Performance Anxiety Tips for Beginners

As my students prepare for their first studio recital, I’ve noticed that some are very nervous, while others are just excited. Today I wanted to share a few basic tips for beginners to feel less nervous while performing music for others.

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Keep Breathing

My first tip is the most basic: keep breathing before and during your performance. I find that my breathing tends to be quick and shallow when I’m nervous, and focusing on taking deep, slow breaths really helps calm me down.

Feeling nervous is both a physical and mental response. By helping the physical aspect, you can naturally feel a bit better mentally.

Know Your Music

Knowing you music the best you can will help you feel a bit more at ease. Practice as much as you’re able, so you always know what’s coming. Having this knowledge will help you feel that you’re not going into the performance blind. You know what you’re doing!

Recovering from a Mistake

We all make mistakes as humans. No one expects a mistake-free performance! How we recover from a mistake is the most important thing we can control.

Just keep playing

If you can, just keep playing after you make a mistake. Continue on like nothing happened, and no one will notice anything happened. Convince yourself that nothing out of the ordinary happened, and no one will be the wiser!

You will always be the one who notices every little mistake in your performance. No one in the audience will be as vigilant, and it’s likely no one else knows the music as well as you do. You’re your own worst critic.

Keep the rhythm going, even if you have to take out a few notes

What the audience is most likely to notice is an interruption to the flow of the music. If you can keep the rhythm going, you’ll likely have a smooth transition back to safety.

If you’re playing the piano, try to keep the left hand going, since that’s generally where the rhythm is. If you’re playing a string instrument, keep the rhythm going with the bow until your can get the left hand back in place.

Determine “safe spots” in your music

Find spots in your music where you can easily pick it back up if you do mess up. This could be the beginning of the piece, the start of a section, or maybe the top of the page. If you lose your place, you can always start back up at the “safe spot” as a way to reset your brain.

Simplify where you need to

Sometimes, as I’m preparing for a performance, I find that I almost always make mistakes at the same spots in the music. When I notice this, I’ll sometimes figure out ways to simplify these hard sections in case I mess up or just get really nervous.

Having a backup plan in place helps me feel more confident, and I usually end up not even needing it.

Think about what you want to convey

What do you want to share with the audience? Are you telling a story through your music, sharing beautiful colors, or trying to get others to feel an emotion?

Focusing on sharing music helps me free my mind up from thinking about all the small technical details that trip me up. Sharing your music is also a more positive experience than trying to keep from falling apart!

Prepare by making yourself nervous

I know it doesn’t sound like much fun, but “practicing” playing under pressure is one of the best ways to prepare for a performance. I find that the best way to do this is to record yourself (and watch it back!)

Lots of us instantly freeze up when we turn on the camera because we think that recording is permanent. The pressure we feel while recording is so similar to what we feel at a performance!

You can use this opportunity to both practice getting nervous and listen back to yourself. There’s so much you don’t notice about your own playing in realtime. Recording is beneficial for so many reasons!

I’d suggest recording yourself twice a week starting two weeks before your performance, but of course different situations call for different preparation, so this is just a starting recommendation.

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You’re invited to our recital!

My private students are performing in our first Halloween Recital next Friday, the 22nd! RSVP on my website or to the Facebook event for the Zoom link!