Performance Nerves: An Impromptu Discussion - PHH 170

A performance. And your anticipation of a performance is like a balloon. It starts out as a small thing and we make it into a big thing by filling it up right. We fill the balloon with air, it.

Grows and that's good.

But whatever you fill up that balloon with determines how you can play with it. So think about what you're putting in your balloon.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've.

Had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like.

To feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy.

That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about.

Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the Miharp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists and anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them.

We're ready for you.

Join Us just go to harpmastery.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show.

I don't know if you know this.

But most Mondays I hold a live video call. I call it our Live Monday Warmup.

And that's how it started as a.

Simple warm up for anyone who wanted to join me.

But like most things, it has morphed.

Over time and now it's actually a warm up and a mini masterclass on harp technique.

I love these Monday calls and I.

Look forward to them each week. Not just because I love to teach.

But because I love to interact with the harpists that show up and participate with me. They're a pretty loyal group and I.

Will take this opportunity to give them.

A shout out for showing up every week. You guys rock. Now you are welcome to join us.

Any Monday you like.

The calls are free and we stream them through the Harp Mastery Hub and.

Also live on our YouTube channel.

So here's the thing.

On a recent Monday, the call went a completely different direction from what I had planned.

We were going to practice fourth finger slides, but a chance comment in the chat started me off on a 25 minute discussion about performance nerves. It was an incredible discussion with many.

Powerful ideas on that call, not just.

From me, but also from the harpists on the call and I wanted to.

Share the recording with you here on the podcast.

I've edited out the actual warmup portion of the call and please remember that.

This was a live call so you'll hear me talking off the cuff, totally extemporaneously.

You'll also be able to tell how passionate I am about this topic, one that I think is absolutely vital to every harpist's harp happiness.

Now you will definitely want a pen.

And paper to take notes because there are lots of words of wisdom here from me and from the others on.

The call and I'll be back at the end with some final thoughts for you to tie it all up. As I mentioned a moment ago, you.

Are welcome to join us for any of these live Monday warm ups.

You'll find the replays on the YouTube channel or in the Harp Mastery Hub.

If you're a member, and in the show notes for today's episode.

I've put links to both of those places, the hub and our YouTube channel, so that you can join us for the next warmup.

If what you hear in the recording that I'm sharing with you today just.

Makes you want more of that.

If performance preparedness and performance nerves is.

A topic that you want to dive.

Into, I invite you to come to the Heart Mastery Fall Retreat, my certified Coach and dear friend Candice Lark will be joining me at that retreat.

And the workshops will focus on mindset.

And method, how to be sure your head is in the right place to play, and, and the practical steps you.

Need to take to be sure that you can play not just your nerves.

But you can actually play the music. And of course, along with the workshops, we have all kinds of other wonderful.

Retreat stuff, plus one on one coaching time, naturally.

So I'd love for you to join.

Us at the retreat.

You'll find all the information about how.

To register on the website and we'll.

Be posting more information about these special.

Mindset and method workshops very soon.

So make your plans, join us in October.

And now let me share that call with you.

Okay. All right. I. Yep. I'm just gonna give a quick comment here before we get started on, on our own things because I see Darlene is going to be playing to. She's one of the people who've signed up to play tonight on the fifth Monday musical at My Heart Mastery. And just I think it's important to remember that, that first of all, you're playing for friends, right? And, and it's a totally judgment free zone. But I also want to put this idea out not just to Darlene, but to all of you.

Playing doesn't have to be a big deal, you know, I mean, it's one thing if you're gonna do a Carnegie hall recital, and I know that's the example I always use, but because we understand what that might involve. So I think if we're doing a Carnegie hall recital, yeah, that's, that's a big deal. And you can, you know, you can get all worked up for that one because it'd be probably hard to stay calm. But if it's not that big a deal, if it's, you know, anything below that level, pretty much.

Try to keep the perspective that it doesn't have to be a big deal unless you make it one.

It's just playing music. Nobody's scoring you, nobody is judging you. Nobody is worried if you make mistakes or stop or have to start over, that that's just part of live music. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be your best performance, your personal best. It's going to be whatever it is.

But the experience of it doesn't have to make you terrified. You just need to remember that this is one thing. And if you're in this harp game for the long haul.

Whatever.

