Yesterday I succesfully played a solo passage in a piece in a wind-band concert and came home feeling euphoric. However, we are giving the same concert next weekend and today I find the idea of having to go through the same amount of stress again quite disheartening.

Everything I have read about overcoming performance anxiety says that the more you perform the less stressful it becomes (and my teacher tells me the same thing) but is it really true? And how often do you have to perform before the stress levels go down?

I think it does get easier, provided one is playing to a 'friendly' audience. As someone who played his first ever public concert just 4 years ago at age 69, and has gone on to play in front of an audience more than 30 times, I find it much more enjoyable now. The two main problems are nerves and concentration - how to lose the nerves yet maintain concentration - not easy, even at forum events where the audience is very supportive.

For me, the nerves have got better the more performances I have done. I worry that I will suddenly break down, go disastrously wrong etc, but the more times I perform and manage to do a competent job, the more I convince myself that I'm more likely to do the same again than have a disaster. I've made a few gaffes along the way, but I'm still going - my musical world didn't go down in flames just because of the odd wrong note or b.u.m chord.

I also try to keep it all in proportion - so what if I make a mistake? The worst that can happen is I'm sick over the keyboard (it has never happened yet!) and even then, I would survive. I did an interview on local radio today - nerve wracking, but ultimately quite fun. I'm a great believer in saying yes and having a go - you only live once. Successful performances are always more enjoyable in retrospect!

As a old newbie to performance - I know I need to get more practice and set up as many situations as possible. A recent concert party was great (afterwards - an hour beforehand I was saying 'never again'). I do know from public speaking (30 years of doing it to groups from 10 to 8000) is that is DOES get easier but I think there is a lot more to playing an instrument than shouting your mouth off! My admiration of professional musicians just grows and grows.

It really does get better, yes. I remember talking to Trevor Pinnock one time, who told me he too gets nervous, so I doubt those who feel nerves will ever really shed them completely, but of course a few are also useful for getting adrenaline going. Six years ago, I'd not had formal tuition on the recorder, and would stop playing if I could hear anyone moving around in the house even a room away: two years ago I stood up in one of Edinburgh's public concert halls in front of about two hundred people and played a piece I don't like very much to them, having clocked the fact that a good few of them looked rather tense at the sight of my descant recorder - and I even raised a chuckle at the finish, and a good round of applause. I don't think one can put a timescale on it though - having had my hangup for years, I think what really made the difference was that my teacher somehow was able to put me enough at my ease to play at my best for him, letting me realise what I can do. Now how does one bottle that sort of teacher talent for everyone to use?

And yes, a wrong note won't make the world stop. Audiences generally are rooting for the performers, at least until there is a substantial amount of cash involved in the purchase of tickets for an event, so those of us performing at an amateur level can rest assured of a warm welcome, even if there's a mess up somewhere in the middle of the music .

Have fun for the repeat recital, kerioboe - let the euphoria from the last carry you on into the next - it's good that you are getting another opportunity so soon, as you get another hit from the addictive bit, and less chance to build up the terrors of the scary bit .

Yes.

Every time you perform it gets easier, even if there is a gap of a few weeks or even a couple of months betwen performances. Even if you never FEEL any less stressed before/during the event, the likelihood of the stress causing mistakes goes down. Your ability to deliver a good performance improves with every one.

After a gap of 22 years between solo recitals I felt more nervous, less than 2 years ago, performing to a dozen friends in my teachers house, than I ever felt first time round. But after a dozen formal recitals and many more impromptu ones (with a few disasters along the way) I have recovered the level of self-confidence I had as a teenager and 20-something. I now have no problem getting up in front of an audience of 100 or more.

I can't say how frequently you need to perform to get the benefits. Every day? Every week? Once a year? I expect that is a very personal thing. For me playing to an audience once every 5 or 6 weeks is enough, but I suspect that performing several times a week would be better.

Another thing that helps is to get into the habit of treating your weekly or fortnightly presentation to your teacher, demonstrating your latest piece to a friend, or playing a few lightweight numbers in the local cafe or pub, with the same serious intent to give your best as you would playing a classical sonata on the concert platform.

It is not only getting used to the performing situation that improves things. Through performing every aspect of your ability improves more quickly. Why? Because performing reveals your technical and musical deficiencies very clearly, as well as showing you whether you know your repertoire as well as you thought you did. The work and practice that you do afterwards is then much more focussed on what really needs to be done.

Yes, it gets better.
Last Saturday I played a flute solo. It was the 5th Forums concert that I have been in, and Daisy Chain said it was the best that I have played, there were dynamics in addition to all the right notes in the right order. She has heard all 5 solos, and so can comment.
I almost enjoyed it Then my hands shook after I sat back down for the next act. That's OK, I can cope with shaking afterwards, when it used to happen during the performance, I could almost drop the flippin flute
Beverley.

