Chords for Pavarotti and colleagues discuss Stagefright

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[Bm] _ Every moment you go on the stage, you must be scared.
If you are not scared, you are not an artist.
I figure that I'm paid to be nervous, and I sing for nothing.
That's what I figure.
_ [N] You never get over nervous.
I don't think it's possible to be a good performer if you don't get nervous.
_ I've never been over stage fright.
I don't think I ever will be.
You walk out in front of 2,000 people, alone, and you basically sing at the top of your lungs.
This is not normal.
Don't be [G] nervous.
I'm not nervous.
No, neither am I.
I [E] remember I was speaking with Lily Pons one time, and she had a big problem with stage fright
in that she had to go and literally experience mal du mal.
She would throw up before every performance.
_ _ When someone would come back and hear this retching, they would say,
Can we help you?
Can we help you?
And she said, No, don't bother me.
I'm getting ready for performance.
[G] _
_ _ _ [D#] _ _ _ [F#] _ _
[B] Once in a while, the heart [F#] will just start [Em] pumping.
Your mind says, This is it, folks.
[B] And your heart's going like crazy. _ _ _
[F#] _ [B] It's scary to [F#] be a performer [Bm] where your very life depends on one [F#] note.
When I was 16, I went to MET.
[Bm] When the [B] scene came to the tenor singer's high note, the note cracked, and the audience was aghast.
The singer did not come out for his after curtain bow, and I never heard of him again.
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_ _ [C#] You've got to go on.
You've got [G#] to feel and give and give.
They got to like you.
You've got to.
[F] You're going on a youngster.
You've got to come [D#] back a star.
Almost everybody's experienced momentary stage fright when you [N] stand up in front of a PTA meeting
and you have to speak publicly.
And that bit of cotton mouth that you get, that dry mouth, is something that a singer has to face all the time.
Stage fright?
Yeah.
You get sweaty palms?
Very sweaty.
Dry mouth?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
What do you do about the dry mouth?
Just keep working it.
Try and get some saliva.
If it's really bad, I will actually bite the end of my tongue a bit to get it.
We have a few tricks we use.
One is to bite down on the tip of the tongue just to the point of pain.
The [B] mouth will fill with saliva.
And then when you swallow it, it's feeling good.
[F#] _ _ _ [B] _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ [B] You don't breathe.
You don't sing.
You're paralyzed.
You paralyze the diaphragm and everything is gone.
Before going out, you have to breathe very deep for three or four or five times.
_ [G#] Like that.
_ [A] In a way, when you begin the first phrase, the entire body is participating to the construction of the note.
[G] Welcome to the 100th broadcast of [Em] Live from Lincoln Center.
When I started in the business, I was worried about my voice all the time.
And I did some singing in addition to talking.
The program director of a station that I worked for said,
you know, if you concentrate on what you're doing instead of how you're doing it.
And I would say, what am I doing instead of how am I doing?
And after I got that technique under my belt, I didn't have trouble with my voice anymore.
[N] _ _ There's an old saying that says, pressure makes diamonds, but it also makes coal.
The thing is, if you walk out on the floor and you use that tension to your advantage, you're going to be great.
You can go out there and be terrified because there's 20,000 people that expect you to make a free throw if you want to.
_ _ But you can also think about the good things that are going to happen when you go out there and you do it right. _
_ Say what you want, but there is something that is giving you advice of what you have to do.
And that, I think, is the brain, if the brain is used to be scared.
So it's always alert.
It's always there.
Like a _ tiger who is going in the forest, afraid that somebody's coming out.
And if somebody's coming out, yeah, you bite it.
But you must be ready.
[F] _ _ _ _
When we're in a stage fright situation, they can turn the stage fright into [Em] concentration instead of panic.
[F] If they let panic go, they're going to shove the breath pressure too much, they're going to hit the high C too hard, and the tendency to splat or crack [C] is enormous.
But if they [Dm] can simply turn [F] that stage fright into intensity, [B] that's not the point where they seize.
That's the skill of turning stage fright into [F] focus.
_ _ _ A lot [G] of singers have a tendency to tense muscles on [F] high notes.
And when we see that blank look in the face, it's the ability to drop those muscles, especially in the neck, to loosen the muscles.
You'll also see him move his head [C] slowly from side to side [G] as he's preparing for the high note.
[A#] And that essentially [E] is to loosen the muscles in the sides of the neck, the muscles in the [D] respiratory system, so he doesn't clench on the high note.
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