Dealing With Nerves
We all get nervous, whether it’s about a performance, an audition, a big meeting, or just trying new material for the first time. Nerves are completely normal, but you don’t want them to overwhelm you or affect your performance. So what can you do about them? Here’s a few tips to help keep them under control!
Preparation is Key
Make sure you’re as prepared as you can be. This seems really simple, but we’ve all been in situations where we’ve had to learn the material in a short period of time and then don’t feel super confident about it as a result. Make sure your rep folder is up to date and each piece in there is well rehearsed. Don’t have anything in there you wouldn’t be happy to sing RIGHT NOW. ‘Winging it’ is a great way to feed those nerves, so do all your homework before you’re in that high stakes situation!
Work out all your acting choices, the journey of the piece, who your character is, and be prepared to be asked about them, but also try different options so you don’t get stuck in one way of doing things. You want to be free to respond in the moment.
Find a great singing teacher who can help you work out any tricky passages and make sure you can deliver the song safely and consistently, no matter how your voice is feeling on any given day. They can also give valuable feedback to help refine your choices and how you work with the music. It can also be a good idea to find a group class where you can present rep and get feedback. The more times you do something for an audience, the less nervous you get!
On the day, make sure you do a proper warm up, without tiring yourself out before you even get to the performance! Do a physical warmup with some stretching, and some gentle vocal exercises, maybe sing through your songs, but save your energy for when you really need it!
Choose Your Material Wisely
When you get to choose what you’re performing, say in a first round audition, be smart with your choices! Be honest with yourself about your casting type and your abilities. There’s no point bringing something with a risky Top C if you can only hit it even 75% of the time. Why take the risk? Something that fits your casting, but is within your range and abilities NOW is the best option. You don’t want to be worrying about whether you can hit that note or nail that riff when you need to be in the moment!
This isn’t to say you can’t challenge yourself, but work up to those more difficult pieces. This is where we go back to preparation - keep learning and practicing until those pieces are consistent and reliable.
Aaaannd Breathe!
There are going to be situations that you can’t prepare for, and sometimes despite all the preparation in the world, the nerves creep in, and that’s ok. There are things you can do just before you head out onstage or into the audition room to calm your nerves.
There’s some great research being done on something called the Vagus Nerve, which you can stimulate by some nice deep breathing - exactly the kind we do when we sing! To get all sciency, this gets the Parasympathetic Nervous System to kick in and calm the ‘Fight or Flight’ response which is what nerves really are. Here’s a great article explaining this in more depth.
Now, hopefully you’ve already been taught good breathing technique, but if not, your singing teacher should be able to help you. Ideally, you want good, released breathing to be your default, so you can just drop into it whenever you want. Let the breath drop low into your belly rather than your chest, and have a couple of minutes of deep, relaxed breathing.
I hope these tips have been helpful, and please comment with anything else you like to do to combat nerves!