by John Wunsch
\n(Originally published in Mel Bay’s Guitar Sessions and edited by Stephen Rekas)
\n<\/strong><\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n
Building the Bridge Step by Step <\/h3>\n
The conditioning we acquire from our experiences go a long way towards building confidence or breaking it down. While most of us are geared to shoot for the big one, i.e., performance of a challenging work for a public audience, we can do ourselves a huge favor by appreciating the value of performing short and simple pieces for audiences as small as one. You read that correctly, 1!\n<\/p>\n
\nPerformance is one of the ways of sharing our music. It involves physical skill but it also involves a level of risk and vulnerability. When successful it provides fulfillment that makes all the effort worthwhile, but for many it is very difficult to get past the nerves associated with the risk and vulnerability. A paced approach can make the transition from playing alone to playing for an audience far more bearable. Simply put, a gradual, patient buildup from the simplest pieces and smallest audiences can provide the opportunity for enough successful experiences along the way to make the developing player comfortable at the next level of difficulty.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhile there is no substitute for experience, no number of completely negative experiences will prepare a player for being comfortable before an audience. Certainly some less than perfect and thoroughly enjoyable experiences are often a part of the process as we learn to deal with the emotions and nerves of live performance; a series of manageable experiences, however, can help players in developing comfort in performance, despite those factors of risk and vulnerability.\n<\/p>\n
\nEach individual has their own set of sensitivities as to who intimidates them and who does not, so a consultation to set up a custom graded list of practice audiences for each student is best. The goal is to gradually increase the difficulty or the degree to which an audience challenges the performer. It is wise to spread the experiences out enough for the player to regroup and improve on problem areas, but keep them coming often enough for them to become a regular part of the player’s musical life. As with the list of audience members, the frequency can be customized to fit a player’s tolerance and practice needs.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe list might look something like this:<\/p>\n
Week 1<\/b> <\/p>\n\n- Audience 1- A parent<\/li>\n
- Audience 2- The other parent<\/li>\n
- Audience 3 – Both parents<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Week 2<\/b> <\/p>\n\n- Audience 1- A good friend<\/li>\n
- Audience 2 – A second good friend<\/li>\n
- Audience 3- Both of those friends<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Week 3<\/b> <\/p>\n\n- Audience 1- Parents with another adult, or a sibling<\/li>\n
- Audience 2- Parents with 2-3 other adults, or siblings<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Week 4<\/b> <\/p>\n\n- Audience 1 – Both friends from week 2, plus 1 more<\/li>\n
- Audience 2 – Both friends from week 2, plus 2-4 more<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Week 5<\/b> <\/p>\n\n- Audience 1- A mix of adults and friends from earlier weeks.<\/li>\n
- Audience 2- A small new group of adults and friends or other known acquaintances, such as teachers from church or school.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n
Week 6<\/b>
\nA recital or concert, perhaps a guitar teacher’s sponsored studio recital.\n<\/p>\n
\nI often tell my students that we carry the souls of our listeners on a journey when we perform. It is much like we are building a bridge for them to cross with us. In the practice room, that bridge only carries our own weight. It appears strong enough to carry others, but until we have them on that bridge with us we may not discover the weak links or vulnerable portions of the structure. We have to go out and try it. We will discover the areas that we need to strengthen, only after we see how it goes in performance.\n<\/p>\n
\nOf course this graduated approach not only helps put the structure of the piece in order it allows us to gradually get acclimated to the emotions of performing. So in terms of the analogy, when you have someone else on the bridge it may seem to move or sway, the footing is just not what it was in the practice room.. That is due to the emotions you experience with an audience present. But just like the person who learns to walk on a swaying or gently bouncing foot bridge, we can get used to the added motion of our e-motion-s as we perform, and be more and more comfortable with these added travelers on the crossings we lead.\n<\/p>\n
\nSo the performance is a necessary test and we must realize it is not unusual to discover problems in performance. But if we slowly add to the size of audience, and how much of a challenge that audience poses to us, we can gradually create the structure we need for safe passage to a successful performance.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn upcoming articles we will examine more facets of both preparation for performance and having reasonable expectations.\n<\/p>\n
\nUntil then – Best wishes,
\nJohn Wunsch\n<\/p>\n
\n\u00a9 Copyright 2007 John Wunsch. All rights reserved, used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction Veteran performer, Strings By Mail owner, and guitar teacher for 15 years at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, John Wunsch presents a series of articles on alleviating performance anxiety. A series of articles beginning with Part 1. This month’s article will present a paced approach to playing comfortably in front of others. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classical-guitar-strings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/anxiety-stage2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2995,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions\/2995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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