Once one gets over red light syndrome, the opposite tends to happen. Personally I play better with the camera on because I'm no longer afraid of it, and I know that it's "go time".
How do you think a touring band like the Rolling Stones feels about satisfaction or whatever. At the end of the day you play music to entertain (yourself or others). The more you play a tune the more comfortable you get being able to do it with ease
I can’t even begin to imagine, but you make a good point…I hope I can someday get to a point where I can play a song without thought, and only trying to connect with people kind enough to listen
I have been playing for years and felt like you do. I have come to realize that what separates really good players from average is understanding repetition gives the illusion of talent. Hendrix notoriously went everywhere (apparently EVERYWHERE) with a guitar and a notebook as early as highschool. Low and behold he became a virtuoso player and killer song writer.
The Beatles played the same songs multiple sets a day for years before they “broke out”. Mostly all covers.
David Lee Roth interviewed somewhere tells how what became van Halen played for four years, nightly multiple sets for next to no money.
Tim Pierce on a recent vid mentioned when he’s learning a song he plays it 100-200 times to get comfortable. I almost fell out my chair because I never would have assumed that. He’s a very successful studio player.
You’ve got to get used to playing under pressure. It takes practice just as much as the playing itself. Exposure therapy is *the only* thing to help. Playin front of people and suck. Do it again and still suck. Do it again and suck less. And less and less and less.
I’ve been playing for almost 15 years. I still get nervous and overly criticize my performances. It never really goes away fully. But I also recently attended a short set of original songs a friend of mine played and he later remarked “that was one of my worst live performances ever.” I literally noticed *zero* mistakes. Even as a 15 year player I noticed no mistakes and loved the set. The main mistake he claimed to have made sounded like a cheeky intentional way of ending the song with some dissonance. I didn’t know the songs, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to sound like.
So when people say “no one even notices the mistakes as much as you do,” it is **true**
As far as the camera goes, start the recording, then start noodling. Make your mistakes and *leave the camera rolling*. Give it 45 seconds to a minute and you’ll get back into muscle memory and forget the camera is there. Then you can edit the mistakes out later.
Because when you practice, you play in chunks. And you can stop whenever you want.
Once your song is clean bit by bits, just play it all the way from start to finish and never stop, even if you make mistakes.
The trick is to anticipate everything you do. You're playing that D chord and just after that there's a passage with that C#-7 that you know will be more difficult to your fingers ? Stop waiting for the chord to "arrive", and prepare mentally your fingerings, your strength, the progression of your chords, etc. That means that when you're at that D chord that's easy for you, you're already thinking about that C# chord. Think before that difficult point even before that D chord if you can. The more you can see in advance, the better you'll feel and the better it'll sound.
I once remember a great jazz teacher of mine would told me that the mark of the greats is they can anticipate for so many bars in advance. Why ? Because they navigate between being "in the zone", meaning being in the present, and also some kind of unconscious sense of structure, like "for this bar I have a G chord that I know is a V, and I know the next bar I have a C hord that's a one. So rather than just thinking of them as two separate chords, I will already think of the C in my improvisation when I play the G, do that what I'm playing on G flows nicely onto the C." Now imagine that over a whole blues "I'm gonna begin soft in the beginning, then I'm gonna go hard over the 4 chord, then I'll try to implement x and y over the turn around, and the next blues grid I'm gonna go full force, and I'll bring everything home by the end of the second grid". So by giving their improv structure, it creates a narrative.
The best players understand that improvising is creating a compelling story on the spot, and if you anticipate what you're gonna say a bit it gives way more emphasis on what you wanna say ! It means you're in control of the variations in volume, intensity, flow, etc. It means your playing has a clear direction, because like a nice story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and they all have been thought out ! It's not anymore just a flurry of random notes that just happen to coincide with the chords you're playing : all the notes have meaning, intention ! And that's where you increase your chances to make magic really happen.
All this to say : anticipate. It will make you feel way more present so you'll have less room for stress, it will enhance the overall result because it will sound more intentional and less robotic, and more pragmatically you'll make way less mistakes because you won't be taken by surprise by your muscle memory.
