Why do I stuck live?

[kyral210]

At home, practicing, I nail every song.
At rehearsal, I’m OK
live, I make more mistakes than I can count
Then I go to practice the songs at home and everything is perfect again
Why is this and how can I overcome my curse?

 

[namboy]

How many times have you played live?

When I started playing live I was so nervous and overthinking everything I made mistakes pretty much every 4 bars. But once I relaxed and got used to people staring at me on stage the mistakes become less.

But here's a trick with mistakes, if you don't acknowledge them they didn't happen

 

[Geepers]

You haven’t yet got the parts on auto pilot. Read Kenny Werner’s “Effortless Mastery” and it will all become clear.

 

[pfschim]

more live playing will get you there, and as @namboy said, try to relax a bit and just enjoy live playing.

good luck!

 

[KohanMike]

I've gotten to the point of being able to cover up my mistakes better than I can prevent them.

 

[Wasnex]

At home, practicing, I nail every song.
At rehearsal, I’m OK
live, I make more mistakes than I can count
Then I go to practice the songs at home and everything is perfect again
Why is this and how can I overcome my curse?

If you play live enough times, hopefully you will eventually loose the yips.

My guess is you are psyching yourself out and creating a feedback loop in the process. Basically you start the gig freaked out a little because you are worried you will make a mistake. Worrying about makes you more likely to mess up. Then when you mess up, you freak out even more. Rinse and repeat.

Stop worrying about mistakes. Everybody makes them. The trick is to learn to cover them up...and of course to make a few as possible. No one is perfect.

Not necessarily recommending it, but a lot of pro musicians get a prescription for a beta blocker. I actually take a beta blocker for migraines, and don't see the point. But performing rarely makes me anxious, unless I am doing something new for the first time. For example like singing.

 

[xiaoma]

There are just so many emotions and stimuli going on when you play live, it's much different than playing in your bedroom or even rehearsing with the band. Also experienced live musicians do mistakes. I think you need to learn how to prioritize focus on your performance and not letting your mind wonder too much. Just my two cents!

 

[Nebadon2000]

For myself early on I made more mistakes than than I was comfortable with also after making one mistake worrying about that caused another

When learning song now I don't stop practicing until I can play it 7 to 10 times continuously without mistake

Still at times I would get mentally lazy or distracted

I learned to let a mistake go and focus on the now

 

[PennyroyalWe]

If you can, try attending some open jams and/or open mics. They’re great low stakes environments where making mistakes is expected, you can get more live playing experience without it being at real gigs.

 

[JamesGrant]

I find the posture of practice vs live makes a big difference - if you perform live standing up, then rehearse standing up.
I have found, for me, practice and learn how ever you like, but the rehearsal - baking the part into your body - do that as you would live. That’s worked for me!

 

[el murdoque]

Why are you making those mistakes? Are you able to identify the reason?

Are your fingers sluggish, or is your focus gone?

 

[flatwound62p]

For myself early on I made more mistakes than than I was comfortable with also after making one mistake worrying about that caused another

When learning song now I don't stop practicing until I can play it 7 to 10 times continuously without mistake

Still at times I would get mentally lazy or distracted

I learned to let a mistake go and focus on the now

That's exactly it, for me at least. I've been playing live for a few decades and I don't think I've ever nailed a full set without a goober or seven. Almost always nobody notices except me. And I've listened back to gig recordings and not heard goobers that I know occurred.
I choose to acknowledge that I will always drop the ball here and there and that's no big deal in any form of rock-ish music. Much easier to enjoy the gig with that out of the way.

 

[gtirard]

There are just so many emotions and stimuli going on when you play live, it's much different than playing in your bedroom or even rehearsing with the band. Also experienced live musicians do mistakes. I think you need to learn how to prioritize focus on your performance and not letting your mind wonder too much. Just my two cents!

Exactly. As other said, this will slowly dissapear as you play more and more gigs, it takes time.

FWIW I also play and sing in a vocal band, and during our rehearsals our coach challenges our concentration and focus with exercices where she adds additional constraints, like making strange and stupid movements while singing or she gives us various instructions to follow during the song, like changing the volume and/or intensity, or sing with the mouth close, etc. The purpose is to get used to being disturbed and stay focus while dealing with multiple constraints, stimuli, external events.

You could apply the same principle for your home practice: you could play while reading, or watching TV, or practice in an unconfortable position, count or recite a text while playing, etc. Put yourself out of your confort zone when you practice. It can be playful. You can also add musical constraints like playing over tempo or stupidly slow, playing a song without using a string you normally use (to prepare yourself in case you break a string during a gig), or without using one finger…

Or you can take it easy and simply accept the fact that nobody is at 100% of their capacity when playing live.

