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What song was it?

It was this one
But your actual playing was okay, surely?

I had some timing problems at first because of the person in charge of the audio system being completely incompetent and turning the backing track volume so low I barely heard it. Altogether I felt that I played fine, but I knew it sounded like crap throughout and that was agonizing.

So much time I dedicate to this damn instrument and then, when it matters, everything crumbles and becomes a lifeless pulp of sounds, and I manage to make a fool of myself in front of some 50 people. I managed to stay calm and confident on stage but the aftermath of all this is a nightmare.
 
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You'll experience this MANY more times if you keep up with playing :mad:
But the few times that everything falls into place will be worth all the frustration
 
Thank you, work, for bogging me down with so much additional work ahead of my holiday that I'll need to work into the weekend to get it all done. Is there any point to taking holidays if you have cram in best part of an additional week's workload before you leave?
 
It's actually very frustrating to know that there is a direct flight from East Midlands - right next to Download - to Oslo, and I can't get on it!
 
There'll be no strike in Scandinavian Airlines for now. The pilots' organizations and the company have reached an agreement.
:rocker:

Who are the five going then? Foro, Brigs, Wiz, Natalie?, and the host Wingman. Anyone else?

Shadow and National Acrobat. Natalie was in Vienna the other day so she won't be there. I didn't count Wingman because he's already in Oslo.
 
So much time I dedicate to this damn instrument and then, when it matters, everything crumbles and becomes a lifeless pulp of sounds, and I manage to make a fool of myself in front of some 50 people. I managed to stay calm and confident on stage but the aftermath of all this is a nightmare.

At the end of the day: you still got up and played guitar (an original piece no less) in front of all those people. They didn't get up there and do it. One thing I can tell you about non-musicians: they don't hear sounds the way a musician does. Unless your amp and PA system were feeding back like mad, they probably noticed very little. I'm sure a damn number of them admired you simply for being able get up and play competently.

Live music is always a learning experience, but giving it your all is what matters. If you think you played fine, then forgot about everything else. We all have bad sound days. :)
 
Played guitar in the school assembly hall today as it is the last day of school. It went as bad as it could've because of the hall's awful acoustics and the relatively bad amp. Countless playthroughs to master the song, an hour of setup to play 3 minutes of crappy guitar and look like a total beginner. I'm disappointed in life. I even dreamt about it going horrible tonight.
I had to deal with a school concert hall that had unflattering acoustics for both guitar and saxophone for 7 years. I never got used to it. When I started having gigs outside of school I figured things would get easier as far as that goes, but not really. Not only are most small venues (and even a lot of big venues) unfit for live music, but you never have enough time to get used to the room and adjust sufficiently. And that can be really distracting with your playing. The good news is that typically these performances always sound worse to the performer than the audience. Go to any rock concert by an established band, chances are the sound isn't that good. I don't know if I can even remember the last time I saw a concert with good acoustics. Might've been Opeth in 2013.
Also, since you played an original tune, it probably came off a lot better than you think.

Two things that will help you with these situations:
1: Prepare for the worst. When you're practicing for something like this, try to "practice" how you will handle yourself if something goes wrong. Acoustics will suck and equipment will break down, live music can be really chaotic that way. If you run through different scenarios in your head, if something actually happens you'll be prepared and at least won't panic so you can still (somewhat) comfortably play the song.
2: Your pre show rituals can make a difference. I've had performances (especially in middle school) where I'd run around a lot and eat a ton of food before going on stage and then I had so much energy that I couldn't control my playing during the performance. Or I went through something dramatic before and I couldn't focus as a result. I'm not assuming you do any of these things (assuming you're already pretty good at this really) but what you spend your time doing before a performance really affects the actual performance. Different things will work for different people but I find it best to find a quiet space and warm up a little (not too much, you don't want to "blow your chops", to use a horn phrase), basically try to relax myself so that when I go on stage I can relax my nerves a bit. I get really bad stage anxiety so this helps a ton. But that also helps if something goes wrong, because you'll be better equipped to handle it.
 
I had the shoulder strap of my guitar fall off during a performance once - and it was the first time I played guitar in front of an audience of any size. Fortunately, most of the audience was drunk :D and once I got a chair to sit on, I did a pretty good solo (at least the response from the drunk audience made me think so!)
 
I was a bit scared of my potential grades so I'd been delaying checking them out for a week now. Turns out I didn't drop off that badly from my first term at all. 3.25 GPA for the 2nd term, 3.42 GPA for the entire year.
 
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