January Technique Challenge; Taffanel et Gaubert

Each and every year at this time we make pacts with ourselves to make and keep resolutions for the new year. Each and every year these tend to go stagnant after a few weeks or even days so I figure why not create a more communal way to keep some of these goals alive and fresh throughout this coming year; 2017!  One of my major goals is to solidify and enhance my technique, so using the darkest months of the year I want to close myself away and bust my fingers to the bones so that when the sun shines this summer I can attack the audition trail with newly rejuvinated confidence that I am held to the technical standards of the greats!

Below is my created 4 week plan for the month of January. While coming up with it I realized that there are many excercises in the Taffanel et Gaubert book I have never even looked at let alone practiced, so using the Moyse technique book as a guide I strung them together and this is what I got! Each week I have goals with each exercise listed below. Let me know how you play with this to fit your specific technique goals! This is ambitious so we might not complete everything each day or each week...lets see how it goes!

Week 1 - January 2nd - 8th

     EJ 1 and 2 - Quarter note = 104 to start, reaching 120 by Friday.

          *Take up to high D

          *Two articulations a day; ex artic 1 line 1, artic 2, line 2. This gets you through 

             all artics by Friday.

          *Play at Piano or Pianissimo dynamic (since I'm bad at it)

          *Saturday just do all slurred at 120.

     EJ 5 - starting at quarter note = 72 to start, reaching 100-104 by Friday

          *Do two letters a day along with two articulations a day (meaning each letter 

            done twice aka repeated with two articulations).

          *There are 6 days of this built in so Satruday is included.

     EJ 6 - starting at quarter note = Comfy (for me somewhere between 60 and 72) and 

     shoot to get up to 104 by Friday/Saturday.

          *Monday, Wednesday, Friday = all Sharp keys

          *Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday = all Flat keys

*****Sunday the 8th is a rest day/tone day*****

Week 2 - January 9th - 15th

     EJ 3 - A starting at halfnote = 80, B starting at quarter note  60. Goal to get A up 104 

     and B up to 80.

          *Take up to high D

          *Monday, Wednesday, Friday are sharp keys

          *Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are flat keys

          *Skip Articulations 1 and 2 and do one articulation a day starting with 

            articulation 3.

     EJ 8 - quarter note = comfy goalish 100-112

          *Monday do A and B alternating articulation 1 and 2 with each changing key

          *Tuesday do C and D alternating articulation 3 and 4 wih each changing key

          *Wednesday through Friday do ONE letter a day alternating articulations with 

            each changing key (articulations 5 - 10 covered)

          *Saturday is a break from this exercise

     EJ 9 - to be done EXCATLY the same way as number 8.

*****Sunday the 15th is a rest day/tone day*****

Week 3 - January 16th through the 22nd

     EJ 4 - starting at half note equals 120. Goal is 132 by Saturday.

          *Skip articulation 1 and 2 and do one articulation a day starting with 

            articulation 3.

     EJ 7 - starting quarter note = comfy

          *Consider doing with all breath attacks...

          *Do each indicated key a day (Day 1 - C, Day 2 - Dflat, Day 3 - D, etc)

     EJ 10 - starting quarter note = Comfy

          *Change the articulation at each double bar and don't always start with the first 

            articulation each day.

*****Sunday the 22nd is a rest day/tone day*****

Week 4 - January 23rd - 29th

     EJ 4 - Starting half note = 132 and getting to 144

          *Do same as last week

     EJ 12 - quarter note = comfy getting to 100

          *mixed articulations as wanted (maybe a different one each page cycling 

            through constantly during the week)

     EJ 14 - starting eighth note = comfy 

          *Do two letters a day

          *Consider all slurred or tongued and go for smoothness and speed.

*****Sunday the 29th is a day of chocolate because you're done!!*****

Congratulations you have now completed my 4 week January Taffanel et Gaubert technical challenge! This will be a learning experience for all of us so I will be updaing weekly on how possible it is to get all of this done, whether or not I was able to truly meet my metronomic goals, and if this does, in fact, seem to be helping. I would LOVE it if you did the same!

Happy New Year and Happy Practicing!!

XOXO

Brandon

School Series Response; University Vs. Conservatory

School Series; University Vs. Conservatory

First, here is a link to my video comparing Universities to Conservatories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fMkd7VVHQQ

Now, a few follow up responses to my video.

1) There's a lot you seemed to not talk about.
     This is just ONE video in what will be a series. Each week (or so) I'll cover a new topic related to higher education and after posting this I realized I should have led with my second video. If you have a topic about higher ed you want to hear about let me know so I can include it if I'm not planning to already!

