You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Dealing With Nerves - #92

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter talk about some strategies to deal with nerves. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Manus, and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Today we're going to give you some tips on dealing with nerves. All right, cool. I'm going to shoot off, man. I have perfect nerves of steel, so I don't even need to be here, never been nervous a day in my life. That's great, because I'm extremely nervous just about doing this episode.

Yeah, well, that's not true. I'm nervous quite often. I think that's the place that we should start, though. actually, you know, great performers, great jazz musicians, great artists. I've heard, you know, tell stories about being nervous, right? We were just talking about Herbie Hancock and his autobiography and how he said he was quite nervous early on, even up to the point of playing with Miles. So know that you are not unique and that you're in good company and being nervous.

Absolutely. I mean, Robin Williams said he used to vomit before every performance. You know, this is one of the greatest performers ever anything. Yeah. And if he gets nervous, you know, you have every right to be nervous. Right, right. In any situation. You know, for me, the biggest thing, I mean, there's many different techniques and situations we can talk about, but I would love to just start with the concept of preparation.

And I think for me, over the years, that has worked the best. It's not to say that I've always been as prepared as I wanted for a performance or for a recording or for a podcast episode. But, you know, once you get into the situation, it is what it is, you are where you are, so you can't prepare anymore. So any time that you spend preparing for that particular situation, the better you're going to be, I think, at being able to manage those nerves. Because the nervous energy, we actually want and need that, I think, especially for performance and for recordings, any kind of live situation. Because that little edge can give you that spark of creativity.

It can give you that spark of spontaneity that's very exciting to the audience and to the listener. So we want to have that, but we don't want it to be based on kind of a hollow thing where the nerves overtake us and make us ineffective in what we're doing. That's right. You know, if I have anything on the calendar that I think I might be dealing with nerves for, I will definitely practice, like I'll up my practice routines leading up to that. I'll try to work on the material, not just from that to be prepared. I do want to be prepared for that, but just to feel more confident.

I mean, I think that's the key is once you get up there, you want to be confident that, oh, I have this. This is, I could do this with my eyes closed. I'm ready for this. So I would really, you know, if you have a big gig or you have a recording session or something come up, make sure that you are as prepared as possible, up your practice time, you know, get yourself ready mentally to go. Yes. And, you know, by prepare, I think specifically to jazz musicians, we're talking about preparing for the situation that you're going to be in that is going to manifest, you know, many unexpected things.

So it's not about you're going to prepare a solo over tune. What we're talking about is really learning that tune, really learning the changes, knowing the form as well as you can. If you have time, it's best to learn all of the tunes to memorize them, for instance, to be able to internalize them to the point where you know the form without having to count measures or thinking about am I on the second A or what the form is like to really know it intuitively so that your creativity can come out in your improvisation. and so you don't get nervous about the basics of the music. Right. You know, that's exactly right. What's good about that is if you do start feeling nervous, but you have that stuff together,

you can just kind of sit back and groove on your solos. You can have that confidence to not feel like you have to play everything until your nerves kind of quell and you can, you can, you know, be more relaxed to play some lines or whatever. But, I mean, I don't know about you, but I do that all the time. If I'm feeling anything, I'll just be like, I'm just going to chill and, like, do my thing. And having that confidence is huge.

I just panic and go, but do but please go up to an octave. That's what I actually do. No, but I do think that there are, there's always going to be things that occur. And this is, you know, some of the most joyful part of playing jazz music and listening to it, you know, that I've experienced over the years. There's going to be things that happen that make you nervous in the moment

that you can't control. Somebody's going to play something or go to another chord that maybe, you know, maybe the bass player plays a different note that you can't quite identify. So there's plenty going to be thrown at you anyway. You better be prepared on that part that you can control or at least no. Chris Potter walks into the room. You can't control anything. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, really, I mean, talking about nervous. Yeah, different people being on gigs or being ad gigs has made me very, very nervous over the years. Me too. But if you're prepared, at least that's just one less thing you can focus on. That's right. So, you know, we got this idea to do this. We've done a similar episode, but the specific idea we got requested from a user on Facebook to talk about dealing with nerves and playing in front of people and how to focus.

And another user, the first comment was meditate and eat right. And I actually think that's a really great way to help with nerves. I don't know if you meditate at all, but I actually meditate pretty regularly. And I don't think about it as like some kind of spiritual practice. But I read once, and this really kind of unlocked this for me, that meditation is really just concentration practice. Right. You pick something to concentrate on. Some people, it's a nonsense word that they repeat over and over.

some people it's their breath, some people it's a color they're trying to envision, but you pick that thing to concentrate on, and then you put yourself in a quiet environment with your eyes closed where your brain is very likely to start going off and thinking about all these things, and you practice bringing your attention back to that thing. And it's actually that situation is a lot harder than playing the piano on a gig. Once you get on the gig, then, if you've practiced this concentration, it's easy to bring your concentration back to where it should be, your attention focused, on the music, focused on being in the moment. So it's been very, very helpful for me over the years. I recommend it if you haven't tried it and you're struggling with nerves. Also, I think, especially the older we get, diet is a huge part of this. It's just for like feeling energetic and focused. I try not to drink too much coffee on the day of a recording session or a big gig. Like not, I'll have a couple cups maybe, but not like my usual 17 cups that I might as I'm podcasting.

