Questions on auditions

[SamEdwTbone]

So recently I had a district audition for my high school where for the 3rd year in a row I absolutely bombed it to the max and got 23rd out of 36 and this always happens. pre audition im playing it flawlessly but as soon as i play in front of a judge I play like its my first time playing my etudes. y'all have any suggestions on how to get over the audition nerves because i plan on auditioning for a local youth orchestra and i dont wanna look like an idiot *again*

[Doug Elliott]

An audition is a performance, by yourself. You have to get practice doing that...parents, relatives, friends, anybody who will listen. That means being totally prepared. If possible, memorize what you'll be playing. Memorization takes practice in itself. Record yourself and play along with the playback. If possible find a great recording of somebody else playing the same thing, and play along with that.

It gets better.

[robcat2075]

Like the OP I was impossibly nervous trying to play for people.

The best playing I've ever done for auditions was when I didn't take it seriously.

Freshman year of college, the audition to see which band I'd be placed in...there was this girl waiting in line outside with everyone else telling astonishingly dirty jokes. By the time it was my turn to go in to play, all my seriousness had been flattened and yet I nailed everything they asked me to do in the audition.

First year of grad school, I wasn't a performance major, but one had to do an audition before one could be in any ensemble or take any lessons. I figured it was all just a formality before they stuck me in the marching band...but then I played probably the best I've ever played and got into the top band.

I wish I could recapture that thinking. It's all been downhill ever since!

Yes,you must be prepared and know your stuff. Getting more experience playing for listeners will be very useful.

But there is also a mind game to this peak performance stuff. It's probably not the same game for everyone.

I absolutely bombed it to the max and got 23rd out of 36

I think continuing to rank them after the top 10 or so is just adding insult to injury.

[tbdana]

Performance anxiety is negative self-talk. You start thinking about all the things that could go wrong, and it affects your entire body - all the muscles, your emotions, even your heart rate and saliva. All because of negative self-talk.

You have a conscious brain and an unconscious brain (there's more, but we'll just deal with these two). Your conscious brain is the one that thinks. It sits in its ivory tower and contemplates the universe. Your unconscious brain is blue collar. It sits down in a little room, at a desk with buttons, levers and wheels. The unconscious brain has a simple job: make commands from the conscious brain come true. That's it. It doesn't think, it doesn't make value judgments. Like, if the conscious brain says "Let's jump off a cliff," the unconscious brain doesn't say, "Hey, maybe that's not a great idea," it just pushes the buttons to make the muscles do the motions to leap off the bridge.

The conscious brain communicates with the unconscious brain via a video monitor. Whatever the conscious brain thinks appears on the video monitor before the unconscious brain. The unconscious brain takes that image as instructions, and sets about making it true. If your conscious brain sends messages of confidence and success, that's what the unconscious brain will try to make happen. Likewise, if the conscious brain sends messages of doubt and failure, the unconscious brain will take that information as instructions, too, and set about making that happen.

If you set a board on the ground, you can walk the length of that board all day long, even dance on it, and not fall off. But if you suspend that board between two tall buildings it suddenly becomes almost impossible to walk across without falling. Why? On the ground, your conscious brain has no fear and sends your unconscious brain images of casual success and complete confidence. But suspended between buildings, the conscious brain fears failure and sends images of falling to the unconscious brain, which in turn tries to make those images come true.

The way out of performance anxiety comes with positive self talk, and scrupulously avoiding negative images. And that positive self talk comes naturally when you don't fear, and only care about having fun doing something you love. It can also come purposefully, where you make it a point to imagine, repeatedly, doing everything perfectly and having success; sometimes even going so far as to imagine wildly exaggerated success, like playing the best audition anyone has ever heard, with the clearest tones the world has ever heard and a performance that redefines the music, such that the committee rips down the screen to shower you with praise and offers you triple the contract if you'll only please, please, please say you'll play with them.

Think about all the difficult areas where you might miss a note or an intonation and that's what your unconscious brain will try to make come true. Think about being nervous and your unconscious brain will make you sweat, increase your heart rate, make your muscles tremble, and keep you tense. And failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But think positive thoughts, send positive images to the unconscious brain's video monitor, and the world is yours. That's why robcat can post that his best auditions were when he didn't take it seriously. When he didn't take it seriously, the board was on the ground and not suspended between buildings, and he had no reason to send fear and failure messages to the unconscious brain. So he sent images of playing well, instead, and guess what? He played well.

Oddly perhaps, the people who do best in auditions are the people who are cheerfully willing to fall flat on their face and crash and burn in complete destruction in front of other people who are judging them. The willingness to fail publicly is a mechanism for success.

****

The other thing is not to be careful in auditions, but to just go for it. Being careful contemplates avoiding failure rather than having success. It not only carries an inherent risk of negative self talk in order to avoid mistakes, it guarantees mediocrity even in success. Great music is never made when you're being careful. Great music is made when you're charging aggressively right up to the knife's edge. (Of course, this presupposes that you're a good player who has practiced and that the material is within the corse of your skill set, not at the edge of it or beyond it.)

Sorry for the length of this post. I hope I said something worth listening to, or at least that my description of the subconscious brain cheerfully making you plunge to your death off a board suspended between buildings was mildly entertaining. I imagine a coyote/roadrunner vibe in that scenario.

[henrysa]

That's wonderful insight! Unfortunately my horns have brains of their own, and it's just not a fair fight.

[harrisonreed]

To some extent it is not possible to outthink the fight or flight response prior to a stressful event, which is a result of too much adrenaline in your system. This is a personal anecdote, and everyone is different, but when I was an infantryman, I felt physically distressed prior to departing on a patrol in Afghanistan, every single time. Physically speaking, my response the morning of a day where I am playing a Concerto with a band or orchestra is nearly the same physical reaction as having prior knowledge that I would be going on a combat patrol, maybe even worse because we don't have teammates playing our concerto part with us whereas we would have teammates going on the patrol with us, who are showing us that they are getting on the truck and being brave too.

