I play the cornet and am relatively experienced - but i can not play on my own in front of anyone I'm not used to, even an audition in front of my old teacher, local music festivals, exams - I just can't do it.

With nerves, my mouth dries up and I panic and I can only make an "airy" sound through the instrument. Playing in a band or group situation this doesn't happen.

Now I have been asked to play at a Rememberance Assembly in school.... How do I sustain my confidence until the end?

The best way to become confident in the solo situation is to do lots of it. For some people (and this includes professional players) even that is not enough. For them beta blockers can help. These are drugs that inhibit the production of adrenalin, which can be dangerous in some circumstances, so you should take them only with advice from your GP and get the appropriate one that s/he prescribes. If less forceful means will do, bananas contain a natural beta blocker that some people find sufficient.

I'm not sure that you do combat nerves, I think that you need to find your way of playing the best that you can despite the nerves.

I'm usually completely crippled by nerves in a performing situation. Over the summer I had 2 situations where I played better than I ever have in practice. They had two things in common, the first was quite large amounts of alcohol. I'm hoping that I don't find this is a necessity to performing well. In my defence the first of these two situations was in the early hours towards the end of a jazz course last night party. I was playing 'Round Midnight, which was quite apt. The other thing they both had in common was commitment. By commitment I mean that I mentally committed to attempting to play as well as I possibly could do, which meant pushing things to extremes, being fairly OTT about things like dynamics, vibrato, and a host of more jazz specific things. At least they felt OTT to me, I suspect they sounded quite subtle to the audience. As a fairly introverted person I find that playing in an over the top manner feels very uncomfortable. I'd rather play in a slightly apologetic, risk free way so if it goes wrong I can dissassociate myself. In committing to the OTT playing I took the risk that it could go spectacularly wrong, but I also allowed the opportunity that it could go very right. My next challenge is to see if I can achieve the same thing withoutusing alcohol as a support.

They actually don't as far as I'm aware, they just lower/prevent its effects.


Bananas are actually believed to boost serotonine levels because of the tryptophan they contain, not to have any influence on beta-receptors/adrenalin-effects like beta blockers, which is a very different effect altogether (adrenaline is rather the 'fight or flight'-hormone, whilst serotonine is the 'happy-homone'). Apart from that, it is likely to be a mere placebo, because you would probably have to eat a lot of bananas. That's just my opinion however, because I personally believe that the biochemical idea behind this theory doesn't hold

To the OP: You have my sympathies. There are things that can be done, but it is very difficult to recommend what would be best for you as an individual. Maybe this will give you a couple of ideas:

http://www.bapam.org.uk/docs/7_I_cant_go_on.pdf

The BAPAM is brilliant with every health problem (mental and physical alike) a performer might think of. I can only recommend them, and every musician should know about them.

When I was on a beta-blocker, I suffered from anaphylactic shock because of an allergy; the result was very low blood pressure. While I was in A&E, an enthusiastic junior gave me a large dose of adrenalin which was very effective (and much more unpleasant than the original condition). My GP immediately changed my medication, and I understood from him that the beta-blocker had been inhibiting my adrenalin secretion. If it had prevented the adrenalin from increasing my heart rate, the effect would have been the same, of course.

I always get nervous. However, experience has shown me that I can play very well with nerves. Nerves are not a bad thing!
When you are in a situation where nerves arrive, don't panic that you're nervous, simply accept them as a natural part of the process.
Full preparation for what you are about to do is invaluable. A few deep, relaxed breaths help too.

I'm not sure about beta blockers as a suggestion to a person of school age.

Perhaps a good way forward would be to double up the part and do a joint solo if that's possible.

If anybody comes across the definitive answer, could they share it with me, please?

