[mikey_29872]

Hey guys,

First time poster yaaaaaaaaay!

So anyway ... I have a problem when I'm performing songs live. Basically I'll start off playing nice and quiet, and my voice sounds great and everything... but then somehow, I either get excited or nervous, or my ears get tired, or whatever, but I start playing my guitar louder and louder. Very quickly I reach a point where I'm having to belt my voice in order to overpower my guitar, which makes me pitchy and just not have a great tone when I'm singing, in addition to more vocal wear and tear.

Aside from just practicing more and learning to be a better performer... I was wondering if any of you have had this issue and found a way to solve it?

I was thinking about possibly taking a soundhole plug and modifying it somehow, in order to only partially block the sound coming from my acoustic, so its a much quieter instrument, but not totally muted for unamplified playing. But would that be a mistake? Would I get too used to playing guitars like that, and ruin my performance on normal guitars? Would the guitar never sound that great or have other problems? I'm not even sure how to do this, other than using a soldering iron to burn a small hole inside the soundhole plug, effectively leaving me with a slightly reduced-in-size soundhole for the guitar.

Any other advice/tips regarding curbing the volume of my acoustic are welcomed. I use a pretty thick pick but light strings if that helps. I also know I should probably just practice more lol.

EDIT: I should add that this is a problem both for amplified gigs, and non-amplified practice/youtubes. I'm thinking of using the soundhole plug for live performances, so that the "real" acoustic sound doesn't go up into my ears and overpower the monitor mix... but also my problem is playing unamplified in my bedroom, or on camera for youtube videos and stuff.