Don’t Forget Your Mouthpiece

On Friday the ESO’s Beethoven symphony cycle came to an end in fine style at Worcester Cathedral with performances of the 8th and 9th symphonies. To do these two pieces back-to-back, following 5 hours of rehearsal the same day, with no bumper, is seriously hard work for the first horn, but I didn’t do much to make it easier for myself.

As much as I love playing the horn, I have to admit I’m not exactly King Practice of the Practice People. I find it very difficult to get into a serious regime unless I’ve got an audition coming up, or something equally important. Which is not to say that ESO dates aren’t, but there is generally more diverse material to learn / revise for an audition than for an average concert programme.

This is, needless to say, not a good habit to get into. Concerts like last Friday become a huge shock to the system in terms of short-term stamina, and long-term endurance, like that needed to get through a week’s solid work, is also a potential problem. Any practice routine needs to reflect the amount of playing that may be expected of you - put simply, you always have to practice as though that important audition or heavy run of work is coming up. Given the unpredictable nature of freelancing, this can quite often be the case anyway - the last-minute phone call to go and do a double show is something every freelancer needs to be prepared for.

So I need to address my motivational problem. My long-term goal of a full-time orchestral position really ought to be enough, but I find it very difficult to keep sight of this when work is thin on the ground and I’m having to earn money in other ways. I’m going to try not to focus too much on preparing for specific events and concentrate instead on more short-term targets, like learning a new piece or study every week, which is closer to the kind of work I was doing at college. I have very little on for the next two months until the ESO’s 2006 Elgar Festival, so the state of my playing when I get to that week should be a good indicator of whether my new approach is working.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 13th, 2006 at 1:22 am and is filed under Horn Playing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.