Has you ever had the experience where you can do something by heart, but then it’s your time to perform, and it’s actually important this time, and your life depends on it–
–and then you completely, as in COMPLETELY, screw (I was tempted to curse here but decided against it) it up?
Yes?
You’re in the same boat as me. But what’s more concerning about my case is that I’ve never thought of myself to be someone like that–someone who has stage fright.
The closest I’ve probably gotten is during my (earlier) guzheng and piano performances, but that was mainly due to lack of practice. Most of my guzheng performances were in groups so I legitimately just pretended to play half the time. Although I was indeed positively terrified during my piano recitals, I never made that many mistakes. And also, it wasn’t that important because I had put in zero effort and, at the time, had zero interest, and I already knew for a fact that I would mess up. It wasn’t a big deal for me whatsoever.
But oddly enough I’ve never felt nervous at all during my choir or singing performances, unless you count a short duet performance I did with a good friend last year. More on that later. Actually, it was the opposite, especially since last year. I had three big-ish performances last year (excluding the duet) and I just felt exuberant the whole time. I was enjoying the singing and I forgot everything else except the music ringing in my ears and the conductor and my voice (by the way, it’s quite ugly). Perhaps that’s what some pianists feel when they play. I never got that feeling when I did, but I do when I’m singing now.
Now that I think about it, it was probably because I was in a choir and there was beautiful harmony echoing in the halls around me. When I’m singing solo or duet, I get… much less confident. Say last year, when I was doing the duet with my friend–my legs were shaking pretty badly and I sang softly (as far as my memory serves me). Luckily, I didn’t make any major mistakes and it was a relative success.
However–back to the main topic of this post. I have this huge, big-deal solo-ish thing coming up, which is literally putting me into a panic attack. It’s piling on top of geometry, guzheng, and school homework (the main, necessary things right now), and what’s worse is that my unsatisfied brain also wants to code an RPG game, write three stories, update my blog more consistently, read multiple thick books, and have more time to enjoy myself.
Luckily, it’ll be over in a week or so. I had my first rehearsal with the real choir yesterday. It was a failure, to put it mildly (at least in my eyes. On the other hand, another soloist did just fine).
First off, I memorized all the music. But I was seized by a sudden sense of insecurity, partially due to the fact that I kept getting a few lyrics wrong every now and then, so I basically just read off the sheet. I literally told the teacher I memorized it, and I did, but. As I said, stage fright.
That’s just the beginning. Right off the bat of my completely solo song (my other one is sung with two other people), I messed up the the tempo so badly. I was aware that my legs and hands were shaking much worse than my duet last year and my voice was nearly stuck in my throat. I came in on the wrong beat when I practiced coming in on that beat (as well as multiple others that I was unsure of) at home and circling it on my sheet music furiously less than a week ago, and even on the way there and while another person was singing I was repeating it to myself and tapping out the beats.
And I still <obscenity>ed it up. It wasn’t even just once. Both times that melody appeared I missed that same beat.
But sure. I would’ve accepted that I just still hadn’t practiced enough and needed to practice a lot more.
Hey, guess what? Today, in my first run through of the song, I did it perfectly. And then I did it perfectly again. Didn’t miss a single beat or anything.
This got me so pissed that I ranted to my friend full blast about it, and then I rushed over to this blog to record it down because.
I NEVER KNEW I HAD STAGE FRIGHT UNTIL NOW.
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