Stage Fright

Stage fright is one thing that have dealt with drummers and still dealing with drummers.

Base on my past experience I have come to understand something about stage fright. Stage fright diminishes your playing, makes you look disorganized, jumbled,confused, muddled and chaotic on stage which is not a good thing anyone will pray to experience.

The first time I ever played on a real drum set and in a church event where so many people were gathered was the first time ever I experience real stage fright.

What happened? I was always telling everyone that I can play the drums at home in the church that they should at least allow me play the drums, but none of them where paying listening hears to what I was saying not until one day during a vigil, the drummer that was supposed to come play for the program was not around and there was no available person to play the drums so I was called upon to play the drums because I was around in the vigil.

At first it felt like a dream, but it wasn’t.

During that period I play drums only on table and not on drum set, I thought it will be the same but the moment I sat down on the drums it dawn on me that it is not the same as the table drums I have been playing.

I discovered I couldn’t play the drum set as I thought. I started sweating profusely with shaky hands and legs, but I did play the drums that day but people were not impressed with what I played.

From this my experience I was able to get the root cause of stage fright. Stage fright most times comes as a result of we not sure of our playing, we don’t trust our playing, we are always having the fear of making mistake while playing.

The fear of not wanting to make a mistake while playing is when you will actually make those mistake, the first thing you need to do to kill off stage fright in you is removing the fear of making mistake while playing, you just need to
accept that mistake is inevitable you just have to learn how to manage it.

Having confidence in your playing is another way of getting rid of stage fright and how can you learn to have confidence in your playing? The only way to achieve that is by making sure you have really practiced and rehearsed to the extent that your playing is void of error, that way
you will have more confident in what you play.

There is no long story here, you know the root cause of stage fright now, tackle them and get rid of stage fright, nobody can help you, you alone can help yourself, and it is your cross to carry.

Image source 1: Mk sticks