Whatever level, you are ready to participate at And I. I don't mean level in terms of ability or skill level, but, you know, okay, I just want to, you know, like, play occasionally for. For my friends or for church or I want to do nursing home things or I want to do therapeutic harp or whatever it is that you want to do. In whatever way you decide you want to share your music.

You'Re going to be doing it over and over and over and over again if you're doing this right? Because believe it or not, it's actually fun.

When you're not so panicky, right? So remember that.

It'S just playing it and it's what it's going to be on that day. And the thing is, you might play it really, really well most of the time, and you might even have performed it and it goes really well most of the time. And then you just have an off day. That happens. And it's not, you know, it doesn't ruin the rest of them. But remember, you're going to do it once and you're going to do it another time and another time and another time and another time. So if you build everyone up into a big thing, you. It's exhausting. It's just another one. Let it just be another one so that the next one doesn't feel like another huge deal. Okay, so we've got some comments in here. Pam, who's on Pamela, who's on YouTube, says thank you for that. Timely reminder. True. For so many things. Indeed it is. And, and I said K and Winifred have logged on here. Evelyn says she feels sorry for the music if she messes it up. Well, you know what? People have messed it up before. They're going to mess it up again. Not a big deal. And the thing is that that music on the page comes out differently for every single harpist every single time. And those dots on the page mean different things. Yeah, I know they represent certain notes and certain rhythms, but you'll never hear two people play the same piece exactly the same way. And so the piece is more flexible, it's more abstract, if you will. It only becomes concrete when we play it. And then, you know what? As soon as we play that note, it's gone. We don't get another shot at it, which means that it doesn't exist anymore. Right. So don't get too worked up in that part either. You feel sorry for your harp, says Sonia on YouTube. Well, you, you know, your harp is your partner in this. They get it, right? Your harp knows. I mean, I know my harps. They Know, if I'm having a bad day, they can't do anything about it. But, you know, and sometimes they have a bad day, and I have to work with that, too. It's like, oh, weather's coming in, and it just doesn't sound right today. So, you know, so that's. That's part of it, too. So none of those things are really that important. As sue says here, not everyone in the Olympics is perfect, but they're all cheered for. Absolutely. Absolutely. Pam says here, how we play at a particular moment is not a direct reflection on us as a person. I love that we're putting that one right. Right in front of everybody here for a second. How we play at a particular moment is not a direct reflection on us as a person.

Our willingness to share only shows that.

We are generous and.

And willing to take a risk.

It feels like a risk. It's not. I mean, yeah, it is. You're sort of, you know, putting it out there, but the risk is in our perception. No one who's listening to us perceives it as a risk. They're not sitting there on the, you know, on pins and needles waiting for us to mess up or not. You know, it's not like when you're watching the Olympic diver and, you know, there's really, you know, you can feel that tension. And of course, the. The announcers do a little bit to help that. Right. Well, you know, last time he did this dive, it was. And the difficulty factor. And nobody does that for harp concerts. Nobody sits there and says, okay, now wait. She's coming up to the hard, to the hard part. This is really tricky. She's messed up this fingering. She messed it up in rehearsal. We. Will she manage it this time? The only person saying that is you. As Pamela said, again, coming from YouTube, the risk is in our perception. Yes. And we don't have to have that there. You know, the risk is something we build up. It's not real. The risk is not real.

So it's what, you know, it. It's allowed to make us nervous because we get excited and we anticipate that. But I don't want performing, playing for someone to ever make you afraid.

Because truthfully, there's not a lot of risk here. That's real risk.

You screw up, you stop, you play wrong notes, you start over, whatever it is.

No one.

The harp isn't judging you. The music isn't judging you. The composer, living or dead, isn't judging you. The people who listen to you aren't judging you. They're not there to judge you unless you're in a competition or playing at Carnegie hall where you've got critics who are paying attention. Right. Other than those very specific instances, people aren't there to judge you. As Steph says here, she likes to think about Adele, who has severe stage fright. Well, add her to a long list. Actors, actors, including people like Henry Fonda, singers like Barbra Streisand. These are people who would throw up before they perform, who can't perform with, you know, without this incredible fright. You don't have to have that.

You don't have to have any of the playing that you do build up into that kind that level of fear. It doesn't have to be there. And when you're just, you know, playing a piece, when you play on a musical, when you play on a coaching soiree, when you play in a. In a sounding board, all opportunities that we have here at heart mastery, right? When you play for one of those things, the risk is really low. You're playing for friends. Nobody expects it to be a finished thing. They're expecting to hear a work in progress. Certainly at our coaching soirees, you know, in. In. In the time you have with your coach, you might not have gotten that piece finished. We get that the sounding boards are all about just, you know, playing music and experimenting with it. Just playing literally for friends, right?