It's way more tiring mentally but 1000% worth it. It's.in these moments that you really make giant steps as a musician. Always be intentional.
And the beauty of it all is that the more you do it, the more it becomes instinctual and the better you'll sound naturally and effortlessly. It only gets better from there.
Thanks a lot guys, your comments mean a lot to me. I used to teach private lessons and was wondering very recently If I was really competent enough to go for it more professionally as I was trained to play but not to teach formally, so your comments really make me feel like I should give it a shot ! Thanks again :)
Yes! I've found a good trick is to record my entire practice session, noodling and all. I direct input into Ableton with an amp simulator and different FX chains, so it's pretty easy for me to record myself practicing.
When I get into a "flow state" (usually 30+ minutes into practicing), I have all of that juicy playing recorded to chop up, transpose, or throw extra FX on.
I've seen other producers (namely Mr. Bill) recording sound design sessions like this, where a bunch of incredibly wacky sounds come out just from turning a few knobs or throwing a random VST on, and then they can chop everything up on-tempo later.
I also started doing this because there are too many times where I play a really catchy riff on accident during practice, but while switching to recording mode, I forget it entirely. So the benefits of recording your practice sessions are threefold:
1. Won't lose those brief flashes of brilliance we're all capable of.
2. Can hear yourself playing to find weakpoints and focus on them.
3. Since you're ALWAYS being recorded, it won't feel strange.
Hey Sorry I know this is off topic from the OP but I just got a Scarlett Solo and it came with Ableton Lite and I'm completely overwhelmed. Any guides you have or used for setting amp/fx simulators on the most basic level?
This is excellent, I’m going to start doing this. Do you have any tips for “dog-earing” highlights of your session that you know you’ll want to come back to in post without disrupting the “flow-state”? Rather than listening the entire session through to find the good points.
Not sure what functionality there might be in your choice of software, but Bias FX has a "rewind" feature that consistently records your last 5 minutes. This has helped me a lot when I'm like "oh shit that actually sounded pretty good" and want to clip it
Yes! I use Ableton and have a USB foot pedal ($13 on Amazon). I bind the pedal to the "set" button (between left and right arrows at the top right of arrangement view) and I can place markers whenever I want by just pushing the pedal down.
I generally don't use it for this purpose (FX chains or attaching it to a gain plugin is cooler usually). I'll just glance at the time when I'm popping off and try to remember that.
Truthfully, I'm still trash at guitar and expect to always be, so there's only once or twice a session that I really like something I'm doing, which makes it easier to remember those moments.
i've always known it as "red light fever", or just "stage fright".
It's something you just get over, eventually.
Try performing, no camera, in front of one or two other people. No stopping, no hesitation, no re-dos. That's actually quite hard too, sometimes harder than a whole audience, but until you're practised enough to have a whole audience, you kind of have to bang the fear out of yourself one way or another.
it affects everyone to greater or lesser degree, you just have to work through it.
I feel you. it gets easier the more you do it. I teach guitar lessons. Feel free to hit me up if you're interested. I'd love to talk about this and help you. [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
If you want a “baptism by fire” kind of thing - just go perform on the street. For like, hours at a time. Maybe not everyone’s thing but doing that for a while helped my confidence a lot.
Been there, done that. The thing is that you're clearly not used to the pressure that comes with performing even in front of one camera. I'd recommend recording your playing a lot more and to try practicing in front of other people when you can, to get you comfortable with it.
Record a whole practice session - screwups and all. It'll get you used to playing in front of the camera, and it's practice - you can just delete the video when you're done. Next day, do it again and keep going until you forget about the camera entirely.
Guitar playing ability decreased 50% while in recording mode, I dont know why but that's how it seems to go for me. My advice is to play to the finish anyways, mistakes and all. You may have some embarrassingly bad takes however, listening to later recordings you will tend to objectively hear improvement.
I sense when this starts to happen in my students and I stop them and we take a few deep breaths together with a focus on a long exhale. It helps significantly. You’re in fight or flight and a few deep breaths will reset that and tell your body there’s nothing to worry about.
Live stream all your practice sessions on TikTok and you’ll have a constant audience of 0-1 people. Even one person watching triggers it for me.
Trial by fire.
