The Secret to Feeling Calm When You Play Your Instruments
Learn Jazz Standards Podcast
Brent Vaartstra: Jazz Musician, Author, and Entrepreneur
4.8 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode is sponsored by the Learned Jazz Standards Inner Circle. |
| 0:03.8 | If your goal is to level up your jazz playing this year and feel confident improvising over |
| 0:08.5 | jazz standards, the inner circle has everything you need and more. |
| 0:13.0 | With monthly jazz standards studies, a library of powerful courses, and a vibrant community |
| 0:17.3 | of like-minded musicians, you're guaranteed to improve your playing every |
| 0:21.7 | single month. |
| 0:23.1 | Podcast listeners can get 50% off their first month when you go to LJSinnerCircle.com. |
| 0:29.5 | That's LJSinnerCircle.com or find the link in the show notes. |
| 0:34.8 | Now, on to today's episode. |
| 0:36.7 | So it's the year 2009. I'm in college at the time, |
| 0:39.8 | going to school in Seattle, Washington. And in Seattle, there is a jazz jam session at this bar |
| 0:47.9 | called The Owl and Thistle. Cool little dive bar. Uh, exactly what you want in the jazz jam session. |
| 0:54.4 | Kind of smells like stale booze, all the good stuff, right? |
| 0:57.5 | So I go for the first time, even the second time, third time, fourth time, fifth time. |
| 1:04.2 | Honestly, it really doesn't matter at this point in time of my life. |
| 1:07.2 | The same feeling inside of my body was always the same. It was just always the same. And that was |
| 1:13.5 | terrified, tightness, stress, and anxiety before I went up to play. I was scared. I was horrified |
| 1:21.6 | to play. I had serious problems with performance anxiety. Now, also at the same time, some of my |
| 1:30.5 | colleagues within the school, players that were a little bit older than me, a little bit more |
| 1:36.7 | experienced than me, noticed that I was playing really tensely. Like, they would look at my body |
| 1:42.4 | when I was playing, when I was jamming with them, |
| 1:44.9 | and they would see that my shoulders were crunched up, that my hands were, you know, very tense and |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Brent Vaartstra: Jazz Musician, Author, and Entrepreneur, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Brent Vaartstra: Jazz Musician, Author, and Entrepreneur and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