The.

The musicals, maybe you want it to be a little bit more presentable, but the risk still isn't there. If you had to stop and start over twice and stop in the middle, nobody there is going to judge you.

And the thing about those musicals is that everybody knows what can go wrong and how it can slip up.

And as Steph says, the takeaway about the Adeles of the world, the Henry Fondas of the world, the Barbra Streisands of the world, and anybody else like this, you know what? They do it anyway. That's the whole thing. And the more you do it, the easier it can get. You don't have to let it build up to that. Nathan says, I wish there was an easy way to switch off that panic in the moment. No, there isn't. I think. I think. I mean, yeah, it would be nice if there were. If, you know, it's like, oh, no, it's my turn. And, you know, every. It happens to all of us. Those nerves, you know, those nerves come up. But I can tell you that when you decide that you're just going to play through them, that those nerves are just added adrenaline and added Excitement, they're not fun. It doesn't feel fun at the time. This adrenaline, you know, your body's going into panic mode. That's what happens. Bodies go into panic mode, you can't help that.

But you can decide that you're just going to do it anyway. Exactly what Steph said. And that's the, what I've been preaching since, you know, since I started this whole thing. And I remember launching that, the first one, practice for the finished course. Long, long time ago. 2014, I believe. 10 years ago. And that's the idea. It's just, it's a play at anyway, philosophy. When you just do it, you know, you're still going to have times when that goes better and times when you wish it went better. But. But playing is the only cure for it.

And that's part of it too, right? If you, if you shy away from playing because it makes you nervous, you're not going to get any less nervous about it. It's just going to get harder. If you go ahead and do it anyway.

And you realize, okay, I lived through that first one, maybe I can live through the next one. Maybe I could live through the next one. And you start getting a little bit of security.

About what you can do, what you can expect. That is not going to go so well, but what can go better than you expect, and you start to enjoy it more. You'll never enjoy that feeling of butterflies, whether those are like big monster butterflies or little tiny butterflies, but you can accept them. So anyway, I didn't mean to get into all that today, but I didn't want to leave that comment on the table. I'll tell you one more thing and then, then we'll get on with our warm up.

All right, well, let me address this comment. She says, if I play badly playing for someone, it takes me a week to be able to play again in my own space. Oh, dear. It's like I lost part of the person that plays my harp. I've learned to take a lot of music and turn the page saying, this piece is not going to work today and play something else. That's a great strategy to just say, oh, you know, this is not the day for this. I'm going to do this instead. I have made last minute substitutions on concerts saying, you know, when I planned it, I thought this was going to go really well, but I just can't face this today. I'm going to do something else. Why do you think performers announce program changes? No matter what they tell you, it might just be because they don't want to play that one today.

So, you know, it happens. So it's a great strategy because you don't want to let.

The fact that something didn't go as well as you wanted when you were playing it for somebody else to keep you away from the heart. That we don't want. That we definitely don't want. A lot of people have pre performance rituals. The day of a performance, they only eat this, and then they take this nap, and then they do this and they do this, and they have this whole whole day lined up just to prepare them for their performance.

I don't do that and for two reasons. One is that I.

By the time I was in college, I was doing enough playing that I didn't have time for that. I was too busy. It was like, well, I'm in class all day. I've got to have a lesson. I do this and then I have to play tonight. There was no time to pamper myself.

But even now, when I certainly could do something like that, I don't. I make my day just like every other day. Because if I start treating that performance as something really special.

It imbues it with more meaning and more weight and more importance and more scariness than it really needs. So I don't do anything differently. I have the same breakfast I always have. I do whatever I need to do during the day. I just do it. I leave enough time to do whatever practice I need to do to warm up for the concert in that evening. And I make sure that I have enough travel time. You know, I build it that way. But I don't do anything extra. I don't do anything differently because I want that performance to just be part of my harp life. I don't want it to be, you know, a separate, oh, I've got a performance tonight thing. I can't do the diva thing. So I don't. And that's one of my own strategies. I make it a normal part of my life. And you know what? I feel pretty normal about it now. As Evelyn says, your heart playing is treacherous. So is, you know, so's walking on the sidewalk. For me, I, you know, I've been known to trip and fall.

