Auditioning for Music Schools: Tips from the Other Side of the Room

It’s early January, so for me, that means another season of listening to college auditions. Few things provoke more anxiety in young musicians than the prospect of only having fifteen minutes to (supposedly) secure your future. So from the perspective of someone who’s listened to a lot of auditions over the past decade, here are a few suggestions to help in your preparations:

1. First Impressions Matter. I’m going to give away a secret here. The vast majority of the time, I can make pretty accurate evaluations about a student’s musical abilities within the first ten seconds of hearing them play. Those ten seconds tell me if you have a good sound, musicality, if you can play in time and in tune, and what your major strengths and weaknesses are. The rest of the audition serves to either confirm or contradict those initial impressions, but the truth is that most of the time, my initial observations prove accurate.

Here’s the good news: You can practice for this! How many times have you started the first ten seconds of each of your pieces? It’s very easy—you could do it twenty times a day in the practice room and in front of teachers/colleagues/random people. Practice these initial impressions until they become so automatic that you can start your pieces in your sleep.

If you want to know how your initial impressions come across to others, record yourself. Listen back immediately and ask the following questions:

• How does it sound? Is my tone full, clear, and resonant? Listen to your most favorite players and ask “how is their sound different from mine?” 
• Is it musical? Would someone (not your parents!) pay money to hear you play this? Someone that doesn’t know your instrument or the piece? Again, listen to your favorite players and ask “what are they doing differently from me?” 
• Is it in tune? Put on a tuner or drone pitch and check for reference. 
• Is it in time? Put on a metronome and see where you rush or drag. 

2. Sound and Musicianship Are Your Primary Goals. Remember that you’re auditioning to study music—that automatically implies that you have a lot of growth and development ahead of you. I’m not looking for fully-formed prodigies in my studio. If you’re that good coming out of high school, you should be auditioning for jobs, not college! So I’m listening for potential as much as polish.

Two of the things that often take the longest to develop in young musicians are also the two things which will define you as a player throughout your career: sound and musicianship. These are way, way more important than being able to play the highest, the fastest, or the loudest. Make sure in your audition preparations that you are focusing on always playing with a great sound and always playing with compelling musicality.

The best way to gain musicianship is to listen to great musicians. Do you have a favorite player? Have you listened to her or him play many times over? Can you hear their sound in your head? If not, you’re not listening enough. Remember to listen to players on other instruments than your own. This can be a part of your practicing—listen for a few minutes in between playing passages. It gives you a chop break and helps to reinforce great concepts of sound or musicianship.

Finally, one of the best ways to work on these concepts is by playing fundamentals. Fundamental practice should probably be at least 50% of your practice time, right up to the day of your audition. If you need help on developing a great fundamental routine and figuring out how to practice i, ask your teacher. Or contact me—I’m always happy to give suggestions!

3. Select Repertoire That Makes You Sound Your Best. Really hard music played in a mediocre fashion is not nearly as impressive as anything else played well. Don’t try and game the audition process by picking music that you are “supposed to play” or that the panel “wants to hear”. Pick music that highlights your strengths and minimizes your weaknesses (of course, you are constantly working to shore up weak areas in your practice, but you don’t have to spotlight them in an audition). Make sure that you are always asking yourself “does this make me sound my best?”

Here’s an example of something I hear a lot. The Hindemith Trumpet Sonata looks easy on the surface—it’s not fast, the notes aren’t difficult, and there aren’t that many of them. But that piece requires tremendous endurance, breath control, and musicianship, traits which many young musicians haven’t yet developed. Virtually every year, someone chooses this piece to play in an audition for me. Most of the time, they don’t have the chops to make it through. Pick your repertoire carefully!

