john

I can change your display name for you, just send me a PM, after you've made a few posts (5 I think) you will be able to delete your own posts. a button appears on the post.

hi Tom It is fairly easy to get caught in some sort of self-awareness hell on stage, at least for me when it happened I was on some level nervous about personal scrutiny even though I was rehearsed etc. and felt confident about the music. It still comes down to some form of stage fright. I found that a few things on stage helped: Focus on a few individual members of the audience and sing/play to them. This works in several ways. If you are focusing truly on them, you wont be focusing on yourself, plus it makes for a more engaging performance for the audience. Get into the meaning of the song you are performing. An emotional connection between you and the song can help pull you out of self-analysis. Yet again this also makes for a better performance from the audience perspective. Interact with other band members during songs. Both of the above are active ways to avoid that hyper-self-awareness. They take a little practice to do effectively. The reason, I decided, was that I was so rehearsed and comfortable playing that performance was sort of automatic... leaving my mind space to wander into self-analysis, and the stage is not the place for that! It happened when I was getting back into performance after a break and had somehow forgotten to take the show to the audience. ie I had remembered to prepare musically for the show, but had forgotten about other aspects of performance. A simple reminder, a mini eureka moment and a little practice and the problem went away. Focusing on conveying the song to individuals and interacting with the audience gives your mind something constructive to do. Although you may be rehearsed etc the notion of being judged is higher at an open mic night. One other point to make would be that not all anxiety is necessarily obvious or apparent. We might not be aware of just how nervous we are before a performance. You might not feel that way on the surface and when the initial symptoms are noticed it comes as quite a surprise. That surprise part I think makes us more vigilent in looking for that issue again in the future, each time it happens we look for it more the next, and eventually it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. By breaking that cycle of thought by focusing on something/someone else it reduces the ability of the problem to take over. I hope this helps Cheers John

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First issue of multiple guitars and one amp look at this: http://www.glab.com.pl/lms-1_en or you could use 2 channels on the same amp if you have a two channel amp, with a simple footswitch to select channel, make one channel your electric the other your acoustic. The good thing about the linked one is that you could control it from a sequencer. Using a sequencer would require your drummer to play to a click live. Using a sequencer you could do live loops using a midi foot controller surface to prime tracks for loops etc and then to control playback, you could easily rig it so that the sequencer does much of the work. environmental sounds could also easily be triggered using a sequencer You could go down the route of a single channel amp but use an FX unit with inbuilt amp simulators, for example a Boss GT-100. I think you could do it with a GT-10, which is cheaper but you should confirm that in your local shop. You could use the guitar input selector (first link in post) with the GT-100 and a sequencer (hardware or software) Let the sequencer control your GT-100 and the guitar/amp switcher and your Apple Mainstage. Loops, the GT-10 and GT-100 do support loops but certainly on the GT-10 it's pretty basic. You can however connect a loopstation for better functionality. Not a cheap set up either way, but it does give you a very versatile and quality set up. So... Audio Chains Guitars -> GLabs line midi switcher-> GT-10/GT-100 -> amp -> PA (optional depending on venue) Apple Mainstage -> PA Midi Chains sequencer -> GLabs sequencer -> GT-10/GT-100 sequencer -> Apple Mainstage Now you could run the sequencer on the Apple, or another laptop (PC/Mac) or a hardware sequencer. The PC option would work fine as any PC audio glitches are audio only, not midi. if you are restricted midi wise you could set up a star network using an external midi port (cakewalk make a good one) or a daisy chain. food for thought