2) But what about the teacher being so important?
     I do mention in my video how important a teacher is! As I was making the video I realized just how much I had to say on that topic so it will be its own video. Keep a look out on either Sunday or Monday for this video to go up.

3) Thanks for mentioning the cost issue!
     This will also be its own video but yes it was pointed out to me that many teachers recommend university for undergrad because of lower costs and conservatories for graduate degrees which are shorter and make swallowing the debt much easier. We'll talk about how to navigate this more in a video on affording school.

4) Everyone is different how can you say what works for them?
     Each of these videos will be my OPINION based on my experiences. No one should take my words as absolutes (although I should point out that many do share my opinion). As I mention, though, your teacher is your best resource when trying to decide what is best for you.

Why Hello Again!

When I graduated form the San Francisco Conservatory I had a ton of social media goals to try and make sure I was able to help out other musicians on the brink of embarking on their own careers and I must say that although I did a great job last year I have been failing miserably this season! Please accept my apologies and know that I am going to do my best to go back to blogging at least bi-weekly and am hoping to get my youtube projects back up and running! Here is an update as to what I have been up to the past few months:

My baby the Concerts at St. Mary's concert series is really starting to bloom and take off! I am in the process of obtaining fiscal sponsorship so I can function as a non-profit next season and already have 5 concerts planned for 2015/2016 including 7 premieres! Our final concert of this season is on May 3rd including works by Quantz, Mozart, Mercadante, and a world premiere by Michigan Composer Matthew Hatty all works featuring the flute quartet (flute, violin, viola, cello).

The freelancing ball has really gathered speed which is the bulk of why I'm so busy. I have been lucky enough to have almost a concert a week this season but they tend to come semi last minute and are ALL over the place from Toledo to Kalamazoo and beyond.

My studio has been building steadily over the past two years and I am now teaching 2 days a week at a music store plus 1 day a week out of the house. I also am the flute technician for North Farmington High School which takes me out there about once a week for several hours. I hope to move exclusively to my home for teaching next year in terms of private students if I am still in Michigan.

Coming up I have 6 auditions one each in Battle Creek, South Dakota, Cincinnati, Chicago, Fort Wayne, and Seattle. I have also been accepted as a fellow at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara this summer and have been frantic making sure my bills and students will be taken care of while I am gone.

I am hoping to go into more detail on a few of these soon but for now I just wanted to update y'all and let you know that I have not given up on my freelance support project! 

Happy Practicing and talk to you all again soon!

How to Handle the Pit

Sunday was the first concert of my chamber series "Concerts at St. Mary's" and after months of planning and scheduling and stressing having it finally come to fruition is an amazing thing! I want to take this space to thank again Michele Williams and Nathan Hubbard who performed with me today for rolling with the punches and time restraints and helping me to put on a great show!! I also want to thank anyone who might be reading who came out. It means a lot to me how much support I have!!

Sometime soon I hope to do a post on putting together a concert series (part 1) but I want to see the aftermath of this past concert and how it effects the next one (regarding audience size especially). I am very hopeful that I can generate a strong following for years to come!

Currently I am also in the middle of the rehearsal process for Elektra with the Michigan Opera Theatre. The opera is great but a bit insane and I am so excited to have been given the opportunity to perform it! This leads us to todays topic of discussion; opera pit do's and don'ts.

Victor Borge compared the Orchestra Pit to a ditch on the side of the road calling it the "orchestra ditch" and this sometimes is exactly how it feels to be part of a production where you are cut off from the action happening on stage. I love this comparison also because when being told you will be in the "pit" you never really know what you're up for. Right now with MOT for example I am in a proper pit (uncovered) but this is not always the case. Sometimes you are in a totally separate room with microphones feeding in the sound to the theatre and sometimes you are sitting in plain view in front of or to the side of the stage.  Once while I was in San Francisco I was even in a pit that was us sitting in the front row of theatre seats! Talk about awkward...we were all staring the vocalists in the face the entire time and the conductor was facing away from them!

Having said this I am not ready to make point number 1. Make sure that the "pit black" you own also looks nice! You will never show up to a gig having not known what kind of pit you will be in but I have been totally appalled showing up to performances when we are in plain view, have been told to wear "pit black", and musicians show up in a faded black polo and black jeans. WHAT?! I mean come on you are looking into the eyes of the patrons and it is so disrespectful to them and the vocalists that you came dressed for beat poetry in a bar that illegally still allows smoking inside. "Pit black" sometimes does include black jeans, etc but please also make sure you have on hand black slacks and a black button up with a black tie. It's simple, comfortable, and looks great.

