Week 5…

This past week was not as productive as I would have hoped.  While the rest of my co workers were in San Francisco playing gigs for Fleet Week SF, I was hanging back here in Hawaii, so you would think that I would have gotten a lot done!  Nope.

I had plenty of desk work, and when you throw in the temptation to go home early everyday and hang out with my little bambino, things did not go well in the practice department.  Ha.  It ended up being a nice break though.

Oh…I forgot to post my week 7 assignment video!  Well, here it is!  As I promised, I recorded it on Monday.  Its actually been on YouTube all week, I just never got around to posting a blog about it.

I did the same thing as last time and I doubled up my recording with a Zoom audio recorder.  The sound is just so much better!  Its a little more work to put the video together, but overall I think its worth it.  Its a good reminder that my sound isn’t as wacky as I was thinking it was.  I am also starting to hear more little subtle things in my sound that I want to improve.  Unfortunately, I have really come down with a case of the lazies and haven’t put in effort to work on it at all.  Perhaps it would be different if I were taking a real audition at the end of this challenge.  Its so easy to let things go when there’s really nothing at stake…

I am still frustrated that I keep making little mental errors that result in technical flubs.  Ugh.  I think it might be prudent to start doing these little mock-audition recordings every day or every other day.

Week 5:

I definitely took an unscheduled break in the challenge this past week.  And that’s ok!  Sometimes its good to take a minute and balance yourself.  So for that reason, I am going to repeat the previous assignment.  Here it is again, if you need a reminder:

• Revisit group 3 excerpts, and keep polishing all excerpts (mental practice counts!).
• Choose a favorite recording of the Mozart Concerto.  Focus on the first thirty seconds of the solo entrance, and write down a few words that you think of when you listen to it.  Listen a few times, and finalize these key words.
• Practice visualizing those first thirty seconds.  For more details on how to do this, read Nathan Cole’s Audition challenge week 5 blog entry.  This should be hard, it will probably take multiple tries over several days.  Come up with some key words for your visualization once you get the hang of it.
• The final assignment is to compare your key words from the favorite recording to key words that you come up with.

I hope I can have a more productive week in the practice room.  I will also share my word assignments from week 7 in my next blog post (I forgot my stuff at work, hahaha).  Happy practicing (and visualizing)!