I seem unable to play a song without making a glaring mistake.

[Bermuda Ron]

Performing Arts Rule #1: NEVER TELEGRAPH YOUR MISTAKES. That little wince, head shake, or shoulder drop will give it away every time and amplify it to the audience (and your band mates). In general just play on, but if it is a really glaring mistake, a wink, a smile, and a light hearted shrug goes a long way towards buying some natural good will from your audience. After all, its about their entertainment and not your ego.

 

[gregbackstrom]

Another thing about practice. Practice does NOT make "perfect." Practice makes permanent.

In other words, how and what you practice is important. If you're varying how you play a phrase when you practice it, you won't achieve the muscle memory that make playing the phrase automatic.

 

[groove pump]

Removing visual input increases the acuity of the other senses. Also less distracting. I play with my eyes closed a lot too.

Good idea, but if I closed my eyes too much at my gigs, I'd probably bust a tooth on my mic or something. And I've been trending into significantly lighter instruments just so that I can move around more easily... when I want to move around.

Distractions? My capacity for playing and singing "well" is inversely proportional to the number of honey-bunnies in attendance at a show. Sad but true and I'm probably not the only one...

If I'm a little sleep deprived or generally worn out when playing a show, I have a SERIOUS problem with that multi-tasking that includes playing confidently enough to drive the bus, singing backups, and also looking at my bandmates and folks in the "crowd". When it's bad, I pretty much need to be boring - stand still and radar lock on my fretting hand so that I don't drag the song off to crazy town. Even if I'm a little rusty, I can play and sing a whole lot better when I'm rested and frosty.

 

[tommyeadg]

I had (and sometimes still have) this.

It peaked during my music college days. I literally practised and studied my ass off, learned tunes by heart etc.
but whenever there was an important gig or exam i would black out or mess up. All kinds of mistakes. Wrong notes, structure mess ups, timing flubs.. It drove me (and my teachers and bandmates) crazy.

For me it was all about lack of confidence and being intimidated by top cat other players in the scene or in the audience. I took every minor mistake as a personal failure. And whenever i'd flub once, i would get so mad at myself while still playing i was sure to mess up the rest of the tune gig as well since it totally threw me off balance.

Looking back, i was taking myself too damn seriously. Realising the gig was NEVER about me in the first place helped. And from the moment i accepted i would probably make a mistake or two, they slowly stopped happening all together. It's a mindset thing. Reading 'The Inner Game Of Music' by Barry Green and W. Timothy Gallwey was a huge eye opener in this for me.
Listening back to recordings of where i felt i TOTALLY messed up also helped a great deal. Most of the time i couldn't even distinct the 'mistake' anymore. In my experience we always put way too much weight to our little mistakes while playing. They are rarely as bad as we think when we hear it on playback.
Another thing which helped me in this process is talking with fellow musicians after listening to THEIR gigs. It happened more than once he or she would be genuinely disappointed in themselves after the gig, thinking he or she totally blew it while my jaws were still on the floor from their performance.

I'm a professional bass player. And even although this 'condition' still seems to hunt me from time to time it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. My advice would be keep on keeping on.

 

[AdamR]

Welcome to the club !

 

[BlueTalon]

Just about every dang time I play a song, I screw something up in a jarring way. Forgetting or mixing up lyrics, going for the wrong chord, one or both of my hands blanking on which string they're trying to play for just a second.

It happens to all of us, but not every song. One thing I'll ask -- are you objectively distinguishing between minor mistakes and "jarring" mistakes? You're always going to be more aware of your mistakes than anyone else and so they're all going to feel bigger than perhaps they actually are.

 

[lordradish]

Any song. Any difficulty. No matter how familiar I am with it and how many times I"m done that part correctly before. Bass or guitar or voice. Just about every dang time I play a song, I screw something up in a jarring way. Forgetting or mixing up lyrics, going for the wrong chord, one or both of my hands blanking on which string they're trying to play for just a second. Then I recover and play the rest of the song just as well as I was playing before.

Rarely the same mistake more than once, which tells me I'm not having this hiccups ingrained. It happens however I'm performing on whatever instrument, singing or not. It happens when I'm playing a song I can barely keep up with the same as when I'm strumming through a 3-chord "King of the Road" for the thousandth time, so it's not a "practice moar, duh" thing. I just can't often seem to get through a freakin' song beginning to end without a big screw-up.

I don't know if this is some deep-buried self-sabotage thing, or just plain being a mediocre musician, or what, but.... anybody experience this? and ideally overcome it?

I remember feeling this way, until I didn't. Just takes time, don't overthink it. Eventually, you won't even think it's a big deal when you don't make a mistake. How long you been playing?

