You can’t write a blog for your readers. Firstly, I don’t have any regular readers except (I believe) my mother. Secondly, whenever I ask a simple question, like, are there enough cat pictures in my blog, I get really different answers. (Ranging from: lady, you are crazy and need to find a new hobby to ALL CAT ALL THE TIME).

But I’ve had some questions over the years about professional things like auditions and practicing the violin, and I thought I’d ramble about practicing a little bit today.

While I was preparing for the Symphony audition the other month, Chris wandered into the room and commented on my practicing style—(this is normal for us—we give advice or comments occasionally)—that it sounded like I was just playing and that I wasn’t really working on something in particular. Really that’s the big issue I have: I am a terrible practicer.

I never really learned how. I’m lucky enough that I pick things up fairly well fairly quickly, and none of my teachers growing up ever taught me how to practice properly (I’m not necessarily blaming them as possibly I simply ignored their advice), and then in college probably none of my teachers realized I didn’t really know HOW to practice. Plus, (and this is the truth) I generally dislike practicing. Like most of my students, I greatly enjoy PLAYING THE VIOLIN and greatly dislike the arduous yet necessary task of PRACTICING THE VIOLIN.

These are two vastly different things, and I do my best to try to help my students learn the difference. Practicing is something that should not be enjoyable to listen to. I try to teach my students that it’s okay to play through their piece once, but then they need to figure out what went wrong and why (the younger ones I mark this for them). If you’re missing a shift, repeatedly, then you need to isolate the problem, slow it down, break it down, and REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT until you don’t miss that shift. (The famous saying: don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you can’t get it wrong.)

The issue for me comes when I’m approaching the same piece again, for perhaps the 13th year in a row, and I know exactly where the problem areas are…and those problems are always the same problems. Thinking back (on the Nutcracker Overture) I didn’t spend enough time isolating the problems, and really working them, and I learned something really fundamental about arm and elbow motion and angles in the week leading up to the audition…I had never consciously thought about the movement of my left elbow as I shifted, and it was brought to my attention, and I didn’t have enough time to really work it out.

It’s hard, as an adult who is often performing the same pieces again, to approach a piece with new eyes. Often you see the piece with tired eyes, and simply repeat the same mistakes. My students complain that they are tired of a piece after a few weeks or months, and while I often try to respect that feeling, I also try to show them WHY we are still working on the piece, and how they haven’t mastered what they need to master before moving forward. And then if they are a Suzuki student, it’s not as if they won’t be reviewing that piece for a long time anyway!

(I know this isn’t a cohesive post about practicing. I just wanted to give some thoughts about it. )

The other challenge is making the time for practicing. I tell my students that even ten minutes every day is a better thing that a few hours once a week. Yet when push comes to shove, I will cram my practicing, or skip it entirely, or “warm up” for a rehearsal by playing a scale with a student…completely ignoring all the hopefully good advice I am giving my students. 

I was joking with a friend the other day that I was trying to become more zen-like in my approach to life, and “live in the moment” more and be more conscious, and all that. Now, I was joking…mainly…but it occurred to me just now (in the moment!) that that is probably the best way to practice. I know I say a lot of things and then forget, but I shall try to remember this the next time I am preparing for an audition: to practice consciously and mindfully, and to dedicate as much brain power as possible to my work at the time. 

Thoughts? I hate writing a post and trying to sound like an expert. I’m definitely not. I play well, and I practice badly. I would play better if I practiced better, that’s for sure.

I should follow up writing this blog post with a good violin practice session but I’ll probably just end up wasting time reading stuff until it’s time for work. Oh well.

I’ve been practicing more (violin) than usual lately.  I wasn’t going to tell you why, because it’s one of those things that most musicians don’t feel comfortable sharing publicly.  But who cares.  I’m taking the St Louis Symphony audition next month.  I’ve taken lots of orchestra auditions in my life, and this is another one.  It just happens to be down the street.  There you go.

The other day I was playing the opening of the Brahms Violin Concerto and it just felt better than it used to.  I felt STRONG and I felt as if I was playing exactly what I wanted to and was more engaged and focused than I remembered being in the past.  I thought, huh, maybe lifting weights has helped me get stronger, especially from my back and shoulders.  I feel like I’m playing really well, possibly better than ever.  And then I thought, I guess I’ll see if that’s true at the audition in February.

In other words: my thought was that the only opinion on my violin playing that mattered was the opinion of some committee for about five minutes on a random day (click here to read a previous blog post about “orchestra auditions“).  It hit me how awful that is.  I should be able to have a valid opinion of my own playing.  It shouldn’t be based on the last audition I lost or a negative comment I received.  It probably shouldn’t be based on a positive comment someone gave me either.  I mean, I’m 34 years old, I teach people to play the violin, I have very strong opinions on THEIR playing.  I should be able to have an opinion on my own.

