Chicago Bass Ensemble

(10 minutes, starting . . . now!)

4 September 2016

Okay, that thing I said in my last post about writing every day? Didn’t do it.

Also didn’t write a second entry that day … got carried away with other things. I wish I could say that I got carried away practicing, but it was other stuff.

Practicing has been going well. Some of the nasty hard shifts in Strauss (Ein Heldenleben), Beethoven (Symphony 5, third movement) are going maybe better than they ever have. The twisty tricky and fast fingerings in Mozart (Symphony 40, fourth movement) are still hit and miss, but the hit:miss ratio his higher than it’s ever been. I’d like to say my confidence is 100%, but it’s not, due to those misses in Mozart and also to the required Bach ‘cello suite movement. While I can play the Bach reasonably well sometimes (and performed it during the summer, but to a crowd of tipsy classmates at my college reunion), sometimes there are parts that completely crash and burn. I’m working to make those fewer and far between, but if I miss one of them during the audition my confidence will be shaken, for sure.

But my sound is strong, and in places where the fingerings aren’t the stuff of contortionists nightmares, articulation is good and clean. I hope I can continue this work … one thing I’ve been meaning to do for some time is work up the audition materials for Cirque du Soleil … once I’m done with this audition, it will be time for that. Would I really run away to join the circus? No. (Unless it pays a whole lot better than I think it does.) But it sure is fun to imagine it.

Lately I’ve taken to writing the name/location of each excerpt on a slip of paper, then tossing the slips of paper on the couch and picking them up randomly, then running through the excerpts in that order. It’s a great exercise to try to be ready for anything: fast gentle passages immediately after raucous loud ones, etc. Keeps me on my toes. I recommend it.

I’m also finding that pausing between repetitions is helping me work things out faster. Sample: play the excerpt not quite up to tempo (don’t make mistakes!). Close your eyes and wait five seconds before doing anything else. This lets the neural pathways in the brain assimilate what you’ve just done. Repeat. It seems to be helping.

There, that’s my ten minutes. Audition is day after tomorrow.

Tags: audition

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2016 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Personal Preparation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.