audition tips – Audition Cafe

10 Preparation Strategies I've Learned from Audition Winners

Jason Heath — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 06:45:10 +0000

Written by Jason Heath, Founder & CEO of Contrabass Conversations

I’ve been doing a podcast about the double bass for the past decade. While I didn’t realize it at first, what I was really doing was creating an oral history from the best in the business.

I interviewed new bassists each week for my podcast. Soon, I had talked with hundreds of people. Principal bassists from major orchestras and world-renowned teachers shared their approaches to audition preparation. When a bassist won a major job, we scheduled an interview and talked through their preparation process.

I decided to compile this audition advice into a 4-part series called Winning the Audition. I divided the series into four parts:

• Part 1 – Preparing for Audition Success

• Part 2 – Practicing Techniques for Peak Auditions

• Part 3 – Preparation Routines That Work

• Part 4 – Sealing the Deal

Through this process, I discovered 10 strategies that came up repeatedly in these talks with audition winners. I hope that you find this list useful!

NO. 1 – SLOW PRACTICE

This is a fundamental technique for all audition winners I’ve spoken with. Like analyzing golf swing, slow practice allows you to hone in on all the details that you might glaze over at a faster tempo.

Audition winners are methodical in their slow practice and map things out over a long period of time. Here’s a quote from my interview with Andrew Raciti (Milwaukee Symphony, Northwestern University) about what slow practice does for him:

“That was a big breakthrough as far as being able to sit down and play, and even though I was playing faster in my mind I still felt like it was slow and relaxed, and I had the space. You know, that hyperawareness you feel in an audition, that often feels like a detriment, you’re aware of every time that you blink, and, “Oh my God, the hair on the string moved a little bit.” It changes it from that kind of panicked uncomfortable feeling to this extra space that you can sit in—the zone or the flow. You actually have space to phrase, or to feel this gesture and hear this crescendo. It’s very liberating—it’s a good place to be.”

NO. 2 – RECORD YOURSELF

Every audition winner I spoke with spent a great deal of time with a recording device. A recording is objective. It separates the act of performing from the actual sonic result. It shows exactly what needs to be practiced, and it builds confidence.

Ira Gold (National Symphony, Peabody Conservatory) shared this with me about recording:

“If I have the opportunity to set aside some time to record myself, I’ll do that. That way I can go back and listen to it and decide if what I’m hearing on the recording matches what I’m hearing when I’m actually playing. Sometimes those two things don’t match up.”

NO. 3 – NEVER PRACTICE, ALWAYS PERFORM

If you wait until all technical details are perfect, you’ll never end up practicing like you’d actually perform a piece. Audition winners practice everything—even scales—as if they’re performing.

Alex Hanna (Chicago Symphony, DePaul University) shared his thoughts about practicing versus performing with me:

“In the practice room, you should make every effort to perform all the time. You know, the word practice kind of has a mindless connotation for a lot of people, which I think is really bad. This is actually kind of a Bud Herseth quote: never practice, always perform.

My piano teacher used to tell me this too, when I would sometimes kind of come into a lesson and play something a little uninspired. She said that I had a “musical button.” And so she would just push my musical button, and you know, it’s kind of like that thing where you engage and you start to… maybe it’s like a right brain/left brain thing, but you always want to have that button turned on, whether you’re playing scales and Simandl or you’re playing the Koussevitzky Concerto, you want to be performing all the time.”

NO. 4 – DEVELOP TEMPO CONSISTENCY

How consistent are you with tempos when you play an excerpt? Gaining control over your consistency is crucial for taking auditions.

Jack Budrow (Michigan State University) has a great technique for establishing tempo recall for excerpts:

“I give metronome markings for every excerpt. And then, after students learn the excerpts and they’re playing them, I ask them every day, “when you get up, I want you to play the excerpt, and then I want you to turn on the metronome to see how close you get to this tempo. And then practice for just a few minutes with the metronome on, and then practice for a few minutes with the metronome off.”

I think the recall is good, because a lot of times people get into auditions, and they get the adrenaline going, and they try to play too fast. Occasionally they try to play too slow. So the recall of the actual tempo is pivotal, so that you know that before you start playing exactly how fast it’s going to be.”

NO. 5 – PRACTICE IN A LARGE SPACE

How much of your practice time is spent in a tiny space? Probably a lot.

Musicians communicate using sound waves. These sound waves behave differently in a small and a large space. In a small space, the sounds we create bounce back to us immediately. Therefore, we need to take every possible opportunity to play in a large space.

Here’s Brandon McLean (Pittsburgh Symphony) on this topic:

“It was relatively late in life that I really got to spend a significant amount of time by myself in a large space, in like a concert hall practicing. I’d been a real practice room practicer for a long time, and my concept of sound was based on the fact that things were bouncing back to me from three feet away as opposed to 300 feet away or more.

A really helpful thing for me was getting into big halls and putting a microphone a long way away from me, and realizing what I actually sounded like to the people that were listening on the panel a long way away from me.”

NO. 6 – DEVELOP YOUR STYLE PALETTE

Do you play with the same concept of sound for each of these composers? Do you change your articulation style, phrasing, and vibrato?

Developing a stylistic approach for each composer is critical. Jack Budrow advocates developing different sounds for each composer, and practicing playing one composer in the style of another for flexibility:

“I don’t agree that sound should be one sound at all. I think that’s the part of the style differences between composers, that you have a Mozart sound, then you have a Beethoven sound, and then the Brahms sound is a little different from that. And they’re all a little bit unique. Conductors love that.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but occasionally I’ll say to my students, “now play this Beethoven excerpt as if it were Mozart… how would it sound?” And then I’ll say, “let me hear this Beethoven excerpt as if it were Brahms.” And make them go from one style to another playing the same music, just so they stay flexible and they understand the this is really what Mozart sounds like, even though Beethoven wrote it. I just think it helps them stay flexible”

NO. 7 – VISUALIZATION

Mental practice, or visualization, is a powerful practicing technique. In fact, many find it to be almost as effective as physical practice. Combined together, visual and physical practice are incredible.

