-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Kroepsch Boot Camp
After the success of my Baermann Boot Camp from last October, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to do another boot camp. After all, scales and technical studies are much more palatable when you suffer practice together, right? For this boot camp, I’ve chosen the Kroepsch 416 Progressive Daily Studies for the Clarinet, which are one of my ride or die clarinet studies. And a lot of you agreed – the Facebook poll I created on Jenny Clarinet resulted in an overwhelming majority of Kropesch fans (sorry Jettel, you’ll have to wait your turn!). So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce the Kroepsch Boot Camp, a practice routine designed…
-
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,…