Saturday, November 30, 2013
Friday, November 15, 2013
Remembering to Sing
The last few months I've been spending a rather extensive amount of time working on solos and excerpts for upcoming DMA auditions. Most of the works (all but 1 excerpt to be exact) are from principal parts, directed toward principal players. This has been mildly problematic for me over the last few weeks considering the fact that I am primarily a low horn specialist. Yes, we all have to be able to play the full range of the instrument, and yes, I do still need to be able to play all of the excerpts, but some players are built to be principal players full time whereas I most definitely am not. I am happy to play Don Quixote or Shostakovich 5 all day, every day with no complaints whatsoever. To give a running comparison, some players are meant to be sprinters (high hornists) and others are meant to run marathons (low hornists). Sprinters still have to work on their endurance and marathoners have to run sprints to maintain balance in their training. However, both types of runners still manage to maintain their focus on their individual strengths instead of trying to fit into the mold of being something that they are not. I had somehow allowed myself to fall into the trap of being a marathoner who was working on her sprints 100% of the time.
It was actually a colleague of mine who pointed this out to me after I had broached the subject of the frustration that has been building since starting my full-time work on my audition music. Remembering where your strengths lie is such a simple idea and I had allowed my focus and drive to blind me from it. The need for technical and mechanical perfection had completely over-ridden the ability to hear and cultivate a beautiful, characteristic, horn sound. Basically, I had forgotten how to sing.
I mean this in both the literal sense of using my voice to sing as well as the figurative voice that we use to sing through our instruments. As I drove home after the aforementioned conversation, I realized that I could not remember the last time that I sang along with the radio at the top of my lungs. My primary source of inspiration for playing a beautiful melody is opera, especially arias in the bel canto style. While I am certainly not an opera singer myself, I can belt out show tunes with the best of them. I used to always be singing along with Beauty and the Beast, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, or Ragtime, to name a few. I started singing along with Phantom and was quickly reminded of just how much singing can help your breath support, phrasing, style, vibrato, and so on. It felt fantastic and it was extremely liberating to rediscover this part of my voice.
The focus on principal solos and excerpts had consumed my practice sessions to the point where I would literally play nothing else outside of my warm-up routine. It was a much needed reminder that the ultimate reason why we play this instrument is the beautiful sound, not the technical aspects of performance. I needed to rediscover the sound that I loved. It was time to slow down on the long tone exercises and use them to perfect my tone rather than as a launch pad to more technical exercises. Milk the Arnold Jacob "Beautiful Music" exercise for all that it is worth (many thanks, my tuba playing friends). Play through some of the big movie themes (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek - new one, Star Trek: First Contact, Jurassic Park, etc.). I had a particularly splendid time reading through the Rochut trombone Melodious Etudes books as well as the Shoemaker Legato Etudes based on Concone's Vocalises and the back section of the Arban's book for trumpet. It was an extremely pleasant way to remember why I love to play in the first play. Air was moving, my sound was returning, and both physical and mental stiffness finally relaxed.
The ultimate lesson that I received from all of this was to remember that there is always time to remember why you play. No matter how soon or how far away an audition may be, you cannot forget to work on your sound. The required music will always work as long as you love what you do. Stiffness, anger, and frustration are some of the biggest barriers that you can face on the road to an audition and you have the power to do something about them. Trust yourself. Trust your horn. Trust your heart. There is always the time to play something simply for the sake of making music.
It was actually a colleague of mine who pointed this out to me after I had broached the subject of the frustration that has been building since starting my full-time work on my audition music. Remembering where your strengths lie is such a simple idea and I had allowed my focus and drive to blind me from it. The need for technical and mechanical perfection had completely over-ridden the ability to hear and cultivate a beautiful, characteristic, horn sound. Basically, I had forgotten how to sing.
I mean this in both the literal sense of using my voice to sing as well as the figurative voice that we use to sing through our instruments. As I drove home after the aforementioned conversation, I realized that I could not remember the last time that I sang along with the radio at the top of my lungs. My primary source of inspiration for playing a beautiful melody is opera, especially arias in the bel canto style. While I am certainly not an opera singer myself, I can belt out show tunes with the best of them. I used to always be singing along with Beauty and the Beast, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, or Ragtime, to name a few. I started singing along with Phantom and was quickly reminded of just how much singing can help your breath support, phrasing, style, vibrato, and so on. It felt fantastic and it was extremely liberating to rediscover this part of my voice.
The focus on principal solos and excerpts had consumed my practice sessions to the point where I would literally play nothing else outside of my warm-up routine. It was a much needed reminder that the ultimate reason why we play this instrument is the beautiful sound, not the technical aspects of performance. I needed to rediscover the sound that I loved. It was time to slow down on the long tone exercises and use them to perfect my tone rather than as a launch pad to more technical exercises. Milk the Arnold Jacob "Beautiful Music" exercise for all that it is worth (many thanks, my tuba playing friends). Play through some of the big movie themes (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek - new one, Star Trek: First Contact, Jurassic Park, etc.). I had a particularly splendid time reading through the Rochut trombone Melodious Etudes books as well as the Shoemaker Legato Etudes based on Concone's Vocalises and the back section of the Arban's book for trumpet. It was an extremely pleasant way to remember why I love to play in the first play. Air was moving, my sound was returning, and both physical and mental stiffness finally relaxed.
The ultimate lesson that I received from all of this was to remember that there is always time to remember why you play. No matter how soon or how far away an audition may be, you cannot forget to work on your sound. The required music will always work as long as you love what you do. Stiffness, anger, and frustration are some of the biggest barriers that you can face on the road to an audition and you have the power to do something about them. Trust yourself. Trust your horn. Trust your heart. There is always the time to play something simply for the sake of making music.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Transposition
When you get a part for horn in E, and someone penciled in the wrong transposition through the entire piece...
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