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Really really nervous to play a show...

M

Murmaider

Guest
Oct 20, 2013
55
5
#1
So I came up with this pretty sick riff, went to my guitarist, and we started to put this song together. It's turning out really awesome, but it's fast paced. That's not too much of a problem in itself, it's not too technical, but I have a bass solo. It's 4 measures long. It isn't too difficult in itself, I just have to stay on rhythm. The only thing that makes that sort of difficult is how fast and pseudo-legato-like it is. It was NOT my idea to have it be this long, I wanted it to be one measure long and it would be over with before people even realized there was a bass solo there xD.

But yeah, I'm seriously nervous. This is my FIRST band, the FIRST song I sort of came up with, and now all this attention is going to be set on me in this bass solo, on my FIRST show. I feel like I'll bee too nervous and **** up, then EVERYBODY would know and I'd feel like ****!

Normally if I mess up not many people could probably tell since I'm the low end, you know? But if I mess up here, everybody is paying attention and everyone will know... Help!!
 
#3
Just practice practice practice. Get it to where you dont have to consciously think about it. And, even if you do mess up, its not the end of the world. My first gig was a disaster but it didnt affect me or my band in any way. Just on to the next gig.
 
#9
jgroh said:
Just practice practice practice. Get it to where you dont have to consciously think about it. And, even if you do mess up, its not the end of the world. My first gig was a disaster but it didnt affect me or my band in any way. Just on to the next gig.
Click to expand...

Several years ago, I used to be the lead guitar player for a church. Often, I would find out on Thursday that I had to play a Lincoln Brewster guitar solo for that Sunday (look him up, if you've never heard him). In the early ninety's that wouldn't have been too difficult for me....but I had not played electric guitar for years, when I landed that church gig, so I was pretty rusty with the shredding technique.

Here are some tricks that I learned that made things a lot easier...
1) Work out the difficult parts slowly and perfectly with a metronome. I used to break the solos down into little phrases, then put them together.
2) Once you can play the parts cleanly at tempo several times in a row, slowly speed up the metronome so that you are practicing faster than you'll need to play it. Then, play a few times at the faster tempo, alternating with a few times at a slightly slower than normal tempo.
3) Work on the transitions leading into and out of the difficult parts--that's often where the mistakes happen.
4) Don't practice for a long time at once, but try to practice as often as possible throughout the day. I tried to practice for about 15 minutes at a time, but tried to do it every 2-3 hours, on my days off. On days that I worked, I got up 15 minutes early before work to practice, and just did what I could in the evening.
 
#11
Most of the time when you mess up, you and your bandmates are the only ones who really notice. If you do mess up, try your hardest to let it not show in your facial expressions or the rest of your playing.

Just practice practice practice, man! Practice it at the normal tempo, practice it twice as fast, practice it twice as slow, hum it while you're driving around or eating dinner. Get the licks inside of you as much as possible, and when it comes time to play it, it'll just come out of you. At least that's what I've found to be true in my experience.
 

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