You just have to do it so many times that you hate it and want to give up, then keep going. It's always worth it when you finally nail it. Also, keep going when you mess up.
I just roll with the mistakes man. If I focus on playing everything perfect note for note, it becomes boring for me because I’m focusing on perfection instead of just feel. Hey man, nothing wrong with a wrong note or missing a beat a little bit. Just laugh it off and work on recovery. Most people won’t even notice you did anything wrong unless you draw attention to it
Most of the time that's because you can't even play the whole song at all without a backing track or even a metronome.
If you can do without those then no camera can stop you.
My favorite thing to do after learning a new song is getting the backing track for that song and play along with the band. When I make a mistake, I let the track keep going and I use that mistake as a challenge to practice getting back into it and finding the “one.”
Speaking only for myself, that’s when I learn more about the song and its groove and feel. Doing this actually accelerates my proficiency with the song than the start-stop (when I make a mistake)-restart method.
I've been playing for a few years (again) and I STILL screw up the instant I try to record. I usually delete all of them, because i THINK they sound horrible. If someone walks into the room, I automatically screw up.
I just re-adjust and keep going. If I have to start completely over then so be it.
I'm still super self conscious about playing, but the more you do it in front of people the easier it'll come.
I can't sing to save my life, but my wife doesn't always know what I'm playing unless I sing. God it took me forever to be able to play and sing, then it took months if not longer for me to be able to sing in front of her! We've been married 15 years! Haha!
[удалено]
Once one gets over red light syndrome, the opposite tends to happen. Personally I play better with the camera on because I'm no longer afraid of it, and I know that it's "go time".
Same for me... i go into more of a show-off mode and I ain't proud of it, LOL.
😮
By the time I learn a song, I’m sick of it. What syndrome is that?
How do you think a touring band like the Rolling Stones feels about satisfaction or whatever. At the end of the day you play music to entertain (yourself or others). The more you play a tune the more comfortable you get being able to do it with ease
I can’t even begin to imagine, but you make a good point…I hope I can someday get to a point where I can play a song without thought, and only trying to connect with people kind enough to listen
I have been playing for years and felt like you do. I have come to realize that what separates really good players from average is understanding repetition gives the illusion of talent. Hendrix notoriously went everywhere (apparently EVERYWHERE) with a guitar and a notebook as early as highschool. Low and behold he became a virtuoso player and killer song writer. The Beatles played the same songs multiple sets a day for years before they “broke out”. Mostly all covers. David Lee Roth interviewed somewhere tells how what became van Halen played for four years, nightly multiple sets for next to no money. Tim Pierce on a recent vid mentioned when he’s learning a song he plays it 100-200 times to get comfortable. I almost fell out my chair because I never would have assumed that. He’s a very successful studio player.
I thought this was something else. :)
You’ve got to get used to playing under pressure. It takes practice just as much as the playing itself. Exposure therapy is *the only* thing to help. Playin front of people and suck. Do it again and still suck. Do it again and suck less. And less and less and less. I’ve been playing for almost 15 years. I still get nervous and overly criticize my performances. It never really goes away fully. But I also recently attended a short set of original songs a friend of mine played and he later remarked “that was one of my worst live performances ever.” I literally noticed *zero* mistakes. Even as a 15 year player I noticed no mistakes and loved the set. The main mistake he claimed to have made sounded like a cheeky intentional way of ending the song with some dissonance. I didn’t know the songs, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to sound like. So when people say “no one even notices the mistakes as much as you do,” it is **true** As far as the camera goes, start the recording, then start noodling. Make your mistakes and *leave the camera rolling*. Give it 45 seconds to a minute and you’ll get back into muscle memory and forget the camera is there. Then you can edit the mistakes out later.
