Peace and Guitarmony – Performance Anxiety – The Two-Headed Beast

When we learn to play an instrument for the first time, it is very exciting, especially if you progress quickly and everyone can see that you are very talented and praise you for your skills. We are open to everything and yet innocently unaware of the pressures of performance anxiety.

However, music can be very competitive and insecurities, fears and anxieties can develop. We can doubt our own game and worry about the opinions of others and end up feeling inferior to those with more developed skills than us.

Artists break down when they need to play their best and it has nothing to do with potential. The brain begins to scatter and the mouth dries up completely. Hands are shaking and the notes on the page start to get messy. The voice in our heads starts with continuous criticism. I remember playing for a “jury” at Berklee College of Music. The inside of my head went something like this: “Here comes a tricky beat, don’t miss it”, “look ahead and read everything but not too far ahead”, “what do the judges think of me?”, “why the bass player so bitter”, “I hate my sound”.

In the book “The Inner Game of Music” by Barry Green and W. Timothy Gallwey, the authors refer to two games that are played when we play music, an inner game and an outer game. The outside game is how we really play when we are relaxed and at our best. The technique that we have been developing for years, the way in which we can improvise a powerful, melodic and technically difficult solo. Our real potential when no one is watching or criticizing, the inside game is not a factor. But that inner game can quickly turn into a two-headed beast. It reminds me of the famous presidential quote, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” We know that we are going to get nervous and that is going to ruin our performance, so we are afraid of being afraid and that produces more fear. As we become more nervous and begin to act out, realizing that we are nervous causes more self-doubt. Right now we’re halfway through the performance and we just want it to end and the feelings of defeat set in by the time you get to the end of the piece.

There’s a voice in your head, a micromanager that makes a deliberate effort to control you so you don’t screw up your performance. Although well-intentioned, this is the voice that doubts you while at the same time trying to reassure you for the next few sentences, minimizing the damage of any stray stuff, and assessing how it’s being received by our possibly angsty audience. Anyone who has gone to music school and had to pass some kind of performance exam will know what I’m talking about.

Our best performances had none of that. We were relaxed without any internal commentators chattering in our minds, letting the music flow through us without really thinking about it, almost watching ourselves as we played everything right. It’s that little voice that breaks the deal. How can we silence that voice and end this snowball of fear so that our potential can manifest? Maybe we need to master both games. The inner game and the outer game. Consider the inside game and the outside game as one. We need to try to integrate them into our approach to practice instead of ignoring the inner game and hoping for the best when the time comes.