Do you have an excuse or a reason?

Performers are told all the time not to make excuses, which is a wonderful thing except for the times when people have actual reasons and don't share them because they're afraid they will be considered excuses.

Let's look at the difference between reasons and excuses here, when you should mention something and when you should keep it to yourself.

  
YOU'RE SICK 

• FOR REHEARSAL: -DO tell the creative team if you're sick before rehearsals start, otherwise they'll wonder if they did a mistake by casting you in the first place. A lot of singers don't tell because they're afraid the creative team will think that they're not reliable, but it's an important piece of information for the creative team to know why you're not giving your whole. DO tell if it gets worse in the middle of rehearsal, and if you're getting a fever, because you might be becoming contagious and you need to go home immediately and take care of it. Everyone will appreciate you for it. DO NOT tell if you're fatigued from being sick if it makes no changes to your sound or to what you're physically able to do.  

• FOR A LESSON: -DO tell if it impacts your sound. DO NOT tell it you think that's a reason for not coming in prepared. There's a lot of mental practicing and table work that can be done even when you're sick. 

• FOR AN AUDITION: -DO NOT tell BEFORE you sing, because if you happen to sound great, people will think that you were just trying to cover for a potentially bad audition, and they might think that you are insecure and that you may be a pain in the butt to work with. DO tell right AFTER singing if you really didn't sound normal, and apologize by telling what it is you have. Don't say: "Sorry, I'm kind of sick," but "I hope I get another chance to sing for you again because I have a terrible cold which is impacting my sound negatively." If you didn't say it at the audition, DO NOT email the casting director about it, you missed your chance.         

YOU DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO PRACTICE

• FOR REHEARSAL: Unless something major happened such as you had to take your child to the doctor, or your car broke down, or something tangible like this, no excuse will ever be good enough. Because most likely the reason you didn't practice was not because of a lack of time but because of a lack of organization. You could have practiced at some point but you thought you could practice later, and then something came up, and here you are, not prepared. Practice when you can.

• FOR A LESSON: There's no really good reason for not being ready for a lesson because you have a whole week to get ready for it. It's even worse if you try to fool your teacher saying that you practiced when you didn't, so the best is to tell right when you walk into the lesson that you're not ready and that you're sorry (and you better be sorry because you're wasting your teacher's time and you're throwing your tuition money away). 

• FOR AN AUDITION: No excuse or reason will ever be good enough for you to go to an audition not prepared. If it's a call back and you do have a good reason for not being prepared, then call ahead and cancel your appointment. If you have a relationship with the creative team, you may email beforehand and explain what your reason is for not coming to the call back, and that you don't want to waste their time by showing up unprepared. They might give you an appointment for a later date, but otherwise, know that you did the right thing and that they will respect you for that.

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Are you a show or a no-show?

Today is a perfect, slow, comfy, snow day in Virginia. Snow is often a good reason for people to not make it to work, but as freelance artists, no matter the weather, one must show up. Two reasons for it: one, it's the way to be as a professional performer. Two, most likely if you don't show up you won't get paid.

To stress the importance of showing up, here is an excerpt from the (excellent) book "The Making of a Chef," when journalist Michael Ruhlman gets confronted between the decision of taking the risk to drive in a snow storm, or showing up in the kitchen of the Culinary Institute of America where he is following the courses as a student, as a project for his book. The following discussion ensued between the writer and his teacher.

"Hi, Chef, this is Michael Ruhlman. (...) It's still snowing up here. I don't think I'll be able to make it in."
"That's up to you, " he said softly.
"I'm sorry," I said.
I paused. I needed him to know I wasn't blowing this off lightly. (...)
He said: "Michael, I don't want you to take offense at this." (...) "Part of what we're training students to be here is chefs- and when chefs have to be somewhere, they get there," Pardus had said calmly and evenly, not as judgment but as facts.
"Chefs are the people who are working on Thanksgiving and Christmas, when everyone else is partying," he said. "Or at home with their family."
He didn't stop there: "You're cut from a different cloth," he told me. (...)
He knew I was doing a different job, he said. This wasn't meant to be criticism. He just wanted me to understand. He had his job to do, and I had mine, he said. (...)

"This is a physical world. The food is either finished at six o'clock, or it's not. You're either in the kitchen or you're not. Much of what one learned here was why food behaved as it did. But sometimes there was no room for why. Sometimes why didn't matter. It wasn't simply that excuses were not accepted here-excuses had no meaning at all. The physical facts in any given moment-that was all."

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Do you play with your fingers or with your brain?

Our brain is what makes the body work.  But when we practice many of us slip back into our childhood habits of training our fingers instead of our brain.

Consider the empo you use to get a new piece up on its feet. Many people get tempted to play up tempo sooner than the fingers are able to.

But you have to make the fingers go as slow as the brain needs to go through all of the thought process. Only then can the fingers play accurately.

When you play faster than the brain can comprehend, the result can only be messy. Repetition at the same tempo won't make it better, but worst, because of the muscle memory of the repeated mistakes.

When a piece is played as slow as needed for the brain to think, the result will be consistency because of the team work between the brain and the fingers.

Next time you hesitate to practice a piece twice slower, consider the actual speed your brain has to think at at that tempo, and you'll realize that it's not nearly as slow as you think.



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Who is in charge of the tempo here?

When it comes to musicals, some people think that the tempo of the cast recording is the ABSOLUTE tempo, the perfect tempo that no one should ever stir from.

Truth is, with every production and cast, the tempo has to be adjusted, and it's a great thing because that's the point of theatre: it's alive, it's real, it's ever-changing.

