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I have been away from this forum for an extended period of time due to playing & life commitments, and the current crazy state of the world. Nevertheless I have had many players over the years often lament to me they still suffer with nerves and stage fright issues on stage, not allowing them to play to their best ability.
Due to the repeated requests over time, I have finally found the time to address this for those who want to deal with it once and for all.
Best Regards- JC Stylles
You can learn more below here:
BSFLand
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05-25-2023 11:06 PM
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I don't have stage fright but I get nervous when I have to fill in forms with personal detail. Any reason for this? Why not just give us the info?
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Very much to the point.
Originally Posted by ragman1
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I've found regularity to be the key. I done 2 stints in my life where I was gigging every week.
For the first gig of the stints I was shaking like a leaf. After that the regularity ( and a double vodka and orange b4 the show) kept the nerves at bay and it was fun through and through.
I wanna get out playing again, but am shaking like a leaf just thinking about it! need that first gig.
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I used to know a guy (very creative, excellent artist and singer/songwriter) who went on stage and promptly sat down in a corner... He went for therapy of some kind but told me it helped keep the Dole off his back :-)
He was definitely okay once he'd got going, though. Like a lot of shy performers.
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I'm hopeless standing up in front of people unless I'm holding a guitar or an upright/electric bass.
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Yeah, I would say doing it often, and from an early age. I played my first gig at age 12. I was too dumb to be scared.
Now as a high school teacher, a room full of teenagers makes any music audience a cakewalk.
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I was 13. Scared sh1tless then. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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The advice I got from Mick Goodrick, that originated with Gary Burton, was to not try to change how you're feeling, but try to change how you feel about what you're feeling. Instead of calling it "Stage Fright", a negative label, reframe it as "Stage Energy", and consider it a good thing that your body is in a heightened state of nerves to help you accomplish your best performance.
Best wishes for everyone's music!
PK
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Possible spam/fishing... reported
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When I played full time, I was never REALLY scared, but what little bit there was, dissipated just by doing it over and over until it became a routine job. We played 6 nights a week, every week for about two years and it probably only took a few weeks for it to become rather routine.
Another thing that occurred during that time was that learning new things I needed on the job was MUCH easier because I had to learn it and was doing it all the time. As a hobbyist, it seems to take much more extra effort and time to accomplish much less.
As an example, in the trio, we each did two things:
- the band leader played sax and had one of those electronic keyboards that he played mostly bass on when I took a solo.
- the drummer was the vocalist
- I sat on a tall stool and played rhythm guitar while playing a Crumar foot pedal bass with my feet.
When I took a solo, the band leader backed me on his keyboard otherwise, he played sax. Needless to say, we played mostly in Bb and Eb and sometimes other "flat keys". I suppose that is why I have never considered there to be "easy" or "hard" keys and find it curious that so many others do.
I had never played foot pedal bass before, but started with just playing the roots of the chords, then root and fifth, then, root, 3rd, and fifth, and then walking bass until without even thinking about it, my feet were all over that thing. It just happened naturally because I had to do it night after night. If I were doing that at home as a hobbyist, I would probably never reach that level of competence. I believe talent has less to do with it than we like to believe. Humans have an amazing capacity to learn new skills, given the incentive to do a thing.
Tony
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Leonard Bernstein said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time."
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All that said, some great performers have had real struggles with stage fright:
Pavarotti, Streisand, Adele, Carly Simon, Eddie Van Halen.
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I always get nervous before going in front of audiences, both in business and playing gigs. This goes away after the first few minutes onstage.
Doesn’t matter how often I do it. I get nervous. But I’ve learned to accept it, which makes it easier.
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I don’t often get nervous about gigs these days. However, I value the things I feel nervous about more; and this makes me feel more alive and connected to music.
It’s not a bad thing. For some people it can be debilitating though. But if you aren’t that badly affected by it and it goes well, you get a such a buzz from it. Or at least I do.
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I listened to Ben Monder on the Everyone Loves Guitar podcast. He used alcohol to curb stage fright and ended up an alcoholic unable to play from his addiction. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Be careful the solution doesn’t become a bigger problem.
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Bob Weir mentioned a few years ago that 60+ years into his performance career, he still has stage fright before every gig. Garcia said he had it, too. Like before every gig saying "jeez, how do I keep letting myself get into this situation?"
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That's interesting. I'd have thought that after as many gigs as Garcia and Weir played, the stage fright would have worn off. Originally Posted by Cunamara
For my gigs, I'm sometimes nervous enough at the beginning that I worry about not executing rapid written passages. After some number of tunes, most nights, I can relax. But, not always. I can't explain it, but some nights are worse than others.
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Someone once pondered why, after all the gigs they played, the Grateful Dead never improved. I do not know enough of their music to say whether this is a fair comment.
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Really lame phishing attempt... Originally Posted by JC2023
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Guess what? I don't believe you.... you registered here for email phishing... that's all... Originally Posted by JC2023
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Jim Hall also had to deal with both problems (stage fright and alcohol) Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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JC Stylles registered here years ago and posted a fair bit for a while. Mainly about Benson picking, which he knows a lot about. Originally Posted by DonEsteban
Here is a set from Small's from a few years back.
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Thanks, Mark. I knew I had some recognition of the name but I couldn't place it.
"Someone once pondered why, after all the gigs they played, the Grateful Dead never improved. I do not know enough of their music to say whether this is a fair comment."
As a Deadhead for decades, I am probably biased. I think that is a very unfair comment. There are a ton of live recordings attesting to their frequent brilliance in doing what they did. Personally I liked the 1972-78 era the most- fusing folk, bluegrass, jazz, country, blues into an utterly American form of musical expression. Listen to the Dead tour recordings from May 1977, the European tour of 1972 (Europe '72 and the other subsequent releases from that tour), the "Sunshine Daydream" concert in Oregon 1972, One From The Vault... they were good enough that Billy Cobham, Ornette Coleman and Branford Marsalis sat in with them. When the Godchauxs left the band and Brent Mydland came in, they developed a muscular organ driven sound that was a lot of fun- more rocking, less jazz perhaps. Good dance music.
The spinoff projects- Phil & Friends (at various times with Biil Frisell, John Scofield, Stanley Jordan, etc.), Mickey Hart's various bands, Weir's projects like Ratdog and Wolf Brothers (with Don Was on bass- the current president of Blue Note records), the Jerry Garcia Band, Bill K's stuff, etc.- are well worth listening to.
There are flaws, to be sure- voices out of key and forgetting lyrics, for example. But OTOH they played different sets every night and had 200-250 songs in rotation at any given time, and sometimes spontaneously pulled out some tune they hadn't played in years. And then there was the particular reason I went to shows: second set "space." The stuff their critics loved to hate. But I never heard them play "Dark Star" live; there are many versions available on YouTube and there is usually something wonderful in all of them. I was listening to 11-11-73 earlier today.
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It was a joke.
Returning to the thread topic, the J C Stylles you know for his Benson picking (another twilight zone for threads) is not the same as the OP. The real Stylles posted under the name JC Stylles, but has not been seen for three years. The OP is an imposter.
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