Nerves? Who Cares?

I was plagued with nervousness throughout all of my earliest music life. My most memorable performances are those which stick out in my memory because of how nervous I got and what the results of that nervousness were. In fifth grade, in a performance in front of the entire elementary school, I got so nervous that my mind wandered and I flipped the top off of my first valve. It went spinning across the stage and I became paralyzed by the thought of what I had done. The band was only four members strong and the fact that I had done something so stupid caused me to react by not playing another note. 

The next thing I remember is when I was first chair in the Wahiawa Intermediate Band. We were playing some kind of contest (I didn't know what a contest was back then) and in the middle of my solo on Camelot, my mouth became so dry I couldn't finish it. This dryness was a malady which followed me throughout the next decade.

In high school, my nervousness heightened as my opportunities to perform increased. I vividly remember the first time I auditioned for All Region Band. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. As I progressed through the etude, my mouth became increasingly more dry. Before I was even half way through the excerpt, it dried up completely and I was forced to put my horn down after several measures of nothing but tongue and air coming through the horn.

Shortly after that, I performed in the "Solo and Ensemble" competition. It was a repeat of the All Region audition, except this time, I became so frustrated that I began cussing, right there on stage. Interestingly, I was not the kind of person who cussed. The judge (Kenny Capshaw) and my band director (Al Mendez) have always been good friends and my band director was shocked when he was told of my behavior. The fact is, this nervousness condition was more than just a dried mouth. It ate at the essence of who I was as a person. It caused extreme levels of desperation in me that I didn't even know I was capable of.

So, that is where I'm coming from. That's what I think gives me the authority to at least write a little something about "how to deal with nerves". The following story is sort of a chronology of my up hill battle to overcome this condition. I offer it to you, the reader, with two thoughts in mind. First, I offer it as some specific solutions that you can try on your own. These solutions won't necessarily work for everyone, but it helps to have something to try. The more options you have, the greater your chances are of finding a solution. Which brings us to my second (slightly more important) reason for sharing this stuff with you. I want to give you an example of the thought process and the work which went into finding my personal solutions. If you understand what I went through, maybe it will give you the motivation to find your own solutions in your own ways.

Curing the Symptom

Shortly after that "Solo and Ensemble" competition, I called that judge to apologize to him for my behavior and then asked him if he would be my teacher.  I studied with Mr. Capshaw for the next three years. 

The first thing we worked on was my nervousness. I remember specifically that he told me something that I've heard hundreds of times since;

"The best way to fight nerves is to be confidently prepared (or even overly confident) and to practice performing in front of people as often as you can."

This did help. Unfortunately, it never made my dry mouth go away. It became frustrating because, after all of that preparation and practice performing in front of people, yes, I felt more confident and competent, but my mouth still got dry. 

So we began to work on other solutions. I tried drinking water. That didn't work. In fact, it seemed to make my dry mouth even drier. It was as if the water washed what little saliva I had completely out of my mouth. Once the water was gone, I had even less moisture in my mouth than I had before hand. 

Then Mr. Capshaw made the suggestion of chewing gum while I played. I scoffed at him in disbelief. Here was my trumpet teacher telling me to chew gum while I played. But he made it clear that this was okay if it made the difference between being able to play and not. 

So I went on a search for the "right gum" to aid me in this condition........and.......I found it!!!! In the stores, back then (in the early 1980's), they sold a gum made by the same people who made Gatorade. They called it GatorGum (or something like that). This gum had a really tart, tangy, lemony flavor to it which worked wonders where all other things failed.

That was my cure which I relied on for many years after. It was a little bit of a juggling act because the flavor didn't really last long. So I had to time it just right. Normally, what I had to do was put it in my mouth ahead of time and then wait until a minute before the performance to actually chew the gum. But it worked. It worked well enough to get me into the All State Band twice and to do all kinds of other great things on the instrument. 

But it was only the dry mouth symptom we had cured, not the condition itself. And I'd be lying if I said that I was cured completely. Sometimes, even with the gum, I would still get so dried up that I couldn't play. Not only that, relying on the gum became a huge inconvenience. Not all stores carried it and it really was difficult to play with gum in my mouth, not to mention what it was doing to my instruments. 

