Preparing For a Live Performance: My Personal Steps

YOU GUYS! I am so nervous right now.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from David Bash of the International Pop Overthrow Music Festival. He found my profile on BandCamp and asked if I would be willing to play Detroit’s IPO festival. I would be stupid to say no, so I said yes!

I’ll be performing an acoustic set at Detroit’s International Pop Fest on Friday, April 13th at 8 pm.

I AM FREAKING OUT. I haven’t performed live in a long time, and I’ve never been comfortable singing live. But as I said, I’d be stupid to say no. I’m going to lay out a plan and get to work to make this as successful of a show as possible.

My Concert Plan

I’m setting this up to try to have the best show possible, but feel free to follow these steps for yourself if you have a show coming up! I’ll report on how it went afterward, so we can see if this was a success. I’m also going to follow my own advice on this post here and refer back to it often.

Here are my goals and target areas for the show:

1). Get Fully Warmed Up Every Day

There are some days when I don’t have any session work, and on those days I don’t do any type of singing or exercises. I need my voice to be in top condition, so I’ll be doing a full warmup even on days when I’m not working.

2). Sing For 45 Minutes Straight

Me back when I had long hair

My set is 45 minutes, so I need to be able to get through that much time singing without losing my voice. This may not seem like a lot of time, but as a session singer, I have a lot of breaks. I can stop whenever I need to and take as much time as I need to go through my notes. I need to work on my vocal stamina, which is where the warmups will help as well. I’m going to work on actually singing the songs I’ll be singing live, as well as maybe a few challenging songs I enjoy singing.

3). Work on Physical Fitness

Please note: This is not me, nor will it ever be tbh

This idea actually came to me while watching I, Tonya (have you seen it? Let’s talk about it in the comments!) I was amazed at how hard she trained physically for figure skating. She wasn’t just working on skating all the time, she was also hiking, lifting weights, running, doing a bunch of work to keep her body in top shape. I need to do this as well. I hate working out, but having a goal in mind will give me something to work on.

4). Design and Order Merch

YOU GUYS I NEED MERCH. I don’t know where to get it or what I need or what to even make, but I have a couple of ideas and I’m hoping I can get them ordered by the show. Part of this is tied into #5, but I think I might see if I can order shot glasses.

5). Research the Venue

The concert is at PJ’s Lagerhouse in Detroit, so it’s going to be a loud bar. I think shot glasses will be a fun idea, and maybe I can talk the bar into letting them use them that night (is that allowed? Is there some sort of health code violation in that? These are things I need to research). I was also thinking that, if this is allowed, maybe I can talk the bar into offering a discount on a certain type of shot if they use the shot glass? I don’t know. My head is spinning with ideas so I need to do a lot of work.

6). Work on My Mindset

I need to be mentally prepared for a show. This is probably going to be the hardest part, to be honest. I have some meditations from when I was in hypnotherapy for stage fright. I will listen to those regularly (maybe once a week or something) and I’m also going to re-watch some of my Christina Aguilera Masterclass (link) lessons. She talks about performing live and the mindset she uses so those will be helpful to me.

So I’m pretty excited! Also absolutely terrified, haha, but I’ll be working on that. After the show I’ll write about how it went, and if my plan worked, I can turn this post into actual advice for live performers!

Do you have any shows coming up? How do you prepare? Also, did you see I, Tonya? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!