Audition nerves and adapting to new environments.

[Gorkk]

Well, tonight I had my first college placement audition. I feel that I could have done much better than I had if I had not gotten so nervous during the audition, and if I had not had to play facing a wall of cardboard boxes!

In the warm-up room, my sound was great, my chops felt great, and I was very relaxed. However, once I got into the room with the two trumpet professors watching and listening to me, I got very nervous, which adversely effected all aspects of my playing (especially the use of mouthpiece pressure, something which I have slowly been working away from but keeps coming back at the worst times). It didn't help that they had me face a wall of cardboard, which isn't the most acoustically friendly substance in the world-- it made my sound horrible (to me at least).

So, my question is this: How does everyone deal with nervousness and playing in a new environment during an audition?

Thanks in advance for the replies!

~Nick

[Nonsense Eliminator]

Nick --

As Henry Ford said, "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

I have found that the best way to deal with distractions -- and nerves, bad acoustics, foul-smelling trombonists and so forth are all distractions -- is to stay firmly focussed on what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm not a big fan of dwelling on performance anxiety issues, because I think it's dangerously close to making excuses. One thing that has helped me, though, is to remember that fear is a physical response designed to allow us to exceed our normal limitations, and that the line between fear and excitement is very fine. If you're well-prepared, a little bit of nervous energy can be a good thing. (Oh yeah, practice your hind end off.) It's not a bad idea to do that practicing in a variety of acoustical environments, or, if you're sure of the acoustic you'll be performing in, in rooms that are as similar as possible.

[Mzony]

I don't know if I really agree. I believe that we should "practice" perorming. I think we should "practice" auditioning. I think for those of us who have performance anxiety (and we all get it in one form or another at some point in our careers), should work hard at reproducing these effects and practicing while these effects are occuring. There is no excuse to not being able to perform under pressure. We can practice under pressure every day mentally and physically.
Heart Beat Accelerated? Shortness of Breath? How about doing some jumping jacks or running up a flight of stairs and coming down, find your center and play a short excerpt.
Arms shake? Do some push ups and come back, find your focus and play another short excerpt.
Get dry mouth? (OK this one is not so clean, but you can clean your trumpet.) Get some crackers, chew on them, and then play another short excerpt.
I know that there are serious anxiety issues to deal with, and I agree with NE in theory, however if you have problems then you have problems. Problems are just issues that need to be worked on and over time corrected.
I think it is healthy to work on our performance issues in the same way we work on our trumpet playing issues. Practice.
We have problems triple tounging, then we practice triple tounging.
Just re-create performance situations in small and large ways. Perform for people. And everytime you practice performing, have a tape recorder going, so you can evaluate your progress later.

[romey1]

When in doubt, block it out.

romey

[Mzony]

Block it out?
As in ignore it?
Pretend that the problem does not exist?
Why not work on the problem?

[romey1]

Beta-Block Baby, Beta-Block!

romey

[Derek Reaban]

Nick,

I've taken three professional orchestral auditions in my life. In the first two, I experienced exactly what you described in your message (i.e. playing well below my capabilities due to excessive nerves). For my most recent audition with the Phoenix Symphony, I had two very helpful suggestions that allowed me to observe my nervous energy and not allow it to progress to something more harmful.

The first suggestion was to read the book Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within. Kenny Werner has so many wonderful suggestions in this book, I will simply offer that his suggestion to "observe" these thoughts and let them go made a world of difference to me.

The second suggestion was from my instructor. He told me that our minds want to be active, and will look for anything to latch on to just before an "audition". He said if you give the mind something tangible and "positive" to work on, the nervous energy will remain in check (apparently he picked this up from one of the BSO trombone players who says a mantra before auditions - "Pitch and Rhythm, Pitch and Rhythm"). Since I was playing the 1st Movement of the Hummel, I continually sang the 1st phrase in my mind once I arrived at the stage door (my instructor's reasoning was, why say words, when you can really focus on Pitch and Rhythm and the musical content all in one). This worked wonders! My mind was very happy to have something to work on, and my nervous energy never got out of hand. Consequently, I played one of the best auditions of my life!

If you haven't read my post on My Audition Perspective, please look at:
http://www.trumpetherald.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=11010&forum=4&18

I hope this will give you some tangible ways to work on this aspect of your playing before your next audition.

Good luck!



_________________
Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona

[ This Message was edited by: Derek Reaban on 2003-08-27 23:52 ]

[Goku]

I tell myself, If I can do something about it, don’t worry. If you cant do something about it. It can’t be helped, so still don’t worry. lol

[redface]

Great Post NE.

My thoughts: If you are feeling nervous it is good. Performing solo is one of the bravest things a musician can do. To perform well you have to show emotional commitment to the music which can make you feel very self conscious in a pressure situation. Your playing says something about your personality and solo playing puts your personality on display. It's great that you feel nervous, it means that you are committed and care about the music. But sometimes nerves get the better of us - here's a few pointers:

1. Breathe. I once asked my college teacher why taking such a deep breath is important. He said that most people think that it is for support, but in reality it is to open the throat and, most importantly, to relax. Nice deep breaths will lower you heart rate and make you feel less stressed. When you are practicing your pieces make sure you practice deep relaxed breaths at the start of phrases, no little snatchy breaths. When you go into perform all this breathing practice (which not many people do) will be on autopilot and will help you relax and perform well.

2. To quote Herseth `never practice, always perform'. To perform well you have to practice performing - even in the early stages of learning a piece when when doing it slowly with a metronome, make sure you are performing at all times. So when you go to the audition room, you will be used to performing and it will seem natural.

