Red Light Fever
Tape’s rolling, time to sweat.
Red light fever, or performance anxiety during recording, touches almost all of us at some point in our musical career. Whether it arises while trying to get a good solo during paid studio time, performing on stage for five, or five-hundred, people, or while trying to record a riff in your bedroom for a social media post, it all feels the same. While I am not a professional performer or recording artist, I do have experience in all of the aforementioned situations and want to share some insights and strategies I have gained over the years to deal with this feeling.
The first set of tips comprise what to do to prepare for a session in the hours before performing.
Take the time to properly warm up. Just like an athlete, your muscles will not perform well when cold. Try to plan out your session-day to give yourself time to properly warm up and acquaint yourself with your instrument. Ideally, try to get in a light practice session early on, take a break, and then warm up again before recording. Some of the best playing can happen when you’ve already played through all of your “normal” stuff for the day.
Be aware of your physical state of being. Take a moment to check in with your body and how it is feeling: are any muscles tight or sore? Are any fatigued from over-practicing a passage or doing other activities like going to the gym? Do you feel fidgety or are you grounded? Hungry or thirsty? Too cold or hot? Becoming aware of these things can help you ground yourself into the present moment, reducing the anxiety which is rooted in the anticipation of the future recording session.
As a secondary point, if you find your body is often tense while practicing or performing, then it is probably worth taking a larger look at how your muscles are serving you while playing. I recommend the book “Effortless Guitar,” by Adrian Farrell to begin this process of rethinking how you interact with your instrument.
Use breathing, relaxation, mindfulness, or meditation techniques to prepare mentally. If you already have spent some time in other areas of your life developing any of these techniques, then use them here as well! They may not completely relieve you of stress or anxiety, but they will definitely help when used in conjunction with the other tips. Beware though, if you don’t already have these tools in your bag, then I would not recommend trying to learn how to meditate thirty-minutes before recording. Instead, take some time to research and practice these things outside of when you need them, and then in the future, they will be available for use while preparing to perform.
This next section deals with tips to reduce anxiety during recording.
You don’t have to start playing on beat one. Just because somebody has said, “recording,” or you have hit the record button in your DAW, does not mean you have to immediately start playing. Take as many bars as you need before you play the first note to give yourself time to properly get set up, positioned, and focused on playing. Of course though, if you are recording to a prepared click track or with a band, you will have to start after the count in. In these situations, I recommend writing in a few extra bars before the “real” beat one happens, or communicating to your band that you still need a moment, just to give yourself that extra time to breathe, centre, and get into the playing headspace.
Do as many takes as you can. This one is a simple perspective shift that you can try implementing next time you record. When I go to record myself and I’m thinking, “I should be able to get this in three takes,” I’m setting myself up for disappointment and frustration. If I instead aim to do fifty takes, chances are I’ll get a good one within the first ten and call it there with a feeling that I did what I had to faster than expected. There is no need to be stingy on digital space - we’re not recording on tape anymore. Aim to capture more than you need and you will relieve yourself of perfectionism pressures.
Take breaks, get some food, stay hydrated, and try again later. If you’ve been trying to record something for a while, but it's just not working, it might be a good time to get up, go for a little walk, rehydrate, and reset. Professional studios always schedule in breaks so you should too!
Finally, here are some questions that you can ask yourself after a session or in the weeks leading up to one.
Is what you’re trying to record abnormally difficult compared to your general skill level? I used to boulder quite a bit and there were some good analog lessons I found there. Different climbing routes are graded by their difficulty. Every climber has a difficulty level range that they can comfortably climb on their first or second try. Every climber also has a maximum climbing ability: the hardest possible route they could do if they worked on it for months to years. As a climber, you’re constantly assessing what difficulties are within your range and how hard you can push yourself, but you have to be careful not to take on projects that far exceed your general ability level. Although you can specifically train for these projects, you will likely develop injuries or bad habits along the way because you don’t have the general supporting strength and skill to support what you are training. Instead, if you were to just continue climbing for a couple more years, your general abilities will develop to the point where you can do that project without any specific training.
Similarly, it is worth looking at what you are trying to record. Is it a song that goes far beyond your general capabilities, perhaps in tempo, harmonic understanding, or technique? If you manage to record it, will it sound good, or will it sound like it took a lot of struggle and effort to play? And importantly, what are your motivations? Are you just trying to record this so you can post it online and look like a better player than you know yourself to be? If any of these are answered with a yes, perhaps take a moment to think about your goals and why you are wanting to record something so difficult for your currant ability level.
What are your standards and expectations of yourself? Something that is often forgotten by amateur artists is how many takes and how much professional editing goes into a professional release. There will be hundreds of little edits and fixes that happen before a song is released to the public so why should you expect yourself to play something perfectly, all the way through, in less than three takes? And for any video that is a one-take performance, don’t forget about all of the deleted and messed up takes that you aren’t seeing, and all the preparatory practice and work that went into making that one take possible.
You might just not be ready to record yet. If you have followed everything I have said up until now and you still can’t get a good take, then it could be time to admit that you might just need more practice. Take an honest look at your playing during your practice session: have you ever played through the song all the way through, no mistakes, at or above the intended tempo? Have you tried yet? If not, than there is no evidence to support that the recording session should go smoothly and you may just need to spend some more time in the shed.
To finish this off, I want to give you one of the tips that has helped me the most: make recording yourself part of your regular practice. If, at any point, your musical goals include recording yourself, then it is a good idea to start getting used to the feeling of it. Don’t show up to your first ever recording session (even if it’s in your home studio) and expect everything to feel the same as it did when you were practicing or rehearsing; many unknown feelings and emotions can emerge during recording and you may find they get the better of you, hampering your ability to play. By recording yourself often, even before you’re ready, you will begin to get used to the process and take away the emotional impact of that flashing, red light. Make it routine, make it as normal as brewing your morning coffee, make it something you do and are proud to tell others about, and over time, you’ll find that it will no longer have a hold on you.
As a side note, recording yourself and listening back to your mistakes is one of the fastest ways to meaningfully improve as a player, but that is a topic for another time.
This Saturday (February 8th, 2025 @ 10am PST) is going to our 8th online monthly meetup. If you are interested in attending and chatting with me and other 8-string guitarists from around the world about practice, techniques, gear, and more, then feel free to sign up here.