Audition Workshop Three Main Factors when playing an audition: Intonation – not only do you need to play the correct notes, they need to be in tune Rhythm – your rhythm needs to be exact even within a flexible tempo Tone – we always want to achieve a clear and beautiful tone that is appropriate to the piece Kreutzer #8 Intonation ·        Should almost always be practiced slowly. Even when we play fast, our ear needs to be listening for pitch ·        Every time before practice, play an E Major scale and arpeggio two or three times to get the key in your ear. This is one of the most important things we can do to help us play better in tune! ·        If you don’t have a tuner to use as a drone, use your open strings for double stops. Don’t continue to the next note until you know the note is in tune. ·        Practice every shift until it is correct every time you have to play it (especially shifts of 4ths or more as in bar 3). If you shift incorrectly, it will take a considerable amount of out-of-tune notes for your hand to get into the correct position. Rhythm ·        Metronomes become our friends when we use them properly. They show us when we play too fast or too slow when we don’t realize it. Don’t think that you have perfect rhythm until you’ve practiced with a metronome – in fact, almost no one can play perfectly in time all the time. ·        Even though this piece is all 16th notes, we make music out of it by choosing when to slow a bit and take time. This needs to be carefully calculated and used only when appropriate (such as when we arrive back on the tonic as in bar 39 or used during a dramatic key change as in bar 34). Tone ·        For this piece we want a strong forte and a good solid bow stroke. The closer we play to the bridge the more sound we will get. Careful not to get too close and scratch the sound thus ruining the beauty we so desperately try to achieve. ·        Even when playing piano, we don’t want an airy or whispery sound; it should always have a core. ·        We cannot get a good tone if we only use an inch of bow. Each note should use about six inches. If your arm is not tired when you’re finished, you didn’t practice using enough bow. Musicality and Dynamics While most of this piece should be played with a good pure forte, there are some appropriate places where you should play less and sometimes piano, and places where you should crescendo and decrescendo. Always mark in your music what you have decided to do and stick to it! Even a small thing like playing forte on accident when you decided to play soft can do funny things to your brain. If it is marked in your music, then it is much less likely that you will make a mistake. There are many places in this piece where you can use emphasis on certain notes to create actually beautiful music throughout this all-16th note etude. Look for patterns of descending notes within larger groups of notes (such as in measures 25-27; notice the second 16th note in each group is a descending scale g-f#-e-d-c; give each of those notes a little lush accent on the up-bow). When playing through the piece see if you can feel when the harmonies change. Since it is mostly arpeggios, try to hear the notes as chords and not just as notes. Overview of Helpful Tips for Practice When using these techniques, try playing only one phrase at a time. Start by playing two strokes per note starting down-bow. Then reverse it and play the phrase starting up-bow (2 strokes per note). Try this several times. Use rhythms to help coordinate your left and right hands. Dotted rhythms often work the best, but don’t forget to practice the same passage with the dotted rhythm reversed like this: Practice each note in a group rotating from first note, to second, to third, etc as we talked about in class. It is important to play through the entire piece every day, but it is even more important to stop and fix problems as they occur. If we only play through the piece, most of the problems will never be completely resolved and concurrently our technique won’t improve as fast as it can. Things to Watch Out For When we have to play an extended fourth finger in first position (a# and d# especially) it is our tendency to play flat. Make sure it stretches far enough to be in tune. In this etude we often have to make a very quick leap from the g-string to the a or e-string and visa versa. Practice these carefully making sure that we don’t hear and squawks in-between. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today ask Mrs. Gordon, your private teacher, or me. Good luck!!! Copyright, Ross Monroe Winter.  2004. Back