Performance Anxiety
Hello fellow guitarists.
I, in an earlier time of my life, played sport at an elite level sometimes playing in front of hundreds of people. I decided to take up classical guitar at the tender age of 66 and I have found that unlike in my younger years when I would look forward with excitement to performing, I now suffer massively with performance anxiety. And it is getting worse. Playing for friends, family and even my guitar teacher has become something that I would much sooner run and hide than put myself through. I play by myself and record some of my playing and am, for the most part, happy with my playing. But what I do in private I struggle to reproduce in public. In golf I think they call what I suffer from, THE YIPS. Whatever the term I certainly know that my confidence is virtually non existed.
I have never taken any form on medication for performance anxiety, however I have heard that a natural supplement called PERFORMZEN is suppose to be very good and is taken by musicians. Has anyone heard of this supplement or have use this supplement?
I have been trying all the non medicated ways like deep breathing positive thinking etc etc etc with zero success. I am sure I'm not new with this problem and would appreciate any advice given.
Cheers
Michelle
62 replies
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Reflecting on the previous comments here, as well as on some thoughts that I have had for a long while, I think that one of the issues that contributes greatly to our performance anxiety is social media.
Back when most of us were young, there was no such thing as "The Internet". There was no getting jealous of someone's physical appearance (as posted on platforms like Instagram and TikTok). There was no "life envy" after viewing someone's marvelous vacation experiences on Facebook. There was no 24x7 bombardment of content that made us reflect on our own lives.
When I was studying marimba, the only way that I saw other marimbists play was maybe at a national percussion convention (PASIC), or maybe when the university invited the occasional guest artist. I didn't have much to gauge my own playing against, save for the comments of my professor.
Now, we are faced with the onslaught of channels like Siccas Guitars and GSI. Every day, we log into YouTube and get a dose of near-perfect performances. Of course, most of the performances have been edited to some degree, with the guitarist sometimes being forced into miming to an edited audio recording. With so much perfection surrounding us, every little mistake that we make can be magnified in our own minds.I have been to a number of open mics where various performers have made hash out of the work they were playing. We feel some internal sympathy for the performer, knowing that we are fully capable of making the same hash out of our own pieces. At the end, people applaud, everyone says "Well done", and life goes on. And, a few minutes later, we forget about the performance.
So why are we so hard on ourselves if we play a single wrong note? Why does that bad note worm its way into our subconscious and contribute to performance anxiety? It's because we are trying to hold ourselves up to a certain standard, and we feel like we let our audience and ourselves down if we are nothing less than perfect. After playing instruments well when we were young, or maybe having some good successes in our professional lives, we find it hard to accept nothing less than a Grade A performance when our turn comes.
It would actually be educational if a platform like Siccas showed us some of the outtakes of the performances in order to show us that even the most polished performers are not perfect 100% of the time.
(Sorry for the rambling ....) -
Some wonderful comments, suggestions and advice here. It's been such a lively discussion and it's great to hear people sharing their experiences.
I have already mentioned about my own performance anxiety issues in an earlier reply. While PA might be unique to each person's experience, perhaps there are some common threads that are uniquely related to the classical guitar and it's history and tradition.
Traditionally, the classical guitar has carried with a perfectionist, academic tradition, atleast in the contemporary era. Unlike results based activity like certain sports where winning is the ultimate goal, classical guitar is often judged on process and nuances of not just rigorous technical prowess but also musical parameters like articulation, phrasing, dynamics that are often set to very high standards. I have often felt the burden of meeting such expectations even when I'm just playing to myself. If it has to be some kind of performance, slips in detail might feel like walking a tightrope.
Secondly, classical guitar is mostly a solo pursuit, unless you're lucky enough to be in the company of others as fellow enthusiasts, classmates in a conservatory, or parts of an ensemble. Unfortunately for me, I'm like an island at a place where I haven't met anyone in person who's interested in classical guitar.
This is unlike in other settings like playing acoustic or electric guitars casually in jam sessions with friends at home or in stage where responsibility might be diffused among the band members
Finally, there's online culture of 'perfection' where everyone and everything is a slice of perfection. Be it tik tok, YouTube, Facebook and classical guitar accounts like SIccas or Guitar Salon International where everything looks like perfection. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking that that's the standard we must reach or at least aspire to, thereby distorting expectations, creating undue comparisons and putting more pressure on ourselves.
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Guitarists seem to be a pretty self-critical bunchMusicians are a self-critical bunch. Being self-critical comes with the job description, I think. I am son of a pianist and a violinist and I don't believe we are an island.