 

[BlueTalon]

And whenever i'd flub once, i would get so mad at myself while still playing i was sure to mess up the rest of the tune gig as well since it totally threw me off balance.

Looking back, i was taking myself too damn seriously. Realising the gig was NEVER about me in the first place helped. And from the moment i accepted i would probably make a mistake or two, they slowly stopped happening all together. It's a mindset thing.

This is key. I used to teach shooting in the Marine Corps, and a surprising number of people had problems with unsteady hands, which presents an obvious problem when shooting. Some if it was stress, some of it was nerve issues. People like that may never be pinpoint accurate in their shooting, but they can become competent if they can learn to accept their "wobble area." Getting those people to understand that and accept it was probably the greatest challenge I faced in that role.

 

[Evets1987]

When your practicing at home. Fix the mistakes when they happen. In performance you gotta play through the mistake. When you hit a wrong note your only a half step away from a right note. It happens to everyone. The key is how you react and in my experience the mistakes are more noticeable on bass. When the bass plays a wrong note people literally jump.

 

[TrevorG]

When I do that it's because my mind wanders. Though ,oddly, seldom in front of an audience but my focus then is not so much what I'm doing as WHO I'm performing to. I'm selling a song to the audience and I need every note to do that. Secondly try and make your mistakes work i.e. make it part of the performance. Resolve a wrong note or improvise your vocal mistakes into something funny. Perhaps easier if you're fronting than stuck on the back line but you're part of a team with the same objective - entertaining your audience. If it's nerves, then that's something else. Maybe a little meditation. Go through the songs properly in your head before you go on stage. I know people who have used beta blockers and had success.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

Any song. Any difficulty. No matter how familiar I am with it and how many times I"m done that part correctly before. Bass or guitar or voice. Just about every dang time I play a song, I screw something up in a jarring way. Forgetting or mixing up lyrics, going for the wrong chord, one or both of my hands blanking on which string they're trying to play for just a second. Then I recover and play the rest of the song just as well as I was playing before.

Rarely the same mistake more than once, which tells me I'm not having this hiccups ingrained. It happens however I'm performing on whatever instrument, singing or not. It happens when I'm playing a song I can barely keep up with the same as when I'm strumming through a 3-chord "King of the Road" for the thousandth time, so it's not a "practice moar, duh" thing. I just can't often seem to get through a freakin' song beginning to end without a big screw-up.

I don't know if this is some deep-buried self-sabotage thing, or just plain being a mediocre musician, or what, but.... anybody experience this? and ideally overcome it?

Stop playing with that drummer!

Fire the drummer!

 

[monkeyfinger]

For me, practice has a lot to do with being able to recover from a mistake faster.

 

[Kipp Harrington]

I practice incessantly and have those brain farts.. but just occasionally. As mentioned earlier, it could be an ADHD thing. Hope it "goes away" soon.

 

[2F/2F]

Well...you ain't gonna fix that problem here.

 

[sindicado]

Welcome to my club. I'm famous among my bandmates.

 

[Rib 13]

Everybody makes mistakes: the art is in how well you can hide them

 

[pappabass]

I tell my guitar player I will miss a note. It is ok. Enjoy playing!

 

[Tim Skaggs]

I went through a period of doing the same thing. For me it was focus. I had to stop thinking about anything other than the song and my part. It took a while to get this perfected. It mainly took a while to realize what I was doing, which was thinking about things other than the song.

 

[SB300]

It's all about recovery. I just played 3 Christmas Eve services, and 1 last night. I have been shaking my head at myself for the last 16 years. But I find myself being my best coach and just say, well that's history, I'm going to kill the next one. Usually works.

I have watched others exit the platform and do things like knock a banjo over and break the neck off, someone kicked my acoustic 12 string over landing face down causing a thunderous std E-tune chord, guitarist walks off stage with his wired in-ear buds still attached and dragged his music stand et al with him, etc. Then last night, after 16 flawless years of clean exits on the last most gentle song, Silent Night; we begin to exit as the pastor walks up to send us all off. Then my foot gets trapped in my bass guitar cable as I'm exiting. I feel it tug. I looked back. Here comes my new, ding-free bass down face first. Like a domino it hits my music stand knocking it off a platform step to the lower level spewing my ipad, music binder, picks, pencil, etc. all over the place. The pastor stops and looks at me. I proceed to nonchalantly stand my bass back up leaving the music stand on the floor and everything else scattered. As i leave I told myself "well that was one of the most embarrassing incidents in my life". So I made up for it tonight with a strong performance, except.....

 

[devnulljp]

When you make a mistake, glare at the drummer. Always.