Ed Barker (Boston Symphony, Boston University) encourages his students to use visualization when preparing for auditions:

“There is a well-known phrase that I always like to use with my students: when you’re building your performance—you’re getting ready to perform and you’re practicing as if you’re performing—when you’re in the practice room, you need to imagine or visualize what it’s like to be where it is.

If it’s an audition, you’ve got to imagine being behind a screen, in a darkened hall, having walked down a long hallway first, before having to play this audition. You need to imagine that—you have to imagine this from your practice room setting.

And then, when you’re in the audition or the recital or whatever, you have to imagine that you’re back in your practice room.”

NO. 8 – ADVERSITY TRAINING

Adversity training puts you in non-ideal performing situations in order to learn how to manage yourself physically and mentally. It’s a similar concept to basic training for the military. Even though music is not a life or death situation, our primal “fight or flight” instincts kick in when we feel under pressure. Our stomach starts to churn, our muscles tighten up, our breathing gets shallower and we start to sweat.

How do we learn to deal with this? Ian Hallas (Lyric Opera of Chicago) describes what he does as the audition nears:

“10 days out, I’d do two things. The first is that every morning… I’m a morning guy, so I’ll get as much work as I can done early in the day. I’ll unpack the bass, tune, put a little bit of rosin on, and just run excerpts. If it’s an orchestral audition, I’ll run standard excerpts that I assume are most likely to be asked on a prelim round. So for example, it might be first and last movement of Mozart 35, it’s going to be Heldenleben [rehearsal] 9, some Brahms 2, Beethoven 5 scherzo/trio. And it’s so hard on the first day because it feels just awful. You might not have even stretched, you might not have even gone anywhere, if you’re practicing in your house you might have just gotten out of bed and done it.

But the goal is to improve your worst playing, because if you can do that, when you walk onstage and have to do it the first time, you’re going to know that you’ve done this work if you can pick up the bass without having warmed up at all and play your excerpts down at a high level. So that’s the first thing I’ll do—and I do record that—to get all the bugs, the hiccups, burps, and farts all out of there.”

NO. 9 – PLAY FOR PEOPLE

This is one of the most important techniques for successful audition. Every single audition winner I spoke with stressed the importance of playing for as many people as possible.

Matthew McDonald (Berlin Philharmonic) describes how important it was for him to play for people as he prepared for his Berlin audition:

“I think the audition was in April 2008, and I started practicing for it in September 2007, practicing quite a lot then. And then basically got it to a point about a month or two before where I was running it every day or two. I even played it for a bunch of four-year-olds once—I would just use anybody as an audience.

I would have lots of friends come out and listen, or I would go to them. I had some big run-throughs, run-throughs for a couple friends. I don’t know how many I did… dozens. So that by the time of the audition, I felt like I’d been through as many nerve-creating scenarios as possible, and I felt very free on the day.

A lot of students make the mistake, they’ll run through it for their tape recorder or something, but it’s very different than playing it to your peers.”

NO. 10 – BALANCE

It’s easy to become obsessive in your practicing. I have struggled with this many times. But practicing to the exclusion of everything else in your life is more likely to harm you than help you. Keeping a healthy perspective and making sure to do other things outside excerpt practice is important.

Ju-Fang Liu (Indianapolis Symphony, Butler University) shares how she finds balance in her preparation:

“I don’t like to be overplaying, because the music or the excerpts tend to get stale if you over practice them, in my opinion. I think you want to have a pretty good balance. If you like running, you should keep running. Stress management is important. For some people, it’s like life and death. You want to get a job, and every one of us has gone through that, I’m pretty sure. So if you over-practice there will be anxiety issues, and you cannot perform your best.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you find these strategies helpful! Here are a few more resources to take your auditioning to the next level.

auditionhacker – Metrolopitan Opera Orchestra percussionist Rob Knopper’s awesome site

Performance Success – Don Greene’s manual for developing audition skills

Audition Success – a fascinating sereies fo intervews with Don Greene about auditioning

Fight Your Fear and Win – another great book from Don Greene to develop audition skills

Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal text on peak performance

Jason Heath

Jason Heath is the host of Contrabass Conversations, a podcast devoted to exploring music and ideas associated with the double bass. His blog and podcast are highly regarded in the music world and have been featured as top offerings in the world of arts and culture for the past decade.

An active double bass performer and teacher, Jason taught double bass at DePaul University for seven years and served on the Board of Directors of the International Society of Bassists for many years. He also previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and at Trinity International University. Jason previously served as President of the Illinois chapter of the American String Teachers Association and as the Illinois Music Educators Association District 7 Orchestra Division Co-Representative.

A graduate of Northwestern University, Jason currently performs with the IRIS Orchestra in Memphis Tennessee, and with he Midsummer’s Music Festival in Door County, Wisconsin. He was a member of the Elgin Symphony for 16 seasons and has performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Symphony, and numerous other professional ensembles.

contrabassconversations.com

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Forget Perfection: An Insider's Guide to Audition Committee Persuasion

Nathan Cole — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 06:02:18 +0000

Written by Nathan Cole, First Associate Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

Plenty of audition articles tell you how hard you need to work, and some even tell you how to work hard. This one goes out to all of you who followed that advice, played a great round, and still found yourselves taking a tearful cab ride back to the airport.

If you’ve ever suspected that audition winners have a psychological edge or secret weapon, then I’m here to tell you that you’re right. There is an edge. But it doesn’t need to remain a secret.

You already know that auditions are decided by committees. And committees are made up of irrational human beings just like us. Therefore, in order to maximize your chances at an audition, you must understand how committee members think and how to persuade them.

