How do college musicians self-manage musical performance anxiety: Strategies through time periods and types of performance

Musical performance anxiety (MPA) occurs throughout musicians’ careers. The existing literature on coping with MPA is underdeveloped in its understanding of how college musicians develop their own coping strategies. This article explores the ways in which MPA is self-managed by college musicians, drawing on qualitative data from the local context of Taiwan. A ‘performance diary’ for managing MPA was prepared and semi-structured interviews were carried out with 53 undergraduate students (from Year 1 to Year 4) from a university’s music department. The findings show that college musicians have developed at least nine self-management strategies, which they implement throughout a specific timeline leading up to a performance, from 4 weeks before right up to the performance (concert, exam and recital) itself. These strategies are products of musicians’ self-regulated learning process of developing their own expertise and building up their self-efficacy. The findings also reveal that providing information about psychological strategies in a performance diary could help musicians to become aware of MPA and develop their metacognition of coping strategies. Highlighting the importance of the specific time periods, types of performance and performance environments, this article has implications for college musicians, teachers and institutions that are looking to develop MPA-management strategies.

Music performance anxiety. Substance use and career abandonment in Spanish music students

This paper assesses the prevalence of substance use in Spanish music students as a strategy for coping with Musical Performance Anxiety (MPA). We also assess the relation between substance use and thoughts of abandoning one’s musical career in connection with the degree of self-reported MPA. We carried out this survey on a sample of 463 students studying different music specialties and enrolled in five superior music academies in Spain (mean age: 22.71 years). Among other questionnaires, all participants completed the Spanish version of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory and responded to a series of additional questions associated with MPA, substance use and thoughts of abandoning their musical career. Of those surveyed 33.9% indicated that at one point or another they had used substances in order to cope with MPA, and 19.0% had considered abandoning their musical studies. Those students who indicated that they had used substances to cope with MPA tended to have had more frequent thoughts of abandoning their musical career and suffered from a higher level of MPA than those who did not. A high percentage of music students who are attempting to cope with MPA also tend to adopt poorly adaptive strategies. These, in turn, lead to even greater levels of anxiety.

TRAITS KEPRIBADIAN “THE BIG FIVE” DAN MUSICAL PERFORMANCE ANXIETY (MPA) PADA MUSISI

This study was conducted to determine the effect of personality traits of musical performance anxiety among musicians. As well as to find out which personality trait has the most effect of musical performance anxiety. This is a quantitative study with psychological scale. Researcher adapt the scale of performance anxiety inventory for musicians (PerfAIM) revised edition from Barbeau (2017) and adopt the big five inventory (BFI) scale from Ramdhani (2012). The item reliability for MPA are (0,97), openness (0,97), conscientiousness (0,95), extraversion (0,93), agreeableness (0,85), and neuroticism (0,88). Respondents of this study are 87 musicians. Hypothesis tested using regression analysis. The results shown that neuroticism has the higher effect of MPA which is 31,9%. And the effect is positive.

An Investigation of Musical Performance Anxiety in the Marching Arts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of musical performance anxiety (MPA) in marching artists. The marching arts include high school and college marching bands, drum and bugle corps, and indoor color guard and percussion ensembles. Drawing on a sample of 780 world class drum and bugle corps performers, we examined the prevalence of somatic and cognitive symptoms of MPA. We also examined differences in endorsement of symptoms by performing section (i.e., brass players, percussionists, and dancers/color guard) and gender. Results revealed a relatively low prevalence of MPA symptoms as compared with prior studies of adolescent and young adult performers. In addition, color guard performers reported significantly greater magnitudes of somatic MPA symptoms than brass players, and female performers reported greater magnitudes of cognitive MPA symptoms than their male counterparts. Practical recommendations are discussed.