Not sure about recommending them as one of the first things to try in general, as a few of you might already know (and I've taken them myself for a heart condition), but it seems to come up every time a thread like this is started.
This just shows how almost normal the connection 'stagefright - beta blockers' has already become, and I am honest: I don't like it. Don't shoot me for it, I know they have their place with anxiety issues, but I think some people are suggesting them before other things have even been tried. I fully understand that people are keen to do this if they have helped with their own situation, and there were many discussions on this board about them before. They helped me, too (albeit not with performance issues), as did other medications. Still

Not having a dig at you here, kenm, because you warned about their possible effects - however, I'm not comfortable with it (and they still don't stop adrenalin secretion as such ).

The same certainly applies to alcohol and other recreational drugs (and I certainly wouldn't put BBs on one level with them).

This borders on the thread about whether to dicuss medical topis is a good idea, and you see that there are not only adults discussing here, which is exactly why I think that we are moving on very thin ice with suggestions like this.
Having said that, I didn't check the OPs profile either, so BAPAM probably won't help much in this case.
Still, the link contains a few good ideas ...

I have always suffered from nerves and I know how horrible it can be. All I can suggest is make sure you practice until you can't get it wrong rather than until you get it right, then, and I know this is all too easy to say there should be nothing to worry about. At grade 6 you are obviously a very good player and more than capable of anything in the concert. Being a rememberance assembly, is it The Last Post you have to do? I was always grateful to be a Sop player, never had that to deal with but a few years ago I chaperoned a couple of early teenage girls who were asked to play for the local parade. there were severe nerves and even tears beforehand but as usual they were fantastic. Sure you will be too, good luck

Amazing cornet player and doctor of psychology, Roger Webster, has written a fantastic book called PPP Preparation Practice Performance, which has a really really interesting chapter about how to deal with nerves. There are also loads of great exercises in the book to help with playing.

Another useful book is "The Inner Game of Music", by W Timothy Gallwey and Barry Green. Amazon has the paperback second-hand, cheapest £2.79 (might need some TLC at that price).

Bananas!

seems a bit simplistic I know, and a certain amount of the effectiveness I'm sure is pyschological but eating a banana about 40 minutes before playing really helps my daughter deal with her nerves.

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I am concerned about the advise given to musicians about taking beta blockers to calm nerves, I have seen this advise on other parts of the forum, please take note beta blockers are not to be played with, I have to take beta blockers permanent and are a very powerful drug, these have to be taken strictly under doctors instructions and I cannot believe any GP would give this medication under these circumstances, as far as nerves whilst playing solos,practice playing to say family members or even groups of other musicians, but please no beta blockers.

This is a topic that comes up again and again. I have several times recommended "Mastering the Art of Performance" by Stewart Gordon so I'll recommend it again.

I may as well also put on record that I thought "The Inner Game of Music" was a terrible book. I thought it was shallow, badly written, and not very helpful. It seemed to me no more than a potboiler cashing in on the "Inner Game" brand, and not in the same league as the excellent original "Inner Game of Tennis". That book might use tennis to illustrate its theses, but it will actually teach you more about musical performance than the poor quality spin-offs.

To answer the OP. What do I do about performance nerves?

1. Work continually to improve my technical skills and musical understanding
2. Study the piece(s) from every angle: aural, structural, thematic, melodic, harmonic, fingering, emotional
3. Overlearn - ten times better than you'd ever think necessary - and then some more
4. Try to take myself less seriously (banish the ego, focus on communicating the music)
5. Stay in good physical shape (sleep, diet, moderate exercise)
6. Get extra sleep in the days before a performance

For all that substandard performances and diasasters still happen, but as time goes by, and I get more and more performances under my belt the general standard improves, and the frequency of major errors goes down.

It is a bit like when you train for an endurance event (cycling, swimming, running). The perceived effort and pain never diminish, but you find you are managing to go faster for longer.

So in musical performance, the feeling of stress does not go away, but it affects your performance less and less - you became able to perform well despite it. At least, that is how it is for me.

Yep. They do what they say they do - block beta receptors, thereby preventing the activation of these receptors by adrenaline.

As for bananas - I like eating them when I'm nervous because I can get a bit shaky and my tummy gets a bit gurgly - they're nice because they provide some sugar, are very easy to eat and not hard to digest. Especially good when you need to eat before a performance and can't force anything down