I’ve been on both sides of the screen enough times to know that perfection rarely persuades. What a committee craves is a player who makes their decision easy and enjoyable.

Do you want to be that player? Then study up on how people really make decisions.

Test-driving blind

Imagine that you have a great-uncle who’s an automobile fanatic. He owns an entire fleet of amazing vehicles, and he makes you an unbelievable offer: he’ll give you whichever one you want.

There are only two conditions: this will be the last car you’ll ever own; and you’ll have to make your decision based solely on three-minute test drives. You won’t be able to do any research beforehand. You won’t even know what car you’re test-driving since all the identifying marks will be covered up.

How would you choose your dream car?

The class system

You’d instantly be able to put each car into a category based on your first impression. Some cars you’d eliminate just by sitting in the driver’s seat and starting the engine. Others you’d cut after a quick spin around the block. Soon you’d have a short list of contenders. But without consumer ratings, expert opinions, and specifications, how would you make a final choice?

There’s no such thing as “objective”

You’ve just put yourself in the shoes of audition committee members. They’re charged with making a decision they’ll have to live with for the rest of their careers, and they don’t get the benefit of objective evidence. Your audition, just like a test-drive, is completely subjective. It’s subject, in fact, to emotion, conjecture, bias, and blind (or deaf) spots!

The power of a story

Think back to those automobiles that made your short list. They felt “right” from the moment you stepped inside. As you sank into the plush leather, you imagined sun-dappled drives in the country. Firing up the engine gave you flashes of your friends’ envious faces. Turning the wheel had you carving up curvy coastline roads.

Each of your impressions went far beyond the evidence at hand: they were all flights of fancy that your brain conjured in an instant, without your approval. But once written, those stories stuck. Without any hard data to examine, they were all you had. You might have see-sawed for a while, but in the end you would have picked the most compelling story and walked away happy.

Committee members gravitate toward that same ease in their decision-making. So make it easy for them: tell them a story.

Storytelling is part of human nature

All of us have a need for narratives. Even as you read these words, you’re drawing a mental picture of me: what kind of person I am, what kind of life I lead. It’s human nature, and if you can tap into it at your audition, you can reach the committee at a gut level.

As soon as a committee assembles on audition day, they tell themselves stories…about themselves. Before the first note sounds, here’s a typical committee member’s thought process:

I know all the music on this list inside and out.
It all started when I won my job here.
I worked like a dog for that audition, and it paid off.
I take care of all the musical details, and I expect my colleagues to do the same.
I want someone like me for this opening!

Pay special attention to that last one. After telling herself all the reasons that she belongs in the orchestra, the member finishes with a desire to include one more person…as long as she’s just like her.

That need to belong, to be included, goes hand-in-hand with storytelling. It’s no accident that most superheroes have an “origin story” that begins with them living life as an ordinary person. Good writers know that we’ll be more invested in the tale if we believe that the hero is one of us.

Without trust, you’re finished before you start

Somehow, then, you have to assume the form of someone who already has the job. How do you begin to do that from behind the screen?

Imagine yourself once more as a decision-maker. This time, instead of choosing cars, you’re choosing people. You need a business partner, someone whose fortunes will be tied to yours for years to come. So you throw a party and invite entrepreneurs from all over town.

As you scan the room, drink in hand, what is it you’re looking for? What’s the crucial ingredient, the thing you have to recognize before you’ll consider doing business with someone?

It’s trust.

If you don’t trust the person in front of you, you can’t take him seriously. It doesn’t matter what he says or how he says it. But someone who makes you feel comfortable, while delivering a killer pitch? You’ll buy whatever he’s selling.

Cultivate “the look”

Each guest at your hypothetical party has a “look”: clothes, accessories, body language. When you see a well-fitting outfit combined with confident posture and easy gestures, you know that person is worth listening to. And you know it at a glance.

In a screened audition, your “look” equals your playing in the first ten seconds. A quality sound, delivered with confidence and fidelity to the score, puts the committee at ease. There’s no sliding scale for this gut reaction: it’s pass/fail.

Fill in the details

Once you pass, each committee member starts to sketch a broad outline of you in her mind. It might resemble the following:

romantic player
lush sound
confident
experienced

Or perhaps:

solid technique
hard worker
safe
predictable

The committee doesn’t actually know these things about you, but their minds race ahead to craft a compelling narrative for themselves.

The committee fills in the details of your story as you play more selections. In fact, without being aware of it, they predict how you’ll play each excerpt based on the story they’ve written about you so far! They pay more attention to evidence that confirms their story, and less to new information that would change it.

That’s why two different players, A and B, can make the same mistake and yet be judged completely differently. Once you understand why, you’re well on your way to honing your edge.

A double standard

One minute into the audition, a committee member pegs Player A as “a maverick, risk-taking youngster who needs to be reined in.” Thus a mistake is further proof that A needs to settle down before deserving the job.

Player B, after one minute, is “a warm, sensitive musician who plays well in all styles.” That same mistake is a fluke: nothing to get worked up about.

It doesn’t matter that in reality, Player A is a veteran of several professional orchestras and a wonderful colleague, while Player B is freaking out during her first audition. The narrative has taken hold, and it dictates how new evidence is received.

First impressions and second chances

All this is to say that first impressions matter. They are perhaps even more important than you guessed. So can you recover from a bad one?

The answer depends on just how bad an impression we’re talking about! If you failed to establish trust, then forget it. But if you at least caught the committee’s ear, then your success at rewriting your story depends on how interesting the story is in the first place, and how boldly you tell it. Give the committee enough new and compelling evidence, without distracting them further, and they’ll be on board with a rewrite.

Your action plan

So how can you take control of your audition story?

First, you have to choose your auditions with care. You must establish trust right away, and that simply will not happen if the entire committee is made up of players who are better than you. So before sending in that resumé, get knowledgeable feedback on your playing level so that you don’t waste your time.

