Getting Rid of Stage Fright 101

1. Your audience wants an EXPERIENCE!!! This is not just about you doing your "thang" on stage ", singing and hitting high and low notes….Fans want to feel the musical story and go somewhere with you. If you concentrate more about the experience than soloing out the song, your voice or your stage presence, you will find that each performance becomes an experience for you too.

2. Allow yourself to make mistakes. If you are worried about not singing or playing your best, you are limiting yourself & if you don’t fall while “skiing”, you are way too controlled and will never improve. If you fall you have probably tried something outside of your control realm. Many times if you deliver a perfect performance, it is also VERY boring. When you are making an experience for someone, you take chances, which can bring mistakes. A few mistakes are MUCH MORE important, than a bland controlled performance. Leave that at your local Karaoke bar.

3. Exercise right before you go out on stage ALWAYS. It releases lots and lots of anxiety and opens up your chest. 20 wall pushups or floor push ups do wonders. A mile or two run earlier in the day is the NUMBER 1 way my rocker singers get ready for a performance…And all this time you thought it was drugs. :0

4. Visualization. As much as your visualize negativity, what could go wrong, and what may happen, and is that one note going to come out, etc., you have the same brain power to visualize a great performance, and an experience. We are in control of our brains, but it takes work. One of the best tips that “Using Your Brain for a Change” offers is when you are in a tough spot and become nervous, play circus music in your head like you hear on a carousel or when you walk into the 3 rings of a circus. It sorta becomes funny and voile! your attitude CAN change. Some of you are playing funeral music.

5. If you aren’t prepared, you’re doomed. That’s it. You should be nervous if you have not prepared sufficiently for anything in life….tests, speaking, presentations you are planning a failure and probably deserve having one so that the pain brings change!!! Practice over and over but practice right because practice makes permanent. And DON’T change your songs at the last minute because you begin to second guess. NOOOOOOOO! Your muscles also have memory and changing songs that you have been practicing can set you up for failure.

Those who could not get over stage fright are most likely not going to make it. That should tick you off enough to say, “Stage Fright, you are NOT going to steal my career!!!! I’ll show you!” REMEMBER YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK!