Overcoming Stage Fright (Part 1)

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Overcoming Stage Fright While Singing

Stage fright or anxiety to get up and perform in the front of others is a very common and big concern in music performance and can affect singers whether at the early phase or any time in their career.

Stage fright is when you conclude in your mind and you say to yourself, “What I’m about to do is dangerous.”

These are some ways you know it is stage fright. You think about things like these:

I am not confident with my voice

What if I forget the lyrics?

What if my voice cracks or I sound terrible?

What if I can’t hit that high note section in that song?

What if I blow chunks and people make fun of me?

What if nobody shows up?

What if I make a fool of myself?

What if they hate me and want to boo me off the stage?

Some people are afraid drowning, others are afraid of heights lots of other thoughts running through your mind creating phobias. Although there may be good reasons to be afraid of performing on stage, performing in front of people is never dangerous. But can rather be exciting for you and your audience.

For you to understand that you are not alone in this: big household names like Barbara Streisand, John Lennon and Adele have all admitted to suffering severe performance anxiety.

But that shouldn’t stop ministrations or your showbiz and so it is important to overcome this as early as you can.

Here are some ways to overcome stage fright:

    1.   Get ready

Starting with something easy and simple is essential little at a time till you are so prepared to the point where you are so “ready” you don’t have to “think about it” as the whole thought may feel too big to be possible.

Write out on a small sheet of paper and repeat your song over and over, while doing some other things, like shopping, relaxing, washing or doing math. If you can write your music notations, you can indicate on each syllable of your lyrics, but if you can’t do that get your song on a sound recorder or when singing a cover or ‘copyright’, play the song on your device as much as possible. Master every riff while practising, riffs and runs most of the time don’t just appear while doing the singing. When you feel you mixed up the lyrics, refer to your small sheet of paper.

Sometimes, our performance anxiety comes about because we have not practiced our song enough, and we are still not sure of our lyrics or the song we chose to sing. When we step on stage without having made preparations enough and getting ready, we are more prone to feeling anxious and that makes us more nervous and certainly unable to perform to the best of our ability!

Getting ready before performance helps us reduce this feeling of nervousness and make us more confident onstage!

Unconsciously getting ready little by little and repetitive practice, reduces the possibility of making mistakes because we are so familiar with the lyrics and the song that we are singing.

You can improve your singing breath control

I always recommend the dog pant and the slow leaky tire or hissing snake singing breathing exercises that you can do before you go out in front of people. Do them as much as possible for better muscle control.

For some people, it may take five repetitions to get a song down and for others it might take a hundred. Just take as much time as needed to feel you have your music learned and ready to perform.

    2.  Do your vocal excersices

Vocal warm-ups related to your songs are very necessary before singing onstage. Using irrelevant vocal exercises for warm-ups, this can affect your confidence in hitting some notes while singing. I’ll put up some singing breathing exercises and few vocal warm-ups in subsequent posts. Sing a scale in your range and choose a convenient Key.

When you're in public you can hum to warm up your voice. Humming can be used as a substitute for singing your scales especially in public, try humming your riffs and other dynamics you can sing them in your practice sessions with your voice.

Practice your music so it is as perfect as you can get it.

3.     Ask a listening audience
      Increasing your exposure is vital to overcoming stage fright. It helps to practice with a listening audience present. Ask friends and family if you can sing for them, even if it drives them crazy. Let them know that practicing in front of them will help you. You can start off with your best friend as your audience, and slowly increase the number of people whom you sing to as your listening audience to family, or even complete strangers.

You may even wish to step it up by singing in karaoke rooms, and maybe move to the karaoke halls to sing to a larger audience! Imagine a large audience listening to you and sing some more with energy and life. If possible, rehearse in the space you will be performing in. Singing calmly in that location makes it more likely you will later perform there with confidence. Performing as much as possible in a
 relatively safe environment where it doesn’t matter that much is an 
excellent way to build confidence in your singing ability, and also makes performing in front of people a regular habit, so that it becomes less daunting for you as a performer!

It is essential to know that the audience, your church congregation, friends and family, are not standing there with their arms crossed waiting for you to make a mistake so they can humiliate you.
They are in your corner. They are on your team. They are rooting for you. They want you to get over your anxiety. I want you to look at your audience as your friends. In fact, the reason they are there at all is because they are excited to see you succeed. The Church congregation want quality and effective handling of spiritual songs. This is an excellent place to start. It may seem almost too simple, but it is the truth. This mental 
exercise will help you begin overcoming stage fright so you will no 
longer be afraid to sing. Your fear of performing will start to diminish.

When you finally go onstage to perform, you will be more prepared and less affected by nerves! ...