If you want to play guitar for an audience it is vastly different from performing by yourself in your room. Once you are in a position where people are watching you play or sing, everything changes. You become aware of yourself in a totally different way and you can no longer play automatically the way you do when you are alone. So it’s a whole new journey together from being able to play alone to being able to play guitar for an audience.

Start with a plan for a basic set lasting about three hours. As a rough guide your songs are probably 3 to 4 minutes long, and you have a minute or two between songs. So you need to get yourself a list of say, forty songs. You will, of course, include your favorite songs, and you will also need to draw upon a list of popular songs. If you look on the internet you will find many people’s definitions of popular songs, just choose some songs from a list that more or less corresponds to your style. The truth is, it will take quite a long time for you to memorize so many songs, so get yourself a music stand and some sheets of paper with your lyrics written on them. These will be your cheat sheets until you have your repertoire memorized.

You will then need to practice your microphone technique. Go to as many gigs as you can and check out what kind of setup solo players work with. For this aspect of performing there is only so much practice you can do at home. The rest is learning on the job.

You would think it would be unnecessary to say this, but you need to practice every day if you’re going to play guitar for an audience. Daily practice brings your guitar playing persona to the fore. So force yourself to practice for at least half an hour a day, more if you are learning a repertoire!

When people start to play guitar for an audience, making mistakes is natural. And quite often a guitar player will try to go back to a point where he can start again to play without the mistake. Don’t do this. You’d be surprised how little attention your audience is really paying, so they probably won’t notice the odd mistake. It’s sad to think that you’re not getting the full attention of your listeners, but that’s the way it is.

Likewise, your audience will not notice the odd guitar playing fumble. If you’re technique is a little rusty on the night, don’t worry too much about it, just slow down a little and leave out any of your usual attempts at virtuosity.

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