Takeaways from a recent audition

I was lucky to have had a moment of decisiveness (they are usually rare) when I was 17 to break away from the traditional path of letting standardized tests decide my fate. In Hong Kong, where I was born and raised, everything's a competition - from squeezing on the subway after seeing 5 trains packed like sardines pass by during rush hour daily, to trying to be a well-rounded student who earns all A's or 5* (~top 2%) in public examinations aside from being great at sports, music, public speaking, etc. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful for my upbringing - it taught me to be hardworking, resilient and disciplined, but I was ready for a change - to a place where I can decide what, why, and how to learn.

Fast forward to today, after 3 degrees and a professional studies certificate, I finally get to be a ‘real’ adult. I have to say that it is a very freeing, scary, but mostly great feeling. At the moment, I am getting ready for my move to Geneva, where I will start my first full time job ever with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Actually, this job came as a little surprise to me. As most orchestral musicians know, taking orchestral auditions is very... thrilling, because you never know what will happen - some people get a job within their first few tries, and some don't for a very long time even if they are at a similar playing level. Audition outcome has to do with things that are outside of our control, for example, who and how many candidates you are competing against, who is on the audition committee, how your instrument reacts to the climate of the city, whether your bass arrive in one piece after traveling in the air, your health condition... etc. What we can control, however, is to make sure we have the right intention and goals when entering and preparing for an audition. For me personally, I had a very unconventional preparation for this specific audition that took place in June. In fact, I almost cancelled due to various undesirable factors. The complete repertoire list was not announced until exactly 1 month before the audition so I felt underprepared (I would usually have the list at least 2 months prior to the audition date). When the list was announced, I was preparing for final juries, exams, while playing all the gigs I could so that I could continue to feed myself and that cute little one-bedroom apartment I shared with a roommate. Also, I turned down a significant amount of work that conflicted with the audition dates. Finally, I was on tour in China for 2 weeks right before the audition, where I did not have access to an instrument outside of rehearsals/ performances, and when I did get my hands on a bass, it was, to put it nicely, far from ideal. I also could not afford to fly with my own instrument all this way and had to rent one in Geneva two days prior to the audition. Despite all the cons, I did realize that there won’t be too many times when the travel cost to a far away audition could be coincidentally covered by a music festival that I was playing at afterwards, so I decided to stick to the plan, and break out of the American audition circuit.

Now, I want to share what I’ve learned from this strange but positive experience.

Embrace uncertainty and imperfect situations - routines are powerful. How we live and how we play our instruments is essentially a series of habits we have formed over time, but we can also grow a lot outside of our routine or comfort zones. Instead of focusing on the negative factors, we can get creative with how to make the best out of a situation. When I have prepared for auditions in the past, I practiced about 4-5 hours a day every day for 3 months in pretty much the same space (why would you want to move the bass around when you don’t have to…), played about 6 mock auditions before the actual audition, and had weekly lessons. But this time, I was lucky if I could get an hour completely focused practice time in every other day. That forced me to do everything in a hyper-efficient manner. I had no luxury of playing through my favorite etudes slowly and no time for scales and arpeggios. I would have an hour between rehearsals/performances when I was in China for this practice diet: 10 minute intervals/ double stops (to learn the notes on the instrument), then 5 to 10 minutes to go over one or two of most tricky and demanding spots in the concertos (making sure my muscles are still strong and that my fingers wouldn’t freeze during show time), the rest would be 15-20 minute each excerpts, with detailed work on only 1 spot, where I would play it all the different ways I could imagine, which metronome clicks on different beats, etc. Most of these practice sessions had no run-throughs at all. They would also be in places with bad lighting/ some noise/ strange acoustic/ other musicians sitting closely next to you, which brings me to the next point.

The importance of doing mock auditions in strange places - I have always struggled with performance anxiety. I get the shakes, the frozen fingers, the dry mouth, the memory slips. If you can find your focus to perform in a dark hole underground with fire-spitting and super judgemental dragons around you, chances are you will be able to kill it on a regular stage. So I make myself embrace performing in these situations (I replaced the dragons with people who I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of). It absolutely made a difference when I had to warm up in the same room as the other finalist in the last round at this audition. (WHAT? I know. Don’t ask me why. I guess it happens!)

The importance of mental practice - I think I do almost half of my practicing away from my instrument. For every new piece I learn, I read it first (with a metronome usually) and learn the rhythms and write down possibilities for fingering and such. I’m not an expert and there are many different ways to learn (write some comments if you’d like to share!) but I find this makes everything much more manageable, and I can see an organized map when I see the music when I do this first. Mental practice can also freshen pieces that I have been playing for years and want to keep improving. It gives me a chance to not fall into my usual routine and create ways to reimagine music and phrasing differently.

Be able to create a space free of worries for your practice - Do you make to-do lists in your head when you practice? Do you feel crippled by your worries when you are trying to accomplish artistic goals? This happens to me all the time, and it’s not just when I’m practicing - it happens when I’m supposed to be having a good time with friends, or enjoying a movie, etc. I had to learn to come up with ways to help myself quickly get back on track and regain focus so that I can make every moment count. I would share my experiments in this area but couldn’t have said it better than Dr. Noa Kageyama, creator of The Bulletproof Musician. Check out this piece: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/worry-too-much-take-back-control-of-your-thoughts-by-batching-your-worries/

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