The Confident Musicianing Podcast
Want to get better at your music auditions? You CAN transform the way you audition and The Confident Musicianing Podcast guides you through it.
I’m Eleanor, and together we dive into concrete strategies for the before, during, and after of your audition process so that you can be better prepared and crush that performance! If you’re a music student ready to revolutionize your auditioning, let’s jump in. Tune in every Tuesday for another insight-filled episode; see you there!
The Confident Musicianing Podcast
How to find the spark in your repertoire... again
When we practice the same thing over and over, it can get boring. Here are 3 ways to revive that boring repertoire.
This episode is available as a blog post. Click here to read.
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Hello and welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. My name is Eleanor and I am a British American oboist studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland literally my dream school and it took me a long way to get there. I applied and auditioned for 12 schools in three different countries. It was a lot of hard work but, oh my gosh, so worth it. I want you to have the confidence to work hard in achieving your goals, so come with me as we go on this journey together. So sit down, pull up a chair, take a seat or, if you're on the go, welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast.
Speaker 1:Almost every time I do a Q&A on Instagram, I get asked about what I do when I am playing a piece and I am kind of tired of it, but I still have to keep practicing it. And how do I make it interesting so that I can keep practicing it without being bored? This is something that I have felt so many times. I think classical musicians generally can feel this way, because the pieces that we play take time and they take time to work through and get better and they, you know, sometimes take months or years to perfect. And through that time sometimes we can be like I am sick of this piece, I am sick of practicing it every day. To me now it's just notes, what, like. How do I make it interesting? And so today, I think it's a really good opportunity to talk to you about three ways that I make my pieces more interesting after a while of playing them and practicing them and when I am bored with them. But I still need to keep preparing them for something. So let's dive into it. The first thing is creating a story around it. This is an interesting idea because I feel like with classical music, there's so much to dive into, right, there's so many parts to it. There's so many pieces to it. It can be very what's the word not? Difficult, but like intricate, right, it can also be difficult, but for us, I think it's crucial that we put a story towards it, and not necessarily the story that it was it had, because some pieces of classical music have stories to them, but maybe our own story.
Speaker 1:I remember, for me, when I was preparing for my university auditions, I had to prepare the Mozart oboe concerto, the first movement, and that piece is difficult. It's definitely difficult, and you know, I spent months and months and months and months doing it every single day, and for me, kind of the only way that I was able to keep doing it without getting extremely tired of it was to create a story around it, and the story changed as it developed. I think that this can also be helpful because maybe if the notes themselves might seem boring because you've been playing them a lot, a way to kind of make them more interesting is to change the story around them. So maybe at the beginning it's one thing, and then as you learn it and as maybe you get better at the notes and maybe the notes get faster if you're making the, it needs to get faster or maybe you're adding more depth dynamics, then the story itself can change and that can be really, really helpful as well. I think I remember in the same audition cycle I had to prepare the second movement of the Saint-Saëns Oboe Sonata.
Speaker 1:I had to prepare the second movement of the Saint-Saëns Oboe Sonata and that was definitely an interesting piece because it's so visual to me. I think at the beginning of that audition cycle I had one story in it and I think it was because the audition cycle for me started in the autumn, so the story in it was, you know, had an autumn feel to it. It was, you know, walking through a forest with with leaves falling down in beautiful colors and then, as it progressed, without kind of realizing it, the story in my mind. I was now walking through a winter wonderland, because it was winter and, you know, maybe I saw deer in the background or maybe there was a pond that had iced over and I had ice skates. If you've heard that sonata, you can maybe visualize and understand why I might put ice skating to it.
Speaker 1:So, whatever you are focusing on, whatever piece you're working on and maybe you're sick of it, because, let's be honest, we get sick of things sometimes adding a story to it being like, how can I add a story? And it could be something so vague, like walking through the woods. It could be something so specific, like maybe it's you and a friend that you are close to and you guys are doing something you enjoy, and that might be something that you visualize or something like that, so something that makes you excited to play it because of the story. And if you visualize a story, that can actually really help with the musicality of it, because you're now trying to get something across right, and that can be very, very, very helpful in terms of just getting the music out and it being more than just notes, especially after months and months and months of preparing it.
