Mircrophone Terror and Total Humiliation

Whistle
21

I’m so glad you started this thread Anna Banana…guess it happens to the best of em. If I’m playing solo…I close my eyes and block everything else out. Someone on the Praise Team said the other night..when a guitarist makes a mistake nobody notices but when the whistler makes a mistake…everybody notices. How would you like to live with that one? LOL.. I’ve nicknamed her Tactful Tillie.

No stage fright(for me) has been as bad as the shakes I use to get when I had to write in front of anybody. When I was young I had to literally change my style of handwriting because of it.
So hang in there…you’ll make it! Gm

22

On 2001-10-29 23:36, Spot Beagle wrote:
I’ve heard of this, but it’s so much fun to go stand in front of every one. Maybe if you had a pint of ale first.

Oh, I wish alochol were the solution! I’m the only one who hangs around who doesn’t touch the stuff. Allergic to it, one of those “Instant A**h*le - Just add Alcohol” type deals. I envy people who can take the edge off with alchohol, but it’s a rare performer that does better drunk! I knew this flamenco guitarist once…

I’ll beat THIS phobia into the ground and stomp on it and get over it, if it kills me, which I doubt microphones do unless you drop them into the bathtub or something.

Let it shine! Anna “RoaringMouse” Martinez

[ This Message was edited by: Anna Martinez on 2001-10-30 03:19 ]

23

Try to cultivate an attitude of not giving a st*** what the audience thinks of your playing. Practise a lot beforehand, of course, the time to care is when you are practising. That is how I got rid of my stage fright.

24

I think the suggestions about laughter and connecting with the audience are great. I once decided to sing a song, accompanying myself on the guitar. I neither sing nor play the guitar well at all, but it was a surprise for someone’s birthday.

So I get up there infront of 100 people and start, and I have forgotten the tune. I am grunting stuff that has nothing to do with where the notes are supposed to be. It was bad. I am searching wildly for the pitch and the melody, and after about half a verse I had to stop. I felt like I would die. I mean, dead.

But then I said into the mike, “Funny, it was working at home when I tried it…” and everybody laughed. Before they had really finished I just started over and it worked well. I was still sort of stressed, but not really nervous or worried anymore. I felt it was the laughter and admitting that it had been terrible at first that brought the audience around to my side. That felt great afterwards.

So, if you can do something that makes you feel like the audience is on your side, that will help a lot.

25

Recently, Anna Martinez scribbled in this manner:

Oh, I wish alochol were the solution! I’m the only one who hangs around who doesn’t touch the stuff.

No you’re not!!

I don’t touch the stuff either. I don’t care for the loss of control – which seems to be what you’re saying about yourself – and I certainly don’t like what it does to my ability to play music. The old saw about “being able to handle one’s liquor” is very much beside the point, which of course is that it handles you. Otherwise, why would anyone drink it?

I had, and sometimes still have, a huge obstacle to overcome in playing in public – much less in front of a microphone. I play songs that I like, that have meaning to me and which I find moving, so when I play them there’s rather more of ME showing in that public place than I’m normally comfortable with. I started by playing for friends in camp at reenactments, and later when I took my daughter to the park in the evenings after work. I take my fife and whistles with me to my sportsmen’s club, where my friends now ask me to play for them. It’s relatively easy to play in these venues, because I’m comfortable there, but if I’m not it’s like someone turned a valve off in my throat. That happened the other evening when an acquaintance asked me to fife up a tune in Border’s (sp?) Bookstore. It just wasn’t the right place.

I sat in on some sessions at the nearby Barnes and Noble Bookstore last summer, and had a similar experience. I could play passably when everyone else was ( and I knew the song … ), but solos just weren’t on. I started “Leitrim Fancy,” a favorite of mine from “The Bothy Band,” and the fiddlers ran away with it so I had to drop out – which wasn’t good, because I was the only one who could play the melody. I did notice, however, that the world didn’t end. Little lessons like that make it easier by degrees.

You have to follow your own heart. If you want to play, then keep at it until it until you’re comfortable with it. Play where you can, and you’ll find that there are more and more places where you CAN play. If it doesn’t feel right, then don’t.

Best regards,

Neil Dickey


[ This Message was edited by: ndjr on 2001-10-30 11:14 ]

26

Anna said, “I’ll beat THIS phobia into the ground and stomp on it and get over it, if it kills me, which I doubt microphones do unless you drop them into the bathtub or something.”

Yeah! That’s the spirit! The audience is your friend. In my entire career of teaching and performing, I can’t think of a time when an audience was truly hostile; the worst I’ve ever experienced was sympathetic: “Off day, huh buddy?” They really do want you to succeed. The only time audiences get truly annoyed is when the performer is a fake. And Anna, my dear, I don’t perceive that as much of a problem for you. :slight_smile:

Stage fright isn’t really your enemy, either. It’s an adreniline rush. It used to make me scared; now it just gets me really focused and wired on stage. It’s almost addictive–I LOVE IT!!! And it’s the same reaction you’re facing. I’ve just learned to harness it and make it work for me, as someone already said.