Point number 2; DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES IN THE PIT!!!! There is always that one person who thinks "oh my feet don't smell" or "I need to air these puppies out". Typically it is a musician who doesn't need to breathe as part of playing and let me tell you this is MURDER for the wind players! Your feet? The DO smell. They ALWAYS smell. Don't do it!

This brings us to smells in general (point 3). Don't wear perfume or cologne. Someone might be allergic for one thing and for another when you're in a small underground type pit the smells all combine together and make it hard to breathe after a while. This is especially true if you are a smoker because the smoke scent will follow you no matter how much you spray yourself after break and then you bring not one but TWO smells into the pit and I don't want to feel queazy while playing Mozart y'all. Lastly, please wash your performance attire before and between performances and runs of the show. Sometimes 25 musty tux jackets make the difference (and not in a good way).

My final point is keep talking in the pit to a minimum. You might feel that because you aren't seen it is ok but I find this to be exceptionally distracting while I am playing or counting rests. Also most pits now have microphones in them to help to get a better "mix" of the orchestra and chances are you will get picked up and be heard in the audience. It is not always audible but be careful...you never know what might be overheard!

Hopefully this sheds some light on life in the ditch! If you are so inclinced the performances for Elektra are; 

Satruday October 18th at 7:30 pm

Wednesday October 22nd at 7:30 pm

Saturday October 25th at 7:30 pm

Sunday October 26th at 2:30 pm

The Elektra set from the pit

Blah!

Sometimes it is hard to care. Sometimes it is hard to want to work hard. Sometimes the idea of getting up is so daunting that we pretend the alarm never happened.

I am the first to admit that although it appears that I am always optimistic, always trying to move forward, and am "doing it" that I have my days as well where I wish real life could pause itself. Sometimes I want to wrap myself in a blanket burrito with Netflix and eat chinese food and pretend that I am 12 years old again (cough cough last night). This has been a lot of the past week for me honestly. The spark has fizzled out a bit.

The reason I felt the need to write today (considering I also did not want to blog this week) is that I allow myself to embrace these feelings because I know that my personality will eventually take back over and kick me in the ass like I need it to. That is something that as musicians, artists, workers of any kind we need to train ourselves to be. I am naturally a go-getter but after so many tumbles and falls there is a point where anyone will break down a bit and it is only with constant diligence that we our able to train ourselves to care beyond what is natural. 

Let's face it, if you want a career in the arts that's what you need. You need to care beyond what is natural and take pride in what you produce. You do not have the privilege to waltz into a rehearsal super hung over and just kind of "keep your head down" because your tone and intonation will suffer and be noticed. "Dressing down" a bit one day is not possible when the dress code for most orchestral performances is a tux and any other time you are more than likely to be asked to wear some kind of button up shirt tie combo (if you're a guy at least). Worrying about work before you get there is unavoidable if you warm up prior to rehearsal and honestly the soundtrack in my head is enough to deafen anyone.

When life gives you lemons, sometimes you just need to bite down hard. Accept the sour taste it leaves you with. We can learn from it and we can also just let it pass. Eventually you will feel normal again. And if you don't? Play Bach.

B-Randon...OUT!

Inside the Holding Pen: A Guide to Sanity

Each and every audition has its own set of rules and regulations in regards to what time you need to show up to draw numbers, if you are pre-assigned an audition time, when the screen comes down, the list goes on. One thing that they all have in common, however, is a general "warm up" room that you will most likely go into before you are (hopefully) given your own private space before you play. Now we are somewhat prepared for this "circud" of an event but after having taken a few auditions I can safely say that no one has ever really been able to warn or prepare me for what being in this space actually means for my well being at an audition. We have all heard stories of the "fast noters", and the "loud ones", and the "death starers", and I want to go on record that...they all do indeed exist. The question is how to be prepared for this event and how to keep your  mind focused on the task at hand and how you will perform that day? For this I offer a small guide to sanity in such instances.

1) Head Phones. I wasn't sure if I wanted to lead with this one or not but in terms of being the most helpful tool to have I NEVER go to an audition without my headphones and music player. I recommend that you choose music that will help you to focus but will also partly drown out what is happening around you. I am an avid pop music lover and choose to listen to some sort of Kesha Spears-Lopez thing to transport me away. I also choose not to listen to the audition music since I am already over thinking what I am about to do and I want to keep the second-guessing of myself to a minimum. It is also a polite way to let others know you don't want to converse too much before you play so as to keep the focus on yourself.

