i think nerves affect me in the weirdest way.
seriously. i have a bunch of the normal symptoms… like my hands shake when i’m playing soft snare drum. and my heart starts beating really fast.
but here’s the weird one: in the warmup room i have to go to the bathroom CONSTANTLY.
(why, god, why?!)
so my question is this. if nerves are psychological, why don’t they teach us how to deal with this in school?
how do you learn to overcome performance anxiety in a world where everyone’s talking about music and technique?
meet noa.
noa kageyama is a violinist-turned-performance psychologist and he runs the bulletproof musician blog.
he teaches students how to beat anxiety and win auditions using the same mental skills top athletes have used for decades.
it’s inspiring, really.
today i brought noa into the auditionhacker studios to ask him 3 questions about mental practice:
1. what is mental practice?
2. what does mental practice look like?
3. when is the right time to do mental practice?
he even gives you an exercise that you can do in the practice room today. enjoy!
in 2019, a cellist named maria reached out to me about her audition struggles. on paper, she was the “worst audition candidate ever” (her words). she had 2 small children, a full-time teaching job, and hadn’t taken an audition in 4 years.