17 down to two. That's probably a good idea. Yeah, you know, maybe one or two drinks of alcohol if I'm, if I'm feeling that way on a late-night gig or whatever, but try not to get too hammered. That helps with nerves for sure. Wait till after the gig. Wait till after the gig. Once you've blown it. Right. That'll be our next episode. How to sulk in a horrible performance when nerves overtook you. No, but I really do think that you can do these physical things. You can practice concentration. You can keep your body. you know in tune with itself and that helps when you get into a kind of a fight or flight mode

yeah you're more prepared well I really like the you know the meditation concept that you brought up and I've been doing some of that myself I kind of go in and out of doing it and what I notice how effective it is when I'm in a good meditation practice is that when you get into the inevitable situations where you could become nervous it it enables you to have the techniques and be able to concentrate on one specific thing. So that, you know, if, if Herbie Hancock walks in the room, you know, because you've practiced that, no, I'm focusing on the sound of the piano, the sound on the base of one thing and letting your creativity come from that, then you don't get distracted by other things. So it almost becomes, you know, nervousness by distraction. You can

remove that element. There will be other elements there still. But at least that one, it'll empower you to be able to do what you can to remove that. And I mean, for me, this goes beyond even blocking out Herbie Hancock when I have to, but our attention, where we've put, focus our attention, our ability to control our attention. I think is one of the most important parts of being a musician, being a person, really, of being able to focus your attention on the right spots, identify where your attention should be, identify when your attention is drifting somewhere else, like it kind of is right now for me, just looking down the room. No, but and then being able to pull that back and understand

that, I think it's huge. Yeah, and I would say, you know, one thing. I found with meditation and applying it specifically to concentrating on gigs is do it. You know, I used to only do it first thing in the morning very early. And it was sort of a natural time for me to do it. And I was fairly successful for me at doing it then. But if you think about a lot of the times when we are called upon to perform, it's at the end of the day. And so I try to throw in a little bit of meditation at times that are difficult for me because that sort of, it is harder at, you know, 530 or 7.30 or something.

But that, those are the times when we do need to be able to kind of focus us into music. And yeah, ideally on a performance day, we're getting up and, you know, frolicking through herb gardens all day and, you know, with no devices naked as we, as we wander just thinking about our gig that evening. But the reality is we have life and things are happening, whatever, that can cloud our minds that we need to be able to focus and to not get nervous about thinking about other things. Yeah, and I think the last thing that we can add to this, something that I use, if I'm ever feeling nervous, along with the other things we've talked about today, is to connect with the other human beings in the room with you, connect with the people.

I like to, like, scan the audience and smile at the people and kind of try to connect with someone or some people out there. You know, keep your head up with the band. You're there with usually people you enjoy, hopefully. You know what I mean? It lets you know that you're not on your own, too. There's a humanity to this. You're in a room with people. You're not here being judged by the eternal jazz gods.

You know what I mean? The jazz police aren't over your shoulder. You're actually just in a room with a bunch of other people doing something that should be kind of pleasant. Yeah. And let's also remember what we do, I think, is very important as artists. I always, I mean, I was brought up to, not only brought up to believe that, I was brought up in a way that I saw that. I saw like this music, art changes people's life.

enhances people's lives in amazing ways. I think it's one of the most important things that humans can do for each other and to participate in as a player, as a listener. I mean, I'm, I believe that gravely. But the other side in terms of being nervous is we are not doing brain surgery. So if we screw something up, we haven't screwed up somebody's life. At worst, we just didn't enhance it in a way that we could have. And that's important. And we want to do that because that's our job. But luckily, or fortunately, there isn't a big downside. It's just kind of a missed opportunity, so we want to get back in there.

And I know for me, sometimes at the end of a performance, even if people like, man, I really enjoyed it, and I feel like, man, I really felt like I failed. I just, I wasn't able to execute the things I wanted. I got nervous. I wasn't concentrating or whatever. Sometimes, like, when people say they really enjoyed it, I mean, yeah, sometimes they're just saying it.

But it's never as dramatic. It's usually not as dramatic as we think it is, like our failures. Probably our success is. aren't as dramatic either. But if we're going into a situation when we're controlling our nerves as much as we can, channeling that nervous energy

into something positive, then nine times out of 10, 19 out of 20, maybe even 99 out of 100 at a certain point, the better we get, we're going to be making that positive impact.

And that one out of 100, nobody's going to die. That's right. And I mean, this comes back to preparation. If you're prepared, if you've been practicing, if you keep your level

of musicianship up up, even if you're nervous and it's low for you that you feel, It's high for everybody else. That's right. Good. Well, I feel even more nervous after talking about this. But hopefully we've helped some folks out there.

So this is good. Yeah, and, you know, if all else fails, you'll hear it. I heard, please leave a rating or review. Yeah, I liked what I heard. I'm going to leave five stars, but you guys can do whatever you want. Today's episode was brought you by Open Studio. Jazz Lessons from Jazz Legends. Check out our brand new All Access Pass.

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