 

[MegaSwing]

Breath control exercises before the performance and during breaks helped me a lot at one time. Develop a preparation regimen for yourself. Tension—both mental and physical—and anxiety will hamstring your creative process and must be managed somehow. You want your creative energy to flow out and not get caught up in non-musical static. Getting the parts down and then performing them live require entirely different things from you.

For years, I’d walk on stage in abject terror. One night, during a show, I looked out over the crowd and thought to myself, ‘Listen, fool. No one out there is coming up here to take this gig away. Just relax and feel the music.’

Isn’t that why we play music in the first place?

 

[PBassAcidJazz]

Join an experimental noise band where mistakes are the same as non-mistakes.

 

[oldcatfish]

As others have said…it’s anxiety, adrenaline, or distraction. Playing live more helps some, but you also learn to recover from mistakes faster—so the ones that you do make are less noticeable.

 

[manbass]

Dude, I hear and see Pros on Bass making full on clams all the time, even in relatively repetitive and simple Rock tunes. I just found one audibly incorrect note/phrase by Bill Wyman while practicing for a Stones Tribute on the Album Exile on Main St. That studio album is full of hits and its what... like quad platinum. I get it though, we want to nail every note. The first hurdle is to NOT STOP playing after the clam, getting back on track will dilude any flub.

My exercises in this order (beyond "ok I have all the notes right") is playing with feel.

1 - I ask myself can I execute a particular phrase with intentional dynamics and varying the note length properly to amplify the groove/pocket?

2 - Can I dance and move a bit with my own rhythm while playing with feel? (does not apply to Jazz Standards!)

3 - Can I play the phrase or whole song without ever looking at my fretboard? (I'm always on this step)

I have a future 4th goal....sing and play or talk and play at the same time.

 

[AgingEngineer]

I'll put it like this as an odd analogy: playing a song is like a kiss. You can get it ~exactly~ right with one partner, but it'll never be exactly like that with another partner.

I'm a studio rat, so I spent much more of my early years playing in front of a multitrack with headphones on than I did in live shows. I had a similar issue when doing live performances. I can nail the song in a controlled environment every single time, but live... No so much.

So much of live performance is learning the dynamics of your teammates in the band. Knowing the song itself is only about 1/3 of what you need to be able to do it live effortlessly. Yes, if you were playing with PERFECT musicians who played the song EXACTLY like you learned it and your monitoring mix sounded EXACTLY like your controlled learning environment, you'd kill it.

But, those bands mates do not play it the same. What you hear onstage live is not the same as listening to that produced track.

You need to learn how your drummer plays and reacts to the song. Does he get amped up and rush in or lay back in certain parts? How do the other musicians put their own interpretation on the performance? Is your singer the dynamic type who likes to extend the song or repeat sections if the crowd is hot?

Live performance (unless you are in a band that's locked into a click track and cannot deviate from the original performance in any way) generally adds chaos to the mix. It took a solid year of paling with the same band of mates for us to go from "hey, they're pretty good" to "whoa.... have you HEARD these guys???!!!"

Same songs, same lineup. We just had a year of learning each other. I knew how the drummer would react when he's having a good and bad night. I knew how the guitarist leaned in sometimes to do his own thing within the framework of the song. If we screwed up, or the singer lept offstage and missed a section, we all intuitively knew how we'd circle back or skip over via non-verbal clues.

The only way to get that remaining 2/3 is just learning they unique live chaos that your own band brings to the show. At some point, it'll just flow.

 

[Tj smith]

It could be nerves. I get nervous sometimes and my anxiety kicks in.

 

[hrodbert696]

Our drummer, who is a long-time nightlife guy (more than me), made an observation a while back; the bands that get the most and best gigs aren't the ones that are the most musically proficient. They're the ones that are the most fun. Which isn't a reason to give up and not improve, but more encouragement to cut yourself some slack. The critical thing in a live gig is the time the audience is having, and you may be doing better at delivering a good time than a note-perfect performance.

My general rule is to push in rehearsal to be as perfect as possible, then anticipate that you'll lose 10% of it live. The sound environment is different, there's more nerves, and (especially in bar gigs) lots more distractions. Is that person coming over to talk to me? - Oh, no, he's just going to the bathroom. What's the person yelling about over there? Is that noise coming from MY gear? Does the guitarist remember how we said we'd transition into this one? Wow, that woman has a nice figure. Oops, I shouldn't stare. Is that guy her boyfriend? Is that the Bruins on the TV? Oh no, I can't see my fretboard dots in this bright light! Hey, everyone's getting up and dancing, this is awesome! Wait, why did they stop, I thought this would be a sure-fire dance tune. Etc. etc. etc.

As far as I have found, the best solution to all this is just to gig as much as possible. In a sense, playing in a distracting environment trains you to play with distractions, that you don't have at home. I'll also mention, in general, stage shows throw a lot less of these distractions at you than bar gigs. The sound is more controlled and you're more buffered from everything else going on (or there's less "everything else" in the first place, really).