By Barry Cuthbert

When I first started playing a number of years ago, I found it virtually impossible to play in front of other people. My music teacher, Alison Stephens, invited a number of her pupils to a workshop, and she asked me to play the piece that I had been learning with her. I was about the tenth person to play, and by the time I began, my nerves had been working overtime. My mouth was dry, my hands were tense, and I was shaking a little. The tension in my hands made it difficult to find the right notes, and by the time I had finished the piece, I was shaking quite a lot. Under the circumstances, I was amazed that I had made a reasonable job of the performance. It was not an enjoyable experience.

I tried on numerous occasions to play in public after this event. I read books on controlling anxiety, and tried to work out other ways to conquer my nerves, but never really made any significant progress. Some friends ran on Open Mic Night. (OMN). I thought that if I went along frequently enough, I would get used to standing on stage, or the end of a public bar, and simply be able to carry on like the rest of the musicians. This didn’t work.

Fortunately, my friends, George and Lorraine were very supportive. They were (and still are) really encouraging with all the players at their events. I am truly grateful to them for their help.

With this encouragement, I analysed each OMN, and tried to work out what I needed to do to reduce the impact of nerves on my playing. It has taken rather a long time to reach the point where I no longer have a dry mouth or the shakes whilst playing. The time taken could have been much shortened if my plan from the outset had not been to keep trying to overcome the problem by just repeatedly playing at Open Mic Nights. What I needed was a plan, so I created this booklet.

Download Barry’s booklet here.