Tempo need to change to fit choreography, staging, voices, and the vision of the creative team.

"The tempo should be faster because that's how it is on the recording" is not a valid argument.

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Are you a rehearsal backseat driver?

Are you a rehearsal backseat driver? Here are the symptoms!

• Constantly interrupt the person in charge to give your input on what should be done at that instant, because you think that the way you go about the process is better than the way the leader's way is. 
• When the director stops acknowledging your comments, you talk to all your coworkers and cast members hoping to get them on your side, thus creating a lot of unnecessary noise and drama. 
• When the leader disagrees with you, you go to the person above them immediately to try to convince them that you are right and that the leader is wrong.

If you suffer from any of these symptoms, know that you have to give your trust to the person in charge of rehearsal, and follow their lead for rehearsal, because they have a long-term plan in mind. It's like when you're the passenger of a car. You would never do the same things at the same time the driver does them, but the result is the same: you're at your destination, alive.

Same for rehearsal, don't be a back-seat driver, trying to control and challenge every step of rehearsal. Trust that your director will get to things you would have done first, and that the result will be as strong.

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Do you do your homework?

My little sister is still in middle school, and was telling me all about her homework. I was about to show off by telling her that I didn't have homework, but then I realized that I indeed do have homework.

Except that part of my homework is to figure out by myself what my homework is.

Here are the five most common homework for freelancers, besides the obvious practicing.

1. Scheduling: this is one of those things that should be straight forward but that becomes incredibly complicated when you go from place to place and from gig to gig, and you add things into your load when you're not able to write it down immediately (when walking to your car, driving your car, carrying a million scores, etc).
   
   Another kind of scheduling homework happens if you work in theatre. Things run more smoothly when I give the stage manager a schedule of how much time I need for each song and with which cast member.
   
   To do so takes me a good two to three hours, because it involves looking up the cast to know how much of the show they already know, looking at the music in depth to locate trouble spots, and make the information as clear as possible (title of the song, number of the song, time needed for first rehearsal, time needed for review, who needs to come in when) so that the stage manager can make his magic and incorporate your ideal schedule into the bigger rehearsal scheme of the rehearsal process. If you want more details on how to do this, there it is.
   
   
2. Find and gather music: If you are ever in charge of putting together a recital or a cabaret show, you know that the difficulty lies in the fact that you have to look at what seems like a billion pieces before deciding on the few that will make it.
   
   Comes a point where most of it is picked, but you may not have the right arrangement, or the right key, or not all of the parts. This is just at that particular instant that people usually think that they are done putting the music together, when indeed the next step of actually finding the right key, arrangement and parts matters the most.
   
   Otherwise, the rehearsal process will start and nobody will have a clear picture of what's going on, and who is meant to do what when, and in which key, which arrangement you have in mind. Don't confuse your troops now!
   
   
3. Copy, tape and label music: Unfortunately this is such a daily homework for musicians! Copying and taping music is a never-ending, tedious and time consuming thing to do, but the consequences of not doing so are much too great to postpone doing it: being the one everyone is waiting on to start rehearsing because you can't find the piece, reading from a printed score which closes itself at every bar, sheets of untaped copied music falling on the floor just when the hardest technical spot is coming, etc.
   
   
4. Reply to emails: Easier said than done when you start rehearsals at 9am, teach all afternoon, and go to evening rehearsals during the week, rehearse all days doing the weekend and play shows at nights!
   
   Meanwhile it seems as if the rest of the world is sitting behind a desk where they get to email and make phone calls all day long, and don't seem to understand that when you say you can't call, it is literally that you can not be playing your instrument, hold a phone and talk all at the same time.
   
   But anyways, while I do understand how hard replying to people can be, you won't be considered professional if you don't and worst, you might actually loose gigs if you don't reply within 24-48 hours. One word: IPhone (or Droid or Blackberry). Get one. And yes, do reply to the offers you can NOT make as well, and do include recommendations of fellow musicians along.
   
   
5. Type handout: again, this is one of those boring annoying chores that doesn't seem crucial at first glance. So what if I don't type the cuts in this show for the musicians, I can just tell them what the cuts are! Well yes, but it will have taken you 10 min for every single musician to have gotten it (and by that I mean, they will all have gotten it right away, except for that one who will remain confuse fno matter how many times you explain it), when a simple handout would have done the trick in 2.
   
   If you have students and they need directions to the hall for their semester's recital, they will be late or be a no-show if you decided to briefly tell the parents where it was instead of having printed a clear map with an address on it. Simple things do make things simpler!

 So, get on to your homework now! The sooner you'll do it the sooner you'll be done with it!

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Are you using your knowledge right?

There are things that we know we know. But of course, what matters most is not to know it, but to know when and where to or not to apply it.

The most common issues happen when we go from one style to the next, and thinking that because we know one style we know just what to do in the other.

For example, a classical chorus director might be asked to music direct a cabaret-type show, and would transfer his knowledge of pure vowels and final consonances to the cabaret, thus taking out just what makes the cabaret style: the raw and raunchy vocal style.

A big band conductor who is put in front of a classical orchestra might transfer the customary freedom given to big band musicians to the classical world,  which is actually used to more constant direction from a conductor.

A jazz pianist might not realize that improvising and adding stuff when playing a music theatre song with a singer is actually unwelcome in that style and would create confusion for the singer. 

If you are ever involved in a music gig from a style even so slightly different from the one you regularly play and you don't agree with what people around you do or say, consider whether those people are playing in their regular styles before speaking up about what you think they're doing wrong, because you might just be the one who is.



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