I will call this session, "Road to the Job."

These sessions, I'll talk about my progress towards winning a position in a professional symphony.  Hopefully, I won't have to continue this past April 21 because that's when I take my next attempt at winning a job.  I found a job opening for a permanent position in the Lexington Philharmonic in Lexington, KY.  It's only about an hour and a half from where I live.  And, as mentioned before, the audition is April 21.

Now I have to give credit to God on this one in a big way.  The day before I found out about this gig, I had an awful performance experience with excerpt class.  I think I mentioned it in my last post.  I decided that instead of letting my bitterness over the performance take control of me, I would take control of my bitterness.  None of that "tail wagging the dog," crap.  So, as always, I continue to pray to God for guidance, and the next day I found this job opening.  However, I decided I needed to make sure this was what God wanted of me, so that night at church, I asked the group to please pray for guidance.  The next day, Dr. Carroll gave me her blessing to go on and take the audition.

The rep for the audition are your basic excerpts.  Most I've played or am half-way familiar with.  Four of them I've never played before.  But luckily, there's nothing weird or out of the ordinary with these excerpts.  Another thing I need in addition to these 10 excerpts is a solo concerto.  If you've been following, you know I've been working on the Telemann.  However, this is not a concerto played in an audition for a professional setting.  So I've decided, again with Dr. C's blessing, to bring back Der Schwanendreher by Hindemith.  My favorite concerto for viola!

I reckon, to prepare for this audition, in addition to keeping up with my other viola studies, I'll need to practice 6-7 hours a day as opposed to 4-5 hours a day.  This means I'll have to sacrifice a few distractions.  Mainly netflix instant streaming.  I'm a sucker for marathoning my favorite shows.  Luckily, this is the time of Lent.  Now, I'm not Catholic, but I do think the idea of Lent is a great one.  Jesus sacrificed so much for all of us, the least we can do is sacrifice one thing for him.

I'm going to try to post weekly recordings of my progress.

Final Thought:
"You know what happens to a toad that gets struck by lightning?  Same thing that happens to everything else."  Halle Berry as Storm in the movie X-Men.  This is quite possibly the worst epic quote in history, and yet, I love it.

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So remember how in a previous post I said I was going to experiment with the Daphnes and Chloe excerpt.  Well I kept up with that for the most part.  I performed it yesterday, and still I fell flat on my face.  So what happened?

Short answer:

• I allowed myself to second guess thus exacerbating my already high level of performance anxiety.

Long answer:

• I didn't warm-up properly
• I picked the wrong focus (getting through it instead of a technical or musical attribute)
• I didn't go through my normal performance ritual I had been practicing
• I didn't allow myself to "feel the room"
• I didn't allow myself time to feel my instrument and reconnect

So this was definitely a win for "Self 1".  This brings the score board to Self 1-4, Self 2-4.  Even tie.  (for those of you who have forgotten, Self 1 is "interference", Self 2 is "potential".  We like self 2)

If it weren't for the beta blocker I took before I played, I would have been a mess they would have had to mop up from the floor.  I was really embarrassed.  I knew the piece, nit-picked it, but I didn't allow myself to show that I had done any of this work.  I enforced my old bad habits of performance practice which have done nothing but create this fear of performing through a slew of consistent negative performance experiences.  So ultimately, it's my fault.

I will say though, I do have confirmation I can and do know how to play my viola.  Dr. Carroll told me in my last lesson that both she and Mr. Kawasaki, after watching my Aspen audition tape, both commented on how good I sounded on the recording.  She looked at me and asked, "Why don't you sound like that all the time?"  I just shrugged.  I wish I knew.  But at least all my claims of, "This sounded better in the practice room," have been validated.

So what do I need to do?  Perform!  Every week if I can manage it.  This is why I signed up for this advanced rep class, because I need to learn how to perform.  I practice it in the practice room, but no one's there to criticize me, so therefore I have no fear of making mistakes.  I think I even need to perform in performance class more often.  Even if it's just a kreutzer etude a week, a scale, or an excerpt.  I'll talk this over with Dr. C.

Luckily, I'll have two opportunities next week to redeem myself.  I'll be performing the excerpt again in rep class, and I'm performing my concerto in performance class.  I decided while I was sitting down after my horrendous rendition of the excerpt that I had two choices: to either let myself feel like dirt after that performance and continue to beat myself up over it, or use the experience to my advantage and use it as inspiration to better myself and work harder.  To take the time to recognize what I could do better and learn from the experience in order to keep it from happening again.  I chose the latter.  Each performance is a learning opportunity.  My former teacher at WSU, Catherine Consiglio, always said that these performances shouldn't be thought of as "performances" but as "a learning experience...a part of my education."  When I reminded myself of this, it took a greater part of the edge out of my bitterness.