Speaker 1:The next thing is finding different places to play it. I think that this can be so helpful, especially because I mean especially if all you have done is just practice it in one spot in a practice room, over and over and over and over, and this piece maybe hasn't seen the light of day, or maybe it has, but not for a while, and you're bored of it, then finding different places to play it can be just a great way to just put a spin on it. Even the act of getting an accompanist or a collaborative pianist and just working with them because then you have another part of it come to life, if, say, you're working on a concerto or a sonata that has a pianist, if it's something else and there's other parts of the music, then working on that can be good as well, even just playing around with it. You know, if it's a piece that is maybe just for your instrument, maybe get another person who plays your instrument and play it together, or maybe play it in a round. If that's something that you can do, maybe, like if you really want to get into it and get technical, maybe understand the chord structure of it and have the other person just kind of play those chords as you play it, that can make a world of difference, I think, for me.
Speaker 1:Right now I'm working on a Bach sonata and this is for me more of a practice technique, as I am just understanding kind of the chord structure and the notes and getting them even, because, because I feel like with Bach especially, there's just lots of notes, just a ton of notes. But what I do is what I found helpful is I play the right hand of the piano on oboe and I record that and then I listen to that recording and I play my oboe with that, and that can be really helpful because all of a sudden I'm in a duet and these notes mean more than just notes. Right, I can hear, oh, you know, the other person or the you know the right hand of the piano is playing this while I'm doing this long note. They're doing this really, you know interesting, you know semi-quaver passage, and all of a sudden I'm like, okay, this is, this is interesting now To me.
Speaker 1:Before this was just like a minim or a half note, now it is, you know, something that I can imagine the other part playing right, that can be really helpful as well, of course, if you want to put on a recital or just put on a performance or just record yourself. You know, for me I record things and I put them on the internet. You know, for example, this video or this podcast. So kind of working through that and just bringing life to it, playing it in different places, playing it in different settings with different people, even if, you know, maybe you don't have a different setting or a different person to play it with. Record yourself, playing a different part of it If there is a different part of it, and then play with that recording. Okay, that like just doing all of that stuff. It can make number one practice more interesting, but also the piece more interesting, especially if you've gotten bored of it. We all get bored of pieces.
Speaker 1:The last thing that I think can be really helpful is watching masterclasses on it. This I didn't think of. And then when I sat down to write kind of my ideas for this, for this video, for this episode, I was like, okay, um, I think, I think I need to put this in because I I remembered as I was writing it in, I was like, oh yeah, I used to do this because I remember when I auditioned for um, the youth orchestra that I was in in the states, I really, really, really wanted to get good at the extracts. The excerpts, like they, you know, were all there and there were quite a few, and I was like I really want into this youth orchestra, like I want to get in, and so I want to be very good at the extracts and I want to convey that I understand them. And so I spent quite a bit of time on YouTube just watching masterclasses.
Speaker 1:I remember there was one masterclass that I watched with, like Albrecht Mayer, who was he's an oboist for the Berlin Philharmonic and he was he was giving a masterclass about the exact excerpts that I had to prepare and, oh my gosh, did it not only make them less kind of boring, because I had been preparing them for a while, but they also just added a whole new spin on them and made me think about them in very different ways and just ultimately got them better. And so if that is something that you are working on and maybe you, you know, are like, okay, I'm kind of bored of this, but I've run out of ideas. You know what I mean, like I've run out of things to work on, but I know it's not good enough. Watching masterclasses on it can be really helpful, and I mean, depending on what you're playing like I was playing very famous oboe excerpts that is pretty easy to find masterclasses on.
Speaker 1:If maybe you're playing something that you can't necessarily find a masterclass or just a class on YouTube, then listening to recordings of the piece and I know that this can sound a bit like you know everyone says that but listening to different kinds of recordings, maybe like your favorite musician on this instrument, going to the like live performances of this piece, if you can is also really helpful. Or playing it for other people and getting their thoughts, and that's kind of ties into the to the second point of playing it in different places. But yeah, just getting people's thoughts on it. Maybe playing it for your teacher you're probably already playing it for your teacher but playing it for different people and getting their different perspectives on it can be really helpful as well.
