Performance anxiety

[maverickf1jockey]

If you want to play for an audience, you need to accept that you'll have to play music that people want to listen to, i.e. covers.
It won't help you in the short term, but try and be a bit less precious about originality and doing your own music, and just get the performance experience, playing in front of a crowd, albeit (as you might regard them) of phillistines.  
And hey, you might even discover that there is artistic merit in other people's songs. You might even start to enjoy being a musician, instead of trying to compete with yourself.

The only thing is that covers are so boring to play after a few gigs :( I had to quit the band I got so sick of it :lol:

True. I am not going to get into a situation where I have no creative input if I can help it.

[Henk]

EDIT: read the first post wrong :oops: , probably the spiked eggnogg 8)  

Nice to read how different everyone here seem to think about music by the way. I allways wrote the music for the bands i was in, well exept the one time a friend(at least i though then) begged me to play bass in his cover band. Took me only a couple of rewritten basslines to get the 'a bass guitar is NOT a lead instrument' discussion, which was understandable since i got so bored i just had to kick @ss  :roll:  :twisted:

Anyway, you dont sound unmotivated at all after rereading, i would definately try the sax duo, i did some phrygian scale improve piece once with a sax which was at least very fun to play, not that it was very good though. With some funky rythm guitar strumming maybe you understand which direction i mean.

Anyway, back to the eggnogg 8)  :lol:

[maverickf1jockey]

Bass is definitely a lead instrument. You don't play chords on it (usually) and you'd be hard pressed to find a long list of decent bass players who only kept rhythm (Lemmy being an example). In short, in general, a bass player has to do at least some melodic material otherwise they aren't properly doing their job of pushing the material onwards to the next chord.

[Henk]

Imagine your on bass and the guitarist is playing the most static, UNmusical version of a song youve ever heard. I played some extra accents by adding ghost notes in my bass part, kind of filling up the song with the guitars melodic line. Seemed the proper thing to do, it at least made it sound more lively and melodical.

Ahwell, no use cr@pping about it, never though they got as pissed like they did though.

If i think back at the time i was allmost constantly involved with one band or another it sometimes was hard to mix composing and performing together, both are simply different diciplines and i always needed to switch the way i listened to myself which was kind of confusing at times. Maybe you are just trying too hard and need to focus your attention a bit more. Or just focus on performing a bit more in case you just had a period in which you composed more.

Anyway i think your first post is a bit confusing, you do sound motivated but on the other hand lack a bit of direction maybe. Im sure youll manage though, i had times i locked myself up and only got outside to harvest a new load of CD's from the library, just listening to tunes all day because i just got stuck somewhere. After everything got cleared up in my head it allways seemed to be the beginning of a better sense of understanding music as an abstract.

I dont think i can help you with this, but maybe talking from my own experiences you approach things differently.

[JJretroTONEGOD]

The only way to overcome any fear is to go out there a conquer it! If you are scared of playing small venues, play them until you are not as scared, then you can begin to expand the comfort zone. It's supposed to feel really uncomortable at first, but you will eventually be able to control fear the more you practice things. Don't mess about, you really have to 'do' something before the fear diminishes. You won't be less afraid at a later date, unless you change now.

p.s. happy new year!

[Henk]

Small gigs are good, take some friends/family, study the pieces well and be sure you are on time to warm up your playing properly. At least the times i messed up were simply due to not being able to sit down and noodle a bit before getting on stage. Or actually i didnt mess up but the gig became so demanding i nearly passed out after it. Small gigs are excellent test cases for new material also.