If you will, picture the situation… You’re doing the best gig you’ve ever done. The venue is packed, the band is gelling, the sound is perfectly mixed and it’s finally you’re moment to shine. Suddenly you doubt every ounce of your musical ability and screw up your solo spot (that you’ve played flawlessly hundreds,if not thousands of times before), and you go from being on top of the world, right back to the bottom.
Panic sets in instantly and it starts to feel almost as if the lighting guy decided to shine the brightest spotlight he had on you ,for the remainder of the evening. And worst of all, you got so “in your own” head, that you actually ended up having one of the worst gigs you think you’ve ever had.
You get into the van afterwards and it feels like none of the other band members are talking to you (which isn’t true you’re just victimizing yourself), so you decide that you hate everything about music and life - oh what a cruel, cruel world.
Ok, so now that we’ve set the scene, let’s turn the drama off a little. I want you to ask yourself this one question (and please do so in the voice of Chow in the Hangover) - “but did you die”?
If you didn’t, (and I doubt you did), but I promise you - it’s all going to be completely ok. We’re human, we make mistakes, we fuck up, we forget things, we remember things wrong sometimes and best of all, we even over complicate things - a lot of the time. It is what it is.
Music, and especially music performance is an interesting thing, we feel like everyone is always paying attention to everything we’re doing (and sometimes they might be), but often they may not be, and even if they are, chances are that’s nine times out of ten (especially if you’re in an up and coming original project), the audience aren’t even going to have a clue what things should sound like, let alone that you made a mistake, or ten. But, let’s try keep it to one.
If you’re really beating yourself up about your performance you can always go home and work on things to improve the hiccup for next time, but it’s important to try your absolute best at the time and to let the mistakes go. Again, we’re human not robots even if TikTok reels have us believing otherwise on occasion.
Whether you believe it or not, it’s been proven that what we tell ourselves self consciously can (and probably) will manifest itself without us even realizing it, so damaging and negative thoughts (while normal) can totally mess us up moving forward. So regain composure as quickly as possible, put it down to a bad night and make sure that you put the time and effort in to come back swinging the next time.
In short (and at risk of sounding like a broken record), you are not expected to be perfect. “Perfect” is just a word, and you are more than just a word, so chin up and keep pushing !
@MusiciansMentorPics
