The Practical Things You Have to do as a Musician
I consistently write about the philosophical ideas about music. I wouldn’t consider them baseless but oftentimes the type of work I conduct requires personal perspective. It is an indigenous practice to pass down knowledge through oral tradition. Specifically When ever I criticize the stringent rules of the classical music world, folks seem to believe that I’m advocating for no structure and promoting that we shouldn’t dedicate time practicing to our craft. F
Don’t put words into my mouth ;)
There’s no need to feel personally attacked… My blog is rooted in dismantling oppressive structures and dichotomies within the music world. Sometimes that means providing challenging ideas rooted in anti-racism, anti-capitalist, and anti colonialist work.
If there is something unclear, I am always open to expand upon what is stated
a note about memorization. I wish this was a part of my auditioning. But it's not yet because my auditioning process has been so new ly form that I kind of have been learning my first steps so to speak. It would be a hypocrite to say that this is a part of my practicing and I actively work on this but I don't however, I do want it to become a part of my practice because I know that it will alleviate a lot of my stress and it will alleviate a lot of my anxiety for performances and auditions. I do think that in the next cycle of me taking lessons for the semester, this will be the thing I'm focusing on. I want to memorize all my music just so I have it under my fingertips and I just want to be able to perform for the sake of performing versus reading off a sheet music. I want my sheet music to just be there for when I need a glance at something or a quick reminder. I don't want to depend on it. Because again, part of being an anxious musician is that you imagined the worst possible scenarios like I've always for whatever reason thought about this. Even though most of my performances are indoors, I feel like one day all my music is going to be blown off my stand and I will be unable to get it because it's so far away and I'm in the middle of a song or whatever. And I need to just keep going. Why is that a scenario in my head I don't know. But it lives rent free there. If I have my music memorize, it won't be a problem. Like maybe I'll mess up a thing or two. But won't be a big deal. So my next feet feat as musician is here. So I don't have much to say on how to memorize these things, but I will in the future. And I will hyperlink this HMM another thing I do to prepare for auditions is on the day of the audition
Day. Make sure your instrument is in working order. I am surprised by the amount of people that I have met that don't know that they need to get their instrument fixed. pretty often. I don't know what standard for most instruments, but I know for flute I feel you should get a tuned up every six months and fixed if anything major happens.
But no more. But you should get it fixed once a year at
least. Whenever I find out about an audition or a performance and I know it's within half a year. I usually like to get mine fixed if I haven't done so. Just make sure it's working and that it's working like butter. Some people will go as far as getting it fixed prior to their audition. However, I would just make sure that you give yourself like a month prior to the audition to get it all tuned up because as many of us know any small changes are facing in our fingers will feel it. our sensitivity to our instrument is so acute that anything could set you off you want to keep your audition as normal as possible. At least in my opinion. So I wouldn't get my flute fix within a month of playing unless I really needed it for whatever reason.
But part of making sure you feel secure in what you're doing as an instrumentalist as a performer is making sure that your instrument is in working order. You want to make sure that the instruments making you feel self conscious because you can't get certain notes are out or the tone isn't right. And it's all because your instrument hasn't been touched or fixed within a decade. Okay, I might be over exaggerating there but you know what I mean?
Over preparation This is something I do at the beginning of the semester or the order when I find out that I have audition or performance I upload all my music or materials into a Google Drive folder. So in the event that I forget my music or whatever that I can pull up my laptop or my phone and go off of that although that's not an ideal situation. It just helps ease my mind knowing that like hey, if my music goes missing, I have a copy of it
that I can either print or see on my phone or my laptop I call this over appropriation because they're like the little things that I don't think a lot of musicians do. Not saying they have to but this is for my anxiety to be calm, or at a state that is manageable. This has made me feel more secure in myself knowing that I do these things. And ultimately that's a matter. Do I advise everybody to do this? No. Like I don't, but I think it will help those folks that have severe performance anxiety. I don't think it is a fixable or a miracle cure. But I do think that these things have helped me over the years and practicing every single one of these made me be able to manage my anxiety a little better. Think also a realization that not everything needs to be perfect has helped me become a better performer. That includes my audition technique, like if not everything goes as planned. That's okay. Because that process allowed me to learn and has allowed me to be better next time am I can't really get mad at myself for getting better than I was before.
Within the audition date something I like to do periodically our breathing exercises oftentimes when we are getting in a performance setting, a lot of physical things are happening to your body that you can't necessarily control. And it's because you're activating your flight or fight response. And you can't really run away from this. So you're fight response is going haywire. So something I like to practice is mindfulness during December. I don't meditate because I just I'm really bad at meditating. I have like a million thoughts per hour. So something I like to do is I guess this could be considered rotative is focusing on my breath and breathing. I kind of just focus on like, how am I really what am I breathing? What does it feel like what is expanding? I also do this technique or I scan for attention throughout my body
I really make sure that I can get myself this because when I open my eyes, I will feel much more present part of performing well and auditioning well is being able to practice presence while you're playing. I think that is the hardest thing to master as an instrumentalist.
