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This started out as a reply to a friend's comment on my reasons for busking with the harp, and a comment which I perceived to mean that she found the harp less intimidating than singing due to a 'frozen diaphragm'. (The "perceived" word used not because I'm being snippy, but because the friend may have meant something else, and I don't want to paraphrase her!)
I have minimal stage-fright with voice - a little, which is healthy before a performance, but on the whole nothing to write home about, and as soon as I start singing, it's gone.
Harp? No frozen diaphragms, but my fingers turn into sausages and I forget where to put them. Confused, directionless, fat little sausages. The only instrument I can comfortably play in public is the bagpipes. The rest? Appalling nerves. I think it has everything to do with what one expects of oneself - I know exactly what I can do with my voice. I've been performance singing since I was eight, and professionally singing for... err... 10 years or so? I've had gigs from hell (really - I'll do a posting some time) and I feel like I've paid my dues with my voice.
But I have impossibly high standards for the harp - I listen to Corrina Hewat and Deb Henson-Conant and expect to be like them. When the amount of concentration necessary doesn't magically materialise, then I get frustrated and scared in front of an audience and *blam* I die. If you haven't died in front of a paying audience, then it is difficult to imagine the horror of it. It's like one of those "I forgot to get dressed for work" dreams, only you don't wake up. Ack. I've then taken well-meaning advice and "got back on the horse".
Can you imagine dying a *second* time in those circumstances? Being terrified, doing it anyway and failing spectacularly the second time as well? Hoo boy. It's like waking up from the "I forgot to get dressed for work" dream to find that you have sleepwalked naked into the supermarket.
I think it was after the third death that I figured out that other people didn't know jack sh*t, and I had to do what felt right for me. So I stopped playing the harp in front of people. I felt better. It's taken me quite a while to build up the bravery necessary to go and busk, and it's only because I am so incredibly fond of busking (I'm still in the first "we're never going to be separated - I'll even go to the bathroom with you in order not to miss a second!" flushes of an affair with busking - only started at Christmas).
Have to take smallest members of family with me, so we'll see how much *actual* music we get done!
My mate Frank (wife of Liam the Unfeasibly Tall Melodeon Player) will bring her hammered dulcimer too, and we'll make sweet stringy music together. Not sure if this makes me more, or less, nervous!
I have minimal stage-fright with voice - a little, which is healthy before a performance, but on the whole nothing to write home about, and as soon as I start singing, it's gone.
Harp? No frozen diaphragms, but my fingers turn into sausages and I forget where to put them. Confused, directionless, fat little sausages. The only instrument I can comfortably play in public is the bagpipes. The rest? Appalling nerves. I think it has everything to do with what one expects of oneself - I know exactly what I can do with my voice. I've been performance singing since I was eight, and professionally singing for... err... 10 years or so? I've had gigs from hell (really - I'll do a posting some time) and I feel like I've paid my dues with my voice.
But I have impossibly high standards for the harp - I listen to Corrina Hewat and Deb Henson-Conant and expect to be like them. When the amount of concentration necessary doesn't magically materialise, then I get frustrated and scared in front of an audience and *blam* I die. If you haven't died in front of a paying audience, then it is difficult to imagine the horror of it. It's like one of those "I forgot to get dressed for work" dreams, only you don't wake up. Ack. I've then taken well-meaning advice and "got back on the horse".
Can you imagine dying a *second* time in those circumstances? Being terrified, doing it anyway and failing spectacularly the second time as well? Hoo boy. It's like waking up from the "I forgot to get dressed for work" dream to find that you have sleepwalked naked into the supermarket.
I think it was after the third death that I figured out that other people didn't know jack sh*t, and I had to do what felt right for me. So I stopped playing the harp in front of people. I felt better. It's taken me quite a while to build up the bravery necessary to go and busk, and it's only because I am so incredibly fond of busking (I'm still in the first "we're never going to be separated - I'll even go to the bathroom with you in order not to miss a second!" flushes of an affair with busking - only started at Christmas).
Have to take smallest members of family with me, so we'll see how much *actual* music we get done!
My mate Frank (wife of Liam the Unfeasibly Tall Melodeon Player) will bring her hammered dulcimer too, and we'll make sweet stringy music together. Not sure if this makes me more, or less, nervous!
