How To Overcome Stage Fright When Playing Guitar Live
Like many guitarists, you probably want to learn how to eliminate stage fright and make your guitar playing more reliable when playing guitar live in front of others. Stage fright is a very real and serious problem for many performers in general and guitar players in particular. The good news is that anybody can learn to feel more comfortable with performing by using several effective strategies for achieving this goal.
In this lesson I will share with you several tips that will help you greatly with eliminating stage fright before performances. If you make them a part of your regular guitar practicing, you will start to feel much more comfortable playing guitar in front of others.
Practice Guitar In The Same Way You Will Play Guitar Live
Most electric guitar players practice guitar while sitting down and do little or no playing while standing up. When it comes time to performing, these guitarists are shocked to find out that the way they are used to holding the guitar (while sitting down) does not enable them to perform well when they have to play guitar live in a standing position. Fortunately, the solution here is very simple: you need spend more of your guitar practice time getting used to standing when playing guitar. Spend at least 50% of your guitar practice time playing guitar standing up and before too long holding the guitar in this position will feel just as natural as sitting down. When you learn new and challenging pieces of music, it is fine to practice them sitting down at first but begin playing them standing up as soon as possible. Doing this consistently will go a long way towards making you more confident with your guitar playing and helping you to overcome stage fright.
Record Your Guitar Playing Consistently
One of the causes of stage fright for guitar players comes from the pressure of having to play perfectly in ONE take when playing guitar live. A very effective way to overcome this fear is to recreate this same pressure on yourself while practicing guitar at home. To practice overcoming stage fright, challenge yourself to create perfect recordings of your guitar playing in as few takes as possible. You do not need to spend a lot of money on recording gear to do this. A simple hand-held voice recorder (or any free recording software that can be installed on your computer) will do just fine for this purpose.
When you feel that you are getting close to mastering whatever you are practicing, begin scheduling some time in your guitar practice sessions to record your playing. This will recreate a realistic atmosphere of the pressure you feel to play guitar at your best and will be a good indication of how ready you are to perform the music for others. If you can record whatever you are practicing with good accuracy in 1-3 takes, you are making very good progress. The more you do this, the less frequently you will feel stage fright before performing.
Recreate The Environment Of Playing Guitar Live
One important method for overcoming stage fright is to intentionally make your guitar playing "harder" for yourself at certain points during practicing by filling your room with various distractions that will make it more difficult to concentrate on playing. The reason for this is to mimic the environment and the experience you go through when you play guitar live. Some examples of this may include: practicing guitar in the dark (or with your eyes closed), not looking at your hands at all during playing, talking and playing guitar at the same time, having the TV on while playing, practicing guitar with a different pick or strings than you are normally used to… (you get the idea).
The point of these activities is to train yourself to play well in spite of various mental and physical distractions that will be present around you when you perform for others. If you are able to play well without mistakes in such conditions, stage fright will begin to melt away due to your newly developed sense of confidence in your guitar playing.
Of course, you should only practice guitar in this way when you have spent a good amount of time learning the music you intend to perform in total isolation and concentration first. You must be able to play the music reasonably well to begin with before using this approach.
Perform More Often
You need to practice playing guitar in front of others on a regular basis in order to completely eliminate stage fright. Although the other suggestions given here will help you greatly with gaining confidence for playing guitar live, there is no substitute for direct experience of playing guitar live in front of a real audience.
If you CONSISTENTLY apply the suggestions above to your guitar practicing, you will see great improvement in your ability to overcome stage fright and will begin to look forward to your live performances instead of dreading them.
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