Speaker 1:But for me, especially when I was doing this this audition for this youth orchestra that I really wanted to get into I just kept doing, you know, watching masterclasses, just masterclass after masterclass of this, and I watched them multiple times. So we're actually only about three or four videos on YouTube that I actually watched, but I watched them over and over and over and every single time I got kind of a new idea about it. So, you know, even if you're in your mind, you're like I don't know if this will be on YouTube, just look it up, just look it up and see if it is, because it might be right, it might be. So that is something that you can do as well. Just kind of listen to it, watch it, watch masterclasses, watch classes of it. You know, ask people for input about it.
Speaker 1:All of these things can maybe give you a new perspective of the piece so that you're not as bored of it, because we all get like this sometimes and we all, I suppose, need this kind of just refresher on, you know, how to make the music we're working on, and that we have been working on for months, every single day, interesting and exciting. Again, because we picked these pieces for a reason, you know. We picked them at one point, um, for for a reason, so, kind of before we do the recap, diving in to the ideas of practicing it, because we did touch on practicing things and kind of understanding how we practice things and maybe we do watch masterclasses, because that can be kind of considered practice in a way and then also practicing it, and maybe practicing it with the story, all of these things that we touched on. Sometimes, a great way to track these things, sometimes a great way to track these things because it is very important to track things and plan things is using a practice notebook or a practice journal. This way we know what we're actually practicing and we know when we're done practicing and then we can also look back and see what we have practiced so that we're able to kind of go forward from there.
Speaker 1:And, moving into this, something that I do when I plan my practice is use a notable practice journal. A notable practice journal is something that, honestly, has changed my practice for the better so much. A notable practice journal is a practice journal and you can write the stuff that you have planned for your practice and then you can also reflect there's reflection questions, there's spaces to reflect so that you can maybe look back and say, okay, I added this story to this piece and it made it more interesting, and then maybe if you go in the next practice session, you're like hang on, what was that story that made it really interesting? You can just look in your journal and be like, oh yeah, I wrote it down and then you can save time and it's just better and you have better efficient practice sessions. Oh my gosh, it's just so good, so good.
Speaker 1:So, as soon as I realized that this journal was helping me, I knew that I needed to tell you about it and I knew that I needed to get you a code because aren't codes great A discount code. So use code Eleanor15 for 15% off your practice journal. That is, e-l-e-a-n-o-r-1-5 for 15% off on your practice journal, and get yourself a practice journal and, yeah, just like, write things down, plan, reflect, have overall, more structured, focused and effective practice sessions, because, let's be honest, isn't that what we all want? I never recommend anything that I don't absolutely love. Um, this discount code is an affiliate code, which means I do receive a commission with no extra cost to you. All right, let's get into a recap, because I think all of these points I'm so excited to tell you about, because they are so helpful for me, so let's just recap them before the end of this episode so that you can remember them easier, easily or when you get into your next session.
Speaker 1:So the first thing is creating a story around it, like literally anything. Anything you want, just something that maybe helps you remember it, something that maybe there is already a story around the piece. So maybe visualizing that more and changing the story as you change as well it doesn't have to be the same story, whatever helps you. The next thing is finding different places to play it, whether that is maybe a recital space or maybe it's just outside the practice room, maybe it is with someone else, with an accompanist, maybe just with a recording of you playing a different part and then you playing, you know, with that recording, just finding different places and ways of playing the piece. And the last thing is watching master classes on it or maybe going to a performance or listening to it or all of these things, kind of getting some input on the piece and not just you in a practice room playing, playing, playing over and over and getting bored. So these are three things that, um, I hope that you have found helpful, uh, for for making whatever piece you're working on and you find boring a little less boring and a little more engaging Because, let's be honest, as musicians I mean, we focus on the same stuff over and over again, and anything that can help it be more engaging is really good. It's really good.
Speaker 1:All right, that is about it for this episode. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. If you enjoyed this, please do let me know, um, whether it is subscribing, following, liking, you know, commenting whatever it is, depending on what platform you're watching this or listening to this on Um, and, as always, all of the links to do with this will be in the show notes, um, from the blog post that goes with this, as well as the link for you to get your notable practice journal. And please, please, please, do use the code Eleanor15 for 15% off so you can get that discount and start getting better focused practice sessions. All right, that is about it for this. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for watching or listening, and I will see you next time. All right, take care bye.
