Just a moment of pre-practice angst. What do I do to make practicing fun again? Hey, even as I ask the question, my mood is brightening . . .
19 November 2015
The answer to the above question turned out be “have some dinner.”
Probably about 90 minutes practice tonight, broken into two segments by some errands. I’m very tired–as you know from last night’s blog post, I was up too late wrestling with an android phone. No matter. I realized the problem and decided on a very low-key practice routine today.
I have half-sheets of paper for each excerpt on which I make notes: the tempo I can play it at, which shift I need to work on the next time I’m practicing, that sort of thing. Tonight I shuffled up these note papers, and then went through them. The represented excerpt I played just a few times (or once only for the longer ones) with maybe a little ‘refreshing’ of a section or a shift before playing or after, or both.
This practice routine simulates the actual audition (especially if one commits to playing the excerpt before working on anything). Of course, I’m not at tempo on many of these. On other nights, I would have tried to bump up the tempo on a second run-through of each excerpt, but tonight was not the night for that.
I’m feeling mellow. Not overly confident and aggressive, but also at peace and not un-confident. I don’t have a lot of time left to prepare, and I’ll reach whatever level I reach. I need to be steady and constant. I also need to be careful that the twinges in my thumb and forearm (esp. left side) don’t develop into something nasty. So tonight (it’s now 10 pm central) will NOT be a late night like last night.
There. That’s my five (actually six, plus the three sentences I wrote before practicing) minutes.
Tags: audition