Stage Fright and The Wide World Of Song

During a recent conference for voice educators, I was presenting on my usual subjects: the singing brain and popular music. Probably because I was talking about brains, I received questions about stage fright. It got me thinking…

Most of us have experienced performing as a fun thing to do, and we want our singers to share in the excitement of performing. We also want them to face their fears, and prove to themselves that they can meet a challenge. We want to see them get the post-performance hugs, and hear them get compliments on their singing. We know–both personally and vicariously–how satisfying it is to walk off a stage knowing you sang well, and we want that feeling for our students and clients.

For most voice teachers and coaches, the subject of stage fright feels challenging, nebulous, and confusing. How can we help our students and clients overcome stage fright?

Personally, I don’t believe there’s a single answer. There's something more important for us, though: the issue of helping our clients with stage fright goes beyond the simple question of “how”.

The World in Six Songs

Musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin published a book in 2008 called The World In Six Songs (highly recommended, btw). In it, he explores the function of singing in our lives. He offers a theory–based primarily on anthropology and evolutionary science–that singing serves six functions: friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love.

If you want to know more, you’ll have to read the book. For this short email, I’d ask you to simply consider the point that singing serves many functions in our lives. Performance is only one.

Functions of Singing

If you’re willing to consider that, perhaps you’d be willing to consider talking to your singers about what they really want for their singing. Many singers hold the goal of performance simply because they cannot, or don’t allow themselves to, imagine another function of singing. We voice educators (with the best of intentions) often pile on to that limiting thinking.

The reality is that singing serves many functions, and our singers have every right to define for themselves how they’d like singing to function for them in their lives. It might be the goal we always assume: to perform on stage. But it might be something else.

Here are some ideas of what that might look like:

• Community: joining a choir or drum circle, leading a sing-along in an assisted living center or pre-school, or signing up for a music improv class.

• Emotional connection: singing to individuals in hospice or hospitals, singing in religious services, or singing to animals in shelters or babies in the preemie ward.

• Exploring art: recording songs to refine the song and/or the singing, starting a YouTube channel, or joining (starting?) an acapella group.

• Contribution: holiday singing to people who are homebound, step up for a singing flashmob that creates surprise and delight, or teach learning-challenged kids how to memorize using singing.

Those few off-the-cuff ideas are not meant as a list of options, but rather as an invitation to open up your teaching brain on behalf of your singers. It’s also meant to encourage you to check in with these gentle souls for whom you create a musical oasis.

Is performing as a soloist at your semiannual recital exciting to them, or is it creating a barrier that keeps them from experiencing music and singing in a way that feels satisfying and joyful? Have a heart-to-heart. Permission to make different choices–and that permission coming from you– means everything.

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Meredith Colby is the author of Money Notes: How to Sing High, Loud, Healthy and Forever, and Your Brain Sings Before You Do. She developed NeuroVocal Method, an approach to coaching for popular styles based on brain science.

Meredith teaches privately online to professional & adult singers, and voice teachers & coaches from all over the world.

You can get information about

private vocal coaching or classes from this site.