Playing Live and Failing Miserably

Hello! I’ve been MIA from Youtube and this newsletter for the past few weeks for one reason: I’ve been recording new music and playing more shows. I’m making playing live my main focus for this year because I think it’s the hardest piece of the puzzle and also probably the most important.

Creating a direct relationship with a live audience and getting feedback is crucial to growing as a musician. It’s also something I avoided for too long because of stage fright, and I want to kill that fear (almost) entirely this year. I want to gain confidence.

And with doing difficult things comes growing pains!

I played a song at an open mic last night and REALLY botched it. My low E string was out of tune, and my tuner wasn’t picking it up (my guitar is in C# so the low frequency is sometimes hard to pick up on a vibration tuner), and I just started playing with an untuned guitar. I was thrown off because of this, and my vocals became shaky. I tried camouflaging the first string by hitting only the 5 higher ones, but that just led to me feeling unconfident and making obvious mistakes on the guitar. The whole thing was a hot mess 😅

But you know what… I don’t even feel that bad. Something like that would have haunted me for months before I started gigging regularly, but since I try to play every week or second week now, I just feel like mistakes are bound to happen from time to time. I see people make mistakes at open mics all the time and just roll with the punches. Since I know what the problem was, you can bet I’m never going onstage before double tuning my guitar ever again.

Have a listen to this clip of me playing my song 6 Minutes From The Radio at an open mic last night (it gets especially bad starting at 1:13):

Now, compare that to this clip of me playing the same song a few weeks ago at a show I played. You’ll see (and hear!) that I’m much more confident, I’m not messing up on the guitar and I’m signing pretty clearly.

Anyways, I just wanted to give you guys an update on what I’m up to and just encourage you guys to plays shows and embrace mistakes. I’ve also noticed that the first song I play is always the worst since I’m just getting my grips, but everything gets better after that.

What have you guys noticed when playing live? Do any of you have any rituals or faux pas when on stage? I’d love to hear them!

Keep on rock and rollin,

Kim