Rapidly-racing heartbeat and sweaty palms are symptoms most musicians experience at one point or another. Stage fright is certainly no fun.
But a recent study aims to shift the perception of these all-too-familiar feelings of stress. The idea: overcoming stage fright is as simple as thinking of it as your ally!
You’ve been practicing and taking music lessons for a while. Are you looking for your next musical challenge? Playing with other musicians is one of the quickest ways to improve, and with National Volunteer Week coming up (April 21-27, 2013), why not make a impact in your community by volunteering your talents?
Here are some ideas to get you started…
Whether you’ve been playing music for one month or several years, recognizing and celebrating milestones along the way is important!
Our students inspire us every day – so we want to hear your stories, and share them with the TakeLessons community! Did you perform at a recital, talent show, or open mic night? Did you ace an audition, or get accepted into a prestigious music program or school? Maybe you mastered a difficult song quicker than you expected.
Whatever your story is, let us know and you might be featured on our Facebook page! Every Friday, beginning April 12th, we’ll select one student to shine the spotlight on.
Performing in front of others can be both exhilarating and frightening. And often, the biggest critic you come in contact with – both before and after your performance – is yourself. Luckily, there are methods to use to combat the anxiety and get through it unscathed. Here’s some great advice from Philadelphia teacher Victoria W…
You rehearse endlessly, and you enjoy the material you’ve been spending hours upon hours mastering. You’ve done this a million times now; performing it should be no problem, right? But when the lights come up and you’re standing in front of a crowd of people, your mind goes blank and your competence seems to go out the window. Though this is an immensely frustrating problem to encounter, it is a tragically common one. The idea of performing in front of people remains one of the greatest fears among adults. So one can conclude that the first rule of overcoming this problem is…. to give yourself a break! There is nothing wrong with you. In fact, you can count yourself as being incredibly normal (whatever that means these days!). There’s definitely no formula for curing this problem, since every individual is so different, but here are a few ideas that you might find helpful…
How do you measure your success as a musician? The time you’ve spent practicing your drum rudiments? The number of gigs you’ve played? For most musicians, it’s more than that – read on for Falls Church, VA drum teacher 
