Sunday is my first ever public performance....

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Johnny Swallow

Bad Daddy Johnny
Joined
Aug 10, 2000
Messages
1,925
Location
NW Arkansas
I'm going to be playing in front of a couple hundred people, I'm kind of nervous but I'm pumped for it. I think I'll go and practice my parts a few more times now.
 
I played with my church worship band last sunday, it's a modern style worship led by the band. I know it sounds dorky, but the guitarist is a great musician and bandleader. (The bass-played was 16 or 17) There is a junior-high (50-150 kids) and senior-high (100-300) service each week and along with the teaching and other parts there is worship as well. Well it was my first time to play live with any band, but the junior high service was a little bit nervous but we didn't screw up any songs as far as the audience could tell. So going into the 2nd service I was more confident, as we began the first song I could feel myself getting into the groove...but then it all went wrong. I'm not sure what happened, I think the bass player hit a wrong note or something but him and the guitar got thrown off and couldn't recover...there I was drunnimg away until the guitarist stopped all together and look at me with a look that had me stumped for what to do. So I did some crappy fill in an attempt for them to play off me and start up again....but I just sat there and listened to him tell the audience how many times we had rehearsed that song. After that I didn't make any mistakes, I wouldn't let myself. The rest of the service was much more solid than the first (other than the first song at least). He was kind of mad at the whole debacle but understood that it can happen, he told me that I'll have a chance to play with him in the future.

But it went pretty well for a first time, what a rush to play for an audience too.
 
Congrats on getting through your first public performance, Johnny.
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You're lucky your first performance wasn't solo.

My first public performance was playing solo during communion at church my sophomore year (I played the 2nd movement of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata). I was so nervous that my foot was shaking uncontrollably the entire time. It was so bad that I'm sure if anybody looked over at me they'd think I was having some weird sort of seizure or something. Amazingly I managed to keep playing without any screw-ups, despite being almost completely distracted by my foot the entire time.

It took me a couple years to get completely rid of the foot-shake thing. I guess it just came with doing more public performances, but also just mentally relaxing beforehand and telling myself that I'm going out there to make music and the audience doesn't really matter.
 
Originally posted by Johnny Swallow:
what a rush to play for an audience too.

yeah, that?s the best part acutally, when you can feel that you?re doing well and the audiance is listening to YOU.
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and congrats, JS, I knew you could do it.


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"The bass player's got it. The bass player's fucking got it." Bono, Boston 6-9-01
 
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