4. Finally, Ace The Intangibles. Going back to this idea that college teachers are looking for potential over polish, do everything that you can to show in your audition that you are the kind of student that will make their studio better. Here is a partial list of qualities that I love to see in my incoming students. The best students are:

• Curious
• Determined
• Hungry
• Team players
• Confident without being cocky
• Thoughtful
• Kind towards others
• Interesting
• Organized
• On time
• Enthusiastic

Without going overboard (or putting on a false persona), how many of these qualities can you show during an audition? There will undoubtedly be time to talk with the panel—this is your chance to show that you are the kind of student that they definitely don’t want to pass on. One further thing with this: you will certainly have an opportunity to ask questions about the program during your audition. Just like in a job interview, have a couple questions in mind to ask. Make them well thought-out, intellectual questions that you can’t find the answers to just by going on the university’s website!


Hopefully this is just a bit of useful insight into the other side of the university audition process. It’s not as scary as it might initially seem, and do remember that you are evaluating the school as well. So test out these tips in your preparations, try to enjoy the process a little bit, and as always, remember to breathe!

 

Alex Noppe 

Trumpet Professor, University of Wisconsin

miraribrass@gmail.com

10 Tips for Success [in your First Year] in Music School

Whether it's your first year or your fifth year, these tips from trumpeter Alex Noppe will set you up for a great year of exploration, learning, and growth!

1. Go to class and do your homework 
Most students that fail classes do so because they don’t show up and they don’t turn in assignments. Too many of those end up paying for 5th and 6th years of college! Don’t let one missed class or assignment spiral into many more.

2. Use your professors for help 
That’s why they’re here – they like teaching and helping students!
Never be afraid to ask questions, whether it’s about class material or anything else.

3. Use your fellow students for help
As much time as you spend around the faculty, you’ll spend way more around your peers. Learn from them. Ask questions. Practice with them. Most older student love to help out freshmen with advice and ideas.

4. Practice. 
A lot. Every day! This is your job right now – to become great at your craft. Nothing else is nearly as important. You don’t get to take weekends and holiday breaks off from practicing any more. The best thing you can do is actually put your practice times in your calendar, and plan on multiple shorter sessions throughout the day. Mental fatigue leads to poor practice and very few people can remain mentally focused on one thing for hours at a time.

5. Use the little breaks in your schedule
Most music majors have tons of shorter classes and rehearsals, often with 20-40 minute breaks between them. You’d be amazed at how much you can accomplish in those short breaks, whether it’s a hyper-focused practice session, theory homework, or meals.

6. Be a good person to everyone around you 
This one is really important. Music school isn’t a competition – it’s collaborative and we all can get better together. Your reputation building begins right now, and many of the connections that you make while in college will be critical to your professional life down the road. Don’t gossip. Don’t cut people down. Assume that anything you say about somebody else will probably get back to them. Both positivity and negativity are extremely contagious, but positive people have happier lives!

7. Try out new things 
One of the best things about college is the incredible variety of opportunities and experiences that you will encounter. This is the best time to explore new fields, take new classes, learn new skills, and do things that will challenge you. I can guarantee that you will leave college a different person than when you started, and you never know what unexpected opportunity might set up you on the path towards the rest of your life.

8. Be smart about money management 
Remember that you have the rest of your life to work a job. This might be your only chance to be a college student. Save money on the things that don’t matter so much (fancy coffee, expensive cars, the newest cell phone) so that you have it for the stuff that does (extra lessons, a study abroad trip, high quality instruments). Small amounts of student loans are probably worth it if it means that you don’t have to spend your precious practicing/homework time working a minimum wage job.

9. Be healthy
Go outside. Drink more water and fewer energy drinks. Exercise. Don’t eat Taco Bell for every meal. Try to find some time to take care of yourself.

10. Remember that your worth as a person is not measured by your music 
In music school, you’ll experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, sometimes within the same 5 minutes! You’ll have successes and failures, but you don’t have to define yourself by either. Every audition or performance is only representative of just your music making at one specific
snapshot in time, not a value judgment of you personally.

As music majors, you get a tremendous opportunity to spend a few years (or your entire life) doing
something that is deeply meaningful to you and those around you, and making our society a better place to live in. Enjoy it – it’s going to be an exciting ride and tons of fun. Have a GREAT year!!