Next, cultivate your “look”. Work on the technical details for your instrument that allow you to make a great sound in any range, at any speed, and at any dynamic. When those details are second nature to you, then committee members will hear in you that idealized version of themselves that they’ve built up.

Finally, to advance and win, you need to work the way mystery writers do: write the ending, then work backwards! You know the end of your story: you’re welcomed by the committee as one of the gang. How did you get there?

Think back to Players A and B, and the narratives that took root after just a few excerpts. What will your story be? Write it down, then live it through your practicing.

At the end of the day, the committee is only human, and humans are attracted to easy decisions. So make it easy for them. Tell a winning story from the start, and they’ll overlook your flaws every time. After all, you’re just like them!

Nathan Cole

Nathan Cole, First Associate Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is one of the world’s leading coaches for the violin audition repertoire. Previously a member of the Chicago Symphony and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, he has sat on audition committees for nearly every orchestral instrument. He has also performed as guest concertmaster for the orchestras of Houston, Minnesota, Oregon, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, and Seattle.

Nathan’s passion is helping violinists reach their potential in the practice room, concert hall, and audition stage. Through one-on-one coaching, master classes, blog posts, and videos, he shares detailed knowledge that is typically taught only inside elite conservatories. His “New York Philharmonic Audition Challenge” invites violinists from all over the world to follow Nathan’s own audition preparation timeline. It has already been adapted for other instruments including flute and viola.

Born to professional flutists in Lexington, Kentucky, Nathan started violin at age four in a Suzuki program. He earned his Bachelor of Music at the Curtis Institute, where he spent less time practicing solo pieces than he should have, and more time rehearsing string quartets. His wife, Akiko Tarumoto, is Assistant Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

You can visit and write Nathan at www.natesviolin.com.

www.natesviolin.com

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6 Unheard of Ways to Lose an Audition, (the last one will BLOW your mind)

Michael O'Gieblyn — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 15:49:31 +0000

If you think this post is a going to be a cleverly disguised list of things you should actually be considering for your audition preparations-think again! I don’t use cheap writing tactics and clickbait headlines just to get your attention. If that’s all you think this is, stop reading already.

Aha! Still here, I see. Apparently you like ignoring advice. You are already proving to be the right kind of person to learn how to lose an audition.

It’s not that I wish you to fail spectacularly and be laughed out of your next audition-chances are you’re already doing lots of hard work, practicing long hours, and reading other posts on this site. You’re not going to fail miserably or fall on your face.

Winning an audition is perhaps like trying to lose weight: There’s lots of great information we tend to focus on in the “Do this!” category (run around, lift heavy things, jump up and down a lot- I don’t know). But if you ignore just one thing in the “Don’t do this” category, (like eat Taco Bell every day) it will completely undo your positive progress.

For that reason, these are some of my best kept secrets for how to play well, but not advance. After all, this is something I know a lot about. Statistically I have lost so many more auditions than I have won, but that stuff doesn’t look so great on a resume, so I don’t mention it very often. These tips are something I have never revealed…until now.

#1) Get busy

Losing an audition takes months of preparation-you can’t just lose these things by accident. You’ve got to start filling up your calendar with concerts, recitals with different repertoire, major holiday visits with family you haven’t seen all year (auditions in early January are the best for this). You need to start feeling like you’re stretched too thin to do anything well. Good? Feeling it? Keep going!

#2) Trust only yourself

You can do this on your own. Totally! You are an island! Everybody else is just like you-way too busy to help you out, even if you paid them.

You know your excerpts don’t sound good-you can hear that yourself. Recording yourself, or playing them for a friend or a teacher isn’t going to tell you anything you don’t know.

You’ve got to just keep chugging along. Think about that famous quote:

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do the same thing that’s not working over and over and over and over and over and over and over” -Unknown

#3 Leave yourself an escape plan

At some point in your audition preparation, the voice of resistance will show up. It will tell you all sorts of ridiculous things like “you’re not really good enough to win this,” or “All this work is not going to be worth it-you should just watch more Netflix.” And if you want my advice on how to lose the audition, (after all, you’re still reading this) you should listen to what that voice is saying.

Buying your plane ticket to the audition, or planning a post audition party would squash those distractions-why would you want to do that? When the going gets tough, you need to consider cancelling the audition- its the only way to 100% guarantee failure.

#4 Go for “the experience”

If you’re not going to physically back out, you need to start backing out mentally. The next best thing is to start thinking about how you don’t really stand a chance at winning. There’s so many great ways to do this, but the easiest (and most Inception-esque) place to start is thinking “I probably won’t win, but it will be a good experience.” Spin that top and lock it up ‘cause that’s a keeper!

There are some great variations on this theme that you can experiment with also like, “I’m an imposter/I didn’t go to the right school/I didn’t study with the right teacher. ” Any of those can work-it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is not counter-acting these negative thoughts with positive messages like Post-It notes on your stand or on your mirror. Don’t visualize a perfect performance, or develop a centering routine or all that other mumbo-jumbo, snake oil stuff. Just let off the gas now, and when you don’t advance, you can at least celebrate the experience. That’s really just as good as winning.

#5) Pay attention to the competition

If you decide to keep going and show up at the audition, there are still some great last-minute tips if you still want to lose this thing.

First of all – just ignore everything the audition proctors are telling you as you check in. They’re usually volunteers, and couldn’t possibly know anything about which excerpts the panel is hearing for each round, or how many hours they’re behind. Just smile and keep scanning the room to check out your competition.

All those other musicians warming up actually are soooo much better than you, after all. You might learn a lot by listening to how fast/loud/aggressive they play Don Juan. Even if you don’t decide to throw out your months of artistic preparations to try to imitate someone else, you should assume that they won’t get nervous-only you struggle with that thing you call “performance anxiety.” Thinking about their flawless performance is exactly the mindset you need before your big moment.

