Beating stage fright is one of the most individual practices I regularly teach. The process varies from person to person because the roots of it are sunk into our individual life experiences. This is where two terms are important.
Performance Anxiety
That is the term that is more commonly used when talking about what musicians would call stage fright. Using that term, instead of stage fright, will tend to get you a greater amount of information that is more studies based than anecdotal. In other words, rather than someone telling you what worked for them (anecdotal) you will get information about groups of people or individuals and the processes that were tested to help them with performance anxiety. Fair warning: you are likely to get a lot of sports related information. This is useful information, we just need to interpret it for our own uses. This is also part of why I sometimes say that being a musician is more like being an athlete than a mathematician.
Progressive Overload
I recently found this term and realized that this is what they call what I've been teaching for decades. Often, again, used in sports, we can use progressive overload to incrementally challenge ourselves to work with our performance anxiety.
Why do we need to learn these terms?
Because they are going to help you find the information, and processes, that will help you work with stage fright. At the end of the day, it is an individual practice that can be helped with a coach or guide, but is ultimately up to you to identify the roots of, ascertain a beginning, and then incremental challenge yourself to overcome.
RVC Members check your podcast feed for my step-by-step walk-through on what progressive overload for a singer might look like! Stay with it to the end for my final thoughts on the roots of performance anxiety. Here's a link: Beat Stage Fright
If you're not yet a member, and would like to know more, click here: RVC Membership
