Speeding can cause accidents

[Leo Salu]

[sxpoet]

When you play a music sheet that is very very fast, it gets impossible to read and play the sheet at the same time.

you will notice a lot of top flight piano players don’t play from a music sheet, they play from memory. If they have a sheet in front of them …. then that might be there just to tell them where and when to play their parts in an orchestra.

Sax is the same, if you learn to play a tune from memory, you stand a better chance of playing it in time, than playing it in time from a music sheet. The advantage of doing it from memory, is that you can still play it from the music sheet and you will find less mistakes when playing the music sheet once you can play the tune from memory

[Leo Salu]

I posted the video because it seemed helpful for all not just piano players, i play with a lead guitar player who is pretty good but does get nervous with a audience and speeds up, and like the video mentioned you have to speed up also, trying to stay calm is always a trick especially if you are having one of those off days and the music is just not happening. I play a few songs by memory and that is fun, but I have a couple of hundred tracks to choose from and sometimes i just like to play a bunch of different songs from the music charts to keep things interesting, it would be impossible to memorize them all. What i do fine helpful is to play a particular song that i like over and over again until i am pretty familiar with what is coming next, the chart is then more of a simple guide to keep me honest.

[sxpoet]

You’re dealing with overcoming Stage Fright which is a good article, where as i was talking about the problem of playing extremely difficult music sheets ex chopin piano music, pieces of music which tend to be played very fast, where it is very difficult to read the sheet, never mind play the sheet. For me it’s impossible to play these music sheets, however it is very easy to memorise these tunes and play them without the music sheet – these are the type of music sheets i would memorise.

In my sax lessons, in the past i was forced to play music sheets at various speeds for various reasons not covered here, including very slow, normal speed and above normal speeds.

I’ve suffered from stage fright all my life, and still do – there are only two options that work 1) you do one to one with a person trained to deal with overcoming your nervousness or 2) use medicine prescribed by a Doctor.

Years ago i had to stand up in front of a crowd of work colleagues and do a presentation – i overcame this fear by practicing at home in front of my parents.

When i got married i had to stand up and make a speech, i went to my Doctor and he prescribed a drug to slow my heart rate down, to take before the speech, it worked a treat. Never used the drug again in my life.

i’ve played in a band and in an orchestra, and it’s a lot easier for me to do that, than stand up and do a solo performance. Once the spotlight goes on me, the stage fright kicks in.

[sxpoet]

Top Tips for Trad Musicians: Conquering Your Nerves & Overcoming Stage Fright

[Leo Salu]

Hello sxpoet, I actually find it harder to record a song than play in front of an audience, mainly because if you make a mistake playing live you just keep going and most likely no one will notice, when you are recording the same song it is in your mind that an error will be recorded and last forever. This usually always leads to a error by over thinking the play and then the need to rerecord the song. which usually then gets worse. A professional like Johnny mentions that he always gets his songs recorded in one take. That’s not how it goes for me.

[sxpoet]

To most people, we think we only have one brain, in fact we have 7 brains that work together. However 3 of these brains – frontal, Limbic and Parietal brains combine to form the psychological mind.

frontal brain – human (is you)
limbic brain – Chimpanzee (emotional machine given at birth and that thinks independent from you)
parietal brain – Computer(storage area, and is an automatic functioning machine)

Any one of one of these 3 brains can take complete control, but they usually work together.

a book written by Prof Steve Peters called ‘the chimp paradox’ this explains in more detail in simple terms why you act differently in different situations, and how to overcome various stuff.

according to his book, when you play in front of an audience you are using the frontal brain however when you are recording, you have let the limbic brain take control over the frontal brain.

The parietal brain can store positive information or negative misinformation in relation to different situations. The limbic brain can pickup on negative information and suddenly take over control from the frontal brain.

interesting book

[sxpoet]

when i play the sax, it depends on who is in the audience –
if it’s people with no musical background, then a lot of pressure is off, as half the time they won’t notice a lot of mistakes, in fact the only thing they will notice is if you are way out of tune.

if it’s people with a musical background, that play musical instruments – the pressure increases as they will pick up every fault, however they will be more forgiving than you possibly realise.

if you’re playing in front of top flight sax players, the pressure is even more intense, as you know however you play you wont be able to play like them, but they are even more sympathetic than you think.

The more often you expose yourself to playing in stressful situations the less it starts to bother you over time. My guess is Johnny’s first attempts at recording took several takes. The Beatles when they did their 1st recording sessions it took them lots of retakes even though they had been playing for several years.

I think if you were to record all the time, you would overcome the stress.

[Author]

Posts