'Tis true.

I *still* find that the rehearsals/practice times can be better than the performance on some occassions. On others the performance has gone well. Not sure why this might be.

Yes it gets better for me too. I felt horribly nervous in the run-up to the first concert I played solo at, although I wasn't too bad on the day. Had shaking hands though I think, and ran short of breath (clarinet). Now I don't *feel* at all nervous (10 concerts in 2.5 years, plus a few other performances) although I know I must be a bit nervous because I still make mistakes, get short of breath and don't sound as good as I should. It makes me so cross when I don't even feel nervous and actually enjoy it

Piano still terrifies me though - I played it 3 times at the previous Leeds concert (solo, duet and accompanying) and although I was pleased with what I'd done on that occasion and didn't go to pieces, I've decided I'm not going to play piano again at a concert until I can pick it up from any point if I go wrong - I find that impossible to do on piano at the moment, even though I can now do it easily enough on clarinet.

The environments I've been playing in though have been pretty safe, and the test would be whether I could play at a formal public concert. I can play without getting unduly nervous at informal public events, but I'm not yet advanced enough to play at a formal public event so the issue doesn't really arise. I suspect I would go back to being very nervous, although I would like to think that again the more I did it, the less nerve-racking it would become.

It's not just the fact that I've done more of the informal concerts though that has made me less nervous - I made a conscious decision to try and overcome performance nerves so I've read a lot about how to do that and changed my attitude towards it.

My 2 daughters and I all played at our teachers' piano concert, and I didn't have time to be nervous because I had to calm my eldest down and look totally unperturbed. 140 audience.

That's an extremely good point, Bev. I'd only played in two concerts when I organised the first Leeds concert, and I found myself reassuring other people instead of asking for reassurance myself. Reassuring other people had the effect of constantly reinforcing positive messages to myself instead of negative messages, which was a side-effect of organising the concert which I hadn't expected. I would recommend anyone suffering from nerves to organise something themselves, and it doesn't have to be a big event - BachPensioner has posted in the last few days about the concert she held at her own home, and it sounded like they all had a really enjoyable time.

I find it's the same with work as well - clients take it for granted that I'll be confident and poised in certain situations, and I can't let them think otherwise. It's just a different type of performing. I hadn't thought of it this way until just now, but I wonder if it might help people who are confident in other situations (eg at work), to view a concert performance as if they were at work and put themselves into the same mindset

Yes, exactly that. It is a performance in looking cool. Same in my job too. Sometimes when I was a Sister, there was a situation that was odd, and I would whisper to the other Sister, have you seen/done/experienced this before, and there would be a shake of the head. So we would pretend we were cool with it,and shake only on the inside The rest of the staff thought it was fine and got on with it.

Maybe pretend to be an actor in a play where you have to play a tune.

I find it's variable.
From time to time I cope well and play well.
The rest of the time I fall apart and so does my playing.

An excellent point. I have just come from RNCM having watched a couple of oboists give their final recitals. I felt there was a very friendly atmosphere (of course the students all cheer each other like mad anyway). There were odd mistakes which is understandable with that sort of pressure, but it's the performance that matters. I think most of us like to see someone who is really going for it.

As an aside. Yes Britain has got talent and it's not generally on reality TV.

No, it doesn't get easier - at least, not for me.

However, I accept that I seem to be in the minority with this viewpoint.

(Not shivering with cold.)

Nor I.

You don't get easier for Misterioso, HG? *puzzled*

I was never a self-confident performer so it's not about getting back to where I once was but getting to a point where I have never been.


I still have days when I get nervous in my lessons. And as for "playing a few lightweight numbers in the local cafe" I would qualify this as a performance


It's the unpredictability of things which bothers me. I speak in conferences on a fairly regular basis. Some days it's fine, others I'm nervous before hand but it goes away once I start speaking on other days I'm fine beforehand but nerves hit me when I start and I can't get rid of them. There appears to be no logic in this and I can't predict in advance how I'm going to feel. I can see music performances going the same way.

I'll just have to hope that Anacrusis is right about the eurphoria taking over as I've got the repeat concert (with solo) on Saturday, the other windband is playing on Sunday (no solo but a few exposed bits), and again on June 12th and again on June 21st and (in what now seems like a moment of madness) I said I'd play in a pupils' concert on June 24th.

Kerioboe, it must be all about the psychology of performing, whether it is music or public speaking. When I was still working, I chaired a technical committee, and twice a year I had to give a presentation to around 250 people from all over Europe. Most times, I found that I started with a little nervous cough which lasted about 5 minutes until I got into my stride. But one particular meeting I had to present the most difficult report about a very sensitive issue that was more political than technical. There were something like 20 papers on the subject, and I was asked to summarise them and give my conclusion of a tempestuous meeting which I had chaired. So what did I do? I prepared for that meeting so thoroughly that I knew every nuance of the subject, forwards and backwards, and was able to field any question put to me. People said afterwards that it was the best presentation they had ever heard from anybody.

