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The Musician’s Guide to Overcoming Burnout and Amotivation
Being a musician is pretty awesome most of the time. You get to work with talented colleagues, play amazing repertoire, and share your art with audiences. But then there are those times when being a musician is stressful, invalidating, and downright lonely. Musicians can experience crippling anxiety, self-doubt, and constant pressure from listeners. But usually, this pressure comes from within. I’ve gotten quite a few private messages on social media the last few weeks from people who are lacking motivation and feeling burnt out: “The fire is gone.” “I’m struggling to find the same drive I had when I first started getting serious about music.” If this sounds all too…
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Which Concerto You Should Practice Next, According to Your Clarinet’s Serial Number
If you’re looking for new repertoire ideas to practice this summer, look no further! Here’s how you can use your clarinet’s serial number to generate your next concerto: Locate the serial number on your clarinet. Add all the digits together. Take the sum from Step 2 and add the digits together until you have a single digit sum. Check the list below to see which piece corresponds to your single digit sum. Go practice! Example: If your serial number is 379125 you would add 3+7+9+1+2+5 to get 27. Add 2+7 to get 9. Use your single digit sum to find your next piece to practice: Aaron Copland – Concerto Paul…
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The Complete Guide to the Clarinet Altissimo Register
The clarinet is blessed with the largest range of the entire woodwind family. But Voltaire (and Peter Parker) were right when they warned us, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Our responsibility? To perfect the altissimo register so we don’t burst nearby eardrums or alarm any dogs in the nearby vicinity. The clarinet follows a logical fingering and keywork system. Once you’ve mastered crossing the break from the throat tone to the clarion register, all is fine and dandy until you start inching higher away from the staff. Things quickly turn from straightforward to clunky and confusing once clarinetists venture above the upper break (above high C) into altissimo-land. Then…
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How to Overcome Audition Success Envy
Have you ever been mindlessly scrolling through social media, hypnotized by the lulling stream of memes, relationship updates, cat videos, and then suddenly….BAM! Your friend of a friend of a friend made an announcement that they just won a position with the Awesome Symphony/Fantastic University/insert other cool opportunity. You’re immediately happy for them, but you can’t fight the quiet jealousy lingering at the back of your mind. Does that make you a bad person? Musicians are prone to a unique emotion – audition success envy. Part jealousy, part crippling self-doubt, audition success envy is the confusing feeling you get when somebody you know wins an audition (or achieves some other…
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The Prepared Musician’s Pre-Performance Mental Checklist
Every musician is familiar with the barrage of thoughts that flutter through their mind before beginning a performance. “What if I have a memory slip? Where is my teacher sitting? Why didn’t I choose a less stressful career??” This cacophony of thoughts is normal, and with time you will learn how to control them. In the meantime, there are several productive thoughts to improve your next performance. I’ve created this pre-performance checklist for my own performances, and I remind all of my students to use these steps to maximize their performances and auditions. Here is my pre-performance mental checklist: Don’t be in a hurry to begin playing. Fight the urge…
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Clarinet Crimes You Might Be Unknowingly Committing
As the self-appointed clarinet police, it’s my job to keep the clarinet community safe from crime. Here are some crimes many clarinetists are unknowingly committing: Infractions Flipping from middle B to C. The “pinky keys” can be confusing, and you should avoid sliding from one key to the other on the same side. But why make extra work for yourself when you can play B with both pinkies and simply lift the left pinky to produce C? Adding the Eb pinky key on high C#. The clarinet is not a perfect instrument. Some notes are atrociously out of tune, C# being one of them. Adding the pinky key just makes…
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17 Pieces of Advice for Upcoming Music Majors
Congratulations, you’re going to be a music major! Being a music major is a simultaneously rewarding and stressful experience. Besides having to endure the puzzled looks from your friends and the well-intentioned questions from your family (“But what do you do with a music degree?”), you have to balance practicing, studying, and performing. Here’s my advice to music majors of all ages to get everything you can out of your program: Hang out with people in other disciplines. It’s really easy to find common ground and make friends in your studio, but be sure to branch out and meet other people. Defy boundaries and introduce yourself to other woodwind, brass,…