The story so far.....

josephine

Hi Ken and All,
Just reporting back to base camp having subjected myself to two shows. Before you start saying wow, I do have to say that I did 1solo and did some group songs. However, I did notice a lot about the two experiences which I wanted to talk about. The KT exercises helped enormously and actually gave me the confidence to sing a Grade 8 Rock School song (Sam Brown's Stop) but I did notice a big difference in performance between the two shows. In the case of the first show, it felt like I was auditioning for XFactor with a hostile crowd and it felt like ages before I could actually perform so the level of nerves was far greater than it had ever been, At one stage, I was convinced I had forgotten the words.
I think I have learnt what environments work for me and which don't but my question to you is: Is that a common lesson for other singers? What tips have you got for controlling the jitters? Would you review your past poor performances or brush them aside?
Josie

highmtn

We all have to learn from our mistakes, but it does no good to go into regret or remorse. If you perform before a hostile crowd, then you've go a lot of cards stacked against you before you even open your mouth.

In a case like that, you pretty much just have to rely upon your training and hope for the best. If the crowd is there to eat you alive, it may not matter if you give a stunning performance.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often. If it does, you may need to reconsider where it is that you are choosing to perform. There may be other venues where the audience would be more open to what it is that you have to offer, and that would be a better environment for you to develop a little more confidence in yourself and your capabilities to perform.

Performing as much as possible in the best environments you can come up with is a good strategy to have more positive experiences to look back on. That said, there is nothing like a terrible experience to make the strong become stronger, once you finish licking your wounds. There may be specific things about your performance that a "wake-up call" is telling you. Learn from your weaknesses and your defeats and turn them into strengths and victories.

A term that many musicians used to use regarding bad performances was to say "We died a death". It's terrible to Die a Death, or Die a Thousand Deaths on stage, but Led Zeppelin used to talk about that, as did many other bands. You wouldn't think that superstars ever went through any bad experiences on stage. They did.

But they learned from their mistakes and they built good comeback strategies. If we can't learn only from our triumphs, then we need to learn from whatever happens to us, and make the best of it. If we look at what happened and learn what to do to make that issue better, then it was part of the learning process.

The more we prepare and identify our weaknesses, the more we can take positive action to build those things into our strengths. It may be that we need to build more confidence so that when we are in those situations that "go South", we can maintain our composure and more quickly find our way back North again! Much of that can be gained simply through experience. The more we perform, the more that becomes our normal state of being, and the more stable we can feel in that situation. The more we practice performing the more accustomed we are in that state.

Bob

josephine

Hi Bob,
Thank for the advice. I will take what you say on board. I think it is a case of onwards and upwards.
Josie