3. Make music your goal. I always find that when I am playing well I am thinking about the music, when I am playing badly I am thinking about the notes (will I make this high run...). If you think about the musical direction and purpose of what you are playing your brain assumes that the notes are gonna be there and 99.9% of the time - they are! If you worry about the notes that's what will go wrong, if you care (not worry) about the music it is a much more positive mindset and so will help you playing.

4. Play to audiences as much as possible. Get a few friends together and play your pieces to them, this will help you practice performing to an audience.

Finally remember that in trumpet playing you are either a hero or a fool, it's better to really go for it in a performance and take committed risks that bottle it and wimp out. And remember -if you're gonna go down, go down fighting.

[Gorkk]

Great ideas so far. I have to put in, though, that I would not call what I get "performance anxiety" since it only happens during auditions. When I am performing with a group, I can get a little bit of nervous energy, but never anxiety or tension (as I described above)-- at least not to the point where it greatly affects my playing. I think I'll have to try performing my audition pieces in front of a few friends before the audition-- perhaps it will get me used to playing solo in front of only a few people? It's worth a shot!

If you've got more, keep it coming!

~Nick

[Nonsense Eliminator]

Mike --

I think it makes perfect sense to do as you suggest, once other avenues have been explored. I suppose I didn't make myself very clear in my first post, so I'll try to explain. I think that a lot of people (and I'm certainly not saying that you fall into this category -- you obviously have your act together) try to put performance anxiety into its own little box, when that's not necessarily the case. That is, when a performance goes poorly, they immediately blame nerves and try to fix their nerve problems. I think that somebody who thinks they have nerve problems needs to carefully assess what really went wrong, in the following order:

1.) Were they really ready? Really, really, really ready? I am much less likely to get nervous when I've thoroughly prepared the music, and even though my performing situation is more stressful, I'm less likely to be nervous now that I have my trumpet playing together. Sometimes, I think people get nervous because deep down, they realize that they're not very consistent players yet, on unprepared on the music at hand. Fixing on the idea of a nerve problem might make it stick around, even after the root cause has been eliminated. I think it's good to be nervous when there's a significant chance of failure, because it encourages us to eliminate that chance. Nerves are only a real problem when they occur for no apparent reason.

2.) Is the situation unfamiliar? I think sometimes people have a bad experience the first couple of times they do something, and conclude from that that that situation makes them nervous. That's not always true. I can't count the number of times I've heard people in masterclasses blame nerves for their performance. Of course they're nervous if they never play in masterclasses! I don't think it's an accident that the situations I'm most comfortable with are the situations I've been in the most. If a situation makes somebody nervous, a lot of the time the best way to deal with that is getting in that situation a bunch more times. I've never been a big fan of setting up phony auditions -- they always seemed, well, phony, and didn't reproduce the effect of the "real thing" -- but they do work for some people.

3.) Then it's time to think about nerves -- first by attempting to get rid of them, then by trying to deal with the consequences. I think your suggestions are great -- most people can identify the symptoms of their nerves, but seem to be content to simply hope that they don't happen. If it's going to happen, figure out how to deal with it -- and I suspect that knowing how to deal with it is very likely to help prevent it from happening.

I hope that makes more sense.

Gorkk --

I'm glad you've found some of these suggestions promising. It's important to remember, however, that everybody is different. Some techniques which may work for me or Mike or Derek may not work at all for you. Try them and see, but if something doesn't seem to work, don't worry about it, just try something else.

[ This Message was edited by: Nonsense Eliminator on 2003-08-28 10:50 ]

[Mzony]

I totally agree with you NE. Let me just add a few more thoughts if I may.
I think there are times where we believe the energy (nerves) that we are feeling to be a negative. I think in recreating these "nerves" in some shape or form allows us to re-access what these vibrations may really be. In other words, one can REALLY get off having those nervous vibrations, because they can channel it into positive thought and really give a special performance.
Everybody reacts to pressure in their own ways. I usually do my best when there seems to be tension from the outside towards me (real or perceived tension), or when I feel I have something to prove.
For me, when I am too relaxed (when things are going too well), that is where my nerves start to happen. I have to work to get my energy level up to get my performance state of mind going etc.
I don't like to "relax" as so many people tell their friends/colleagues/students, to do. There are too many things at play to relax. I have to find a way to get my energy up to stay in the zone and execute a good performance.
I know this sounds rather primitive in a way, but I love this topic. I think it is an important one for this reason alone:
Often times when we are in school, we give maybe a concert a month. The piece is usually a big one like a Mahler Symphony or a Strauss tone poem.
As students, we are so excited to play, and we have been working on it for a whole month. We just can't wait to show off what we can do. TO play these great pieces that we listen to all the time. It is a rare/special opportunity to perform.
As professionals, we have 3-4 rehearsals a week. Often times there are multiple sections in a given piece that you don't believe were rehearsed well, and you have 2-3 performances a week. Your work situation CAN become common place, and concerts CAN be a nuisance. That youthful energy and excitement to performing MAY not exist anymore.
I think it is our responsibility to maintain that excitement for performing live. Not only for the audience but for ourselves. Because when something REALLY big comes into your part, you may be feeling a larger energy than you have felt in years, and you may not know what to do with it. You may not remember how to perform under those circumstances.
OK, again I apologize, my posts are too long.

[Nonsense Eliminator]

Mike --

I agree 100%, with one exception:

"OK, again I apologize, my posts are too long."

Bollocks.