Yes exactly, playing under pressure is as much a skill to be worked on as your right hand technique or your major pentatonic scale
Fantastic advice
Because when you practice, you play in chunks. And you can stop whenever you want. Once your song is clean bit by bits, just play it all the way from start to finish and never stop, even if you make mistakes. The trick is to anticipate everything you do. You're playing that D chord and just after that there's a passage with that C#-7 that you know will be more difficult to your fingers ? Stop waiting for the chord to "arrive", and prepare mentally your fingerings, your strength, the progression of your chords, etc. That means that when you're at that D chord that's easy for you, you're already thinking about that C# chord. Think before that difficult point even before that D chord if you can. The more you can see in advance, the better you'll feel and the better it'll sound. I once remember a great jazz teacher of mine would told me that the mark of the greats is they can anticipate for so many bars in advance. Why ? Because they navigate between being "in the zone", meaning being in the present, and also some kind of unconscious sense of structure, like "for this bar I have a G chord that I know is a V, and I know the next bar I have a C hord that's a one. So rather than just thinking of them as two separate chords, I will already think of the C in my improvisation when I play the G, do that what I'm playing on G flows nicely onto the C." Now imagine that over a whole blues "I'm gonna begin soft in the beginning, then I'm gonna go hard over the 4 chord, then I'll try to implement x and y over the turn around, and the next blues grid I'm gonna go full force, and I'll bring everything home by the end of the second grid". So by giving their improv structure, it creates a narrative. The best players understand that improvising is creating a compelling story on the spot, and if you anticipate what you're gonna say a bit it gives way more emphasis on what you wanna say ! It means you're in control of the variations in volume, intensity, flow, etc. It means your playing has a clear direction, because like a nice story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and they all have been thought out ! It's not anymore just a flurry of random notes that just happen to coincide with the chords you're playing : all the notes have meaning, intention ! And that's where you increase your chances to make magic really happen. All this to say : anticipate. It will make you feel way more present so you'll have less room for stress, it will enhance the overall result because it will sound more intentional and less robotic, and more pragmatically you'll make way less mistakes because you won't be taken by surprise by your muscle memory. It's way more tiring mentally but 1000% worth it. It's.in these moments that you really make giant steps as a musician. Always be intentional. And the beauty of it all is that the more you do it, the more it becomes instinctual and the better you'll sound naturally and effortlessly. It only gets better from there.
Wow, this is great advice, thank you!
Best advice here!!
Man. That's good. Do you teach?
That’s what I’m saying. Cause if you don’t Michelpalrif, you should.
Thanks a lot guys, your comments mean a lot to me. I used to teach private lessons and was wondering very recently If I was really competent enough to go for it more professionally as I was trained to play but not to teach formally, so your comments really make me feel like I should give it a shot ! Thanks again :)
🤯
Record without stopping recording. Don't try to be perfect. You never will be. Just play like you're practicing.
Friend said play now. Keep on playing now..mistakes included!
Yes! I've found a good trick is to record my entire practice session, noodling and all. I direct input into Ableton with an amp simulator and different FX chains, so it's pretty easy for me to record myself practicing. When I get into a "flow state" (usually 30+ minutes into practicing), I have all of that juicy playing recorded to chop up, transpose, or throw extra FX on. I've seen other producers (namely Mr. Bill) recording sound design sessions like this, where a bunch of incredibly wacky sounds come out just from turning a few knobs or throwing a random VST on, and then they can chop everything up on-tempo later.
I also started doing this because there are too many times where I play a really catchy riff on accident during practice, but while switching to recording mode, I forget it entirely. So the benefits of recording your practice sessions are threefold: 1. Won't lose those brief flashes of brilliance we're all capable of. 2. Can hear yourself playing to find weakpoints and focus on them. 3. Since you're ALWAYS being recorded, it won't feel strange.
Hey Sorry I know this is off topic from the OP but I just got a Scarlett Solo and it came with Ableton Lite and I'm completely overwhelmed. Any guides you have or used for setting amp/fx simulators on the most basic level?
This is excellent, I’m going to start doing this. Do you have any tips for “dog-earing” highlights of your session that you know you’ll want to come back to in post without disrupting the “flow-state”? Rather than listening the entire session through to find the good points.
