Will performance anxiety ever go away?

It usually becomes manageable rather than absent, and most professional musicians report some version of it throughout their careers. The workable target is performing well while it is present, not performing without it.

Why do I only lose the passage on stage?

Because on stage you watch yourself play it. Conscious monitoring degrades an automated motor skill, and the dread of a specific bar is a very efficient way to start monitoring.

Does practising more help?

Practising differently helps more. Add arousal — an audience of one, a recording you will keep — because a skill rehearsed only at low arousal is not fully available at high arousal.

Music performance anxiety: shaking hands, dry mouth, and the bar you always lose

In the practice room it is fine. On stage your right hand is somebody else's, your mouth is dry, and there is one bar you now dread eight measures before it arrives — which is exactly why you lose it.

Do this now

In the wings, two minutes

2 minutes

Stand with the weight even and the shoulders down. Let the arms hang and shake out the hands once.
In through the nose for four, hold four, out four, hold four. Eight rounds.
Keep it even — you are not trying to get calm, you are trying to get steady. The energy is part of the performance.
Then one slow exhale and play the first two bars in your head at the exact tempo you will take.
Walk on during an exhale. First breath before the first note, not with it.

Run it with a timer

It is near-universal and it is studied

Surveys of orchestral and student musicians find that a large majority experience performance anxiety severe enough to affect playing at least sometimes, and a substantial minority report it as a career problem. It is not a sign of insufficient preparation or insufficient love of the music — it is an evaluative-threat response in a domain where the output is measured in milliseconds and millimetres.

Why the feared bar is the one you lose

Anticipating a specific passage draws attention inward onto the mechanics of a skill that runs better automatically. Conscious monitoring of an automated motor sequence degrades it — the explicit-monitoring account of choking. That is the mechanism: the dread does not cause the error by making you nervous, it causes it by making you supervise your own hands.

Practise in the state you will perform in

Skills are partly state-dependent, so rehearsing in a quiet room at low arousal builds a version of the piece that is not available at high arousal. The countermeasure is exposure with the arousal present: play for one person, record yourself, perform it badly in front of somebody on purpose. Alongside that, CBT-based approaches have the best outcome evidence for performance anxiety specifically.

What changes it, over a week

Every practice session
Two minutes of box breathing before you start. It pairs the pattern with the instrument, which is what makes it available on stage.
Twice a week
Perform one piece to one person, or to a recording device with the intention of keeping the take. Arousal present, deliberately.
The feared passage
Practise it at half tempo with attention on the sound rather than on the fingers. Monitoring the mechanics is the thing that breaks it.
Daily, ten minutes
Slow nasal breathing away from the instrument. Lower baseline, smaller spike.

When this is not a breathing pattern

See a clinician — promptly, and before assuming any of this applies to you — if any of these describe you:

Avoiding auditions, performances or opportunities because of the anxiety
Alcohol or unprescribed medication to perform
Pain, numbness or loss of control in the hands, which needs assessment rather than practice
Low mood or loss of interest in music lasting more than two weeks
Any thoughts of harming yourself — contact your doctor or a crisis line today

This page is education, not medical advice, and no part of it is a diagnosis. Full disclaimer.

Questions people ask

Will performance anxiety ever go away?: It usually becomes manageable rather than absent, and most professional musicians report some version of it throughout their careers. The workable target is performing well while it is present, not performing without it.
Why do I only lose the passage on stage?: Because on stage you watch yourself play it. Conscious monitoring degrades an automated motor skill, and the dread of a specific bar is a very efficient way to start monitoring.
Does practising more help?: Practising differently helps more. Add arousal — an audience of one, a recording you will keep — because a skill rehearsed only at low arousal is not fully available at high arousal.

What this page is built on

— Kenny, 2011, The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety — prevalence and models
— Beilock & Carr, 2001, Journal of Experimental Psychology — explicit monitoring and choking in skilled performance
— Burin & Osório, 2016, Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy — interventions for music performance anxiety, review

Named by author and year. The DOIs live in the journal.

Put a number on it

Most of what is on this page tracks one measurement: the Control Pause. It takes sixty seconds, needs no account, and it is the thing that tells you whether any of this is working.