Remember, when you suffer some sort of psycho-physiological reaction that seems harmful, it’s just your body/mind trying to help you. It just needs to be readucated. By doing, doing, doing.

We’re all behind you! You can do it! Roar, mouse!

Good luck and God bless–
Tom “'I Can’t Is Not An Option” Wilson

27

Attitude adjustments can be made more permanently without the aid of drink or drugs.
Lisa

28

No you’re not!!
In Deadwood, with all of 1,500 people here in the winter, I’m considered an anomaly simply because my social life does not happen in bars or casinos. I’d rather do jigsaw puzzles with little old ladies! In fact, the poeple I play with at the open mikes, travel approximately 18,000 miles a year just to make music with each other, and of course all of us have day jobs, so getting together to practice is something else. It doesn’t happen. I was practicing with a buddy’s CD the other day, and when we got to play together, I’d been playing in all the wrong key, because somewhere between cutting the CD and going to the open mike, his A harp gave up the ghost on him. The entire area can support the arts, but we travel from venue to venue and some of them are much more comfortable. There’s one in Sturgis that has little kids running over your toes on trikes, and that’s comfortable for me. The one is Deadwood is all professional musicians, and that’s a bit intimidating. Making music with other people here is grab them when you can. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about the Deadwood open mike because I’m the only one who doesn’t get a free drink, and have to buy bottled water, while the beer drinkers just slurp it up on the house! Most of the folks around here are pretty good about this stagefright thing of mine, but it’s take me the whole year just to be able to sit in the back and play and to sit and play on the street! The ranchers don’t have time during planting season, some of us can’t make it from Wyoming in a truck with no heater in a blizzard…it’s much more fun to sit around a kitchen table and play and I do much better there, than a stage with a mike and lights and beer drinkers. Campfires in the summer are fun, too!

29

I play a lot in front of people and have my fits with stagefright. Some classical singers I know have recommended eating a couple of bananas before a performance. It does sound strange but it does work. Something to do with Potassium, I don’t understand it but I keep a whole bunch backstage for the reason that it has worked for me countlesss times. You could also try meditation, that works nicely too.


Tots

30

I really find a glass or two of wine before/while playing does help.

Not only does it relax me, but I’m sure it does something to my mouth or the fipple so that the whistle is less likely to clog with moisture.

31

I can relate to your “microphone terror”.

One thing that helps is to play the piece in front of as many test audiences as possible before the big event. These can be family members, coworkers, classmates, etc. When playing in front of them, try to imagine that they are the audience for your big event.

Then when you get in front of the real audience, try to imagine that you are just going to share a song you really like with some close friends who have listened to you before. It does help.

Something else you can do is focus your eyes on the microphone instead of the audience beyond. They won’t know the difference.

32

Anna,
Sometimes it just happens that way. This is my attitude along with the attitude, “sorry guys that I couldn’t give you that tune”.

You got some excellent advise.

I used to do a good bit of solo work as a folk singer and guitarist. One of the things that helped was arranging to do a sound check befor I performed. Procedurally you might want to make the most of your sound check, if you have to, insist on a sound check, befor the performance, even if it only you requiring it.

The sound check lets you get a feel for the mike, the mixer, the amplification. All the things you don’t want to think about when your performing. A sound check also gives you a feel for the venue and sound in the room. Make sure you do the check with someone who is good at describing the characteristics of the amplified sound their hearing around the venue as you perform your check.

Think of this process, just like, warming up your whistle to room temperature, or checking for moisture, or setting your chair to the proper angle to see the other musicians. Just something that you do, no big deal. Then when you go to perform your mike isn’t the issue.

For me, the issue is connections to the music, to the others playing, and to the audience (in that order). The mike, my instruments, my chair, the stage, the adjustment of the monitors, how well I know the musicians, how many friends I have in the audience, are all just conduits for that all important connection.

For me, my connection to the music, putting my heart into the music, expressing what I feel through the music, this is my primary responsibility. This is most under my control, this is my risk, my will, my choice, and therefor my joy, my ecstacy, my peace, all ways my heart. If I do my part, then the rest falls in place as it should. If I play for thugs, then their connection to me is minimal, because they don’t allow themselves to be connected to anything, even the music. If I play for my dearly beloved, then the connection is complete because the heart was allready shared. All else seems to fall between these extremes. If I don’t connect to the music then the connection is lost, neither thug nor lover connects deeply with empty tunes.

So what does this have to do with freezing befor the mike? What gymnastics can you do to get past the broken circuit. Hmmm…

I sometimes imagine the person to whom I am most beholding, sitting in the very back of the venue, the person whose acceptance is absolute, who is there to hear my music. The only way to reach them is through the mike, over the hubbub of the venue. Connect: Heart to fingers, fingers to instrument, instrument to tune, tune to mike, mike to person in the back of the room. Remember my humanity, imperfect as it is, so the tune, will never be perfect, but the connection, is only made stronger by the shared humanity.

It’s how I enjoy my music and I hope it helps you …

Enjoy Your Music,

Lee Marsh

[ This Message was edited by: LeeMarsh on 2001-10-30 17:23 ]