Right.

If your fingers are stiff from the heat, it's scary. Yeah. If your fingers are stiff from cold, they don't work right. If you've got nerves, your fingers are jelly, or they're shaky, or they're whatever it. And everybody in every line of performance has this. Whether it's a speaker who's afraid that when they walk out on the stage, they're going to trip or their mouth is going to be dry. Speaking is treacherous. Violin playing is treacherous. Am I going to. Am I going to trip as I walk out on stage and smash my violin? Is that. Is that tuning peg gonna. Gonna totally screw up, and my E string's gonna break, and I'm not gonna be able to play, and my bow is gonna, you know, and their fingers can shake, their bow arm can shake. Everything is treacherous. It's not just harp. And the harp, you know, is a good friend. You get to hug it. It's a good friend. It's there for you. Everything is treacherous. Heart playing is no scarier than anything else. And it's not. It doesn't have any more worries than anything else. We have worries. Yeah. Am I going to miss a pedal? Is my string going to break? Is this. Is this. My fingers are shaky. Yeah, but so does everybody else. It's not that big a deal. No matter how big a deal it feels to us at the time. And I want you to be sure that that's what you take away from this, that you're the one making it a big deal.

I mean, you know, yeah, it's hard. It is hard, and it is scary. But don't build it up into more than it needs to be. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that, you know, it is scary. Sit there in front of somebody and play something. Yeah. It's scary. And a lot can go wrong. Yeah. But don't make it harder on yourself. That's what I want to tell you. Sonya says a string breaking is your worst fear. I'll tell you, it's the best thing that can happen.

Wow.

This is not going the way I expected today to go. So here we go. Yeah. It's a Monday mindset. Warmup says Steph. Yeah. Okay, but here we go. A string breaking should not be your worst fear. And here's why.

First of all, always have your strings with you and know that you can change a string. Right. Practice so that, you know that's not a problem.

One of the best things you can do to put yourself at ease in front of an audience is to talk to them. Right. I mean, think about.

When you. When you see somebody and. And. And they're. Maybe they're a famous person, and you think, oh, gosh, I'd be too scared to talk to them. And then all of a sudden, you're face to face with them. And, and, and so you end up, you know, you, you talk to them and it's like, oh, they're not so scary after all. It's the same thing with an audience when you can say, you know, oh, gosh.

My string broke and I'm sorry, I'm going to have to stop and replace it and then I'll start over. So you take a string out of your bag and you say, you know, harp strings come in different kinds. This is a gut string. And so I have to. And every string on the harp is different. So I'm going to have to look through and I'm going to have to find the right string. And you look through, you find the right string. And now what I have to do is I have to thread it through. And then we have a special knot that we tie and I need a special end for it. And, and I always have to hold stuff in my mouth and I'm going to bite this. I'm going to turn time. I not. And then I'm going to test it and then I'm going to tune it up and listen how terrible that sounds, right? So I'm going to tune it up again. I'm going to tune it up a few times and then I'm going to have to be tuning it up every time I play. You're going to listen to it. It's going to sound awful for the first couple pieces and I'll try to do my best to yank it up, but. But I had to replace the string. That audience is gonna love you. They are gonna love you. And you will feel like they're your friends now. They're gonna, they're gonna remember that concert I played last Thursday.

At the reception afterwards, somebody came up to me with. But she said, I remember a while back, this harpist, and she broke a string and she'd left her strings off and she had to. And, and I said, that was me. And that was three or four years ago. I have a feeling it might have been four or five years ago. They still remember the fact that I had to stop, stop and stand up and say, I broke a string and I can't go on without this string. And then I had to admit, I said, and I did. And she remembered this, what I said, word for word, I said, and I have done what I always tell my students not to do. I have all my strings with me except for the wire strings. I'd broken a big low wire string. I mean like a real thick one way down here. And I needed it for the entire piece a lot. And so I. So I said, and I've left them in the car. I don't have them with me backstage. And it's going to take me a little while to go get a string and change it. And so there was a. So somebody else went on while I, you know, took care of the string. Actually, I ended up getting. Borrowing another harp that was there. It was at a university. And I played on that harp. But the point, my point is that I broke the string, had to stop, told the audience what was going on, the concert went on because there were other people playing. And so somebody else went before me. And then I came back and played later. I took care of the string. And the audience remembers it years later. They loved it. They didn't even remember it was me. I said, but. But it was. But this is, you know, string breaking is a great way to just reset your mind. When a string breaks, all your adrenaline problem is solved because now your adrenaline has a place it went. You will no longer have that adrenaline rush. Your strings, your fingers won't be shaky. It'll all be solved right there. So a string breaking should never be your worst fear because you'll be able to replace it. It'll calm all your adrenaline. It'll all go away. You'll put the new string on. It'll sound stinky, but you can't do anything about that. Never worry about that. I broke another string in performance once. It was like a very high string. It was the last string of the piece I did. I was playing with my flutist, played a big glissando, ended on the string and it broke. So while I changed the string, she talked about the harp speech. You know, she talked about the pedals and about what I was doing with this thing, and I just changed the string while she talked to the audience. People remembered that for years, too. You know, your audience is your friend if you make them your friend.

