I try to go to this bar for its open mic every Monday to do solo guitar & singing performances. Generally speaking I'm a little nervous when I go there, as I'm pushing myself to play challenging guitar parts. The goal for me is to become as good on stage as I already am, if I were sitting at home in my own room... so I often end up biting off more than I can chew. Such a strategy may be at the expense of the crowd if I hit the odd bum note.

For this reason, my ego disappears to some extent when I go to this bar. I'm a little more tolerant of people, etc. And all this is fine, until girls are brought into the equation. As I'm new to the stage presence, I automatically account for worst case scenario, and feel as if there's something I've forgotten. It nearly always goes good anyway, but it's in anticipation of it going bad that I become nervous and this prevents me from acting cocky.

It's actually a bar/hostel, so it's a good place to meet people. I often end up chatting to people before hand, including girls, who I may ordinarily be flirting with. The thing is, after singing on stage, a girl may see you differently, whether for good or for bad. It's not as simple as "oh he'd balls to go up there" and that that earns you brownie points. Sure they'll still be nice to me after I come down off stage even if they viewed me as "the guy with the shaky voice who had the abrupt timng mistake during the 2nd verse", they just won't shag me.

There was one good example a few weeks ago, when I was having a drink while waiting to go up and chatting with a few people, this girl caught my eye a few seats away. I could tell she found me peculiar as she waved. I gave some sort of facial gesture in return. Just at this point in time, I began to badly need to take a shit. Shortly later she came over and said

Her "Hi, do you mind if I sit here, you seem interesting?" which was a boost to my self image
Me "Yeah..." blah blah blah
Her "So you seem like... ah you seem like.. like" She was struggling a bit. And she was a bit drunk too.
Me "Take your time" which probably sounded sarcastic. I could of helped her out!
Her "yeah, I just said I'd say hello"
Me "I'm Patrick" hand shake
Her "I'm...."
Me "Are you singing tonight?" didn't even know if I wanted the convo to go towards the fact I'd be going up.
Her "no no, I'm a terrible at singing" Some friend of hers on her other side joining in saying "yeah, she's at singing"
Me "well few get to have good looks and a good voice"
Her: some more talking I think about where she was from and how she moved to England from Poland 8 yrs ago
Me "so you've a messed up accent?"
Her "So what is it? I come over here to talk to you and now you give me attitude?"
Me "Relax, I was just trying to be funny, which obviously I'm not very good at"
Her laughs.

She then later burped at some point.

Me "Gee, that's not very lady like"
Her "I don't want you to get the idea that I'm some kind of perfect girl, I'm not"

The thought of her watching me, made me more nervous, so I just said I'd just take a back seat with chat and tried to remember that I was there for the music first and foremost. Then some drunk fella came up on her other talking random stuff amongst which he said "you know she is looking fucking beautiful man". I think she then looked over at me. I said "she certainly is" while turning to take a drink. Then there was a little bit a talk between us about stuff that wasn't bringing the conversation anywhere if you know what I mean. She then got out her phone and asked me to show my fb profile. Maybe if I wasn't nervous I'd more inclined to say "facebook is for kids, I'll take your phone number".

Her "So do you want me to add you? would you be interested in meeting up sometime?" didn't seem convinced that I was into her
Me "Sure... I'd love to"
Then while leaning in I said "now are you sure you'd be as interested in me if you weren't drunk"
Her "yeah sure... you seem interesting, you know" This was now the point where I should have escalated things and got her out of there. But of course I felt like I couldn't concentrate on two things at once sort of a thing.
Me "So are you about to go home?" I guess hoping to get her out of there so I could have the place to myself without having to worry while performing, and then meet her later.
Her "No not yet"

She went on to ramble a bit about negative stuff about her own life, like how drinks too much and has difficulty sleeping. I decided to stop her and while putting my hand on her said "look, let's try focus on the positive tonight". What she was talking about seemed to upset her. There was then some dead air space and she left. I took that shit(thanks bit of God), and returned to my seat. A while later her and her friend passed by. I looked over my should as she was passing to be ready to engage. She then put her hand on me while giving a slight squeeze saying "I'll see you".

Ending up getting on to her on fb just in case, but long story short - as you'd have guessed - nothing happened. So I'm just putting my thoughts out there hoping there might be some light shed on them. I'm not actually even sure what I'm asking because for time being, I don't think there's a solution to the problem, but at least it's a minor problem.

Your frame is very weak and you come across as insecure and needy of validation.

Mistake #1: Believing you need to earn a girl's respect by performing on stage. Being on stage is a good way to get girls to open you, but you cannot convert it to lays if you are doing it to earn 'brownie points'. The girl needs to earn your affection, remember? You don't need to earn hers.

Mistake #2: Not escalating when a girl is clearly into you.

Mistake #3: Talking about random boring bullshit instead of flirting.

Mistake #4: Repeatedly negging a girl who showed massive interest in you and was nothing but nice to you. Save negging for bitches. Be nice to the nice girls, but don't forget to be sexual too.

Mistake #5: Needing reassurance that she really likes you. You shouldn't care at all if a girl likes you or not. Just assume all girls want you. This is the mindset of the most attractive men. You'll never get laid if you need a girl to explicitly and very directly spell out that she likes you before feeling confident enough to make a move.

Mistake #6: Failing to lead the interaction. You were just reacting to the girl and not taking action to move things forward. You should take her hand, lead her somewhere else, make out, lead her back to yours.

And the Facebook / Number fail you already mentioned.

Thank you for your feedback But by not trying to earn brownie points, you're earning brownie points. So same thing. In other words, if she thinks you're cool, you're earned brownie points. But yeah, I get the whole idea of not trying to hardBut you see this is the mistake I couldn't correct, due to the original reason for the thread.

You're right though. On hindsight, I could have decided to forget about my performance, and tried to get her out of there.

Usually it's case of reminding yourself not to over-invest in one particular girl, and to instead focus on the original task at hand. And because I was nervous, it suited me to think like that, but in this case since there was a very high chance of getting laid with her, I could have scrapped my performance instead. Ironic in a way!

Anyway, I'm slowly but surely getting better with the stage presence. It's a small problem in the greater sense, and will only last for another year or so.

Once you've sung and played an instrument on stage, then delivering a speech is very easy in comparison.