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How to overcome the nerves?

How to overcome nerves when playing piano?

  • I have played piano for over 15 years now and have always struggled with being nervous while playing in front of audiences. For instance, just this morning I played a piece in church which I practiced over and over and was well prepared to play. Yet, I still managed to badly mess up one section of the song. It seems that my nerves get the best of me around 90% of the time that I perform. It is very frustrating. Has anyone else struggled with this? Does anyone have suggestions for overcoming this?

  • Answer:

    I have the same problem, to the point where I will almost walk out of judged events just because of nerves. I realized that I worried more about the technical details. Will I remember the pedaling, phrasing, accidentals? I was well aware that I knew the music back and forth. I do several things, and it does take some mental practice. I sit down at the piano as if I were to practice a run through. I put myself in a situation where I'm about to leave the room and just want to practice the music one more time. Or I get my confident (almost cocky) persona in gear and play as if I'm showing off to someone. "Look, I have 15 years of skill under my belt." That, or you want to inspire someone to start learning. With both of those, you really just have to let the music flow. You already know it. Just breathe. I close my eyes a lot when I play so I can listen to my accomplishment rather than pay attention to which keys I'm hitting. Best wishes!

Steven M at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source

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This is always a huge struggle to overcome for performing musicians. One suggestion I have learned overtime is before you go out and play, just try to breathe well and put your mind into focus. I know that sounds very obvious/overly straightforward, but it if before you perform you actually take the time before you go out on stage or whatever to breathe and relax your body, you could prepare yourself much better and are less likely to stress and mess up your music. Just go out with as much confidence and with as relaxed a mind as possible. Some people are more prone to nerves than others, and if you are one of those people you may have to try different tactics to go about overcoming it, but it is definitely doable.

correll_sucks_at_spanish

Maybe you are over analyzing the situation too much on yourself. Like so afraid your going to fail that you stress out and it happens. Just prentend the auidence isn't even there next time, I know hard thing to do but it might help. I dont play piano but I hope I made some sense.

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