I might put in weeks or months preparing for a high-pressure performance. The groundwork is done—I have made the technical and interpretive decisions, drilled the difficult spots, and otherwise planned and prepared every aspect of my playing.
But all of that can fall apart pretty quickly if my head isn’t in the right place. Nerves, stress, and distractions can make one small error snowball into an unfocused, sloppy performance.
One of my favorite tricks to help avoid this is to plan my thinking. As I do the final preparations for my performance, I often pick out two or three things I would like to focus on as I begin each piece or movement. These might be important technical details (“make sure embouchure is stable before playing the first note”), more general advice (“keep breath support strong through the ends of phrases”), or interpretive thoughts (“light and playful”).
I write these two or three things (no more) on a sticky note, and place it at the beginning of the piece or movement. If the reminders seem especially crucial, I might put the sticky note over the first few measures of music, so I can’t start playing until I have physically moved it out of the way.
This small preparation helps ensure that as I begin to play, I’m thinking about the things that are most important to the success of the performance, rather than reacting to distractions.
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When I’m working with new or prospective college music students, one thing that I often hear in their auditions or early lessons is awkward ornamentation. Here are some common pitfalls:
Aggressive grace notes. Notice how grace notes are printed smaller on the page? They aren’t there to call attention to themselves. They are usually adding weight or importance to the following note. Give that note a little extra volume/tenuto/stretch/stress, rather than accenting the grace notes themselves.
Weak trills. Don’t let your breath support sag. Blow through the trill like it’s part of the phrase (because it is). Every note of the trill, no matter how fast it goes by, needs a full, clear, in-tune sound.
Short trills that aren’t short enough. If you don’t have an exit plan for your trill, it’s easy to get stuck in it and be late for the next note. It’s especially a problem for shorter trills, like on a quarter note. To make sure your trills aren’t interrupting the rhythmic pulse, decide exactly how many notes they should have. The shortest version (for trills starting on the lower pitch) is three notes—the starting note, the upper note, and back to the starting note. Five or seven notes (hitting the upper note two or three times) makes it sound more convincingly like a trill, if there’s time. Decide what number makes sense for the style and tempo, and practice it slowly and deliberately with a metronome so you can land on the following note right on time.
Missed accidentals or key signatures. Even within ornaments, key signatures still apply, and accidentals still carry through the measure. Check carefully and mark in any sharps or flats that will help your accuracy.
Uninformed interpretation. Ornamentation is an art, and takes into account musical style, historical context, harmonic context, rhythm and meter, and a lot more. If you possibly can, listen to lots of recordings by professional players and see how they approach the ornaments. Listen for note choices, rhythms, emphasis, and articulation. While you’re still accumulating the knowledge and background you need to make good ornamentation choices on your own, there’s nothing wrong with stealing some ideas from musicians you admire. Also: a surprising number of Baroque composers wrote books on how to play ornaments, so if you’re playing something in that style it may be worth checking to see what the composer themself had in mind! (Quantz‘s chapters on appoggiaturas and “shakes” are a good example for woodwind players.)
Graceful ornaments raise the maturity level of your playing, and audition judges notice. Don’t wing it!
Beautiful tone is a nice goal, but it’s subjective, and it’s inextricable from less-sexy pursuits like consistent tone, solid intonation, and reliable response. Let’s expand your focus to your overall tone production and make sure you do lots of listening to the great players. Then you’ll be equipped to play beautiful ideas, not just beautiful notes. Read More “Priorities and patience”
It’s easy to think of articulation markings as being black and white (and not just literally). But sometimes the instructions aren’t completely clear.
For example, I think most people would see this marking…
…and understand it to mean that the D gets some extra length, perhaps so much that there’s no silence between the D and the following C. And there’s an implication that the other notes shouldn’t be that way, so perhaps they should have a bit more space by comparison.
But how about this? (I ran into this marking in a piece I am working on this week, by an experienced composer.)
The slur seems to preclude any space between the notes, so how does the tenuto work? You can’t reduce the space if it’s already zero, right?
I think most experienced musicians would say that in this case the tenuto gets some other kind of stress, like a little extra volume, or a slight stretching of the beat, or maybe more intensity in the vibrato. But those are substantially different from the first interpretation. And if I do interpret the tenuto as some kind of stress, how is it different from, say, this:
To interpret the markings, you have to take them in context. Musical notation is an expressive language, not a set of precise instructions for note-playing robots.
And sometimes the markings are bad. There might simply be mistakes, or maybe the composer or editor isn’t entirely familiar with how wind players interpret articulations. How about this one?
Wind players tend to think in terms of slurred or not slurred, and map this directly to a technique. When the slurs are doubled up like this, it doesn’t quite compute—I’m already slurring, I can’t make it any more slurred.