2) Change NOTHING! There will be someone playing the Mendelssohn Scherzo as fast as they possibly can and you will think "should I play it that fast?". There will be someone playing Brahms IV at a tempo that could make turtles seem to run at light speed and you will think to yourself "should I take that a bit slower?". The answer to these questions is: "NO!". "But why?" you ask "they can do it like that so maybe I should too!". I have two answers to that. First, you have prepared and practiced and decided how these excerpts should be played based on your own taste and musical intuition. Take comfort in constancy. Constancy  (especially in a first and second round) is worth its weight in gold at an audition. The second answer is: perhaps the way they are doing it is just flat out wrong! Mendelssohn Scherzo is not meant to be played much above 92. Brahms IV is not a dirge in context. Leonore is not actually as fast as you think and should sound heroic not hurried. Daphnis is meant to be supple not garishly loud. All of these details matter more than sheer finger velocity or tonal control at a slow tempo (although don't skip those when appropriate) and knowing the context is important. Once you have accepted that you have a knowledge of the excerpts that others have glossed over, hearing these "fast noters" or "loud players" will give you comfort because you have prepared to a level that they forgot existed. You have the style. And at the end of the day style is EVERYTHING.

3) Do not take group warm up interactions at face value. You are all stressed and competing against each other for one spot that you have all been practicing your booty's off for! You don't know why someone is staring at you...or if they even see you! Maybe they see the music and you happen to be standing behind it. You don't know what they're thinking while listening to you. Maybe they're intimidated. Maybe they think they're way better. At the end of the day though, you will all play and then the claws retract and you can grab lunch and get to know those around you. I have made many friends at auditions and each time we enter a first round we might say hello when we see each other but mutually understand that until we have actually played; business before conversation. Save your judgement of a person until after the round is complete. In this business we need to band together so don't write someone off until you have given them a fair and untarnished chance.

4) Get there early and be prepared to tune. This is the last point I want to stress. I recently took an audition with no individual warm up room option. We were in the group room until right before we played and then were taken to a room where we could not play a note because it would have been heard while the applicant before you auditioned. I am so glad that I arrived early enough that there was no one from my round in the group room. I was able to tune and hear myself . It always strikes me as odd when applicants show up, put their flutes together, and then go to town without tuning! Don't you want to make sure? I do! If you arrive late or find that there are too many people, simply step into the hall (if possible) or find a bathroom. The moment of obnoxiousness others may experience will be worth your sanity knowing you are in tune and sound like you always do.

I could go on and on with other scenarios (don't overplay, don't play the same things as others), etc but I am going to leave it here for now. If you want me to go over how I react to a situation please do not hesitate to message me and I will either write another posting with several other scenarios or reply directly with whatever advice I have.

Until next week!

Happy Practicing!!

Did Ya Miss Me?!

Well it has been a LONG few months since I last posted on this blog! I knew going into my summer I was going to be taking a month away but as fate would have it (and a bit of laziness I must confess) that turned into 3. I am back and will (hopefully) be posting regularly again soon for the few loyal followers I might have!

Shall we talk a bit about my summer? As a flutist who is no longer a student but still much younger than many professionals and others in school I had a very mixed bag kind of summer that was 3 parts exciting 2 parts stressful. In the month of June I attended the National Orchestral Institute and Festival and had an absolute BLAST! I played an average of 10 - 12 hours a day, made a ton of new friends, worked with some amazing coaches and conductors, performed a TON of repertoire, and learned a lot of things about the nature of the business that I have gotten myself into. After five big concerts, a community engagement appearance, and a chamber marathon I was ready to take some time off and enjoy summer. I don't do well with just sitting around doing nothing though so I had a few performances here and there sprinkled throughout July and August but mostly I started working up excerpts for the slew of auditions that I have coming up. And that pretty much wraps up summer without going into a long drawn out version.

Performing as Principal on Holst's "The Planets"

Presenting to a Middle School in Maryland

Shostakovich's 5th Symphony

Having taken a few months away I was able to refocus on my career and come up with a few new tricks that I will be presenting in the coming months. The focus of this blog will remain about how I am trying to piece my musical life together in order to help those just embarking on this journey to have an idea of what works, what doesn't, what major problems I run into, and also to see if anyone has suggestions for me to make things easier. I might veer off from that path from time to time but in general that is what I am committed to doing on here.

In the coming weeks look out for posts concerning (in no particular order):

Creating a Concert Series!

Inside the audition holding pen: things we aren't warned about.

How to get asked back.

What you wear matters!