How to overcome stage fright
It’s a familiar story – you get on stage for a performance, and suddenly, your heart starts racing, your palms start sweating, and you start getting lightheaded – your body goes into panic mode at the thought of performing!
Many musicians – even really famous, successful ones – deal with stage fright. Adele, Ozzy Osbourne, and Eddie Van Halen have opened up about severe anxiety before performances.
See what Billboard Top 20 artist XIMXIA has to say about stage fright:
Luckily, there are a lot of ways to combat stage fright. Here are a few tried and true tips:
PRACTICE
Practice your songs back and forth, so that playing them is second nature. The less you have to think about what you’re playing, the easier it will be. If you have new or improvised songs in your set, put them toward the end, so you can feel more comfortable when it’s time to play them.
Give yourself grace
At the same time, if you do make a mistake, don’t get down on yourself about it. Even the pros make mistakes! Keep playing the piece and don’t let a wrong note get in your head. It’s unlikely the audience will notice small mistakes anyway.
Visualize your performance
Imagine that you have a perfect gig – what would that look like to you? How would it feel? Conceptualizing a performance will help you make it happen in real life.
Be prepared (to the best of your ability)
Make sure your gear is working and ready to go the night before the gig, make sure you have setlists, capos, and any other gear you might need, and get rest and a good meal before your performance. If you’re feeling stressed about gear, it will only make stage fright worse.
Practice breathing exercises
Practicing mindful breathing before a performance will help you to ground yourself. You can find helpful tutorials on YouTube or Tiktok.
Fake it till you make it
You’ve probably heard that pretending to have a quality actually helps you achieve that quality in real life. If you tell yourself that you’re confident to go on stage, eventually your brain will believe it.
Connect with a friendly face
Do you have a friend or family member in the audience? If you do, lock onto them until the jitters subside. If you’re playing in an unfamiliar place, scope out a friendly face in the audience and imagine that they just said your guitar playing is amazing.
Just keep at it
Eventually, performing will become second nature, and the pre-show anxiety will subside. Just remind yourself why you love playing music, and don’t give up!
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