I avoid singing at all cost partly based on a mortifying experience I had when I was in high school. I was singing on stage with a large choir and the choir director pointed just to me and made me go into the seats to listen. To learn how to sing properly, I guess… Fortunately, it was just a rehearsal, but still that experience messed me up.
Do you have a mortifying experience that has affected your own musical journey?
I once put a mp3 up in the current sounds thread and didn’t get 1 like!
A friend invited me to sing in his band, I came to his apartment, we came up with a tune and he wanted me to improvise straight away. I told him that I couldn’t improvise, it would take me a few hours of practice to sing anything half-decent to it (I wasn’t a good vocalist). He insisted, I sang, it (gasp!) sucked. I think that was the last time I considered singing.
Wouldn’t call in mortifying, but discouraging for sure.
One time when I was younger (middle school aged) I had a solo cello performance during a program through the school I took lessons with. I was one of maybe a dozen people performing in the recital, playing to probably a few dozen people total (parents/teachers/guests). My accompanist was my dad (stand in for my usual classical accompanist who couldn’t play for some reason) who is a jazz pianist. I don’t remember what piece I was performing but it was a classical piece. During the performance my dad was improvising, not playing the accompaniment I was expecting from hours of practicing and listening to the piece.
Now, I was playing from memory so I needed specific cues to play off of. Since he was playing what he felt was better instead of what he was expecting, I lost my place. I couldn’t get back on so we started over. At this point I was so flustered that even the second time I couldn’t remember the piece so I ended up just having to stop and walk off stage without being able to finish.
I am still mortified when I think about this, and I’ve had plenty of embarrassing performance experiences.
…nope, never experienced such a thing…
but i tried for years to vocal coach, since everybody can find his/her very own voice of some kind,
a good friend of mine without getting anywhere with it, only to hear him telling me, after all, a pretty likewise story like urs…
my first live PA was at a very big club night in NYC (for the time, held at The Shelter). set up, sound check all goes perfectly. comes time for my set at the peak hour of the night, when 1,000+ ravers are absolutely monged. press play and . . . nothing. no sound from the PA system. can see the sequencer is going and sound should be coming out but still just silence. they just had the next DJ up start their set – but graciously had me back the next month and went off without a hitch then.
Oh geez, that’s awful. Do you know what happened?
nah, never figured out whether it was me or the guy running the board (my audio setup was . . . primitive at best, to be fair). good times . . .
Goddamn jazz musicians always ruining a perfectly fine piece of music.
My high school was having a talent/music show with open auditions. I’d been jamming this specific “song” out on my MPC and MS2000, and figured I’d give it a shot as my first ever performance.
Lugged everything to school for the audition, got nervous as hell before hand, and instead of staying cool, I decided I needed to have my friend who played drums come up and play while I did my thing. Totally unrehearsed, we never really even jammed together.
Of course it was a bomb, and I got pulled a couple of bars in.
To add insult to injury, as I was pulling my rig offstage, like literally dragging the table off the stage for the next performer, the table I was using buckles and all my gear falls off.
I’m not saying that’s why I don’t perform anything, but it’s not not why I don’t perform.
We would always go back to mates place for jam sessions after being out at club nights. Usually decks set up and sometimes drum machine and sampler making beats. One night when really bad we wrote rap lyrics and recorded a full blown diss track convinced we were going to take over the local scene. I forgot about making it until he pulled out the tape few weeks later with a load of other mates.
Was the most cringe thing ever, we were talking about peoples mums, bitches, getting high and every stereotype you can think of thinking we were great. It was terrible, nothing about it was good and I never touched a mic again
one time my mom showed up to a live jam and I had no idea she was there until I turned around and saw her and I thought I was gonna faint, she kept saying how did you learn to play the drums I never bought you a drum set… it was the first, last, and only time she’d ever seen me play and that was mortifying!
Number 1:
When i was 8 we had a music lesson at school. We were singing in a choir with some older pupils. In the row behind me were some 12 year old girls. While we were singing, out of nowhere, the girl behind me pulled down my sweatpants and they could see my naked ass for a second. Thank god we were standing in rows so only these girls could see me. But it was very freaking embarrassing.
It was so mean because before that the girl who did it talked really nice to me and i really thought she liked me. After that i had to hold my pants for another 20 minutes of choir practice, always expecting another bad thing to happen.
Number 2:
When i was 11 we had a school play and i played a solo piece for piano from Bela Bartok in front of 300 parents and pupils. After two notes i hit a wrong chord which sounded very awful. Not a big deal but the girl that i had a crush on laughed really loud. So loud that the teacher told her to shut up. I started again and got through the piece with no mistakes.
A few days later we watched the video recording of the play with the whole class and when my mistake came on she laughed again quite long.
Sounds funny now but back then i started to think that some girls are evil. 
When I was in my third year of high school, I dragged my 200-watt guitar amp out onto the front porch at 6:45am on the fourth of july and did a super convincing rendition of the Jimi Hendrix star spangled banner. Neighbors came out and clapped. It was epic.
At noon, an 11-year-old girl from down the street showed up unannounced with a news crew who she had called and blown the whole thing out of proportion to. They wanted me to re-enact the thing and I was totally mentally unprepared and was not in a good position to decline as there was a fucking news van parked out in front of my house.
I tried to re-enact the magic and was so nervous I just bombed hard. It was so embarrassing and mortifying and I’m just glad that the tragically awful performance didn’t ultimately make it onto the local news.
Once I was put in charge of providing the soundsystem for a house party. The dance floor totally bombed because the speakers weren’t loud enough and I couldn’t figure out why. The next day I realized the speakers had volume knobs in the back that were only turned halfway up.
Another time I was playing a gig with my band in high school and accidentally threw a drumstick into the audience and it smacked a cheerleader in the head.
You do what you have to do I guess
I wish I had a mortifying experience in music to share. I have billions of those outside of music.
This didn’t happen to me, but I thought I share it. I was playing bass for a person’s music project. This was a very dramatic person. His guitar amp was placed next to a smoke machine. As soon as the band started playing, the smoke machine went on. He looked back and freaked out, got on the mic and told people the set was over because his amp blew up. Me and the drummer had to convince him that it was the smoke machine not his amp. He then got on the mic and apologized to everyone in a self-deprecating fashion.
When I was a lot younger I played a one off pub gig in a band called Ad’s Merciless Girth. We were utter dogshit but we got really, really drunk. It was mortifying in hindsight, but the fact that it never put me off of performing probably says more about my lack of shame than anything else. One of my pals drove a fair distance to see us and left after about two minutes.