Transforming Fear into Mastery on Stage

Sungazer played a gig on the MS Stubnitz, stuff went wrong, and then I ruminate about that for about 10 minutes.

Sungazer is...
Shawn Crowder - Drums
Adam Neely - Bass
Pier Luigi Salami - touring keyboards

Some sources:

MS Stubnitz

(⌐■_■)

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Peace,
Adam

[Rubrickety]

This incident perfectly illustrates the timeworn adage: "Never rent a keyboard with outdated drivers for a gig on a converted fishing boat in Germany."

[AdamNeely]

ADDENDUM: If you need anxiety medication, FFS, take the anxiety medication. Also, Beta Blockers can be a vitally important blood pressure medication. Seriously, this is not one-size-fits-all, and I'm not a doctor. This is me ruminating about stage fright and how I - personally - deal with performance anxiety and use it.

Love y'all!

Adam

[purple-flowers]

So I'm autistic, so basically every aspect of my life is a performance and it gives me serious anxiety. Ironically the stage is one of the few places that I feel less anxiety because the "rules" are explicit when in every other aspect of life it is implied.

Edit: didn't expect this to resonate with a lot of people, but I'm glad it did :)

A really useful tool I've learned is using the mammalian dive reflex to get out of panic attacks. It is a really good way to use the built in physiological systems you have to get yourself to calm down when mental grounding techniques have failed you.

[velvet_bass]

As a life long stutterer, public speaking is a fear beyond comprehension for me. My brother got married last year, and as best man i was expected to give a speech. This terrified me from the moment i was asked to be best man to the moment i got in front of the crowd holding the mic. The vicious cycle of stuttering means the more nervous you get, the more likely you are to stutter.

I decided to write my speech about how my brother helped me with my stutter throughout my life as a way of letting the crowd know to expect my impediment and to acknowledge my fear of speaking to a crowd.

Long story short…i didn’t stutter once, it was the best speech of the night, not a dry eye in the venue and it was a defining moment of my life. I actually enjoyed myself up there!

But i will never do it again 😂

[Pattamatt]

I remember after one trumpet performance early in college someone told me afterwards "oh you have such great vibrato!"

My hands were just shaking uncontrollably, but thank you.

[rawali]

Key takeaway: Driving is scary so get drunk before taking the wheel. Got it. Thanks Adam! Great video!

[PhillipAlcock]

I once heard Paul McCartney tell the story of an incident when Wings first went out on the road. On evening Linda, who had been improving her keyboard playing ‘on the road’ forgot how to play the intro to the song that opened their show. They tried several times, but she still didn’t get it right. Eventually he went over to show her how it went and screwed it up too. Because of the way they handled it the audience thought it was part of the show and started laughing. McCartney then played to this and got them laughing more. Eventually they sorted the intro to rapturous applause! Moral is don’t take yourselves too seriously, and if you screw up get the audience laughing. They want you to succeed, and if you play a bum note (especially in jazz 🙄!) the moments gone and they probably didn’t notice anyway…

[andybaxter]

One mental trick I learned was right before I go out on stage to start the performance, convince myself that I am walking off the stage at the end of the performance. You get that momentary relief and relaxation from finishing, but you get it when you really need it, at the very beginning.

[KovertCorteX]

when i played in a band, the anxiety was the rush. and overcoming the fear mid performence is what made you feel powerful

[noyanoamtal_music]

As a classical pianist, while I may make some more mistakes on stage than when practicing alone, playing on stage always makes my performance a lot more inspired. Playing without stage fright leads to an almost tired feeling- for me and probably for the audience too…
A million people have played these pieces with perfect technicality before. When people hear a pianist play it’s not to test them for how many mistakes they make, but to be moved and inspired by them. That’s how I find stage fright to be important for me :)

[JetBlackLi]

I have crippling stage fright. Something an orchestra musician taught me that has helped a bit was re-framing your fear as excitement, as the sensations can be similar--two sides of the same coin of sorts. "People pay to go on rides and stuff to feel like this!" they said lol. I later saw the concept of re-framing come up as a legit psychological coping mechanism (though I forget if this was the correct term), though even if I hadn't come across it, it was a cool way of thinking about things

[guitaro]

As a person who is always coaching others in dealing with stage fright (which I deal with myself), this was tremendously helpful. Thanks, Adam!

[marco-xeje]

adam, this type of content about a musical life, like the "5 words of musical wisdom" and the "how we almost lost $17, 000 on tour", is simply AWESOME. love the theory and analysis content, but these ones make me feel connected to music and motivated in ways i couldnt imagine.

[urredux]

There's a quote I love from boxing champion José Torres that makes a very similar point: "I learned that fear was something you must have if you wanted to be a champion. Because fighting, and having that fear, but not allowing that fear to get the best of you — to use that fear to help you — that is one of the best qualities of a champion. You must have fear in order to understand when the guy is going to throw the punch before he throws the punch. That is all triggered by fear. So through experience, I learned that one of the best friends that a champion has is fear."

[archeoxx]

I am a church organist and I a often have stage fright. For me the 'redirection of energy' happens when I play the last piece of the mass, the loudest, it feels wonderful letting all that stress go away with the music !

[alexanderschuhmann]

I've been at that concert. The improvisation in the beginning to bridge the silence was so good, it was a huge pleasure, one of the best gigs I've ever been to.

[TheFlual]

In German it's called "LAMPENFIEBER" and translates to Lamp Fever. I remember when I had my first gig I became sick and had a big fever, so I couldn't perform. On my second gig I got a fever again but this time I performed, but it wasnt fun at all. It was as if my body wanted to prevent me from going out on stage. Addidtionally to stage fright the fear of getting sick before a gig always kicked in about a week before a performance. I really thought I couldn't perform music in front of people. This happened when I was 20 years old and continued until my mid 20s. Now I'm 34 years old and I'm now super calm before a gig. I think getteing older helps with stage fright.

[usinganear]

It's also so interesting how different venues trigger different responses. I notice that a stage lower to the floor, specifics of the lighting situation, the number of people, can be SUPER effective at curtailing or exacerbating performance anxiety. I remember checking my blood pressure once before a particularly tiny show that was floor-level with the audience and no stage lighting and I was a wreck! I do so much better in "professional" settings with more people, stage lighting, etc.

It's a godsend to have little internal mantras about how the audience isn't out to get you, and that adrenaline isn't necessarily negative--you also get adrenaline rushes from excitement and passion!

Glad you got your driver downloaded 😂

Deep breaths.. Deep breaths..👂

[shanecommins]

That self-transformation thing is so key. Once you get lots of experience of public performance, you learn to *love* the fear, because it turns you into someone who can do things the offstage you never could.

[oolabob]

There is a moment in the video from the show that tells me something about how you actually got through it: the audience cheers when they hear the keyboard working, which means you let them in on your present emotional drama. That means you conquered shame first, connected in an honest way with your audience, and then showed them you were courageous enough to keep trying. That's no small thing. You made a genuine human connection with those people and went on to exemplify what it is to be scared $#!+less and do your job anyway.