Greetings from the 89th season of Interlochen Arts Camp!
One of the really cool perks of working up here in the summer is the decades old Sunday night tradition of a performance of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra (WYSO). These are high school age musicians who are among the very best in the world for their age (or, in some cases, ANY age). This summer we've been treated to orchestral masterpieces such as Stravinsky's Firebird, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis, and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, among others. These young musicians have six days to put together an hour long concert each week; usually with a new conductor! They do it on a level that leaves me floored each and every week........and I know how they do it!
Ok, sure, they are really talented but after a certain point the phrase 'well, that person is just really talented' is just a cop out and, frankly, should be a bit insulting to the person in question. These young musicians can do what they are doing through one avenue. They park themselves in front of a stand and they WORK. Sure, I hear excerpts from the pieces they are going to perform but the majority of what I hear is fundamental work; scales, arpeggios, long tones, and every other facet of pedagogy that helps us play.
WE ARE VERY MUCH LIKE ATHLETES-
Were you to watch the buildup to the NFL or NBA drafts you would hear scouting reports on the athletes and, invariably, would hear the phrase 'holes in their game'. If you play basketball a hole in your game might be that you aren't the strongest rebounder. It's a facet of your game that needs improving. The best way to improve that facet is not to just go play more basketball but to do drills specific to learning to be a better rebounder; positioning, boxing out, timing the jump, things like that. The same goes for music.
As even the best athletes have holes in their game, so do even the best musicians. Some, over time, become so highly skilled that none of us would notice these holes....but they still do. They notice it when they are preparing music to perform. You see, the parts that are difficult for them to prepare indicate areas where their skills haven't been as well developed yet. With some modern composers it may be a weakness because the piece requires a technique which is new to the performer. Other times, though, it's simply an area that hasn't had as much development yet; ergo, a hole in their game.
So, what's the simplest way to correct these 'holes'?
C'mon, you already know the answer. It involves your instrument, a metronome and tuner, time, and patience.
First, let's establish the difference between PRACTICE and PREPARATION. It's pretty simple.
PRACTICE involves work with no expiration date; meaning you'll be doing them as long as you play the instrument (or, more to the point, you'd BETTER be doing them)- scales, long tones, scale patterns, etc. It is anything that is helping to make you better at your instrument. For younger players, these should all be given equal weight. As a player advances, they should still practice these fundamentals but there might be situations where specificity becomes involved. This means at a certain point a person might decide that their tongue is still a bit sluggish and add extra articulation exercises or, a person might feel that their sound is still not as full as they'd like so long tones and voicing is emphasized a bit more. Regardless, practice is basically all those things your teacher wants you to do that you want to make excuses about doing....until those holes really start to show themselves.....
...like when you are preparing a senior recital and those holes present themselves to you daily in the practice room.
Herein lies PREPARATION. It is working on something that has a due date; a recital, an audition, a concerto competition, semester juries. It's anything that you know on this date had better be ready. I'm going through that preparation for my senior recital as we speak and that early October date is looming large in the windshield.
I don't mind mentioning at all that I went through a good bit of my youth believing that if I simply got my sound good enough, everything else would fall into place. I didn't need those stupid scales and patterns. I would just work on the music and over time my technique would just magically improved. Yeah, so that isn't how it works AT ALL.
I see those holes even after a few years of hard fundamental work. I especially see them on the last two pages of Ingolf Dahl's Concerto; which is solid 16th notes with a performance tempo of about 152 beats per second. I'm getting it ready. I'm preparing it for my recital. I can just tell you that the preparation would be considerably easier had, years ago, I addressed the holes in my game.
Make no mistake, you don't do long tones just to make a pretty sound in the practice room. You don't practice scales just so you can get them up to 120+ beats per minute. You do these things so that when it comes time to say what you want to say in a piece of music, regardless of whether it's a Bach Cello Suite, Creston's Sonata, or Giant Steps, you won't have a basic fundamental skill development issue blocking you from saying what you want to say in a piece. There are few things more frustrating to a musician than not being able to get what's in their head out for the audience to experience because the musician simply isn't good enough; skill wise.
This takes us, once again, back to why the WYSO kids are so much better than the average high school musician. It isn't talent. It's hard practice on the basic skills needed to take care of the holes in their game.
Get in the practice room.
Do the work.
Take care of those holes.
Become a star!
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