How to Stop Shaking During an Audition
- Gökçe Kutsal
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
You're in an audition, and your hands start shaking...
Sometimes before you've even played the first note, sometimes right as you start, sometimes halfway through — when you realise you can't quite control it the way you usually can.
And then your attention goes straight to it: Why are my hands shaking? This is going to ruin everything.
Which is usually the moment people start looking (naturally!) for ways to make it stop.
Why Your Hands Shake During Auditions
In an audition, your system is responding to a situation it interprets as high-stakes. Being evaluated. Being visible. Being in a position where something important could happen.
Shaking is one of the ways that response shows up physically. It isn't especially unusual, and it isn't specific to you.
This is part of the work I do with musicians in my coaching practice: Looking at what happens in these moments, and how to keep performing in a way that still feels like you, even when your body is doing something you didn't ask for.
I remember working with an oboe player who had been performing for years. Teaching as well. Basically, not new to any of this.
But her hands would shake every time she had to perform, and it didn't have to be a big, important audition for it to happen. Playing for her own students could set it off. Playing for her boss at the music school where she taught could set it off.
So she found something that worked: Beta blockers made it bearable, and with the pills she could perform close to her actual abilities — not quite the hundred percent she had in the practice room, but close enough that it worked. And she got used to playing that way.
The trouble was that it had been so long since she'd performed without them.
Somewhere underneath was a quiet, persistent shame: What kind of "proper musician" can't play without beta blockers?
So when she came to me, her goal was simple. She wanted to stop relying on them.
Why I Didn't Start by Taking the Beta Blockers Away
The first thing I told her was that this wasn't a problem in itself.
She'd found a solution that helped her function in a situation that was otherwise overwhelming, and that's not something I'm interested in taking away just for the sake of it.
Because the alternative a lot of musicians reach for (like forcing themselves to perform with nothing at all, hands shaking so badly that the whole thing becomes something to grit through and then dread doing again) tends to go exactly as badly as it sounds. It becomes audition after audition of rough experiences, all for the sake of doing it without the pill.
As you can probably imagine, that doesn't usually help anyone.
Still, she chose to do a number of auditions without them, because that mattered to her. And what she noticed was genuinely interesting: Even when she did take the beta blockers, her playing still wasn't where she wanted it to be.
Which is usually the point where we start looking a bit closer... because if the pill isn't the deciding factor, there's clearly more going on than the shaking.
Shaking Hands Aren't Actually the Problem
You see, shaking hands, on their own, are never the thing that ruins a performance. It's the meaning we attach to them.
The moment your hands start shaking, the mind tends to leap straight to the worst
version of events: Oh no, this is going to ruin the performance. I'm going to make a mistake. I'm going to play horribly. I won't get the callback.
And that mental layer (the commentary, the forecasting) is far more detrimental than the shaking itself.
If you've prepared properly and you've spent some time getting used to performing with shaking hands, then your hands can shake and you can still play to a very good standard. The exception is when your mind is distracting you — when your thoughts have pulled your attention away from the actual task, which is to perform the music.
So the question starts to change, from "how do I stop shaking during an audition" to "how do I perform well if this happens?"
And in my experience, that second question is a far more workable place to begin.
How to Control Shaking During a Performance (Without Trying to Eliminate It)
My approach to performance skills isn't to fight the feeling. I don't tell musicians to think positively until it goes away, and I don't ask anyone to pretend the shaking isn't there.
What I teach is something slightly different:
Even with your hands shaking, you still get to choose how you show up. You can show up as a musician you'd respect. You can show up as someone who performs in line with what matters to you... even if there's a small slip at the beginning.
Because as soon as you stop fighting the feeling, as soon as you invite it in or even start to expect it, it loses its grip.
How to Stop Shaking When Performing Music: The Practical Part
You can't force yourself to feel nervous in a practice room — and you shouldn't want to, since the last thing you need is to associate that feeling with your instrument or your practice space.
But you can mimic the physical symptoms.
So I had her do things like push-ups, running up the stairs, squeezing a stress ball — anything that would tire her hands out enough that they'd start shaking from fatigue...
And then go straight into playing.
I know, it feels strange at first. But things change quite quickly, because now you're playing with shaking hands on purpose. You're proving to yourself, directly, that you can still produce a sound, still shape a phrase, still get through the material. Yes, it probably isn't perfect — but it isn't a collapse either, and that turns out to be a big deal.
Here's why: One of the hardest things about shaking during an audition is that it feels unfamiliar, like something that shouldn't be happening, so your attention goes straight to it.
But if you've already played in that state — even in a different context, even from fatigue rather than nerves — then it isn't the first time anymore. Your hands shake, and your brain doesn't sound the same alarm. The thought might still show up (I'm going to make a mistake) but you don't believe it and follow it quite so quickly. You stop being hooked by it.
None of this means the shaking disappears completely. Sometimes it reduces, sometimes it doesn't, and that's not really the point.
The point is that it stops being the thing that decides how you perform.
So, How Do I Stop Shaking During an Audition?
Most musicians asking how to stop shaking during an audition are really asking a slightly different question:
How do I perform well even if this happens?
But the shaking itself isn't especially unusual, and it isn't specific to you. It's a physical response to a situation your system is reading as high-stakes.
That's why trying to eliminate it completely tends to be a losing battle. But learning to perform with it, practicing in a state that resembles it, expecting it when it comes, not giving it the power to decide how the rest of the audition goes, is what finally allows musicians to show up fully under pressure.
If you've been trying to sort this out alone and the shaking still runs the show, that's usually where performance coaching helps. This is the kind of thing I dig into with the musicians I work with — not making the shaking disappear, but learning to perform anyway.
About
I'm Gökçe Kutsal, a performance coach for professional orchestra musicians and opera singers, with an MA in Voice Pedagogy and over 2,100 hours of coaching and teaching experience. I work with principals, titled positions, and audition candidates across Europe, the UK, North America, and Australia — and I write about performance anxiety, audition preparation, and the craft of practice for musicians who already have the technique and are trying to work out why it doesn't always hold up under pressure.
