen to that extent but I think at the time it was attributed to a lot of stress and lack of sleep the night before. However, I generally perform better when I focus more on how I want to portray the music for my audience rather than what will happen if I make a mistake. Like concertpianist12988 said, it certainly helps to perform more often. Also, if possible, try to be well rested and relaxed prior to your performance. Good luck!

Theres a lot of topics on this, but some of the most useful tidbits were:

-getting a good nights sleep for at least 2 nights before the recital
-eating bananas
-having a good meal and drinking enough
-breathing exercises

bananas?

That always takes care of my nerves.

About the most useful thing to do with that banana is to *$!&*^% it firmly!
Here's a brief overview on performing at your best in a relaxed manner:
1) Think of a time that you played, or did anything at all in front of others that you felt confident doing. It could be a sport, telling a story, whatever. Take your time and find a really good example of such a time.
2) Spend a moment re-living that time. The way to do this is to access your 3 main senses...See youself at that time (from both your audience's perspective and your own view of them). Listen to the sounds around you at that time AND what your internal dialogue was saying (ie what were you saying to yourself). Feel the same feelings of confidence, pleasure, relaxatio etc that you felt the that 'special' time.
You will find if you do this thoroughly, that you'll access the same feelings of confidence you did at the time you're re-living.
3) once you have 'that feeling' in place, make sure you are standing or sitting as you would at that time (hold your head and body how you did at that time)...keep a hold of that feeling, sights and sounds...and imagine yourself walking out to the piano. Don't allow anything else in your mind but that positive, confident, relaxed feeling. Sit at the (imaginary) piano. If you're standing at this point sit down to reinforce this. Keep a hold of that same feeling and (in your mind's eye) begin to play. See your hands gliding effortlessly over the keys. Hear the music, absolutely perfectly played. Feel the confidence and relaxation. Picture the faces of the audience being spellbound. Imagine them thoroughly enjoying your performance.
Finish the piece and imagine and see and hear and feel the huge applause. Stand, take it all in, bow and really feel the pride and pleasure. Soak it all up and make it REAL. Visualise people coming up to tell you how much your playing moved them. Notice how it feels, sounds and see the whole scene.

Now here's the good bit, you're brain does not know the difference between a well imagined experience and an actual experience...fact!
So the more times you do this, the more used you get to feeling that way about performing. The more your brain 'believes' it.

Test this out by arranging to play for some friends and family. Make sure (as with any recital) that you really know your piece(s) inside out. (don't pick anything too hard).
Before your recital, stand outside the room and re-capture those relaxed, confident images, sounds and feelings (the same way you did earlier). The more you've done this on your own, the easier you'll access the right feelings. Remember to keep the positive, relaxed, confident self talk going as you enter the room and sit down to play. Play your piece(s) and notice how you feel.
If you're done this methodically I guarantee you will have less nerves and will play better.
Repeat this process and you'll get stronger and it will get easier each time.
When your important recital (audition or exam) is due, simply follow the same procedure. It works like magic.
All you've done is take something which you are confident at doing, and transfered those feelings to your playing. In exactly the same way as anyone who has done something well a thousand times, is so confident, they just do it without a thought. They know it's going to be great. And that in itself makes it great...you will have some of that feeling, and it has to make you more relaxed.
Enjoy your new found freedom!

Bananas are good for calming nerves, because they contain potassium and beta-blockers which calm the heart and reduce the pulse rate.

This should be in the FAQ section!!

Wow, good advice here.

I have experienced enough of that during my college years.

The prepation seems to start way back when you are learning a piece initially, that you are paying great details on things...as your practice goes on, it will serve the purpose of refreshing, but you can't just let playing take over, you have to consistenly stay on top and think, something that's very easy to say, and hard to do.

Then, you really need to know your LH...I mean really forward, backward, without right hand, with right hand, have your ever try to memorize just the LH? it's hard, but it's very useful.

Last, 1 week before recital, run through pieces slowly, with music score, and do a lot of mental practice without the piano, and with the piano. Getting some good night sleep is important 2-3 nights before, don't do a lot of practice on the recital day, and eat well at lunch, 30 minutes before it starts, eat banana and OJ....or water. While on stage, instead of imaging that the audiences don't exsit, they do and you can't fake that, try to focus on the first 5 measure of you piece....take a deep breath b4 you start, and take as long as you need b4 you start. During performance, play back your music socre in your mind as you play...think only music when you play....definitely NOT I am going to screw up.