It’s not that I never think, oh that sounded good.  But when I think that, I usually try to squash that feeling.  I don’t want to get a big head, or overconfident, or heaven forbid, feel good about my violin playing, right? 😉  That’s not what we were taught in conservatory!

Okay, so here’s where I honestly think I stand, right now.  I feel like I’m playing really well.  I feel strong, my shoulder feels good, my wrists feel good (those are injury prone areas for me) and I feel like I’m doing a great job making the violin do what I want (I have specific things but I’m not going to get TOO technical!).  So all that should count for something, right?  My opinion should matter. 

And I should be able to say, I’m taking the St Louis Symphony Audition in February, and I’ve been working on the list and will continue to do so for the next month.  So what if you know that?  You’re not going to stop reading my blog if I lose, are you?  I don’t think I have any friends who will stop being my friend if I lose, either, so who cares?

Yet I’m still really nervous about publishing this post.  I mean, I’ll care if I lose.  But that’s regardless of whether I blog about it, right?

Like, not practicing the violin regularly, then practicing again regularly, and I suppose not building to that (though I feel I have), and invariably your damn right shoulder starts tingling, and you sort of stretch it out, but not really, because you are lousy at remembering to stretch.  And then a couple days later your right wrist hurts.  Not tingling, but the sort of aching, mildly nauseating pains as you attempt to play spiccato.  And you feel like you really are doing a lot of things right.  You’re standing up straight when you play, you’re working out so your arm and shoulder muscles are strong, your back could not be stronger than it is.  Everything should be going in your favor.

And of course it’s not.  Because your right wrist is always going to conspire against you and hold you back.  And you don’t know what to do, other than cry (a little, only a little bit), step away from the violin, and just try to relax.  Always it’s the right wrist, ever since you first starting having problems, at the age of 12.

This of course the day after you thought, damn, I just might be in the best shape of my life.

That’s what you get for being proud.

Insanity:  expecting that I can play the violin at some sort of high level without my body conspiring against me. 

Only a little bit of crying, right?  That’s okay, isn’t it? 

My trainer told me today that he was on facebook and noticed how all of my recent posts were about cookies.  This is true.  I figured it was time for a non-cookie post!

I’ve gotten some questions about my advice for how to prepare for orchestra auditions.  Honestly, I’m hardly an expert on this, as I’ve only ever won one full time audition and a handful of regional auditions, but hey, it’s the internet!  Anyone can write anything and people will believe it.

Just kidding.

Oh, is this supposed to be a serious post?  (Fine, I’ll give it a whirl.  Also make sure you’ve read “Orchestral Auditions for Non-Musicians.“)

Let’s assume you’ve been practicing the violin since you were a young child, and you have spent several years in college really perfecting your craft. (Otherwise I really can’t help you, sorry.) You’ve decided it’s time to enter the “real world” and so you are entering the horrific world of orchestra auditions.  Or maybe you’re still in school but you are auditioning for a part time job in a regional orchestra (that you just might keep for the next 20 years!).

So you get the list of excerpts to prepare.  You may already know some of them.  You may not.  I would allow 1 to 3 months to prepare.  I like to make a CD of a variety of recordings to listen to in the car (former Suzuki child, plus, my use of CDs definitely shows my age.)

What will the committee be looking/listening for?  Rhythm, intonation, rhythm, and rhythm.  At least that’s what my teacher in school told me.  I’ve been told conflicting information, such as intonation, intonation, rhythm, intonation.  I think you get the point though.  Without rhythm (use a metronome, marry it, make it your best friend) and intonation (ditto with a tuner or drone) you don’t have a chance.   A recording device is helpful as well, so you can really hear yourself.

Next step:  make it interesting.  Especially for violinists, anyone can play with perfect intonation and rhythm.  (Do I actually believe that?  No, but that’s what people say…and maybe anyone can for 30 seconds occasionally).  I’ve heard the phrase “pleasing tone” being bandied about.  That means an inoffensive tone, with a nice (not too fast, not to slow) vibrato to go with it.

Other advice I’ve been given over the years:  Follow the printed dynamics.  Play accents when they are marked and only when they are marked.  Do the tempo markings.  Know what else is happening in the orchestra while you are playing alone, but never play too soft or too loud (even though you likely WOULD in the section.)  In fact, don’t play much like you would in the section at all.  Play like you would fit into any section.  Don’t play too loud.  Make sure to play loud enough.  Use contrast.  Don’t worry about contrast too much and just focus on intonation and rhythm.  Don’t sound like you are just focusing on intonation and rhythm.  Anybody can play perfectly in tune.  If you play perfectly in tune you will be the only one.  No one plays a perfect audition.  We’ve never hired somebody who played a perfect audition.  No one played perfectly enough to get hired.

