Ron Smart, Colorado

-And Never Blow Another Performance Again!

Most performers have experienced stage fright at one time or another. Most of the time people can't help but be a little nervous, and that's fine! The trick is to control it. 

Let me paint the picture: You're about to perform. Maybe your band is playing a gig, you're auditioning for a contest, you have a solo in your church choir today that you're not completely comfortable with. You get on stage to do your part, and your rapidly beating heart is making it difficult to breathe. That fact alone is making you MORE anxious, and rather then concentrate on that high note you need to hit in two seconds you're trying to calm yourself down and slow your heartbeat to a normal level. Adrenalin rushes your body, and your voice cracks, or you 'sort of hit it', but flat, or sharp, because your throat was probably so tight that you over-shot it. 

Sound familiar?

Don't worry! There ARE things you can do to make sure it doesn't happen again. 

Having too much stress before you go out on stage will compromise your performance. A little bit of nervous energy is good, and can fuel your performance but too much will hurt it. Not to mention damage your confidence for future performances. 

A lesson on confidence

The core problem for many people is a lack of confidence.

Confidence is the answer to overcoming stage fright and having good stage presence. It's having confidence that will allow you the freedom to dance around and enjoy your experience on the stage, and because of that your stage presence will come out naturally!

Over-active nerves and the fear that your audience won’t like you causes stage fright. The fear that after you are done, no one will clap for you. That fear can be overwhelming it causes you to choke. Here are some basic concepts everyone needs to understand before going on stage:

1. You are your own worst critic. Read that again. 

2. Any mistakes you make are amplified in your own ears, and sound worse to you then anyone else.

3. You can recover from any mistakes you make by simply moving on right away and not dwelling on them.

You just have to develop the ability to make yourself relax, and understand that it isn’t a big deal if even if you do have a less-then-perfect performance. Developing confidence on stage is also going to come from facing your fear and just doing it. Just getting up on stage and performing.

It'll be uncomfortable for you the first time, but after you do it a few times, you'll naturally become far more at ease with it. You will notice your heart rate won’t be as high before going onstage, and because of that you'll be able to breathe easier, and singing will be a thousand times easier.

It just takes practice and repetition.

Another thing that helps is if you're old enough, hit a karaoke lounge to get some practice. Even though it isn’t quite the same as singing with a band, you'll still get the feel for being on stage in front of an audience and the words will be displayed on the screen, so you won’t have the added pressure of trying to remember the verses.

This is also a good thing to do when practicing a song for the first time in front of an audience. As long as the karaoke provider has the song, you'll be able to practice it live.

If you aren’t already confident on stage, here are some tips to help get you there.

• Make sure first of all that you know the song you are singing.

I've made this mistake myself. I'm a karaoke host and at one of my shows, I started singing a song to open the night that I wasn’t too familiar with and hadn't practiced before, but thought I could pull it off anyway. OUCH! I was so wrong! I ended up stopping the song halfway through and apologizing. I then proceeded to sing a song I did know, and everything was fine after that. It was still pretty embarrassing

Simple to prevent that, just make sure you know what you're singing!

Proper preparation is key for giving a good performance. If you know the song you're about to sing really well it's much easier. Here are some tips for preparing properly. Use them and you won't have anything to be nervous about!

• Make sure you warm up properly before you sing. Take a few minutes to do humming warm ups, and you'll have more confidence going onstage that you won’t crack or break because you warmed up properly.

• Take a minute to do some relaxation and breathing techniques like shoulder and head rolls. These help a huge amount in preparing you for a performance. Your voice is greatly affected by the amount of stress you bring to the stage, so the more relaxed you are, the better you will be. Here are a couple of them:

• One of my old teachers taught me this one: Sit down in a chair and put your back evenly and straight against it. Take a breath and as you do, pull your pelvis up and open your back so that is spreads against the back of the chair. At the same time, you should sink into the chair and squeeze the gluteal muscles together to support the diaphragm. Then, slowly blow air out of your lips like a quiet whistle, feeling your pelvis rise, back expand and glutes tighten. This is great for developing breath control for beginners, and illustrates the term “sitting on your breath.”

• Take a breath and hold it for a count of ten. Blow it out slowly, for a count of ten. This helps you control the amount of breath you let out over a specified amount of time.

• Don't drink alcohol in an attempt to relax yourself for your performance. This does not help; it dehydrates you and makes you sluggish. I assure you that you will not be focused properly if you have had a few drinks before you sing. Sure you may feel more relaxed, but you will be sacrificing other important things that you need to focus on. 

• This is to be done while onstage, if you can, try and start your night with a duet. Your ability to do this will depend on what type of performance you are doing. If you are in a competition for example, this probably won't be an option. However, if it’s just a karaoke night or a band performance, you can probably begin this way. Having the added voice on stage with you will help to ease the nerves because you won’t be going at it alone, and not all of the audience attention will be on you.

• And one last thing to mention that's extremely important is to not take yourself too seriously. Do not be afraid to laugh at yourself if you screw up. It’s not the end of the world, and by having this ability to take it lightly; you'll be a better performer because of it. We all mess up onstage. We all go flat and sharp. We all forget the words. It’s not the end of the world, or your career as a singer. Lighten up!

Having good stage presence stems from being confident on stage. It starts with getting rid of your stage fright, and getting yourself comfortable to the point where you enjoy performing. After you've mastered that, you can move on to completing your performance by adding some stage presence. Having good stage presence means that a singer incorporates some form of movement coupled with singing that suits the song and is appropriate for the audience.

I was once on a panel of judges for a singing competition, and one of the things the performers were being judged on was their stage presence. Or lack there of. The people that scored the highest overall were the people that danced a little while they sang and made motions and gestures to go along with the lyrics they were singing, instead of standing still like a stick with a microphone. 

For example, there was this one guy who was singing a phrase that included the words: “I would get down on my knees for you”, and while he sang that, he got down on his knees right in front of us, and placed his free hand over his chest while singing. It was great! He showed feeling and emotion in his singing through the use of body language. 

That is an example of great stage presence. You don’t want to over do it by dancing around too much and compromising your voice, but you definitely want to do a little acting. The idea is to get your audience to feel what the song intends the audience to feel. You do this by getting the feeling of the music yourself, and portraying it with your own body language and voice to them.

For example, if you are singing a sad, sappy love song, you're probably not going to be jumping around and giving your best air-guitar performance.

That, would be an example of bad stage presence. 

Just keep in mind what the song is trying to make the listener feel, and act it out

Some tips?

• Practice some signature dance moves that you can easily do on stage. Nothing too crazy, again, you don't want to compromise your voice.

• Have fun when you're singing! The best people to watch are the ones that are noticeably having fun. (Even if they don't sound so great, they're still the best ones to watch!)

• Practice your songs before you sing them on stage, and look for places to add some physical personality to them!

Make sure that you're not inappropriate. If there are young children around for example, don’t sing something inappropriate that might bother them. Be considerate of the audience that you are performing for, and tailor your stage presence and overall performance to that.

Inappropriate stage presence can be offensive to audiences, and is distracting from the vocal performance itself. It can leave people with a bad taste in their mouths over you.

Just to illustrate further, you wouldn’t perform a heavy metal song with a lot of head banging for a group of senior citizens, would you? And you wouldn’t perform a sad, depressing love song and act like you're heartbroken and lonely at a family wedding, would you?

I'm sure you get the point. Keep in mind exactly who it is that you're performing for. Make sure you're well prepared, and by doing that you'll see that the confidence will be there, and you'll enjoy yourself as a result!

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