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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
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I frequently dream that I am running late, I've forgotten some or all of my kit, my guitar is broken, or even that I have been booked to play sax or trombone!
Live was never an issue, even for some of the bigger things I've done in the past but in the last couple of years, something odd has happened and as such, I turned down a really good opportunity with a good bunch of musicians and friends playing exactly the type of music I love. I worried about gear breaking down, having a spare rig, ballsing things up etc and couldn't even commit to the auditions and was getting night sweats and panic attacks thinking about it. To this day, I'm saddened by it but have accepted that I would be a liability to a band if I felt like that and it's not what they need.
I've tried to evaluate the cause. Is it the lack of playing live on a regular basis - I used to play most weeks or a couple of times a month and now it's around 6-8 times a year and even then, most of those are bass gigs and not guitar ones and that was all before lockdown. Coincidentally, I also lost my Father around that time but I can't see the link there. It's not nice to be crippled/limited by something like this but equally difficult to snap out of it.
Someone suggested Toastmasters, which is more about public speaking but a step in the right direction
https://www.toastmasters.org/
I hope those suffering get to where they want to with this
My first gig was a party held by my first band and I forgot how to start the first song. I've used cheatsheets ever since. I rarely look at them now.
I also started a song with the bass riff back to front. Drummer purposely missed his queue and let me sort it. Flipped the notes and gave him a 4 count.
I've also done things where the singers have come in half a bar early. In both cases we followed the drummer with a two beat bar.
I don't get nervous when I know how to get out of a muck up and my band members help and vice versa. Playing in Ab is fun when the keyboard player left the transpose button on.
But if I strap on a guitar for a gig or do a high pressure theatre show, I have no anxieties at all and will usually play a lot better to a big audience, and take risks on solos too - it just seems to flow out like watching a movie play out. Some lower level adrenaline effect maybe.
So you can’t really know till you try.
Then at the end there is the praise and the impressed girls, even if you think you played mediocre.
I think if you don't get nervous, it means you either aren't bothered about putting on a good gig OR you're so bloody good and full of confidence you don't need to worry.
I also find that shrinking my world to become exactly the size of the stage helps; that's all you need to be aware of, in practical terms. Quite often, you'll be blinded by the stage lights if you try to look out anyway (at least, in the venues we play) - you'll often not be able to see much past the front row.
The part that terrifies me is when people come up and want to talk to me afterwards, particularly when they're waiting at the side of the stage when my brain's sorting through everything that just happened.
I'm pretty sure people, even on game shows or whatever, are still encouraged to have a g and t or two before a show.