OhMyGawsh!! I Have An Audition Tomorrow!!

False alarm, I don't, but when most people do, this is probably what goes through most peoples' heads (does this sound like you?):

The fact that you have practiced your scales and your solo peice like crazy and you know you know everything you need to know, but are afraid that you will mess up anyway in front of the judges.

The fact that you only get one opportunity to get into a particular ensemble, and if you mess up, the judges won't give you a second chance, NO EXCEPTIONS.

This is quite a common problem when auditions just pop right out of a corner.

About a month ago, I was participating in the North Carolina Eastern Regional Orchestra. You have to audition to get in, and I remember just feeling all this pressure coming at me; this was the first time I have auditioned for this type of orchestra! You do not know how happy I was when I found out I got in! 

During our clinic, our conductor, Jim Waddelow, was talking to us about things that get in the way of having the perfect audition! I can't believe I still remember these, but I found it so helpful that I had to blog about it!

1. Wash your hands in alcohol: Not so much alcohol that a person can smell it from 10 miles. Washing your hands in alcohol (the type you buy at the pharmacy to clean wounds) will help improve your performance because if you get sweaty hands, the alcohol will keep your hands completely dry! 

2. Excercise the day before: If your heart rate skyrocks hours (or maybe even minutes) before your audition, then I recommend you do this! Go running! Go swimming! Take an aerobics class! Cycle around your neighborhood! Do something that will make you tired! If you excercise the day before, this makes it so your normal heart rate is the one that you had while and after you were excercising, it takes away some of that unnecessary energy for the audition! I hope that made sense!

3. Eat A Banana: He had a good reason on why this helps if you eat a banana the morning before an audition. I wish I remembered!

I hope this helped!!! 

"Don't blend in, STAND OUT!" -anonymous

Inspiring quote, but it doesn't mean standing out is always the way to go, especially when it comes to blending your sound into ensembles.

Most musicians know that if you play an instrument in any type of ensemble is to make it as if the ensemble is just a couple, or maybe even one instrument playing. This is what I call blending in (refer to the quote). Being able to achieve this can turn out to be quite a struggle for musicians. I struggle with blending in all the time!

The reason decided to make this blog post was because I have been thinking about a solution to this common struggle for quite a while. Then, all these ideas came to me! Just like that! I had to write them down before I forgot them! These ideas help me, but let me remind you, I have quite a crazy mind when it comes to giving advice!

1. Observe: Of course this is what the majority of the musician do when the recieve any new peice of music. However, if you struggle with blending in, then you are probably just staring at the notes. Not to get you wrong, you're doing the right thing if you are looking at the notes before having to sight-read a new peice! However, you are missing other important parts of the peice that make it an ensemble peice! For example, the dynamics of a peice! If you play a note with a forte dynamic while the peice says to play with a piano dynamic, this is when standing out isn't cool! I have seen this happen all the time, it happens to me! 

There is a reason that the composer that wrote your ensemble music placed that certain dynamic in that certain measure! It is our job as musicians to express the feelings that the composer was feeling while writing that peice of music! It is our job as musicians to learn to express those feelings that the composer was feeling to an audience! If the peice tells you to play forte, maybe the composer was feeling angry! However, if you play the indicated forte dynamic as piano, then you are not doing a good job at expressing the composer's feelings that were felt in the work!

Also, don't just observe what is going on in the sheet music, observe what the players of a higher chair are doing! Notice what the principal player is doing, or maybe what the concertmaster is doing! For if you blend in, everyone will follow suit, and now everyone sounds as one!

2. Ask for Help: The more you ask for help, the better a musician you will become! There is a reason you take private lessons! When it comes to blending into an ensemble, some people are afraid to ask for help because they are afraid that they are asking a stupid question! There are no such things as stupid questions! Ask away, because no one is judging you, for they know you are trying to fix up your mistakes to makes a classical work transform into solid perfection! Good questions to ask would be:

"What dynamic are you playing this part in?"

or

"How fast are you playing this part?"

3. Listen to others: Listen to music made by renown ensembles. Watch some quartet performances on Youtube! Buy some classical music off of Itunes! Buy some cd recordings of ensembles! Observe how their parts all seem to blend into one! You will learn from this to become a better player in an ensemble by becoming inspired by these musicians!

(Whoa! I've never seen a viola like that before!) 

Not only that, if you have friends that play in ensembles, ask when their next concert is so you can go watch them play! Last week, I went to go watch my friend play for her ensembles, and I loved the way they took blending in very seriously; the ensemble(s) sounded great! Just watching my friend play drives me to become a better musician! 

I hope my advice helped! Wow, pretty good first serious blog post!