We’ve all been there… You’re about to walk onstage and it hits you all at once; they’re all watching you! Or that small control room friends, producers, and engineers all of a sudden is fixated on you and you realize that they’re going to hear everything that you play. Or even though you’ve spent countless hours practicing this all week, suddenly you find yourself sitting in front of your teacher and you feel like you should have practiced ten times as much.

PERFORMING CAN BE NERVE-RACKING!

Especially when you’ve been doing this for a long time. I don’t see it in kids – they just get up there and play, usually with a hollow stare that is unaware of its surroundings, and they almost never fret about any judgement from their audience. It’s kind of cool, really, as I remember this feeling as a kid. But as an adult? It gets harder. Way harder.

People are looking at you: they’re sizing you up. Every bass player in the room is watching you, waiting for you to mess up so they can steal your job! It’s funny the things that pass through our minds when we’re nervous, and I’m as guilty of this as any.

Now, besides unpreparedness, I have a very simple solution for this problem. You ready? It’s so easy that even I can do it. Any time that I get nervous to perform in front of a particular audience (be it on the stage, in the classroom, in the studio, or at the trade show) I just say this to myself:

“Remember that you like this.”

Sometimes we forget that simple fact, that we ACTUALLY dig doing this! Everyone is watching you. DUH! That’s what you wanted! Everyone is listening to you. OF COURSE! That’s why you wanted to make a record. Everyone is going to hear your music. AWESOME! Wasn’t that they whole plan? It seems silly to remember that what we’re afraid of is what we were dreaming about to begin with. Sometimes I need to remind myself that not only do I like this, but I also want this. This is what I asked for! So enjoy it, you’re getting to do what you love to do! Don’t be afraid of it, rejoice in it!

At least that’s how I look at it. Granted, I’ve never performed on live television for tens of millions of viewers, nor have I sold gold and platinum records to seas of fans, so I guess my advice can only go so far. But I’d like to think that it still holds up.

What do you do to counter your nerves?