OK, so if you’re still reading this, you must be waiting for the big finale. You may be thinking, “Michael, all this advice is good enough to lose me some auditions, but certainly not ALL auditions.” Well, buckle up, Buttercup!

#6 Not advancing means you are a failure, and you should accept defeat

Yes, it’s true that even following my tried and true tactics listed above may still result in winning an audition, but I really want to focus for a minute on what happens after not advancing.

This is such a special time in your life, that failing to grasp its importance could have serious long-lasting effects. After all, you’ve been playing your instrument for decades, spent a small fortune on lessons and instruments, and have had countless affirming experiences that led you to believe that playing music was a worthy pursuit.

But in this moment, none of that matters.

Five complete strangers behind a screen just told you that they didn’t want you, and it only took them three minutes to discover this! This audition has taken all the intricacies of your musical life and boiled them down to a single black or white answer. Yes or No. Pass or Fail. And Fail, you most certainly did.

Not only did the oracles behind the screen tell you that you were not good enough for their ensemble, they are telling you that you are not good enough for ANY ensemble.

This is where my advice gets real: It’s incredibly important to connect your self-worth and the direction you see for your life to the outcome of every audition. To really lose every audition, you have to believe that you will never get better at auditioning, and that teaching snotty little children who won’t appreciate your talent or your efforts is your only option for the future.

Please don’t look for the bigger picture or try to grow from this experience. Don’t ask those benevolent overlords behind the screen why they didn’t like you. And don’t start preparing for another audition.

If you remember nothing else from this article, remember this lasting proverb by William Edward Hickson:

“If at first you don’t succeed,

give up, give up, give up again.”

(at least that’s how I think it goes)

Well, I hope this list of tactics serves you well on your quest to lose your next audition.

Until then,

Don’t be well, and don’t practice well.

P.S. I do hope that reading this article has brought to light some of the absurdities that we think, but never would say out loud. Sometimes just getting them out of your head helps you see how silly they sound. So in the comments below, please feel free to share your favorite thoughts (real, or hypothetical) on how to lose an audition.

Michael O'Gieblyn

Michael O’Gieblyn is a violinist with the Miami City Ballet and Palm Beach Symphony. He is the creator of www.OrchestraExcerpts.com, a resource for helping musicians study excerpts, and host of the Per Service Podcast.

www.orchestraexcerpts.com

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Orchestral Preparation in 10 Steps

Mark Nuccio — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 05:08:53 +0000

Written by Mark Nuccio, Principal Clarinetist of the Houston Philharmonic

Everybody has a different approach to audition preparation but this is what has worked for me. I have probably taken about 20 auditions. I have won six auditions and beyond that, have been in the finals and not won the job in eight, all with this basic process. Through the years, I have slightly modified it to adjust to the changing system. Below we will jump right in:

Step 1

Realize that all contact with the orchestra is a part of the audition. The process begins with the orchestra announcing a vacancy. These days, the official notification comes both in the musician’s union paper as well as on the given orchestra’s website. Typically what is requested is a one-page resumé. When preparing this resumé, make sure to consult with your teacher or another performing musician to check it for quality and content. This resumé should include your instrument name at the top (CLARINET) directly below your name and address. If the orchestra is having multiple auditions, you don’t want your resumé to end up in the cello vacancy pile! Following your Name, contact info and instrument name, you should begin by showing your accomplishments. Because it is a performance audition, you should start with performance information, not teaching or education. Your information should be listed most recent to older experiences. You also need a cover letter to introduce the resumé. This should be brief, respectful and to the point specifying what you are seeking (i.e. “I am interested in your Principal Clarinet vacancy. Please find my resumé attached. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.”). Remember that this information is often photocopied and stapled to all the other information and given to each of the committee members. They will now begin to judge you based upon experience, intellect (the way something is written or how it is presented) and you will begin to set your first impression.

Step 2

Get list and begin to assimilate the parts. Often times, the list is also on the orchestra’s website or on Facebook. Once you have the list, get the parts from your library, IMSLP, friends, etc…I make a spiral notebook of parts that include the requested passages or main/obvious solo sections with tabs on each of them so that I am able to quickly move between the excerpts as the audition committee makes their requests. At this time, I also make three additional copies for future mock auditions. Along with the preparation of the music and assimilation of the book, you should design a graph that represents all the repertoire down the left side and the days/dates prior to the audition to the right along the top. This should always be kept with the audition book to keep track of what you have practiced each day.

Step 3

Make a playlist on your computer/iPad/phone with all the pieces that are on the list. This way you can begin to study the music during any downtime. If you have never played any of the pieces, it is a good idea to have gone through several recordings so that you have an idea standard tempi as well as for the best recording available.

Step 4

Make sure that your instrument is in the very best working condition. Actually you should make sure you have a good instrument first. It is not likely you will win an audition with a subpar instrument. In reality, why practice 6-8 hours per day for 10 weeks when you really have no chance because you have equipment that wouldn’t allow you to win an audition?

Step 5

The Performance preparation should take approximately 8-10 weeks. The graph, spoken about in Step 2, should be used daily during your practice so that you can begin to see where the focus of your work has been. Remember that as frightening as some of the more difficult repertoire may be, assuming this is not the standard rep, that you won’t get to perform that anyway unless you play the standard first-round repertoire with artistry and accuracy.