Nervous When you Perform? You're Probably Breathing Too Much!

Wait, what?  That goes against everything we've ever been taught as brass players!  Let me explain.   You know the feeling when you are performing and start to feel anxious?  Your heart rate quickens and so does your pulse.  Your breathing gets shallow and you start to take a lot of them.  But somehow, you constantly feel out of breath.  Here's what's happening:

Consider a normal breath under relaxed circumstances.  You fill your lungs completely full of air, which is made up of slightly less than one-quarter oxygen and the rest nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other gases.  We'll call all that stuff carbon dioxide for now because that's what most people understand.  While you are playing, your body uses most of the oxygen for, you know, staying alive.  The carbon dioxide is mostly blown into your horn.  Once you're out of air, you take another breath and the cycle repeats itself.  

But here's what happens when you're nervous.  Your heart rate quickens, causing all sorts of problems but most importantly, you take in extra breaths before you are fully out of air.  So here's what we end up with.  You take your first breath and your body uses the oxygen.  You blow some of the carbon dioxide into your instrument.   Then you take another breath, but this time you don't have your full lung capacity to work with because there's still some carbon dioxide left in there.  Again, your body uses the oxygen, you blow some of the carbon dioxide into your instrument, and then take anther breath too soon.  Now you have even less lung capacity to work with, and again, your body uses the oxygen.  At this point, you have a lot of carbon dioxide built up in your lungs and less and less oxygen to work with.  So you feel out of breath and continue taking too many breaths because your body is reporting that it's out of oxygen and panicking.  This is a dangerous cycle when you are already nervous!

You're taking more breaths but getting less oxygen!  So what are some solutions to this?  First of all, the easy solution to deal with this situation when it happens to you:

BLOW ALL THE AIR OUT OF YOUR LUNGS

Find a spot in the music when you can exhale completely and take a fresh breath to re-oxygenate.  Try this right now—blow all the air out of your lungs and take a nice big breath.  Do you feel how it instantly gives you extra energy?  This works pretty much all the time in performance.

Here's the way to avoid this problem in the first place:

PLAY WITH LOTS OF AIR SUPPORT AND LONG PHRASES

Most of us play with a weak and wimpy sound when we get nervous.  Make sure to keep putting lots of relaxed air into your instrument.  And even though your "fight or flight reflex" is telling you to take lots of extra breaths, save them for the ends of phrases, or when you're truly out of air.  This requires some mental discipline but it can be practiced.  Try running up and down the stairs a few times and then playing some long lyrical phrases when you're already out of breath.  The feeling is remarkably similar to what you feel when you're experiencing performance anxiety!  

These techniques won't completely cure nervous performing, but they will get you one step closer.  Good luck, and let me know how this works for you!

-Alex

The Athletic Brass Player

To play a brass instrument well involves learning a variety of skills.  Of course, one must be an artist, as well as an engineer (how do I make my instrument function most efficiently?) and entrepreneur (how do I develop a market for my music?).  But in addition, we also need to be athletes.  Brass instruments tend to create all kinds of physical challenges, from the necessity to move enormous amounts of air to the fine motor control in the face and fingers.  As such, there are some lessons that we can learn from how athletes approach some of the same challenges.  Below are three of the ones that I have found most valuable in my career:

Product Over Process

You're standing at the free throw line holding a basketball.  Are you looking at your hands or the basket?  You're waiting to bat at home plate.  Are you watching the ball or your bat?  In the bowling alley, are you looking at the ball or the pins?  All of these situations have one thing in common: your focus and concentration is on the end result, not the process by which you are going to achieve it.  

So as a musician, what is your product?  How about your sound and your musicianship?  These should always be the ultimate goal of any performance.  Nobody has ever come up to me at the end of a concert and said "I loved how your triplets were perfectly in time" or "My favorite part was that your low D's weren't sharp."  At the end of the day, what matters most is how you sounded and the musical/emotional message you conveyed to your audience.  