So, even though in one situation there was the potential to actually die, and in the other there is no actual danger at all, the physical response is the same. I don't think any amount of self talk will get you out of that response, but you can just learn to function at a high level while under that stress. You just have to do it a lot to build up a tolerance. If it's still an issue later on on your life and you're trying to make a living in music you can ask a doctor if there is anything they can do for bad nerves.

Completely unrelated, the rooms you take an audition in are never going to be like the rooms you practice in. You should play your audition material in a lot of different types of rooms. If you only ever play in a tiny room, you will take a dump on the audition if it's in a big hall. If you only ever play in an echo chamber, you're going take an even bigger dump on your audition if it's in a small classroom. The effect the room has on the response of the horn is physical, not just mental, and it's something you can practice and prepare for.

[harrisonreed]

Another thought on the fight or flight response, the physical response to the adrenaline is for your body to start purging excess weight, so you will dehydrate and your chops will be different. Your heart rate goes up, and all your nerves in your muscles will be firing on overdrive. None of this is good for trombone playing, but it is good for fighting off a wild animal (which is why we evolved this response). Once the adrenaline is in your system you can't talk your way out of it. So as suggested above, some people can prevent the response before it happens, but not everyone can do that. Once it's there it's like a drunk driver trying to talk the alcohol out of their brain.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

I believe there is a thread on TromboneChat about Toby Ott’s suggestions for dealing with audition/performance nerves. His approach rang very true with my journey……

As a young trombonist, I felt like I was rather invincible (mostly due to being rather naive). Nonetheless, I had little or no problems with performance anxiety. When I got into my thirties, I was doing more recital work because of my college faculty position. That is when I started to develop some anxiety issues, mostly because of one performance in which I developed a horrible case of “cotton mouth.” For a few years after that, I had the fear of “dry mouth” every time I stepped on the stage to play in a recital. Even when I used the traditional tricks to solve it (rubbing my tongue around in my mouth, biting the sides of my tongue, even drinking water on the stage), I found myself dealing with dry mouth and/or shallow breathing due to anxiety. In those years, I was certainly more worried about “what could go wrong” instead of thinking “remember to do this and that in the music because those things have been successful the previous 50 times I have played it.”

Knowing that so much of the problem was in my head, I remember having a particular performance in which I was able to focus ALL of my concentration was on the thousands of details in the music (breathing properly, careful tuning of specific notes, precise articulations, etc….). It was a breakthrough performance for me and I have been much more comfortable in solo situations ever since. Essentially, I got my mojo back. It turns out the my solution was exactly what Toby Oft preaches: Focus on the details and artistic nuances of the music. Avoid thinking about what could go wrong because you are nervous.

All this being said, I am well aware that the mental focus to do such things might take time to develop. This is where frequent performing comes in handy. Like others have already stated, performing in front of friends family, church groups, etc…. will help make the art of performing more natural.

[dbwhitaker]

If you want to read lots and lots and lots of advice about this an excellent source is https://bulletproofmusician.com/start-here/

If you want some very short advice you might be able to get some benefit from this snippet from The Inner Game of Music:

InnerGame.equation.png

So "all" you need to do at the audition is minimize all of that "i" stuff going on in your head (and in your body). Easier said than done, but it might help if you realize that any conscious thinking or worry you're experiencing is likely 100% interference. Let it go if you can.

[norbie2018]

Another approach:

https://www.youtube.com/live/kjBy3L5fAGI?feature=shared

[VJOFan]

Part of practicing or rehearsing is simulation of the actual performance. The advice above about playing for people and playing in different spaces is awesome and necessary. Those things don't really address the fight or flight aspect.

The more prepared and the better a player's mindset is, the less anxiety that will be felt, but there will still be anxiety.

The simplest thing to try to simulate what that is going to feel like is to do some vigorous exercise just before a performance run through. Run up and down a good size stair case a few times or do 20 burpees, or sprint around your house, then do the performance. You will find that you can play with a pounding heart, an elevated breathing rate and sweat beading on your forehead. If and when those things start to happen at an audition you'll be able to think that yeah, your heart is pounding, but it doesn't matter. Been there. Done that.

[Kbiggs]

Performance anxiety (PE) is a part of the sympathetic nervous system, a series of automatic responses towards stimuli or perceived stimuli. In this case, the stimulus is the performance, but the mind and brain perceive it as a threat or danger because it’s a new situation in front of new or different people. The body will respond, as it does with any anxiety-related response, by going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, or sometimes a mix of them.

The long-term and most certain way to work through and manage PA is through exposure—playing for lots of different people. Allow the mind and brain to do what they will do during these first test runs. Just observe the thoughts and the bodily responses like shallow breathing, rapid thoughts, etc. Over time, it does improve.

There are many, many different ways to address PA if exposure isn’t helping. Meditation is helpful not only for PA, but for learning of and about the negative self-talk that accompanies anxiety. There’s LOTS of resources out there, so I won’t repeat them.

There’s a fellow who teaches classes on PA called (I think) The Bullet-Proof Musician. I haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard some people say it works well.

If the PA doesn’t improve with these and other kinds of cognitive and behavioural attempts, you can try a short course of beta blockers. Talk with your doctor, be honest about why you want them. I’ve used them in two brief periods in my life when my PA was quite bad, and meditation and exposure weren’t working. Each time, beta blockers helped me “re-set” my PA to a manageable baseline. I would strongly suggest meditation, exposure, or other things before beta blockers, though, especially if you’ll be taking more auditions in future.