Hey phess -
Drake and sno are on it.
My 10 cents would be to practice your singing and playing in front of the mirror. Once you can sing to yourself in the mirror, you can sing in front of anybody.
Ooop - add another nickel to it. As hard as this sounds when you're actually rehearsing, play-all-the-way-through the song. Honest. Don't stop for mistakes and keep going all the way to the end. Try to stay on time. An audience notices a break in rhythm before they notice you missed a note. If you keep getting hung up at one spot try any or all of the following.
- Simplify that spot with a simpler chord or phrase.
- Don't play at all and riff a vocal over the empty spot, then pick up at the next measure/whatever. This works better than you'd think. Winking at the audience helps.
- Using a metronome practice, first on the troublesome spot or the transition from the music right before the troublesome spot. I find that I'm good at individual musical phrases, but it's the transition that bites me. Fingering is usually the culprit. A "should I use an upstroke/downstroke picking to begin the phrase?" kind of thing.
Wow. A nickel turned into 2 bits. Sorry for excess but I hope it helps.
RW