Good Bye Dry Mouth - Forever!!!!

I used the gum for almost a ten years. But even at it's best, it was nothing more than what a friend of mine calls a "work around". It fixes the immediate problem but isn't a real cure. 

What finally cured me of the dry mouth problem was nothing more than a coincidence. Back in those days, Laura and I used to take regular trips to the library, every two weeks. We looked up anything that we might have been thinking about at the time. One time I wanted to know more about what and who geniuses were. That, in turn, lead me to books about the brain and memory. That's when I learned about the role blood sugar has in the brain. One of the books I read said that the brain needs two things to work properly; Sugar (glucose) and Oxygen. 

What does that have to do with getting nervous?

At first, I didn't think it would have anything to do with it. When I first applied this knowledge to my trumpet playing, I was thinking more about my mind than I was about my nervousness. I just thought, if I timed my eating just right, my brain would get all the glucose it needs during a performance. My idea was only to increase my level of concentration through a process that many people call "carbo loading". 

Guess what..........it worked!!!!!

The first performances I had in which I actually used carbo loading were the first, truly focused performances of my entire trumpet playing life. Before carbo loading, using only the gum, I was lucky if I had a fifty fifty chance of even doing okay on a performance. With carbo loading, there are only very few times when my performances are truly bad. And most of those are due to some kind of illness or something like that, beyond my control. 

If you would like to read more about this carbo loading, click HERE. 

But the question is, what about the dried mouth? 

Well, in my later research, I learned that dry mouth is a symptom of low blood sugar levels. Here's my theory about what was happening to me. I believe that, in a state of mental agitation (like stage fright), the mind uses lots and lots of glucose. It uses so much glucose that the blood sugar levels drop if that glucose is not replaced. Simply put, the more you use your brain, the more glucose it needs. If you run out, then you get all of the traditional symptoms of low blood sugar - including a dry mouth. 

So carbo loading became a way of life for me and I don't think it's a coincidence that this was when my career began to blossom. Before carbo loading, like I said, I had some bad days and some good days. With carbo loading, I have VERY FEW bad days. And people began to notice. Or better put, people began to "not notice". They began to not notice any of my bad days because I wasn't having any. I became musically reliable and the dry mouth condition was GONE!!!!! 

A Quest Towards Excellence

Unfortunately, having fewer bad days is not the same things has having more excellent days. Figuring out the carbo loading thing made a huge difference by removing a barrier from my performances. However, it wasn't like a magical elixir or anything like that. I was still subject to other things which kept me from being the best player, in performances, that I could be.

The success which followed my carbo loading discovery got me on gigs with some of Houston's finest players and I naturally wanted to do my best on these gigs. Unfortunately, "wanting" to do my best was like a poison in my mind. The harder I tried, the worst my performances became. Granted, they were never as bad as the bad performances I used to have, BC (before carbo loading). But they were a far cry from "doing my best". 

I soon recognized the problems inherent to wanting to play better. By thinking about playing better, you are taking your precious mental energies away from the music and the results are almost always disastrous. Therein lies the dilemma. How do you play your best without thinking about playing your best? How can you do better without trying harder? To me, it was like trying to solve one of those rubics cube puzzles. 

Fortunately, I had/have a model to study. I've had the great honor of being able to work with David Caceres. I worked with him for five years in the Tom Borling BeBop Band and then a year and a half with his own band, the David Caceres Band. David's playing is like the Rock of Gibraltar. When it comes to being excellent, at all times, David is there. So it has been really good for me to see this with my own two eyes. It's been a learning experience to see him, day after day, gig after gig, perform at such high levels of quality without any of the hang ups I was experiencing in my playing. A lot of that has rubbed off on me, but more importantly, he has offered me lots of things to consider, things to ponder - about how all of this performance stuff works.

