Troubleshooting Performance Anxiety

An ensemble coach once told me, in a moment of profound pre-performance anxiety back in college, “Don’t be nervous. It’s not about you. It’s about the music.” She was right.

But it can be awfully challenging to focus on the music when performance anxiety takes over. You just know you had that piece sounding perfect and confident in the practice room, but in front of an audience (or worse, audition judges) everything seems to fall apart. What to do?

Musicians each have their own solutions to the problem of performance anxiety. In general, it’s a good idea to sleep and eat well, and avoid caffeine before a big performance, but that alone won’t cure stage fright. Some musicians recommend focused breathing, meditation, or stretching, while others find that those exercises make them too calm to give an inspired performance. What calms one musician may distract another. Performing is an individual process, and you’ll have to find what works for you.

There is no easy answer, but there is good news: dealing with performance anxiety is all about learning to unlock your expressive abilities–and that’s the exactly the same challenge you face in the practice room. Being expressive in front of an audience is the same old challenge, just more of it. So go ahead: challenge yourself. See what you can learn.

Think of it this way. A mountain climber can practice in the gym all she likes, but she’ll never get really great at climbing until she tries a real mountain. The real mountain has an unpredictable terrain, and the stakes are higher. Moves that seemed easy at the gym suddenly become risky endeavors. The climber has to unlock her ability to problem-solve on the go, to address the task at hand for all its unpredictability and scariness. Her aim is to forget about her nervousness and just climb, one step at a time.

Perhaps a routine move can’t be remembered under pressure. Or perhaps a certain muscle doesn’t turn out to be as strong as she thought. No problem: now she knows what to practice. And afterwards, that climbing wall at the gym never seemed so tame. A little scare now and then can turn out to teach us a lot.

There’s only one way through this process that I know of, and that’s practice. Perform in as many different situations as you can, show up to auditions just for the sake of auditioning, and practice performing in front of friends and family members as much and as often as you’re able. Facing the fear will help you learn how to navigate it in a way that works for you.

Believe it or not, a scary performance situation may also show you some expressive abilities in yourself that you didn’t even know you had. Be open to finding those, and try to enjoy the process. Good luck!

Do you have a great tip for dealing with performance anxiety? Leave a comment for us here on the Harmonious.ly blog. We’d love to know.