Just a thought. So I spent 25 minutes doing this. Thank you, Nathan, for saying this was relevant and helpful. So. And thank you, Steph, for just saying it's the Monday mindset. Warm up. But. So here we are. Joanne says, great lesson from this experience. Make the audience your friend. Yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they're prepared to be your friend. We're the ones who are saying, well, I don't know, you might not think I'm good enough. I'm really worried about this. That's on us.

That's on us. But those things that we think might be great disasters. Not such a big deal from an audience perspective. That's a part of the experience that. That they wouldn't ordinarily know. A string breaking. This is pretty cool. They've never seen somebody change a harp string before. Unless you happen to be playing for that same audience that I played for all those years ago. But okay. Sony says a great pep talk. Well, I hope so, because I want you to enjoy every aspect of your heart playing, including playing for other people.

And you get to decide that you get to be in charge of that. You don't have to let your nerves be in charge of you. You get to be in charge of them. I mean, there's a certain physical thing you can't help. Adrenaline is there. It's a physical response and it's a good thing we have it because there are real life emergencies that have nothing to do with heart playing that we might want our adrenaline to help us. Right. The house is on fire. We want our adrenaline to. To make us feel the urgency about getting out of the house. That's what adrenaline is for. It's unfortunate that it comes up with heart playing because it gets in our way. We can't help that particularly. But, you know, the string breaks. That's your built in emergency. Your adrenaline has. Has a place to go and it's.

All calm before you're playing again.

So, I mean, that was some of the easiest playing I ever did. After that, what was there left to be nervous about?

Nothing. Nothing. So.

So you're more in charge than you think.

Okay. All right. Let's be in charge of some fourth finger slides. You ready?

I hope you enjoyed that call.

So many words of wisdom and takeaways from everybody on that call.

If you didn't get them written down while you were listening, please come back.

Listen to this episode again.

Share it with a friend that you think might benefit from this way of thinking. Remember, too, that you have opportunities to get better. Better at this. Every time you play anywhere is another step forward.

You have learning opportunities like our fall.

Retreat that will give you the tools you need to overcome your fears so you can finally experience the joy of sharing your music. And here's the final thought I want to leave with you today.

A performance.

And your anticipation of a performance is.

Is like a balloon. It starts out as a small thing, and we make it into a big thing by filling it up right. We fill the balloon with air.

It grows, and that's good.

But whatever you fill up that balloon with determines how you can Play with it. For instance, if you have a balloon and you put water in it, like a water balloon, it can break, right?

Okay.

When you blow into the balloon and blow it up, that way it can be kind of fun to bat around.

When you put helium in it, though, it soars.

So think about what you're putting in your balloon. If you're filling your balloon with nerves and with fears, this is going to make you very reluctant to play.

It's going to give you sort of performance paralysis.

If you're learning to fill your balloon and learning to play anyway, even though you're nervous, this is great. This is how you're beginning to communicate the music. But when you learn the fun of sharing, when you can have actual communication with your audience from the stage and enjoy bringing music to them, you get joy all around. And it's a wonderful thing to be able to do. And you'll experience it as just the best heart moment that you've ever had. So I invite you to, you know.

Put it on your post it note, put it on the music stand. Right?

What are you putting in your balloon? Think about that every day because I want your balloon to soar.

Next week on the podcast, we're talking about how to arrange anything.

A much more practical down to earth.

Kind of topic, but that's a good thing, too. And in the meantime, please remember, every.

Day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe. Fill the universe's balloon, right? And your world and your spirit. And all you have to do is play.

Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running.

Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day.

See you next time.