So often the go-to explanation is that the larger slur is some kind of phrase marking, to show that those notes belong together, and the smaller one is an actual slur. Or, I guess, maybe another smaller phrase marking? And why do I need a phrase marking anyway—shouldn’t I already be playing phrases? And, if I decide to take out the smaller slur, then does the larger one still remain a “phrase marking,” or does it transform back into a slur?
Here are some things I try to keep in mind as I try to interpret articulation markings:
If the composer put it on the page, she or he wants to hear it. How can I make the marking audible? What is the composer’s likely intention?
Why did the composer pick that particular marking? If there is ambiguity, is it intentional, or at least knowing?
Do similar markings appear elsewhere in the piece, or even in the composer’s other works? Does that shed any light? For example, if the composer uses both tenuto marks under slurs and accents under slurs, the composer probably wants them to sound different from each other.
Is there a tradition surrounding this piece? Sometimes frequently-performed pieces begin to develop a sort of standard practice for how certain markings are interpreted. Sometimes these are reasonably reliable, such as if a recording was made with the composer’s input, but sometimes they are just popular guesses. If you have a better guess, you can use it, but it would be wise at least to know what the tradition suggests.
We are used to thinking of music itself as an expressive thing, that hopefully causes our audience to respond in some way. But the art of music notation is also expressive—the composer/editor/copyist is trying to get some kind of response from the musician. (Which in turn gets the response from the audience.)
If you have been reading articulations like a robot—or ignoring them—return to the score again and listen to what the composer is telling you.
I have a recurring teaching challenge with my saxophone students who are tackling the altissimo register for the first time. They play a passage, and when they get to the altissimo note, if it doesn’t respond perfectly, they immediately stop playing. When I ask why, they look puzzled. “The note didn’t come out.”
“Well, what did come out?” I might ask.
More puzzlement. Sometimes I have to prompt them to play it again, and remind them to play it long enough to really hear it.
“A weird honk,” they might finally conclude. Or “a terrible squeak.”
“That’s a note,” I point out. It might be too low (honk) or too high (squeak). But it has a pitch, right? It isn’t the note we wanted, but it was something. And understanding what something it is helps us know what to try next. If it was a honk, the instrument responded at a too-low partial, and if it was a squeak, it responded at a too-high partial. There’s work to do to fix it, but we’re much farther along than we were the diagnosis was only as specific as “failure.”
This approach is helpful with a variety of woodwind-playing problems. Don’t bail and declare failure at the first appearance of a problem. Try leaning into it. What does the problem really sound like? Can you make the problem happen again, on purpose? If you change something about your approach, does the sound change (even if it just changes to a different problem)? All of this information is potentially useful in finding a reliable, repeatable solution.
Additionally, this approach encourages an attitude of curiosity and exploration, rather than self-judgment. That’s a much more fun and productive way to practice. It lets you finish your practice session eager to try again tomorrow, rather than dreading more failure.
Run toward your problem spots, not away from them, and see what they can teach you.
Many musicians are eager to tell you what equipment they use. They list their equipment on their websites, in the signature lines of their forum postings, and so on. I don’t.
I’m rarely impressed with what I see on fellow woodwind players’ lists. Ownership of impressive equipment (assuming the gear is, in fact, paid for?) does not make a fine player. Ownership of unimpressive equipment seems, well, like it’s not worth boasting about.
Some musicians seem to see their equipment listing as a service to the musical community, as though others will benefit from knowing what instruments they play. Buying instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, and so forth just because another player uses them—even a truly fine player—is much like buying the same shoes your favorite basketball player wears. No doubt they are fine shoes, but they might not suit your feet, your ability level, your playing surface, or your personal sense of style. Equipment listings are especially hazardous to younger beginners, who may be easily convinced that owning certain equipment will solve their problems, or who may ill-advisedly buy equipment that isn’t a good fit for them. Read More “Why I don’t list my equipment”
I hear auditions on a pretty frequent basis: my college students audition for placement in university ensembles, prospective students audition for admissions and scholarships, high school musicians audition for the honor band the university hosts. It is pretty routine for me, but clearly sometimes extremely stressful for them.
I thought it might be helpful to some auditioning students to have some idea what is going on in my mind while I am listening to auditions. I expect my thoughts are reasonably typical of someone who hears these kinds of auditions regularly. Bear in mind of course that I’m not talking about extreme high-pressure situations like auditions for full-time positions in major orchestras, or even for admissions to a big brand-name university/conservatory; I’m generally hearing students within a range of ability and preparation levels.
Firstly, I am more or less a regular guy and not looking for nit-picky reasons to deny you your goal. Some students seem to be overly stressed about tiny matters of protocol: will he be mad if I knock on the door? Will he be mad if I DON’T knock on the door? Just be your best, most professional self, and exercise a little common sense. Read More “Student auditions”