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I finished "The Wise Man's Fear" by Patrick Rothfuss.  I personally gave it a 4.5 out of 5.  This was mainly due to the fact I felt it was like a never-ending-story.  It was well written and extremely captivating, but in many places it would never move on.  But, if you like sci-fi/fantasy, the Kingkiller Chronicle is a must.

Now I'm reading Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure."  I think Rothfuss might have gotten a lot of his inspiration for the hero of his story, Kvothe, from this book.  In many ways, they are exactly a like.  And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I was right on this.  If I ever meet him I will confirm and let you all know.  I'm hoping this finish with this book soon because I need to get back to my main series I've been reading for the better part of 7 years, the Wheel of Time.  Fourteen books, each a minimum of 600 pages.  That takes a long time to read, and I'm not the fastest reader on the planet.

Final Thought:

There is "do" or "do not." There is no "try."

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These past two weeks have been rather interesting.  Last week I stressed myself out so much I couldn't play my viola for more than 30 minutes at a time, and this week, I can play for five hours straight and feel no tension anywhere.

So what was I so stressed about?  Let me see: classes, I had a group lesson with Dr. Carroll and a lesson with Mr. Kawasaki three days later, I was stress because I hadn't finished reading my book (this supposed to be a relaxing activity, so I most surprised by it), and I was having trouble with my running training.

Remedy: Do absolutely nothing!  And it worked.  I allowed myself to relax, gave myself permission.  And now, I feel great.  I've about doubled my sound on my viola, running is fun again, and I've lost two pounds : )  (And I actually had a pretty good lesson with Mr. Kawasaki.  He didn't pass me off on anything, but he hinted that I was getting better)

I think that one of the activities I did to help me destress was make a list.  I like making lists.  There methodical and help me to organize my thoughts.  I have ADD/ADHD, so lists can be most helpful when I can't concentrate.  So what was the list I made?  A list concerning everything I could think of that I should be thinking of while I perform on my viola.  I focused on three areas (mainly because I don't have enough paper or pencil lead to get everything down on paper): posture, left hand, and right hand.

Posture:
-Stance

• position of feet (I like my right foot slightly in front of my left)
• weight on the backs of the heels
• viola parallel with the floor
• Am I using my abdominal muscles to support my spine?
• Is my spine straight?
• What position is my head in?  Is it leaning to one side or the other.  Or is it "held up by a string"?

-Tension

• Jaw
• Neck

Right Hand

-Bow

• correct stroke
• Am I allowing gravity to pull my forearm down allowing more weight into the string
• Am I "letting shoulders lie"  (are my shoulders resting)
• Is my bow straight
• is my upper arm "hitting the wall" (is my upper arm stopping in the same place each time or is it flapping like a chicken wing)
• Is my arm properly balanced
• Am I on an even plane with the string
• Is my stroke being engaged by the forearm then the fingers

-Tension

• Shoulder
• Upper arm
• Elbow

Left Hand:

-Hand

• Is the frame of my hand "set"
• What is the finger pattern I need to use for this passage
• Where are my fingers landing
• tips
• pads
• are dropping or am I forcing them down
• am I using speed
• am I releasing the energy  after they drop
• Am I aware of cross-string relationships
• Are my elbow and hand on even plane with the string I'm playing on
• is my elbow too far under, or not enough under the instrument to allow easy finger motion
• How are my shifts
• are the fast and light
• am I lifting, sliding, and placing
• are the slow and heavy (no no)

Intonation:

• are my ears telling my fingers where to go
• are my fingers listening to my ears
• is this Pythagorean Intonation, Just Intonation, or Equal Temperament Intonation

Vibrato

• Am I using wrist or arm in this passage
• fast or slow
• is it in tune?

Tension

• hand
• fingers
• fourth in particular
• elbow

I did this because I wanted to make a check list.  Dr. Carroll says she thinks of literally everything while she plays by going through a mental check list.  She says she cycles through it constantly and this allows her to become more focused on the music.  This is actually a technique described in "The Inner Game of Music" as a way to engage "self-2" (one's potential) and shut out "self-1" (interference).  After making this list, it really did help me to focus my thoughts on my own personal check list, and it has aided me greatly in the past two days.  The biggest being the part about my ears telling my fingers where to go, which I've known about and have been trying to do for a while now, but also realizing my fingers need to listen and actually do what my ears tell them to do.  Once I realized this, I found it a lot easier to play in tune.  

Even though this is a lot of information to think about, I didn't even cover the areas of :musicality, history of the piece, what is the hermeneutic meaning behind that passage, what kind of energy do I need to convey what I wish to convey, etc.  And people think majoring in music is easy...........

Final thought:

"What a conundrum, I'm going to blow things to smithereens for people being so persnickety about my vernacular."