“The best performances are completely unselfconscious—where you’re inside the music, and it’s leading you, and you just follow where it goes. The minute you start to think about how the audience is going to react—whether what you’re doing is right, or wrong, or entertaining people—you’re in trouble. All kinds of doubts and insecurities creep in, and you lose the music. Suddenly, the music is no longer this organic, living, breathing thing. It becomes something you try to knock into shape with a set of rules you’ve picked up throughout the years. Thinking should be done at an early stage in a musician’s career. After that, you just let go. And it becomes a blissful experience to play.” —Bill Nelson
I play with a guy that severely overthinks things and it is corrosive. Very true.
Also, great article