Stage Fright – A Guitar Player’s Guide

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Stage fright can be overcome. Stage fright is not fear of failure, but a reaction to other people focusing their attention on you and what you are doing or saying.

If we play well onstage that means we have learnt to play automatically. We practice with careful attention but once we know our music we can play it without consciously aiming our attention at what we are doing. For a guitarist, playing and singing involves performing automatic movements and automatic repetition of words and music we have memorized.

This depends on how we practice. We are all familiar with the sensation of having warmed up during a practice session or when we are jamming, and we begin to take some risks. We start to play a little faster than we are really capable of. We try improvising, and maybe playing some stuff we are not entirely familiar with. This is a performance situation where a little “skin of the teeth” stuff enhances your playing.

But that is not the way to practice. When we are practicing we should always aim to be a little slower than we think we can be, keeping some energy in reserve. If we feel that we have warmed up and can let the dog off the leash, that’s natural but we should only be doing that with material we have practiced really well.

So, slow practice is one way to overcome stage fright, trying to duplicate the intensity of when we are in front of an audience is another way. By recording or videoing our playing, we are testing how well we have learnt the music. The slight nervousness we feel in front of the video camera shows up any flaws in our practicing.

One thing that plagues classical guitar players in particular but can be a problem for any player is the anticipation of a difficult maneuver. A rapid change from the first position to the seventh or an awkward scale passage often means excessive slowing down to accommodate the difficulty or, as many amateurs do, play through blindly and hope for the best. This is a symptom of poor preparation and practice. If you practice your piece at a slow enough pace to take all the hard bits into account, the hard bits will become easy. It’s just a matter of our mental attitude.

By practicing slowly we are working within our capabilities, but if our fantasies about impressing people with our guitar playing become the dominant factor when we are preparing for a gig, this could lead to unexpected stage fright. If we are going to impress our audience, it will be with the real technique and musical insight that we have acquired in our practice time. If we let our fantasies rule us, we are setting unreasonably high expectations for ourselves.

When we are onstage we need to let the results of our careful practice show themselves. Start the gig with some material that is not too challenging. If you play your first couple of numbers well, your audience’s appreciation will help you overcome stage fright and with your body warmed up, you will be ready to let loose a little.

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