By continuing in this series I hope to give you alternate views of how to prepare for an audition, whether for a chair placement or an All State tryout.
Rule #3. Stop practicing your audition material and start learning it!
• To most students, practicing means running through it once a day. Wrong!
Practicing consistently the same way every day creates boredom. Boredom generates lack of concentration. Lack of concentration wastes valuable practice time and helps to ingrain mistakes and create phobias when learning the music. To get the most out of your practice time, get in the habit of hitting the music a couple times a day for short periods. Two fifteen minute sessions improve your concentration and endurance much more than one 30 minute session. Fifteen minutes before school or in the band room before class and an equal amount of time in the afternoon at home in the evening will reflect in a quicker absorption of the material as well as strengthening your lips for any additional practice you might choose to add.
• Most students watch the clock to make sure they have put in enough time. Wrong!
Practicing by the clock is a fine way to make you obligated to your practice routine rather than looking forward to it. Instead of “punching in and punching out” every day, challenge yourself to accomplish short segments of your material. It is much more productive to isolate one measure and spend fifteen minutes learning that one measure than trying to read through all of the material listed for the audition at one time. One measure each day will put you way ahead of your usual routine of play through all the material. It would not be uncommon to spend even a couple days on the more difficult material. Remember as you practice your audition material, you are not practicing it just to get through it. You are practicing it to be able to play it perfectly- every time.
• Most students begin with the first exercise and work to the end. Wrong!
When listening to students at auditions, it is obvious who has fallen into this trap. As they begin their audition, their confidence is readily apparent. Then as the difficulty increases, their confidence tends to decrease. When students are asked to audition for whatever position, the auditioners always start with the easy stuff so that the students can feel at ease as they begin. Every student is expected to play the easy material. It is when the “black notes on the page” come up that the auditioner actually begins to listen to the player. The “shower of spit” as we like to describe the fast and difficult passages is where the weak players begin to fall by the way side and the more proficient players excel. Don’t pat yourself on the back because you can actually play a C major scale for everyone in the building can do that. Where you can start gaining points is in the difficult passages. Alternate your practicing by starting at different sections of the material and by all means, have the most difficult passages completely down, every time.
• Most students practice exactly what is on the page. Wrong!
This statement may confuse some of you for practicing what is on the page seems to be what we are all about. But…if you have a passage that puts you up to high C, why not transpose the same passage into a key one step higher? By increasing the range of your material it will eventually make the high C seem much easier. Students who limit their high notes usually sound the weakest at that point but if you have practiced the passage one step higher, your high C will come out with far less strain and will impress your listeners greatly.
Another trick which will help you prepare is to take the slow passages much slower and the fast passages a little faster than written. You need to push yourself more than the music requires. Slowing down a slow passage will train you to use your air more conservatively and playing faster on rapid passages will improve your valve action so that the correct tempo will seem much easier and more under control.
• Most students are afraid to play their material in front of family and/or friends. True!
Stage fright or nervousness is common among all of us. Some students thrive on the added excitement while others sometime collapse under the pressure. One of the hardest things to do when you are preparing for an audition is to play in front of your friends or family. Most students will fluff this suggestion off saying “I can do it, no problem”. If you are one of these deep thinkers, try it and see if you are as confident as you imagine yourself to be. Playing in front of people you know is as close as you will come to playing in front of a judge or auditioner. This added pressure is something everyone needs to cope with and the best time to cope with it is before your audition not during it.
• Most students wait until the last week to polish the finer points of their material. Wrong!
Too many students wait until the last minute to finish their preparation for an audition. The easiest way to correct this situation is to move the date of the audition up two weeks on your calendar and be prepared that much in advance. If you are worried about “peaking too early” forget it. You can always lay off the day before the audition to give yourself a little edge. We all have good intentions when it comes to deadlines but life is not always fair and the last few days you reserved for added practicing might be interrupted by a family trip, a cold sore or any other of one-hundred other reasons you may fall short of your mark.
• Most students practice all of the material every day. Wrong!
Now we are back to the boredom issue. Concentrate on one segment of your material for a couple days and practice it until you can play that section perfectly, every time.
• Most students never think about the eventual audition until they are walking into the room to perform. Wrong!
This is a very helpful hint when you are practicing. I will give Philip Farkas the due credit for this idea. Mr. Farkas has been quoted as making this analogy. “When practicing at home or in the band room, picture yourself on stage at a grand music hall with hundreds of people in attendance”. “And when you are in a grand concert hall with hundreds of people listening to you perform, picture yourself in your band room practicing all alone”. In other words, place more importance on your practicing and less pressure on yourself when performing. When practicing your audition material, begin each session by entering the room, visualizing the auditioner at his/her desk and convince yourself that you are actually auditioning at that time. That means no stopping and no “do-overs”. That means playing as if this was the real thing. Everyone needs to be more realistic when preparing for an audition.
• Most students are content if they are able to play their audition material without a mistake. Wrong!
It has been said of Herbert L. Clarke that he would not perform a solo in public unless he was able to play it perfectly 100 times…..in a row. Hello. If we can get through a piece without a mistake, we are content. That’s why Herbert L. Clarke was Herbert L. Clarke and we aren’t
In my next post I will give you specific examples of how to practice your tryout material so that your next chair will be at the top end of the section.