I kid you not.  That paragraph is full of actual advice I’ve been given by professionals.  In a nutshell…work your butt off, practice as much as you can, definitely work with a metronome and tuner and trust your ears, but ultimately, the committee is crazy and often has no real idea of what they want.  You can do your best, and it might never be good enough.  Or one day you’ll get lucky, win a job, and then within a period of a few years, will forget how hard it was and how much of that was good luck and the audition committee smiling upon you, and assume that you are good enough for any orchestra and that people who don’t have orchestra jobs are lesser musicians.  Or you’ll spend decades complaining about how hard your orchestra job is…to people that work three times harder for a third of the money doing the same thing you do but in crappier orchestras.

But this is meant to be a positive and inspirational post, so I won’t get into the bitterness of orchestral musicians, or musicians, or non-orchestral musicians (or my own bitterness)  Because nothing, nothing beats playing a Mahler symphony.  Nothing!

Is this post helpful?  Probably not.  Remember.  Practice, practice, practice.  If you are sleeping, somebody else is practicing.

One of the best things to do to prepare for orchestral auditions is to take orchestral auditions.  The more auditions you take, the more you learn what parts of your preparation are effective and what parts are not.  You’ll also learn how you react to intense pressure and get more accustomed to “performing” in an audition setting, which is completely different than any other setting.  I always think of it this way:  in a concert or recital, people are there to enjoy your performance and be entertained.  In an audition, people are waiting for you to mess up so they can eliminate you and move on to the next candidate.  Or perhaps for you to be so much better than the other candidates that they can hire you.  But either way they are not looking to be entertained, or to enjoy themselves.

I could probably go on for a long time, talking about auditions.  I’ll take questions though, in the comments.  Like I said, I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ve taken my share of auditions, and can certainly offer my unique perspective and advice.

As you know, I do not work regular hours.  I work late afternoons/evenings, I work weekends, I work sporadically. my schedule changes often, but the one constant is (not baseball) generally I can run my errands during the weekday when stores are less busy.  This works well with my aversion to crowds (and aversion to people).

I went to Target yesterday afternoon.  It was PACKED!  I always forget how busy these places are on weekends.  I decided to shop anyway because there were a few things I needed, and it wasn’t as busy as it could have been.  (No panic attacks…).  I ignored the Christmas decorations section.  We are going to decorate after Thanksgiving.  Not before.

While I was there (a trip that ordinarily takes 30 minutes took twice that) I learned that there would be some things coming up that I might need to be putting in quite a lot of practice time for.  I initially freaked out, after all, I’ve got a darned wedding coming up and between that and teaching, how can I adequately prepare?  Then I calmed down and realized I definitely have a spare couple of hours in the day if I organize myself properly, and after all, isn’t that the whole point of everything I’ve been doing my entire life?  If I can’t be ready on short notice to play the violin at a really high level, then I might as well just pack it in.

My mind went to my running.  I’ve never shied away from hard work, but I’ve been putting that hard work into exercising rather than violin over the past few years.  It makes sense:  I see quicker results and constant improvement for only 6 to 7 hours of effort each week.  Versus for violin, I could put in 20 to 25 hours of effort each week and not necessarily see improvement plus just be setting myself up for injury and failure.  Then again, if I can run three half marathons in six weeks, surely I can put a few hours of practice a day in on the violin.  Correlation?  Very little.  Did it convince me to go home and practice?  Yes.

Practicing is a tough business.  I always encourage my students to practice daily though most of them do not.  I always hated to practice growing up, and it was a constant battle between my mother and me.  That’s very common.  Even those of us who love music so much that we do it for a living–that doesn’t mean we like practicing.  It just means we understand the correlation between practicing and being able to perform well.  I suppose some people might like practicing…I just don’t know them very well.  And it’s not that I hate practicing—it’s that there are other things I would rather be doing.  I like being good at the violin, that’s why I do it.

Since graduating from school, practicing for me has been more sporadic.  It depends on what else is going on in my life, what music I am preparing, and what sort of performances and auditions are coming up.  I’d love to be more consistent, say, practicing 2 hours a day throughout my life, but it’s just not possible for me.  I need regular mental and physical breaks from the violin.  (And I consider 2 hours to be not that much practicing, just so you know—in school I tried for 4 hours a day, and that is on the low side for what people do.  Sometimes it was more.)

This is part just a random blog, but part of me trying to put more on the “violin” part of Hannahviolin.  I had a request to write more about my audition experience and the audition process and preparation, and that’s something I’ve been rolling around in my head.  Musician readers:  what would YOU like to read about?  Non-musician readers, feel free to answer that as well 🙂

30 days of Thanksgiving:  I’m thankful I can complain about having to practice in my free time, because it means I have free time.