That now gets to the four things that are a must in every audition. Those things are:

a. Rhythm

b. Intonation

c. Articulation

d. Sound

You notice I didn’t say perfection? Perfect performances are rarely memorable because when you take risks, imperfections happen occasionally but also special and different things happen too! If you aren’t practicing taking risks, it is much harder in your performance to take these risks. Practice with musical intent, the goal first to make music and then do it as accurately as possible. This is not to say mistakes are okay. Just take risks while playing as near perfection as possible. One also needs to understand that a committee often times is comprised of a variety of players who don’t play your instrument. This is not the case as much with strings, but quite often is with Winds/Brass. So what is noticed when it isn’t your instrument? 5a, 5b, 5c and 5d. In your detailed preparation over the course of 8-10 weeks, and when listening back to your recorded practice sessions, make sure you are playing with solid rhythm and accurate intonation, clean articulation and doing all of that WHILE playing with a beautiful sound…or at least with the sound you have chosen for that particular excerpt. Think about it, these are all things to which we can all identify and probably bare themselves within the first 24 measures of the concerto, performed first in most auditions. I usually know if I want to hear this person anymore in that short amount of time. I hear more because the great players, of which there will be only a few, will have the basics covered and now will have to distinguish themselves with their musicality and knowledge of the styles of music. If you aren’t getting out of the first rounds consistently, it is most likely one or all of points 5a, 5b, 5c or 5b.

Step 6

During 10 weeks of audition preparation, you will have busy days, days with lots of playing where you might not be able to practice as much. 8 or 9 weeks out, you can get your reeds ordered or blanks for oboe/bassoon reeds made, strings ordered, extra drum heads and sticks ordered,etc… As you get closer to the audition and these things are accomplished, you should be listening as much as possible when you aren’t practicing. Record your practice and be a very critical listener…to your own playing, almost as if it was someone else playing. Practice the excerpt and when you are ready, record it and listen back immediately with intent to make it better, making sure all the basics are present along with great musicianship. If any of 5a-d are not accomplished, practice it more and then repeat this exercise until you are satisfied. I would say that the saying “Rome was not built in a day” is true here. You should not expect to reach perfection in week one of the preparation and probably not until about two weeks out from the audition. Therefore just make it better and identify what you must work on to improve it tomorrow, knowing that you have 10 weeks to do so.

Step 7

Earlier I mentioned that you should make 2-3 extra audition packets. That is for the purpose of setting up mock auditions about 2 weeks out from the audition. Your choice of “jurors” for your mock audition should be musicians that you respect. They don’t all need to play YOUR instrument. Give them their packets and encourage them to make their comments right in the “audition book” so they don’t miss anything. You should also record this so that YOU can assess if you agree. You can now listen to your mock audition and compare with the mock audition comments. This now has put you in the position of “auditioning” before actually going to the audition. If you have done this process two or three times prior to the audition, there will be less chance of getting nervous since you have already done it so many times. There are many people that can get a particular passage right on the 10th try but playing live concerts 3-5 nights per week, we must make it accurate and musical on the first try. Therefore we all have to learn how to concentrate and achieve this for the audition and all future auditions as well as future performances.

As you get closer to the audition (one week out), you should be trying to run the audition list while recording it and not stopping. Choose a different order each time. If you’d like, you can go back after and listen to each excerpt and assess what needs to be practiced again. But one has to learn to push through the inevitable mistake and put it behind him without making 10 more mistakes because he was thinking of the earlier wrong note …or whatever the problem. I have played perfect auditions and not gotten out of the first round and I have won auditions where I made mistakes. Practice “making music”, not perfection. If you are in fact, making music, you will probably be playing more accurately anyway.

Step 8

Arriving at Audition

Hotel Choice: Don’t stay the night before an audition with a friend. You are about to go to a job interview where you need to be the very best YOU can be. You have prepared for many weeks, many hours a day and need to have space to focus on proper sleep and preparation. For that reason, I rarely chose the cheapest hotel. That will be the one with every candidate playing the excerpts faster, better, louder and/or softer than you. I like quiet space and a few more dollars makes some difference.

Getting in the Hall: You should also try to get in the concert hall where you will be auditioning. Maybe the night before your audition, the orchestra is performing? Why not go to the concert? Might it be nice to know where you will likely be sitting for the audition, what the dynamic range of the orchestra is, how the players around where you’d like to be sitting play? There is so much to learn. If there is any chance to play on stage yourself, do it. This is rare that you can do this but if you know someone in the orchestra and you can get in, by all means, do it.

Clothing – Back to “First Impressions”: You now have practiced for 10 weeks, you have your playing in the best shape you have ever been in and are ready. Make sure you wear clothing you would wear to a job interview and that “when” you win the audition later in the day, you will be proud to meet the music director and your future colleagues. If this is a drastic change from your normal day to day clothing choices, it might be smart to practice in the audition clothes a few times before the audition day. Remember “first impressions” are important!

Warm-up Room, the Day of: Bring healthy food and a bottle of water thatwill help you sustain the typical two-hour delay in their audition process. You must feed the brain to keep it sharp. I also bring other things to do …magazines, books, etc., and headphones so that you can drown out all the [instrument] playing. I refer to this wonderful playing as a product of the “door factor”. We all sound better through the door. You don’t need to hear the others playing the excerpts and you certainly should NOT be rethinking your musical decisions in the excerpts that you have practiced for 10 weeks. Those decisions were well thought out and are going to win you the audition if you execute them as planned.

Step 9

Not Offered the Position: This is always tough but realize that it really does no good to complain about the process should you fall short. The decision has been made and it didn’t go your way. What if the winner doesn’t take the audition and you were bashing the process, will you be invited back to audition the next time? Doubtful! It is an imperfect process and it is almost unheard of that anyone wins every audition they take. Move on!

Step 10

Offered the Position: Fantastic. This is the end of a very long process and you are not equipped to negotiate a contract. If you are presented with the scenario, respectfully tell them that you would prefer to work on the contract “tomorrow”. Then make sure you take the time to find out your peers overscale, both within and outside of your orchestra.

