You’re two weeks away from your Vermont All State Festival audition. Whew! If you’ve been following directions on these blog entries you’ve done a lot of work and are probably mostly pretty well prepared! Congratulations on your hard work! Now’s the time to 1) prepare yourself psychologically for the process, 2) go over all the details of audition preparation, and 3) refresh your love for the flute, and for your audition piece in particular.
With experience, auditions can truly be enjoyable – perhaps your biggest job now is to think of this audition as your friend and ally, your partner in the ultimate goal of helping you to experience and express that glorious and elusive legacy of humankind: music. How do we change our mindset from feeling that we’re being judged or that we’re being unfavorably compared with the skills of others, to a mindset of learning, loving, and reveling in our own experience of music?
First, remember that the adjudicators were high school students themselves once. Chances are, your adjudicator has been through many auditions and has felt similar nerves, concerns, and anticipation to what you’ll be feeling. Remember, the adjudicators are there because they want to help with the process of helping students to both get the feedback you need in order to improve your playing and to make it possible for all those who are chosen to participate to have a fully inspiring experience. I believe adjudicators in general want to help every kid to develop the skills that would allow them to fully enjoy the All State Festival experience, and also knows that some kids will need to develop skills in some areas before they can fully enjoy the experience themselves and in order to be an asset to the group. If you don’t make it in, it simply means there are skills left to be developed, whether technical, tonal, or psychological, and their hope is to provide information to help you develop.
Next, think of it as not so much a competition with others as much as an opportunity to demonstrate all the work you’ve been doing and the progress you’ve made and are continuing to make. Remember that, unlike professional orchestral auditions where many people are auditioning and only one person will win the spot, in a Vermont All State audition many students will be accepted. In the general audition, often there is not an absolute number that will be accepted. There may be many students who are only a point or half a point apart, but often there will be a large gap between those accepted and those not accepted. If you’re above the cut-off, you’re probably close in ability level to others accepted. If you’re not accepted, it simply means there are areas to work on before your next audition – and likely not that you just barely missed the cut-off by a single point or two. Just knowing this may help to decrease the pressure and stress level – it’s not that every tiny detail is likely to make or break the whole thing.
Some of you may be auditioning for the scholarship competitions, in which case you’ve hopefully had quite a bit of experience with auditions, and your particular audition will be more directly competitive. But even in those cases, you’re most likely to do your best if you go into the process thinking of enjoying the experience for its’ own sake.
Another part of being prepared psychologically is to be as prepared in your practice as possible. If you know you know it, your muscles will take over the technical part, allowing your mind to enjoy the music and expression, and you’ll be less likely to become flustered. If you know you don’t know the music well, you’ll have to use all your brain power just to get the notes, and will be more likely to make even more mistakes as a result of nerves. My rule of thumb is that if you play something correctly 9 times out of 10 at home, the 1 time out of 10 that you make that mistake will almost certainly be in performance, due to nerves. Go over all the details of everything to make sure you know it all inside out – all the scales, all the challenging sections of your piece. I’ll go over more of this in the final entry for one week before the audition, but you have the general idea. At this point, it’s particularly important to be playing the piece all the way through as often as possible. If there are mistakes, make a mental note of them and go back AFTER you get to the end. It’s important to NOT stop for mistakes during this final polishing stage – note that in the adjudication form, in the pitch accuracy section, you could get 10 points for “All pitches were correct” 7, 8 or 9 for “Virtually all pitches were correct” versus 3 or 4 for “Wrong pitches detracted from the performance.” Unlike a professional orchestral audition where a single mistake will put you out of the running, the reality is that almost everyone auditioning in Vermont at the high school level will make some note mistakes, and other imperfections, somewhere. The key is to make sure you keep moving in a way that the overall feeling of the piece comes across. A little mistake is not a big deal. Stopping dead in your tracks or going back over the section with the mistake might be a big deal – and make the difference between losing 1 or 2 points, versus losing several points. Keep in mind that the goal is for the music to be beautiful – not to prove that you are capable of playing a specific section correctly.
So find anyone who will listen and create your own relaxed performances to give yourself trial run experiences playing in front of people, the whole way through. Even your or your siblings’ stuffed animals can make an ok audience in a pinch, at least for starters. Family members and friends often make a willing audience, once you’ve played it through in mock performance many times on your own. Perhaps try recording yourself. It can be hard to hear yourself make mistakes, but recognize that you’re human like all the rest of us (even professionals make embarrassing mistakes in these trial runs – and other times!), hear the mistakes and imperfections as well as the parts that really sounded great, make a note of them, go back and fix the imperfections in your next practice session, and then record again. Do this many times over the next two weeks – it can really help if you use the information you hear to your advantage!
Finally, notice the things you like about your playing. This is really what it’s all about. If you like something about the way you sound, then it’s all worth every minute of practice, every comment, every audition, every attempt to improve. Those who do best in the audition experience love what they’re doing! Music is truly one of the most intensely satisfying, deeply enjoyable, and purest expressions of humanity. That’s what this is all about – so find your own place within that – and revel in the experience!
