How to Handle Stage Fright (Maudabawn Chapel)

Find my podcast here on Apple Music or here on Spotify!

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Megan Beller. And today I'll be bringing you a setting of Maudabawn Chapel from a session at the Arthouse bar in Baltimore.

Today, I'm going to be talking about feeling nervous, and dealing with nerves. This is a topic I have worked on a lot, as a Suzuki teacher, my students, the kids at least, played a recital every December, and a recital every May, and they got nervous. So I had a lot of experience coaching kids through nervousness, here are some of the ways I would try to help them. I hope this could be helpful for you. I use these tips for myself. And I think it's good because I'm not naturally...I get nervous I, I get nervous about a lot of things. We'll talk about that. 

I usually start with the frog story. So this is to illustrate that nervousness is a feeling that comes from how you're thinking about something. I always tell kids, I say, I was on a hike with my own children, and we saw a frog. And one of my kids was thinking in their head. I love frogs, then I'll ask the kids, how do you think they felt I was like, oh, excited, happy, like so excited to see a frog. 

My other kid was thinking in their head. Because they were a little bit misinformed. They had just been studying poison dart frogs, and didn't realize that poison dart frogs don't live in Maryland and won't kill you on the spot. So that kid was actually thinking that frog could kill me. And so they were feeling very scared. 

Here's the frog, not hurting anyone. One person is super excited, the other person is very scared. So it was what they were thinking about it that was affecting how they were feeling. I tell that to kids, just not to say like, it's your own fault for thinking things that are making you nervous. But the nice thing about thinking is, it's a little bit like breathing, we do have some control over it. 

When you think something that gives you a nervous feeling. What I've read is that the actual chemical reaction in your body that gives you I mean, whatever happens if you feel like a little hot, or a little sweaty, flutter in your stomach, whatever those physical reactions are, it's kind of a short, like one to two minute chemical process. And then it's done. But you can keep thinking something over and over again, kind of spinning with it keep, keep recycling it and triggering the process over and over again.

When a kid is doing that, they're just thinking something that's making them nervous. And they they feel like they can't stop. I try to work with them to think something else. But it has to be something that they really believe they can't just think like I'm going to play great. I mean, if they don't believe that, it's not going to be helpful. 

So sometimes in a situation where they're going to perform, and they're feeling really nervous about that, and they're thinking, I'm going to screw up and my family's going to hate me or something like that, and they can't stop thinking about it. I'll try to find something for them to think like, do you feel physically safe? Do you feel like you're going to play in this recital? And things might go wrong, but your body is safe physically? 

If they're able to say like, Yes, I, I acknowledge that this might be hard for me emotionally, but physically, I am safe. There is no danger to me. Then I'll say why don't you try thinking and saying to yourself, I am safe. I am safe. And try to think that instead of Oh, my family's gonna hate me if I mess up. 

Another thing that I'll explain to students who are feeling nervous is that one feeling...if you can notice it in your body, let the feeling be there and not try to fight against it and panic about having the feeling then you avoid it turning into like a whole layer cake of feelings. 

And I tell them the story about me when I went on a college audition and made a mistake in the practice room warming up beforehand. So I had the thought, I'm not sure this is gonna go well. I'm not playing this well. Just feeling nervous. I didn't just let the nervousness be there and try to work to still perform through it. 

I kind of let myself panic over it like, Oh, if I'm nervous, I'm not going to play well, what if my parents are upset, I'm gonna let my teacher down. Like, what if I don't get into college and you know all these other feelings, worry, panic, shame, dread, like, you can just let it spin out of control. 

So, when a kid is feeling nervous, I like to have them identify it. I'm feeling nervous, feel it in their body. And think about the reason like, I'm feeling nervous, because I'm going to perform this piece, and I'm performing this piece because I'm part of this performance, I'm going to share my music, people are going to enjoy it. feeling nervous is part of that. But I'm doing it for a reason that I like, like I do want to perform in this concert. It's not great that it makes me feel nervous, but it'll be worth it. At least I hope, that's always the goal is that it's worth it. 

The quick and dirty way to deal with nervousness that I use is box breathing. I just used it at the dentist this morning. Breathing in, for instance, for a count of four, then you hold for for breathe it out for four, hold for four, and then I'll work up to maybe six or, or even eight, sometimes just a little bit of box breathing will get me through that two minute chemical reaction in my body. Sometimes I need to do it over and over again. 

I played a dance on Wednesday, in a situation that would probably make a lot of people nervous. I felt absolutely no sensation at all actually checked on my body was like, am I feeling nervous. And there was nothing I've played so many dances, I knew whatever happened, I would be fine. I don't know, I wasn't scared. 

But also last week, I did for the very first time I did live streams. I called it like a practice club. I was going to get on YouTube and practice. And people could practice along or just kind of have a practice buddy and talk in the chat a little bit. And I'd never done this before. 

And on Sunday, the first day that I did it, I had several hours of feeling nervous beforehand where it would come in my body kind of flood and I would do some box breathing and just saying to myself, I'm nervous because I'm gonna do this live stream. But I want to do the live stream and it's worth it even if I have to feel nervous. And it would kind of go away after a little while and then it would come back again when I was thinking about it. 

And on Monday, I really only felt it. And even Tuesday for 30 to 60 minutes before I was gonna turn on the webcam and do the live stream. And then I did one this Sunday just yesterday and I didn't feel nervous. I mean it was almost imperceptible. So it's good to remember that. A lot of times you feel nervous because you're just not sure what to expect. And that nervousness goes away very quickly. You just have to do something a couple of times and you know what to expect. You won't feel nervous. 

Oh I have gone on and on about this. Let's do our tune. 

This is a tune called Maudabawn Chapel and it's by Ed Reavy. I have also seen it called the Reefs. Ed Reavy was an Irish Fiddler, born 1898 in County Cavan, in the town Maudabawn. And this tune, Maudabawn Chapel was named for the local church. 

Ed Reavy moved to the US in 1912 and lived outside of Philadelphia, working as a plumber, and also as a musician he recorded in 1927 for the Victor record label. He was a prolific tune composer, more than 100 compositions published and his sons have said that he wrote probably more than 500 tunes. That's a lot of tunes. His most famous fiddle tune is maybe the Hunters House, but this is a very popular one. 

If you look it up on the session, I guess Kevin Burke played it and recorded it a little different from the way that Edie played it when he recorded it. And somebody asked Kevin about it. That must have been a funny email to get why is your aversion different? But he was a good sport about it. And he wrote back and said, you know, different strokes, basically different strokes for different folks. 

Kevin's version is specifically on the session if you want to go in there, Kevin said that his version was influenced by the musicians, Martin Burns and Brendan McGlinchey. It's a little bit of a long discussion of this tune on the session but we're gonna kind of play the version that's played around here in Baltimore. Yeah, here we go.

Thanks for listening, you can head over to fiddle studio.com to find sheet music for this tune and more information about becoming a member of fiddle studio. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.