Mark Nuccio

Mr. Nuccio officially began his position as Principal Clarinet with the Houston Symphony Orchestra in the 2016-17 season after seventeen years with the New York Philharmonic. He also serves as clarinet faculty at the University of Houston’s Moore School of Music. Mr. Nuccio joined the New York Philharmonic in 1999 as Associate Principal and E-flat Clarinetist and during the time served as Acting Principal Clarinet for four years from 2009-13. Prior to his service with the Philharmonic, he has held positions with orchestras in Pittsburgh, Denver, Savannah, and Florida working with distinguished conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Bernard Haitink, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Andre Previn, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and Gustavo Dudamel. Additionally, Mr. Nuccio has toured extensively with the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in numerous countries, recorded with both orchestras, and performed regularly with the Philharmonic on the award-winning series, Live from Lincoln Center, broadcast on PBS. Recent highlights include the Philharmonic’s historic and newsworthy visits to North Korea and Vietnam.

Nuccio is an active solo and chamber musician and has been featured with various orchestras in the United States and made multiple appearances as a featured performer at the International Clarinet Association conventions. He made his subscription solo debut with the New York Philharmonic on Feb. 10, 2010 and returned to perform the Copland Concerto with the NY Philharmonic under the baton of Alan Gilbert on May 31 and June 1 of 2013. Other highlights include a New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 2001 and his Japanese recital debut in 2002. He is an avid chamber musician and continues to regularly perform recitals in Asia and Europe as well as across the United States. In New York, he can often be heard at Merkin Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Nuccio also participates in the chamber music series at the Strings in the Mountain Music Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and teaches at the Hidden Valley Music Festival in Carmel, CA.

As a studio musician, Mr. Nuccio is featured on numerous movie soundtracks, including Failure To Launch, The Last Holiday, The Rookie, The Score, Intolerable Cruelty, Alamo, Pooh’s Heffalump, Hitch, The Manchurian Candidate, and various television commercials. Additionally he has performed on the Late Show with David Letterman and on the 2003 Grammy Awards. His own debut album featuring the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms, Opening Night, was released in November 2006.

A Colorado native, Mr. Nuccio was recently awarded the “Distinguished Alumni Award” from his alma mater the University of Northern Colorado, a very selective honor bestowed on an elite group of 200 alumnus representing various fields throughout the long history of the university. He also holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University where he studied with renowned pedagogue Robert Marcellus. Beyond his active performing schedule, Mr. Nuccio is a dedicated teacher committed to training the next generation of musicians and teaches master classes in the U.S. and abroad. Nuccio is a D’Addario Advising Artist & Clinician and a Performing Artist/Clinician for Buffet Music Group.

www.marknuccio.com

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Make the Decision Easy For Them

Jeff Nelsen — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 09:13:55 +0000

Written by Jeff Nelsen, horn soloist and professor at Indiana University

How many audition finalists who don’t end up winning the audition could actually do a good job in the position?

Answer: It doesn’t matter. You just have to win the audition.

How often does that one mistake cost you the audition win?

Answer: Pretty much never. If you played incrrrrrrredibly well for every other note, and then made that one mistake, it would not have mattered.

I’ve missed notes in every audition I’ve won. I’m pretty sure I also missed notes in every audition I didn’t win. Ha! After the auditions I didn’t win, though, I simply asked myself, “Was it perfect?” The answer was always no. And my second question was, “How can I make the decision easy for them next time?”

Make the decision easy for the panel. It’s that simple…and that tough.

To win an audition, you have to convince the panel, through your performance, that you are the optimal choice. You have to make it an easy decision for the majority of the panel to agree to hire YOU over the other candidates. In some cases, more than one performer is hirable — it is especially pivotal in these scenarios to make the decision easy. It isn’t a foregone conclusion that someone will emerge from the final round of an audition with a job offer. Often, when the choice isn’t clear to the panel, they discuss…and discuss…and discuss their options, until they reach an impasse — then, they send out another audition announcement, the following spring.

Let’s be realistic: most finalists reach the finals of the audition process because they sound quite capable of doing the job for which they’re vying. In the earlier rounds, they met or exceeded the technical requirements of agreeable execution — they sound like they know the score, and they play accurately, with dynamic contrasts, and with good time, intonation, and sound in all ranges. Winning an audition, though, requires you to surpass good-enough — in order to win an audition, you have to be great.

Good-enough is the enemy of great. A good-enough performance is…good enough to advance you past the first round. After that, all bets are off. You have to be great. Great performances, performances that make the decision easy, reach beyond the panel’s intellect and affect them emotionally. To do this, you have to share your musical stories in a way that contributes more to the listener than proof of your fitness as a candidate or your ability to accurately play the ink on the page. That extra oomph reaches the panel in multiple, often inexplicable ways. These ways appear through the personal decisions you make as a performer — rubato, dynamic and color contrasts, an elegant lift right before a certain note, a magical ending to a phrase, in which it’s unclear where your spinning, sparkling sound turns into breath-stopping silence.

To get from good-enough to great, you have to be mindful of both your attitude and your approach. Yes it is possible a performer could win an audition even if they don’t make the decision easy for the panel, but you can’t coast on that. It’s safe to assume that the audition-winningest musicians approach their preparation aiming higher than, “I just need to be the best of the bunch.” You have to hear the mind-blowing versions in your mind’s ear. Then you practice in ways that have you making your excerpts sound the best you can imagine on your first (and only) performance. It’s not just about your technique; it’s about your approach to musical and personal greatness. You don’t win an audition because you managed not to make more than three mistakes per excerpt. Yes, you could smudge past in a close call, but those narrow odds aren’t reason enough to hop a plane to an audition. Be great, and train to be great — it makes your decision to click “purchase ticket” easy…and worth it, because you’re more likely to get a return on your investment that starts with an incredible feeling on your return flight! Trust me, you want that INCREDIBLY exciting and fulfilling feeling of flying home from an audition having won it.

