It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Similar to you, playing 20 years at home, competent player and can play in front of my wife and kids without a care. But if anyone else is there, the nerves set in, brain turns to mush, can't remember any of the songs I know, and my fingers just don't work properly. A few years back my nephew was learning guitar, he sat next to me while I stumbled badly through a song I was trying to show him (Under the bridge IIRC), I was probably sweating. A few more relatives came into the room and that was it, I shutdown and I couldn't play. It's ridiculous isn't it?
It's almost as if, note by note I am beating myself up about not playing that note or change as well as I normally would do, which then makes subsequent playing worse, the snowball effect.
Seems to be piled on pressure, when my relatives come around I'm thinking 'will they ask me to play something' while remembering how bad I looked last time.
Like you, when I was about 20 I played with others a couple of times and I was ok then, so what changes?
I don't like being in the spotlight I guess, terrible at public speaking and get dry mouthed in job interviews (although I think if I was doing interviews all the time I would get used to it) . If someone else was singing and the attention was on them I might not be so bad.
You say you have played in bands though and it didn't get any easier though. Maybe it would help if you could play with other people who have the same problem, everyone plays bad, laughs about it, and it's something to slowly build on?
Actually, I don’t know how much this is down to performance anxiety, instead a result of how our brains are wired. I began a thread last year about the challenge of speaking (especially in a foreign language) when playing. I finally got in contact with a brain specialist last week about this issue and of course he wants to give my brain a scan to see what happens as I play.
Im busy with translations and the Coronavirus here in Italy so I have yet had time to process his reply.
I would expect your phenomenon is linked to the different parts of our brain in use and the inability to swap from one to the other quickly or in your case using another part of your brain instead of the musical part.
I will I’ll keep an eye on your thread and share this phenomenon too.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
It'll get better.
Now this is an interesting one because about 18 months ago I started on a mission to improve my ability to think and play. I had spent a lifetime playing by ear, visualising patterns but never actually thinking as I was playing which was something I considered limiting This was certainly an area for me where I considered that I simply didn't have the 'brain wiring' to be able to do it.
I was awoken to this when I had a lesson from a fantastic teacher and what I saw blew me away. The guy could literally play any scale from knowledge of the notes of the scale in real time. He was doing stuff like playing ascending scales horizontally descending down the neck and incorporating open strings into scales; discussing it with him it became apparent that he was pretty much always aware of what he was doing even when he was doing it at a subconscious level (like driving a car). I mean aware at a note/function level over the underlying harmony. I know that sounds counter-intuitive but I now understand that you can do things subconsciously but still be completely aware at the subconscious level.
When I started I was absolutely hopeless. I mean f'king hopeless; I literally couldn't shout out the names of notes through a cycle of 4ths when trying to play them at the same time. A pattern so ingrained in my mind that I found it unfathomable that I couldn't 'know' it as I played. I simply couldn't seem to hold something in my mind whilst at the same time undertaking the physical action of playing. I presume that's what you're alluding to above?
I worked through a program that focused on initially knowing the notes of the fretboard. Now I really mean knowing the notes; shouting them out as I played. I worked on this to the point where I know them cold, without thinking about them. If you asked me to name the note on a fretboard I would be able to convey it as easily as you asking me to pick a red card when holding up a red and blue. It took a massive amount of effort to do this but what's interesting about this to me is that I now know them sort of subconsciously.. Doing this forced me to have to think and, over time, it just got easier and easier and I've now got to the point where thinking and playing just feels normal. Even when I'm playing on auto-pilot and letting it flow I still have an awareness.
I say this because it's defo an area for me that I thought I simply wasn't equipped mentally to do and yet I've proved that's not the case (in my case).
Good luck the CV-19 work and be careful out there.
Si
Last week I embraced my inner rock god and other than a few foul ups early on I don't think i muffed a single solo, probably because i could actually hear what I was playing!
Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like it’s heaven on earth.
I have the same difficulty in any situation tbh. Doesn't matter if it's playing in front of a mate, someone who's come to buy a guitar off me or a room full of people. Don't get me wrong I'm man enough to put myself in any situation as my view has always been you've simply got to push into the unknown to grow. Done it my whole life in everything and am still here to tell the tale
As an example I took the bull by the horns and hooked up with a really nice singer a couple of years ago and did a few acoustic gigs. Just me on guitar and her singing. A nightmare situation for me as there's simply nowhere to hide. I survived but only because the stuff I played was so simple (to me) that I could pull it off. It's not that I don't enjoy performing, I do. It's just that my mental/physical state is so altered that doing what I'd like (and am able) to do seems impossible when doing it in front of anybody. Shame it ended but she couldn't continue due to life challenges..
Si
Play three notes on an electric, I can hear my heart...
We all lose a percentage of our skills to pressure so can only perform well what's easy for us in practice.
The saying is, "practise until you can't do it wrong!"
If you mean a piece of music let's take 'Message In A Bottle' for example. Effortless when I'm on my own; 100% guaranteed to fuck up if I tried to play it to you..
Si