In order to do this, of course, you need to understand what a great sound and great artistry are.  The best way to do this is by spending regular time listening to world class musicians.  I always ask students who their favorite players are--if they don't have any, it's clear to me that they don't spend nearly enough time listening (it's okay to have many favorite players and they can change all the time!)  Once you have a great idea of what you want to sound like, then start recording yourself and listening back.  Do you sound like your goal?  If not, focus your practice on what needs to happen to get there.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting here that you ignore the mechanics of how to play the instrument.  Imagine a quarterback working on his passing.  He might make subtle changes to hand position, throwing motion, or footwork.  But then, (and this is the crucial step), he practices those new techniques hundreds or thousands of times so that they become completely automatic, controlled by the unconscious part of the brain.  That way, when he actually gets in the game, his attention can be solely on his targeted receiver downfield.  We can do the same things as brass players.  Nobody should be thinking during a performance: "Keep your finger out of the ring!"

Achieving Balance in Practice

Those people that have been on a well-coached sports team already understand this process.  How many times has a soccer coach said, "Today we'll work only on penalty kicks.  Tomorrow, we'll do just headers."  Good coaches intuitively understand that to develop complete players, you have to practice all facets of the game, repeatedly and continuously.  In fact, many elite teams use a practice model where players engage in a short drill working on one particular skill set, then run to the next drill for 10-15 minutes, then on to the next one.  By keeping them constantly moving and on their toes, the coaches avoid mental fatigue and much more closely simulate the actual game situations that their players are working towards.

I think most brass players understand this concept of balance.  But how many times have you found yourself playing the same Arban exercise over and over (and over and over)?  How many times have you worked for an hour on the same 4 lines of an etude only to realize that you used up your entire time and never got to the rest of your practicing?  I highly recommend that every brass player come up with a great fundamental routine that addresses all of the skills that you need in order to be successful (air, sound, technique, articulation, flexibilty, sight-reading, etc.)  This should be the very first thing that you practice every day--and becomes even more important as you prepare for a recital, audition, or major performance. I also thing it's critical to recognize when you are mentally or physically tired and learn to take a break, or move on to something else.  Continuing to practice when you are working against yourself won't really help you get better!

I've found a couple other great tricks for helping to organize and find balance in your practicing.  First, keep a practice journal.  Write down what you worked on, for how long, and possibly even what you achieved or learned from that practice session.  By going back and looking at your journals for the past week or month, you can learn where you being efficient vs. where you might be wasting a lot of time and what you are working on a lot vs. what you are ignoring.  A second trick that seems to work will is to set a timer.  This works well both for people like me who often had give myself time goals in order to get all of my practicing done ("20 more minutes on my Charlier etude and I then I can watch one episode of Colbert") or for people that obsessively practice they same thing until it's perfect (once the timer goes off, you must move on).  

Fundamentals Over Repertoire

This seems like a simple concept, but it's critical to brass players in every stage of their career.  Think about your favorite team--how much time in their practice do they spend working on skills and drill compared to the amount of time playing scrimmages and actual game simulations.  At most, it's probably 50-50.  At other times in the season, practices are devoted almost exclusively to fundamentals.  

The same goes for brass playing.  Which do you think will lead to developing better multiple tonguing more quickly: working out of the Arban book on a variety of exercises designed to teach you to multiple tongue repeated notes, scalar passages, and arpeggios in a variety of keys, or just compulsively practicing Carnival of Venice over and over again?  Learn the fundamentals first, and then apply them to repertoire.  

The trap that many people fall into is, "But I have to learn my band music, so I spend most of my practice time working on that!"  If you spend more of your time learning to be great on your instrument, the director/conductor will thank you later because the next piece will be so much easier to learn.  Don't forget about the importance of sight-reading every day!  Think about it: if you practice your fundamentals until you are a great player and learn how to sight-read anything in front of you, what piece of repertoire will present a serious challenge?  

Besides the actual content, there is very little difference in the preparation and process of great athletes from great musicians.  We have as much to learn from Peyton Manning and John Wooden as we do from Joe Alessi and Maurice Andre!  Now go practice!