Coming now to music, like Bev I also played a flute solo on Saturday, at Leeds. I have played this once before in public a few weeks ago in our church and it was a disaster, from which I only narrowly recovered. The day after, I was wishing I had not chosen a Grade 5 piece to play at Leeds. But with help from my teacher, I worked on it again, we identified the gremlins and to use her expression, we "charmed them away". Although it was not perfect, I know that last Saturday I gave the best ever performance of that piece in front of somebody.

And I am going to do it again at the end of June, in the Adult Non-Competitive section of the Leamington Spa Music Festival - in front of the same adjudicator who is going to award prizes in the other sections. I hope to rely heavily on the feeling I had at Leeds, which was not really at all nervous. So I think it does get easier the more you perform in front of somebody.

This is where I dispair of myself at times. I find that the more prepared I am the more nervous I get. It's almost as if I can see more things to go wrong (or in the case of public speaking) the more things to forget. In fact the only instrument I have played in public without nerves is the flute. I'm sure this was because I didn't know how to play it properly and so there was no risk of me playing any worse than I usually did (if that makes sense). Having played the cor anglais solo well once, I now feel I have a reputation to live up to.

At the end of the month I have agreed to take part in the music school end of year concert and play the Oboe Trio Sonata that I played with Emsoboe and Oldnotes at Leeds in January (if you remember it) except that it will be with a cello instead of the piano. I have worked on it with my teacher and so can play it much better than I did in January (when I had only worked on it by myself) and my teacher is playing the second oboe part (the part Emsoboe played). When I am being rational I know that my teacher is capable of filling in my solo parts as well as playing his own if need be, that in a performance he will play out of tune to be "in tune" with me and that in such circumstances it is virtually impossible (as far as the audience is concerned) to give a really bad performance but I still feel really nervous about it and have moments when I wonder why I agreed to do it.

(Well actually I know why I agreed to do it. It was because I decided I wanted to confront my performance demons but psychologically it's turning out to be harder than I thought).

Well it was lovely in January, so it will be even better now .

Good Luck!

I don't know that it does ever get easier to perform.

I still get the same performance nerves as I did when I first sang something in public - a couple of solo lines in a carol service that had me shaking so much I had to hold the choir stalls to stay upright.

What has changed over time is my ability to deal with them, and to channel the adrenaline rush into something that will enhance what I am doing, rather than turn me into a jelly.

So I suppose the key questions are how did you manage to channel the adrenaline rush and how long did it take?

I am still at the jelly stage. Before the concert on Saturday I found myself alone in a room with my fellow oboist and so decided to have a quick play through my solo. When I'd finished she said "I don't believe it. It's just you and me in the room and you're shaking like a leaf "

And another question is how long in advance does the adrenaline start? Does it still stop you getting to sleep and make it hard for you to eat days before you're due to play?

I think it took several performance outings before I began to recognise the adrenaline rush. And I'd read somewhere that one could choose to label it as excitement rather than nerves, so I made a conscious decision to do that, and I found that it helped me a lot. I still have the shakes a bit, but I know now that they don't show and don't stop me.

Yes, I can be anxious and irritable and can fail to sleep in the days running up to an event. But knowing that what's happening is all part of the concert build-up helps me deal with it (and helps Misterjay deal with me dealing with it. )

I think the main thing is that I allow myself to feel the wobbles, the lack of sleep (I don't do failing to eat) etc, rather than trying to stop them happening, and they seem to be a lot less for not fighting them. And so it's all part of the job of giving that performance. It's not a dreadful, bad thing that has to be avoided, it's just part of the process.

There are some people for whom performance in front of an audience is as close to ###### on earth as they can imagine. The anxiety & fear affects the performance, at least in their view, and this makes the anxiety before the next one worse rather than better. Over the couple of years I have been on this site there have been many threads about how to diminish (or even) abolish performance nerves. If you can't achieve this then performing will continue to be ######. If you can come off stage believing that you've done well then it will make the nerves less next time.

Also, performing teaches you how to perform. I've played wrong notes, sung wrong words and on more than one occasion stopped dead in mid-song because for the life of me I couldn't remember the next line. The first time this happened I wanted the stage to open up and swallow me. The last time I just got on with it exactly as I would if I was in my front room at home.

Edit: Apparently the auto-censor doesn't like you to use the word for the place that Dante wrote about other than Heaven and Pergatory! Many apologies if anyone is easily offended.