I haven’t read all the replies, but here’s what I know, being a sufferer myself.
A: Don’t eat or drink too much before playing.
B: Closing your eyes can help
C: If you feel a panic attack coming on, chew down a propananol pill. It’s a prescription drug that’s been around for ages. It reduces blood pressure and the symptoms of anxiety. I keep a supply at home and office. This drug is often used for stagefright.
I think it was about 3 years on the whistle for me before I could ever play with anyone else to my satisfaction. When the “listen or play, one or 't’other” syndrome broke for me and I could both play and listen to variations or mistakes and not have that trip me up. That was magical the first time.
Since then, I started being able to play whistle with better and better musicians without getting nervous. I even jammed with Kevin Burke with no nervousness once at Celtic Week at the Swannanoa Gathering and he even complemented me. I almost busted my buttons off my shirt that night, but I really screwed up that night that we went out and performed on stage in Asheville. I opened my eyes in the middle of my second tune and lost it. That was my first experience with whistle, an audience and a sound system. It certainly was a knee shaking experience to say the least and I got complements, believe it or not (I admit I did good on the first tune, though).
Our band has been playing in public now for almost 6 years, and after finding a place, setting up gear and tuning pipes and whistles, we have very little time to get nervous before a gig.
Now when I play in church or at a local Courthouse Ceilidh in Independence, VA, I seem to get much more nervous for some strange reason. Perhaps it’s because I know most everybody in there…
Nerves are strange, but I can be sick and miserable, then do a gig and feel great until I drive home and collapse. It must be an adrenaline rush or something.
I can play in front of others at work, or outdoors. Even folks I know. But I freeze up when I need to play in front of another whistler, sometimes. Last night I met another board member in person for the first time - talked over dinner and a couple of pints of stout, in a nice pub (which, unfortunately, doesn’t encourage indoor whistling).
When we walked outside afterwards I started to play . . . and trainwrecked. It might have been the new whistle I’d just bought from him wasn’t as familiar, or the stout, but it was really just nerves. I’m not a master whistler yet, but I can sound pretty good on some of my favorites. Last night, though, it sounded like the first time I’d ever seen a whistle. Arghh!!!
Played just fine when I got home, though - I really like the sound of the Dixon Bb, especially late at night. The upper octave is mellow enough that even “The Ten-Penny Bit” sounds relaxed. When, of course, I’m not playing with ten thumbs and a tongue like a doormat. 
Well-I had a job interview/audition for a university band conducting position yesterday. I’ve been at this for 20+ years, but that didn’t stop me from being a nervous wreck. One of the students in the band said to me afterward,“Boy, you were really nervous, weren’t you?” I told him yes, but how did he know? Apparently I had wished the band “Good Morning” at the beginning of the rehearsal (it was 4 in the afternoon). And I have no memory of this at all!
(Needless to say, I don’t think I got the gig. Oh well)
This is not a problem at all. You should be listening to what others are playing as you play. I advise against trying to shut them out.
Often students have trouble hearing and playing at the same time, a problem curable through practice, and IMHO the better students are the ones who listen and then have trouble playing, rather than the ones who just play and have trouble hearing!
If you listen to stories about “that one guy” at a festival or open session whom others want to whack with a stick, you find they often have one factor in common: that one guy is blissfully immune to feedback. He might be a half-beat off the tempo for a few minutes, or unaware that he is way out of tune or overloud, or just doesn’t notice the local unwritten rules of how the session is run, and so is unwittingly rude. “Playing in a bubble,” I’ve heard it called here.
Wish I could say it works everytime, but it doesn’t. I think I have adult ADD or something.
Well, how long have you been playing and how long you practice each day (and how much previous musical experience do you have)?
Or maybe, how many tunes do you play from memory?
A fellow once posted here that he bombed at an impromptu jam session, and felt like he just wasn’t cut out to be a musician. Turned out he was only playing whistle for a few months—he probably sounded fine for someone only playing a few months! Somehow he ended up with the expectation that by that point he should have been rock’n and roll’n with everyone else.
Caj
[Oh, and regarding stage fright, my one piece advice is not to drink anything caffeinated before the performance. I suppose that’s a no-brainer, but I’ve brainlessly sucked down a cup of coffee before a lecture more than once. I think my biggest blunders were caffeinated ones.]
Nervous schmervous. I say, be prepared, practice,
and then if you’re nervous, don’t make a federal
case out of it. That’s show biz.
Roger O’Keeffe wrote:
So this thread is not about V1.@gRà, then?
Zobbie responds, same thing… just relax… [icon_lol_144.gif]
At my age if I just relax, I fall asleep. Best
I won’t play a gig unless they furnish free coffee, preferrably with a splash of Emmett’s Irish cream. I need at least two before starting a gig and a big mug of iced water handy on stage. Hot coffee during breaks.
Mmmm…
Don’t give our banjo/bouzouki player any before the gig as sometimes nobody can keep up with him when he gets set on a fast rhythm. He goes into some sort of zone and getting his attention to slow it down is impossible then.
Although I’m not glad others seem plagued with this problem, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one suffering.
I do the same thing. If I’m playing for folks who also know how to play that instrument. I find it’s not so bad if it’s playing for folks who are not musicians. I guess subconciously I feel like they will be more critical or something.
I do find that repeated playing of for instance, the organ at church, has calmed the nerves and I’ve learned to carry on through any mistakes. I finally figured out that I need to hear a played piece as a whole instead of dwelling on any slips. Did that with the drumming too. BUT, these are the instruments I have the most practice playing publicly. While I still strive for perfection, I realize that’s not going to happen often.
That’s pretty much the way it is for me. I get more nervous playing for one or two musicians I don’t know that well but really respect than I do playing alone on stage in front of a crowd of non-Irish musicians. I think it’s because at some level, I know I can wow people who don’t know the music, but I’m afraid of being judged harshly by those who do.
I read an interview with James Galway where he talks about still sometimes being nervous before he plays, and how there’s no rhyme or reason to it–he may play for ten thousand and not be nervous at all, but the next day play for 30 and be edgy with nerves.
When I was studying music at NLU, I had horrible problems with performance anxiety, especially at first.
It’s true that the more you do something, the better you get at it. By the end of my 2nd year, I could get just as nervous as James Galway, if not more so! 
Having played with my band has helped so much. Also I used to play over my lunch hour a couple of times a month in the hospital cafeteria close to where I work, this does wonders for overcoming nerves.
I think the important thing is to remember that if you are well prepared you can get through it and play well in spite of the nerves.
One last thought: practice like you’re gonna play. If you are going to be sitting in a straight chair on stage, practice in a straight chair. If you are going to be standing (usually I am), do your entire practice routine standing up for several weeks before you play. If there’s going to be a mic in your face, even if you don’t have a mic, put a music stand or something in roughly the same place so that you are used to it being there.
It does get better. Age helps, too. My nerves were worse as a young man than they are now.
–James
I haven’t been playing whistle long enough to be playing in front of strangers but I did play guitar alone and with others. When playing solo I got close to panic before some gigs. When playing in a group I have never more than slight nervousness. It seems to me that when I was alone I invested much more of my personal self image in how well I performed. I thought, subconsciously at least, that I would be humiliated if I didn’t play well. Imagine my confusion when people came up to compliment me afterwords when I was sure that I had bombed big time. So a big part of stage fright is mental and requires self image work.
I also agree strongly with Jim Stone’s comment about the necessity of preparation. Like the old saw about asking how to get to Carnegie Hall the big key to lessening stage fright is, “Practice, practice, practice.”
Mike