As you prepare for an audition, you have to ask yourself, “What’s it going to be — reasons, or results?” To get to great, the answer has to be results. While reading Wayne Dyer’s book, You’ll See It When You Believe It, I had a lightbulb moment of strong clarity when I saw this phrase:

Your actions don’t achieve success or failure, they just achieve results.

This idea can help us to let go of destructive emotional attachment to what is coming out of our instruments, and help us to be present and realistic about what we’re actually doing. Don’t let minor flubs distract you from your end goal — when you let a missed note determine your mood or how you feel about yourself (or your instrument), you waste valuable prep time and focus. Destructive critique in performance is even more destructive.

So, how do you increase your positive results? Mix up your training! This isn’t a new idea. What also isn’t new is which of the three aspects of performance — the technician, the musician, the person —performers most often neglect. Sadly, it is also the most important.

“A person’s music can never be any more or less than the person they are.”

— Nadia Boulanger

As you know, the winning audition performance is above the requirements line in technical abilities and musical knowledge. The third aspect to audition performance is the person performing. Who you as a person? So many factors at play here in regards to focus, ego, reverence to story, calm recovery, eagerness to be heard…to be understood. This is the biggest variable of the three aspects. Once you’re above the requirements in technique and music, it’s all about your personal choices in preparation and performance that evolve the intangibles.

Why are you onstage?

To avoid mistakes
To show off what you can do
To share the best possible version of this music you love, for an appreciative audience, and the bonus is you avoid mistakes, show off what you can do, and get the gig.

The person drives the musician and the technician

Keep mixing up your ways you learn about the person you are so you can consistently prepare and perform the best possible versions of your music. Here are some of my ways, and people from whom I get more ideas:

Read about performance and the mental game.

Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner (this was my first read about the mental game)
Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey (my second read!)
Tim Ferriss’ books – he’s a meta-learner, obsessed with optimal learning
- 4-Hour Work Week
- Tools of Titans (New One)
The Musicians Way by Gerald Klickstein – FULL of creative ideas on practicing and more.
The short daily blog of Seth Godin – business guru who writes about performance well and often.
The Path of Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield

Check out the performance experts

Don Greene – author of Audition Success and many more
Noa Kageyama – The Bulletproof Musician
Rob Knoppler – The Audition Hacker
John Beder – Composed – The Documentary Feature Film

Listen to Podcasts by experts on the mental game

The Charged Life by Brendon Burchard
The Tim Ferriss Show by uh huh you guessed it – Tim Ferriss

Collect inspirational and motivational quotes. Surround yourself by them. Change them up often! Keep ‘em fresh!

I love quotes, as they take me somewhere constructive quickly…and energize me. Motivate my quantity of work, and inspire my quality of work.

Play for people who don’t play your instrument. They are incredible unsympathetic ears that will look for simplicity of message, and let you know when you’ve complicated it.

Record yourself. It’s your most objective data, as long as you listen with un-forgiving ears. Don’t give yourself the benefit of the doubt while listening back. Hear it like an objective idiot, and if it didn’t blow your mind, get surgically detailed about what was distracting to the simple line, and creatively aggressive in finding solutions. Mark your solutions in your part. There’s your work for the next practice session.

On that note, here are two final ideas for you.

One – If you’re wondering whether to do that next audition, Seth Godin writes a wise blog. One day he wrote to the audition/don’t audition question quite well:

“MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH”

Here’s an interesting choice that most people leave unmade:

How comfortable are you engaging in projects where there’s a likelihood that you’ll lose by just a hair?

What makes a project worthwhile and interesting is that it might not work. All the this-is-sure-to-work projects are taken.

Given that you’re taking a risk, what kind are you up for?

Are you seeking out areas where there’s no competition, true longshots where few people see you fail?

Or are you okay with the daring near misses?

Two – Now that you’ve committed, make your training be that of someone who will not lose by just a hair. Train in every way possible to make the decision easy for them.

Remember, they want to hire someone.

Jeff Nelsen

Jeff Nelsen is one of the many Canadian magician horn-performing professors in the world who was raised on a pig-farm with opera-singer parents. He’s writing here on auditioncafe.com because he’s won auditions both before and after he became unable to start notes in performance. He’s had mental and physical roadblocks, and he not only stayed on the road, he’s thrived on it. Jeff says, “It’s hard to teach something you haven’t had to learn.”

Probably best known for the eight years he spent touring and recording with Canadian Brass, Jeff has also performed concerti with orchestras on six continents, and in the horn sections of dozens of orchestras including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and the Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Montreal, Porto, St. Louis and Vancouver Symphonies. This year’s performances include South Africa, Santa Barbara, Brazil, Germany, San Diego, Seoul, Ottawa, and in home-town Bloomington Indiana. Jeff most enjoys performing with his wife, mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen, on recital series and in their two orchestral pops shows.

Jeff is especially proud of becoming professor of horn at the illustrious Indiana University Jacobs School of Music without having finishing his studies at McGill University in Montreal. At last calculation, he is in his 28th year of his bachelor degree in horn performance. His curious pig-farmer international horn soloist life-path brought him to become founder of Fearless Performance LLC, a company that focuses on training people of all walks of life to transcend their limited self-worth illusions, and discover how to consistently perform their absolute best in order to reach their own “unreasonable” goals. Since giving his celebrated 2011 TEDx Talk about Fearless Performance, Jeff has been training fellow TED Talkers, teachers, athletes, and business people into giving their own Fearless Performances as well.

Aside from creating musical magic, Jeff is an enthusiastic magician, and often adds touches of illusionary arts to performances. He recently reached a childhood dream of becoming a magician member of the Academy of Magical Arts at the world famous Magic Castle in Los Angeles. Go to www.jeffnelsen.com to contact Jeff and to sign up for his free “Fearless Performance” newsletter.

www.jeffnelsen.com

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