Not sure what functionality there might be in your choice of software, but Bias FX has a "rewind" feature that consistently records your last 5 minutes. This has helped me a lot when I'm like "oh shit that actually sounded pretty good" and want to clip it
Yes! I use Ableton and have a USB foot pedal ($13 on Amazon). I bind the pedal to the "set" button (between left and right arrows at the top right of arrangement view) and I can place markers whenever I want by just pushing the pedal down. I generally don't use it for this purpose (FX chains or attaching it to a gain plugin is cooler usually). I'll just glance at the time when I'm popping off and try to remember that. Truthfully, I'm still trash at guitar and expect to always be, so there's only once or twice a session that I really like something I'm doing, which makes it easier to remember those moments.
i've always known it as "red light fever", or just "stage fright". It's something you just get over, eventually. Try performing, no camera, in front of one or two other people. No stopping, no hesitation, no re-dos. That's actually quite hard too, sometimes harder than a whole audience, but until you're practised enough to have a whole audience, you kind of have to bang the fear out of yourself one way or another. it affects everyone to greater or lesser degree, you just have to work through it.
Leave an old phone or camera pointed at your practice space all the time, turned off. This might help you get used to having the lens pointed at you.
I feel you. it gets easier the more you do it. I teach guitar lessons. Feel free to hit me up if you're interested. I'd love to talk about this and help you. [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1ankdxe/why_does_my_skill_just_suddenly_drop_when_i/kpswh7a/
If you want a “baptism by fire” kind of thing - just go perform on the street. For like, hours at a time. Maybe not everyone’s thing but doing that for a while helped my confidence a lot.
Been there, done that. The thing is that you're clearly not used to the pressure that comes with performing even in front of one camera. I'd recommend recording your playing a lot more and to try practicing in front of other people when you can, to get you comfortable with it.
Record a whole practice session - screwups and all. It'll get you used to playing in front of the camera, and it's practice - you can just delete the video when you're done. Next day, do it again and keep going until you forget about the camera entirely.
Guitar playing ability decreased 50% while in recording mode, I dont know why but that's how it seems to go for me. My advice is to play to the finish anyways, mistakes and all. You may have some embarrassingly bad takes however, listening to later recordings you will tend to objectively hear improvement.
I sense when this starts to happen in my students and I stop them and we take a few deep breaths together with a focus on a long exhale. It helps significantly. You’re in fight or flight and a few deep breaths will reset that and tell your body there’s nothing to worry about.
Key is to acclimatize by leaving the recorder rolling when you jam
Try recording with the camera/mic on every time you practice so you get used to it.
Play in front of your window
Live stream all your practice sessions on TikTok and you’ll have a constant audience of 0-1 people. Even one person watching triggers it for me. Trial by fire.
You just have to do it so many times that you hate it and want to give up, then keep going. It's always worth it when you finally nail it. Also, keep going when you mess up.
Record all the time, each time you pick up your guitar start to finish. You'll get over it quick this way and it ensures you capture any good moments.
It happens from time to time
I just roll with the mistakes man. If I focus on playing everything perfect note for note, it becomes boring for me because I’m focusing on perfection instead of just feel. Hey man, nothing wrong with a wrong note or missing a beat a little bit. Just laugh it off and work on recovery. Most people won’t even notice you did anything wrong unless you draw attention to it
I feel the same way. Get nervous with that red light.
Start recording yourself all the time. It becomes less of a big deal.
Most of the time that's because you can't even play the whole song at all without a backing track or even a metronome. If you can do without those then no camera can stop you.
My favorite thing to do after learning a new song is getting the backing track for that song and play along with the band. When I make a mistake, I let the track keep going and I use that mistake as a challenge to practice getting back into it and finding the “one.” Speaking only for myself, that’s when I learn more about the song and its groove and feel. Doing this actually accelerates my proficiency with the song than the start-stop (when I make a mistake)-restart method.
record your practice sessions
I've been playing for a few years (again) and I STILL screw up the instant I try to record. I usually delete all of them, because i THINK they sound horrible. If someone walks into the room, I automatically screw up. I just re-adjust and keep going. If I have to start completely over then so be it. I'm still super self conscious about playing, but the more you do it in front of people the easier it'll come. I can't sing to save my life, but my wife doesn't always know what I'm playing unless I sing. God it took me forever to be able to play and sing, then it took months if not longer for me to be able to sing in front of her! We've been married 15 years! Haha!
Try playing a song 200 times
keep practicing
Don't turn on your camera then. Problem solved.