The 2 kinds of stressed musicians on stage

Have you ever performed and screwed up where you normally never screw up? Or started thinking so much ahead of time that you forgot what to play at the moment? Or froze and couldn't remember what as coming next?

In the book What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell (the author of Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point, and writer for the New Yorker) explains how nervousness shows up in one of two different ways: chocking or panicking. Here is the difference, and how it translates into performance.

• Panicking
  
  
  
  
  That's when you stop thinking. For example when you forget where you are in the music and you can't think of options to get back into it, or when you do a rhythmic mistake and you can't think of what beat you're on or what makes a beat (quarter note, half note, eight note?).

• Chocking
  
  
  
  
  That's when you think too much, the same way you did when you first learned how to play your instrument or the piece; when the technique of a piece had become a habit, that happened mechanically, and that in performance you start thinking of every single note and gesture and rhythm and emotional content and phrasing, etc.
  You lose your instincts.

By thinking back on stressful past performances, we can see what the pattern is, and if we tend to chock or panic. Once we know that, we are better able to anticipate a response for the next time that happens, and we are more prone to understand what is happening as it is happening, helping us to fix it rather than letting it control us.

More power to us!

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Four perks for performers

Virtually every job gets some perks, right? Teachers get tons of vacations, finance people get free stock options, electricity people probably get cheaper electricity, the cable guy gets free cable, CEOs get to tell everyone what to do, cooks get to eat good food, etc. What about us musicians?

Here is what I think should be our perks:

1. Greatly discounted tickets to any music and theater event (Broadway show, symphony concerts, etc), particularly for when you're not a student anymore.
2. Discounts on scores and scripts (like teachers have on books)
3. A free fixing of your instrument after 9 uses, or a free make up kit for actors (punching a card like at the hair dresser or at the deli)
4. One resident masseuse/acupuncturist/chiropractor at any gig that requires long hours of intense rehearsing (orchestra rehearsals, opera rehearsals, accompanying auditions, etc.)

But even if we don't get any of those perks, at least we don't get that either:

Add your own idea for perks in the comment section!

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New York New York!

I am going to New York this weekend, and here's what I'm listening to prepare for the trip! Oh yeah baby!

I Hate Music

I hate music, but I like to sing
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, laaaa!
But that's not music! Not what I call MUSIC, no sir!
Music is a lot of men with a lot of tails making lots of noise like a lot of
females
Music is a lot of folks in a big dark hall where they really don't want to be
at all with a lot of chairs and a lot of heirs and a lot of furs and diamonds!
Music is silly
I hate music...but i like to sing

From the song cycle "I hate music" by Bernstein.

Can you tell a composer from a score?

My doctoral orals are in two days, and one of the challenges I'll have to face will be to tell a composer from a random piece of music.

Here are some of the things I am looking for in a score to tell one composer from the other.

ITALY

• Scarlatti: More figured-bass oriented. Looks almost like Mozart.
• Donizetti: a little more adventurous than Bellini. Use of ornaments, Alberti bass. Some chromaticism.
• Bellini: many short piano and voice pieces. 
• Donaudy: more bel canto in that the accompaniment supports the voice, but richer than bel canto. Lots of instructions on the page. Strophic.
• Tosti: more sophisticated than Donaudy.
• Puccini: piano parts look like orchestral reductions.
• Respighi: elaborate piano parts, frequent modulations, advanced harmonic language. Italian Wolf. Chromatic, lush.

GERMANY

•  Brahms: Hemiolas. Accents on weak beats. Flok like. 1+1+2 phrase structure.
• Schumann: tempo markings often "Nicht Schnell." Middle voices. Strong dynamic contrasts.
• Strauss: orchestral, thick chords, long phrases.
• Wolf: very chromatic, shorter phrases. Piano part motivic, not broad. Lots of changes.

FRANCE

• Offenbach: more operetta than Massenet. 
• Massenet: a cross between Gounod and Offenbach.
• D'Indy: looks like Franck
• St Saens: harmony very romantic, close to Schumann.
• Chausson: more harmonically out there.
• Duparc: orchestral piano parts, really big.
• Hahn: like Faure, set the same texts as Faure, but not as advanced as Faure. More than one mood in a song. His songs look like light Faure.
• Debussy: declamatory vocal lines. Stresses don't always match the right words. 4ths, 5ths and octaves.
• Millhaud: short songs. Polytonal.
• Messiaen: octatonic scales.

AMERICA

• Barber: really hard piano parts. Romantic and lush.
• Copland: very spare, wide chords on the piano. Lots of open fifths.
• Bernstein: very rhythmic, more popular influence. 
• Ives: polytonal, cluster chords, motives. 

EAST

• Bartok: one motif in one voice, picked up by other voices. 
• Hindemith: neo classical, traditional concepts of organization and design combined with newer material. 
• Prokovief: more rhythmic drive.More playful.
• Shostakovitch: spare textures.

There. You. Go.
Your turn!

Photo from http://guides.library.ubc.ca/music

How to be noticed by the hiring powers

I assume that all of you artists out there know that you have to be proactive in order to make a living out of your art: replying to ads for gigs every day, telling everyone that you're available, giving away business cards, having a website, a resume at hand, headshots, etc...

I've just recently came to realize that being proactive is not enough these days, and that more and more people are being more than PROactive, they're being PREactive.
Let me explain. Here are three good things to do as a preactive artist:

• Reply to ads that are NOT for you. For example, I wanted to hire this drummer I had worked with for a show, but he wasn't available. I had previously posted an ad for a bass player, and this one drummer had let me know that he was available and interested in playing the show. When the drummer I wanted didn't work out, guess what?  I didn't post a new ad and sort through thousands of emails, I contacted that one drummer that stuck out of the pile of bassists, and he's been the drummer of the show ever since!
• Contact the people that are in charge of a project you want to be a part of. I had been working as a pianist for this theatre program for a few years, and I had told them that I wanted to music direct, but they never did musicals. Well, they did decide to do musicals, but by the time I learned about it, the director of the program (who didn't know me), had hired a music director. I thought that the job naturally belonged to me, but you know what? A new music director from the area had contacted the director of the program as soon as he had heard about the show, and he got hired for it. Two lessons in there: tell people you don't know that you want to be a part of their project, and know people who are in charge of hiring at your work place.
• Help the person in charge of hiring with something that matters. I was looking for singers to work with, and after auditioning a bunch of people I found this awesome girl, nice, pretty, and of course, a talented actor and singer. That was enough for me, but before she had even come in to audition, she had let me know about this other singer that would be interested and put us in contact. When that singer didn't work out, she told her friends about my project, and had somebody else email me, that ended up doing the show. Do I want to work with her again? You bet!

Do you think preactive is the way of the future, or do you think it's not worth the effort? Have you ever been preactive?

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What to play on a tropical island

In the Island of the Reunion, where I lived for eight years, a favorite style of pop/folk music is Sega-Maloya. Sega and Maloya were originally two different styles, but they are now quite similar, so people talk about them as one.
Here are some contemporary versions of it:



Those songs really remind me of my childhood, even if those examples are much more recent than when I was there.