OK, it's confession time. I'm not a professional player and I don't do gigs, but I do play at our local keyboard club and occasionally before small groups. When I play before a (small) audience, I feel consciously quite relaxed, but while I am playing the nerves tend to take over. The only real problem here is that I like to use the expression pedal (probably because I've had organs for years) and the nerves seem to find their way to the foot resting on the expression pedal. The nerves seem to think that the piece of music needs a tremelo effect so my foot starts shaking. The only way I can stop it is to take my foot off the expression pedal.

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone have a solution? For the next meeting of the keyboard club I'm going to practice not using the expression pedal at all unless I can find a solution.

Mike