I remember, on a trip to Austin, we car pooled and I had a lot of time to sit and talk with him while we were on the road. I brought this stuff up and I was surprised by what he said. First, he admitted that he really doesn't "feel" as confident as he seems. Then he said that there was something that really changed his life. He told me a story about when he went to visit Dave Nichols in the hospital. Dave was his best friend and he was dying of cancer. But apparently, they had previously talked about the exact same stuff as what I'm writing to you about now. They called it "the monkey on your back". The monkey was like those nagging thoughts which always make you think about how well you're playing. It's those thoughts which end up making us play less well than what we are capable of. So Dave Nichols told David Caceres "when I die, I'm going to take your monkey with me."  David says he thinks about that sometimes when he plays and it helps him to let go of all of those nagging thoughts.

Do you notice a pattern here? David said that he doesn't feel as confident as he seems. And yet, he comes off sounding as if he is the most confident player I've ever heard. There is a pattern and this pattern has become a huge part of my entire life, not just my performances. It seems that how confident you feel isn't as important as being able to play without letting your own thoughts interfere with the performance process. 

It's alright to "feel" incompetent. It's alright to know that you're not perfect. Just don't let those feelings effect your playing. When you actually perform, your mind should be free of these kinds of thoughts.

To free my mind from these poisonous thoughts, I self inflict myself with an attitude of indifference bordering on contempt. To release my mind from this prison of concern, I convince myself that I really don't care how well the performance goes. Does that sound like a bad attitude to you? It is. This reminds me of when I was in high school and there was a sax player in the band who obviously didn't care much about how well we played as a band. In one of the band's competitions, this sax player showed up late and walked on stage in the middle of a tune. The band director got mad and told him to get lost. In response, the sax player threw the soprano sax he was barrowing from our teacher, threw it on the floor and walked out. 

I definitely don't encourage that kind of behavior. However, at this point in my life, I need to have a little bit of that kind of attitude. Back then, I thought of that incident as if the student was saying he was too good for us. But now, I see it as if he really didn't care, one way or the other. 

This attitude of indifference has been working very well for me over the past year or so. The most difficult part of this has been in convincing myself that I don't care when I really do. 

So, as you can see, there is still a slight flaw in this solution. If you only convince yourself that you don't care, you still have, way in the back of your mind, a monkey sitting on your shoulder, nagging you with thoughts about wanting to play well. 

An Expression of Grace

Just recently, I've been able to reach a final adjustment to this attitude which really works well for me. I don't think I'll be needing anything else beyond this final solution. However, it's such a big deal to me that I'd like to make it a separate essay of it's own. I call it:

"An Expression of Grace"

It is the final chapter in the story of my battle with performance problems. 

Summary

The entire purpose of this essay was to show you the thought process and the work which went into finding my solutions to my specific performance problems. If you can use some of the specific solutions which I have shared with you, that's good. But more importantly, I want you to see that these things can be worked out. Everyone is different and your solutions will be different from mine. Don't give up just because you tried something and it didn't work. You need to keep trying different things until you find what works best for you. Look at me, I'm only now beginning to feel as if I have an answer to these problems. Considering that I've been fighting this battle since the late 1970's, I think that says a lot.

Let's look once again at what I had to do to get where I am. The first and more immediate problem was a physical problem. To solve that problem I used analysis, did research and tried different solutions until I came up with the carbo loading solution. I should mention at this point that I do continue to use carbo loading, even today. 

The next step in this development was to increase the quality of my performances towards a greater degree of excellence. This was a mental problem. To solve it, I employed more analysis, not only of myself but also using David Caceres as a model - remember - he's the Rock of Gibraltar. With this problem, there was less true research and more thoughts and ponderings. I found that altering my attitude erased the concerns I had, the same concerns which were causing me to play less than what I was capable of playing. 

Two different kinds of problems - two separate solutions. 

PS.

I just finished writing the "Eat to Perform" essay. I wanted to include the last paragraph of that essay here, too. Because I want people to know that I'm here to help them if they need it.

If you EVER have any problems trying to figure this out, or any questions about this process in general, please feel free to email me with your questions. I know that all of this nervousness stuff can be extremely depressing, even career ending. I want you to know that I've been through it myself and that, even if I don't have your answers, I'm here to help you find those answers. Most importantly, don't give up. There's an answer out there for each and every person. You just need to have patience. It took me over twenty years to find my solutions.