…in which I quote a tweet by Jeff Gothelf
17 November 2015
It’s just about 9:45 and I’ve finished practicing for the night. I started at about 6 pm when I got home, had a 45-minute break for dinner with the family and now I’m done.
I got through every excerpt and the required solo piece with the following formula (more or less):
- play the excerpt note-by-note, watching the electronic tuner for intonation (as well as listening with my ears!), and retrying any shifts that were particularly out-of-tune.
- consult my notes from yesterday, and play the excerpt at least once at the same finishing tempo or slightly slower than yesterday.
- If all went well in (2), notch the tempo up a beat per minute or maybe two and play it again.
- as needed, re-study things that didn’t go well.
- repeat 1-4 for all 23 excerpts and the solo piece.
The solo was what really fouled me up at the CSO sub list audition. Look, I’ve been working in a very semi-pro capacity for a lot of years now. I don’t get paid for playing solo pieces, let alone playing solo Bach. They’re pieces written for the cello, an instrument with a much shorter string length and tuned differently. They can be damned hard to play on bass, no matter what Edgar Meyer might make you think. So when it comes time to work on the Bourrees from the third suite, I just plain get frustrated. This animosity I have is getting better, but it is hard to deal with.
Okay, five minutes is up. That went fast. I was gonna totally get into my emotional state, but I guess I won’t.
I promised I would quote a tweet. @jboogie wrote it about writing a book, but I think it’s just perfectly applicable:
Emotions of writing: 1. I got this 2. Ok, not bad 3. I’M A FRAUD! 4. No one should read this 5. Burn it all 6. I got this Repeat.
— Jeff Gothelf (@jboogie) November 16, 2015