There is no perfect performances out there, even the greatest messes things up, but they do seem to have a great ability on focusing, so they never goes out of focus so we never notice they are off.

i wish i knew what those letters were.....oh well

knew it had something to do with K

Eating bananas will achieve absolutely nothing in terms of anxiety or stage fright. You might as well get a list of old wives tales and try them.
I really do wish it were that simple.
It's easy to try to grab the easiest, most convenient solution, but, I suggest you try doing the banana thing and see what results you get, then invest a little time try using my technique (not mine actually, it's using NLP).
If you want a technical reason why this works it's as follows:
The brain (they are mostly all the same in terms of stimulus and response) reacts in stage fright, in the same way it does in a phobic reaction. There is a time when something happened to trigger the fear, it could be a bad performance, a critical parent, a speech which went wrong etc. This causes a stimulus response (like Pavlov's dogs). So the next time you're in a similar situation, the brain remembers this 'first time' experience and you start to get nervous (probably only slightly at this stage). That in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy as your perfprmace is affected by your nerves.
Each time this happens throughout your life, a neuro pathway is being built between stimulus (the performance) and response (the anxiety). And each time it gets stronger, often to the point where just thinking about the performance will cause anxiety. Think of this neuropathway as a series of strings attaching stimulus to response. Over time it becomes like a thick rope! The brain has no other choice when faced with the stimulus than to 'connect' with the response.
The trick is to use the technique I described earlier (there are others which I'll happily share on request), to build a NEW neuro pathway. With correct preparation, and trials in front of groups of friends etc. You build a new response to the stimulus of performance. In fact just imagining it does this, so long as you really play full out (See it, Hear it, Feel it), and make it 'real' for you.
Now your new neuro-association, neuro pathway or stimulus-respomse (all the same thing for our purposes here), although a relatively weak 'few strands' of string, offers your brain a more pleasurable response to the stimulus. The brain prefers to have pleasure instead of pain, and so it opts for the new association ie feeling more confident.
Now, don't get me wrong here, you may not walk out and be totally confident first time, but if you repeat this process, the new association gets stronger each time you do it. This is not some crazy idea it works, period!....
or you can eat a banana and see what good that does ... seriously, though, eating, sleeping, correct hydration (enough water in the 24 hrs before performance) etc should also be part of your preparation. A rule of thumb with hydration (which is so important to rain function, coorination etc) is to check that your urine is reasonably clear. If you are de-hydrated it will be darker yellow. If it's quite clear, you're well hydrated.

..sorry, no joke intended, I meant to type brain funtion and coordination, not rain function he he!

Steve...

I agree that bananas aren't going to cure stage fright. I don't think anybody believes that. But bananas do help with alleviating the symptoms (how much they help depends on the person and how many bananas they eat ) and, of course, there is that placebo affect that we mustn't forget about...

But you're right. In order to combat nerves, we shouldn't be concerned with combatting the nerves themselves - we should be concerned with combatting that which causes the nerves. So far, we've all been talking about how to alleviate the symptoms. But your post offers a good solution to the real problem, which will prevent (rather than simply alleviate) the symptoms.

I have the problem with the shakes! My leg shakes so much I can hardly hold down the pedal!! I must look like a wreck. I've never had a memory lapse on stage; my hands keep on playing and I just try to think about my dynamics and interpretation. That shaking is the worst though!

If I'm playing a really long piece, I usually loose the shaking by the end. Sometimes I don't have it at all. Even with pieces I've played for years and years though, it can happen.

I sincerely have sympathy for anyone that suffers from stage frieght and screaming nerves before and during a performance. Years ago, I thrived on performing. Something changed in the last 10 years. I dread performances. I am excited and look forward to the moment and then go into panic mode before walking on stage. I tried drugs, yoga, positive affirmations, you name it! I FINALLY DID SOMETHING I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER DO, I called a hypnotist/thearpist. IT HONESTLY HELPED more than I ever dreamed!
It is a suggestion but it worked for me. Rachmanninoff
composed the 2nd concerto during post hypnotic suggestions. He suffered depression and appearently the therapy worked as the 2nd is a masterpiece!
LOL.

I think concertpianist's advice makes sense. I've never performed piano in front of an audience, but I've done a fair amount of public speaking in my career. The stage nervousness may never go away but it can get better over time - CPs advice to 'perform' in lower pressure situations whenever possible as practice makes sense to me.

Another thing that makes me nervous while playing is trying to record myself. I just know any mistake that I make, I'm going to hear it on that recording!

Sometimes this helps me practice being nervous and playing anyway. Usually, however, I give up on trying to record myself for a while.

The recording yourself is great for self analysis of a piece you play.