This is Adam Manus, and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast.

Daily Jazz Advice coming at you.

Today we're going to give you some tips on dealing with nerves.

All right, cool. I'm going to shoot off, man. I have perfect nerves of steel, so I don't even need to be here, never been nervous a day in my life. That's great, because I'm extremely nervous just about doing this episode. Yeah, well, that's not true. I'm nervous quite often. I think that's the place that we should start, though. actually, you know, great performers, great jazz musicians, great artists.

I've heard, you know, tell stories about being nervous, right?

We were just talking about Herbie Hancock and his autobiography

and how he said he was quite nervous early on, even up to the point of playing with Miles.

So know that you are not unique and that you're in good company and being nervous.

Absolutely.

I mean, Robin Williams said he used to vomit before every performance. You know, this is one of the greatest performers ever at anything. Yeah. And if he gets nervous, you know, you have every right to be nervous. Right, right. Right.

You know, for me, the biggest thing, I mean, there's many different techniques and situations

we can talk about, but I would love to just start with the concept of preparation.

And I think for me, over the years, that has worked the best. It's not to say that I've always been as prepared as I wanted for a performance or for a recording or for a podcast episode.

But, you know, once you get into the situation, it is what it is.

You are where you are.

So you can't prepare anymore.

So any time that you spend preparing for that particular situation, the better you're

going to be, I think, at being able to manage those nerves.

Because the nervous energy, we actually want and need that, I think, especially for performance

and for recordings, any kind of live situation, because that little edge can give you

that spark of creativity.

It can give you that spark of spontaneity that's very exciting to the audience and to the listener.

...