I went to the Victory Music open mic with GM and Igor K., and I found it eye-opening to get out and play in front of strangers again. Same as it ever was...
We played only a single circulation in E Phrygian, followed by Where It Goes. The circulation was decent (as always, the best stuff seems to happen when we warm up before a gig), and it ended without a full resolution. GM later said he was worried the circulation would go on too long.
Our performance of Where It Goes was "OK," but not stellar; maybe it would qualify as "honorable." We played it all the way through, and considering this group's modest beginnings, to play Where It Goes all the way through like this in front of an audience was an achievement. We began several months ago playing 1 of 1,000 Regrets and Asturias, and these two pieces were a big challenge for the group. We must have worked our way through some of those "transformative increments."
Stage fright sapped my playing and reduced me down to about 70% of my normal playing capacity. Which means I need to work on these challenging new parts that much more, so that I have a larger margin to draw upon in the future.
Stage fright manifested in the usual symptoms: shaking hands, sweaty palms, and a maddening tendency for my right hand to "dig in" excessively with the pick, as if it had a mind of its own. No surprises.
Early on in the piece, I suddenly felt the group wanted to speed up. A lot. We can usually rehearse the piece competently around 74 bpm, but for this performance we dialed back to about 68 bpm. If we rehearse at a lower tempo like 68 bpm, I almost always hear the group wanting to pull ahead of the metronome.
But here on stage, there was no metronome to keep us back; we only had our dodgy internal clocks and the group pulse or "pocket" that exists mostly by unspoken consensus.
GM later said he considered just running with the urge to speed up, but chose instead to pull back. And I thanked him for having the good sense to pull back.
It's not like there's really any other choice; if we abandon reason and speed up, we're heading for a train wreck. Which isn't the end of the world, but it's never fun.
I wanted to make a good impression, and I cared how we sounded; this is a wrongheaded mindset, in its own way, because you can wind up chasing your tail, and it always seems like the best playing happens when you stop caring how you sound and just play.
And so, in the moment before we pulled back from the brink, I was about ready to panic.
All the same, I look forward to playing in front of audiences as much as possible. I need to get used to dealing with stage fright again. I don't think it's ever going away; I just need to get used to it.
Along these lines, I've heard it said that stage fright is fundamentally an ego problem; you think you should sound good and impress people because you're a good musician (dammit), but if you don't sound good and impress, it reflects badly on you. Please like me! screams the ego.
The audience was supportive; the MC said something about needing to "learn to play the guitar" and said we were a "guitar orchestra."
Aw, shucks...
