Week 3 Update

Week 2 completely got away from me because it was my last week working in New Orleans, we had a ton of services and also quite a few horn quintet shows and I was hopping from couch to couch and socializing with my hosts.  It was a pretty great last week of work and I'm glad that I spent it with people I care about and will miss!  I didn't get any time to think through a change in routine though until now!

On the audition prep front, many things have happened.  Things were progressing steadily when I left for Nola and then as I played shows and had less time to focus on really detailed practice, I felt like things started to feel a little odd halfway through the week, but I pushed through the shows I had left and came back to Houston feeling a bit worn down.  So this week, I'm bringing things back to the basics.  I don't feel like I need to do a ton of building exercises anymore, that will come through the excerpt work and that's a more applied use of it anyway.   

Focus: Basics

I feel like my tone in the upper register was not improving in New Orleans, so I've started doing slow, focused simple exercises to center my sound.  I think I've been overblowing a bit and over pressing, too much wrist rocket, as they say.

Piano Long Tones- with a mirror

• focus on not stretching my lips (pursing)
• breathing with my jaw dropped instead of through stretching my corners for air 
• pursing more as I ascend to ensure supported cushiony lips for a rounder sound
• flat chin
• Using an "oo" vowel

I also felt like when I came back I was experiencing less accuracy in slurs.

Octaves, 5ths, and 12th slurring pattern-

• Every entrance still focusing on not stretching
• blowing through the slur for support
• correct amount of pressure (just enough to get a quiet slur to speak comfortably)
• Floating sensation in the upper register notes especially for resonant, easy sound

And my loud playing seemed to disappear for a day when I returned so I'm focusing on that too.

• pursing
• not too much pressure
• staying relaxed when I get above the staff (b/c I tend to get over excited and work too hard for it)
• "oo" vowel and some "e" tongue position when way up there (ravel piano, shost 5)
• keeping my aperture more consistent in ballon swells (instead of opening too much.)

I think I started to open up my oral cavity and throat too much for loud playing so it ended up kind of hurting my throat and not sounding as centered or good at all.  It's also much less efficient, obviously.  So, I'm experimenting with a more closed jaw and more relaxed lips and air and a higher tongue position.  I realized this while talking with Josiah in New Orleans, because he thinks about the upper register as if he's whistling- you use your tongue the same way.  What I noticed doing that was when I try to whistle up high, I either can't or it hurts my throat!  So I started adding some whistling into my routine to see if I could get up there with less pain and more sound.  TBD on that.  We also talked about checking efficiency in the upper register by whether or not you can trill on each note.  This week, I can trill up to an Ab above the staff.  So I need to find more efficiency and more ease above Ab.   

I think a lot of that will come from breathing properly.  As I said, I've gotten into the habit of breathing out of my corners b/c it's easier in a pinch- however, less good for your lips.  I've also lost the habit of breathing and blowing directly from the front of my lips instead of the back of my throat (hence the throat pain and overly open oral cavity).  So, I think I can attribute all of these bad habits to changing how I sound, and they're all very fixable. 

So the new routine for week 3 will be as follows:

Routine:

Path Meditations + extended

2 octave arpeggios (piano, relaxed, slow then fast)

long tones (mirror)

Bruckner 4 based interval work

Path octaves

Balloon swells

2's and 3's (for low work)

Rep session 1: ALL WITH METRONOME

-work Schoenberg up to tempo

-Major Till excerpts

-Mahler 5 Obligato major excerpts

-hit all 2's every 3 days (checklist)

-clean up fairy's kiss

-triple tongue Sheherezade repetition

-Ease in Mozart

-Play through Strauss for stamina

Listening session:

Listen to 3-5 excerpts per day, multiple recordings, taking note of tempo choices and stylistics of excerpts I don't know well.  

Rep session 2: Endurance: pick 2 per day

-work high, soft excerpts (ravel, shost, beet. 6

-hit a few loud excerpts (heldenleben 78, short call, Don Juan)

-throw in the heavy hitters for endurance (Tchaikovsky 5, end of heldenleben, solos)

-short warm down

I also have some rep to learn for a few chamber gigs I have this coming weekend, so I need to spend some time on that music as well.  It's not terribly taxing music but we have a lot of hours scheduled for it for rehearsals and we have 7 performances!  

I'm definitely making progress, but it feels like this will take a lot of time and focus to recreate all of these habits.  All in all, I think I've added a lot of tension to my playing over the past 3 years, but it will be possible to get back to a place of ease and comfort in all registers of the horn!  I just need to be patient and diligent!