Make Up Blog: Stress

Stress is something that I am very used to, especially when it comes to music. As a percussionist, ever since fifth grade, I experience enormous levels of stress whenever I get a piece of music. Percussion is different from most other instruments because you are the only person playing that part, so you don't have 4-5 other people to cover up your mistakes and most of the time, you are who the rest of the band listens to for tempo. During my beginning years of music, those two reasons gave me some pretty hard times in class and made me very anxious. I still remember during my first middle school concert, I barely played at all because I was so nervous. The stress from not only learning the music, but performing it was enough to make me worried sick all of the time. I don't know when it happened, but the stress turned from giving me a negative affect to giving me positive affects. I became less worried about my music, and actually found it easier to play. I somehow learned how to control the stress, either from learning from my mistakes or from over the top practice. I went from not being able to play a part by myself to playing the main solo percussion part in this previous years marching band show. I used to hate being stressed over other people having to rely  on me for things such as tempo or hitting the right notes, but now it gives me a sense of control and confidence.