Picture this, the crowds anticipating your perfomance, hundreds if not thousands chanting your name, the MC is about to announce your name, the curtain opens before your grand entrance. Yes YOU the superstar, it's your time to steal the show. You can hear the crowd getting louder, Can you feel the rush? every steps you take to the stage you were praying you better not choke. Then...you take command of the stage, but you blacked out...

Trust me my friend, everyone who ever performed for the first time gets the butterfly. Well to be honest even seasoned performers get the jitters at times before stepping onto the stage. Unlike bands, solo performers has the most pressure backstage, here are some of my methods to keep calm and stay focus before any gigs.

1 Go to the Mens room 5-10 minutes before your turn onstage

  If you are a vocalist you tend to consume a lot of water just to clear   the throat. This is understandable, but too much fluids in the system is not a good idea if you are about to go onstage. Just be sure that you consumed just enough H2O to smoothen the vocal chords.

2 once you're in front of the mic, take a 5-10 seconds to take a look at the crowd.

  Now the purpose of doing this is to warm up the crowd, and to ease yourself and the crowd into your first song or the first poem that your going to recite. Usually what I would do is that I   would give props to the previous performers that came before me, or the most courteous thing to do is to introduce yourself, let the audience know about you and a little info about your projects. Break the ice.

3 Take a step at a time

  Perform at a smaller gigs first, preferably at Open Mics, since the settings of an Open Mic gig is more intimate, and the crowd is more laidback and forgiving and gradually to a larger crowd, for this will build your confidence when you confront with a hard to impress audiences.

4 Be sure to rehearse. Remember practice makes perfect.

  Naturally when you are too nervous, you tend to blanked out, as a result you will forget your    lyrics, you can't recall your verses or your words muffled. But if you practice, the show will go on smoothly, even there's a tinged of nervousness in your body movement.

5 Don't forget to have fun, whenever you are in your elements the performance will be a second nature to you.

  Nervousness comes from uncertainty. To you the performer is a matter of uncertainty of whether   you will win the crowd over or not, but if you're worrying too much then you will take the pleasure out of your performance, so don't stress yourself, just take a deep breath and just let loose and have yourself a blast. Who knows maybe there's an A&R of a record label in the  audience scouting for the next Superstar.