Saturday, November 19, 2011

Valuable Skills

For young students who have a musical background, and are entering Freshmen at a college or university, an undergraduate degree as a music major is one of the most difficult and challenging degrees to pursue. Besides the normal academic load, music students are involved in rehearsals and concerts that take up quite a bit of time. Not to mention the hours necessary to prepare for their weekly lessons. Serious music students may practice up to eight hours a day to achieve the competitive advantage necessary to succeed in this profession. Skills learned as a musician are valuable for any profession. Primarily the daily practice regiment for their weekly lessons. This is similar to being given a project and completing it in a short time span. Music students do this every week of the semester.

Another important skill is that there is no such thing as being late in the music profession. In a major symphony orchestra, a conductor will not begin a rehearsal if one musician is missing. Every instrumental voice in the score must be heard to properly rehearse the music. If a musician calls in sick, management must hire a substitute player to fill the chair.

Music students quickly learn that they not only must be at rehearsals and concerts on time, but they must also allow time to warm up, be in tune, and ready to peform at the exact rate of speed as the rest of the orchestra from the first downbeat. It is not unusual for some professional musicians to arrive at rehearsals and concerts up to one hour before they begin.

Musicians also learn to take criticism-whether it's from a music critic, teacher, friend or relative. As soon as we step on stage, we are subject to criticism.  Especially from conductors!  As music students, when taking a private lesson, teachers constantly are instructing students to play louder, softer, faster, slower, or any of the hundreds of other musical directives that apply to the score.  These suggestions are not open to discussion.  Students learn to follow directions; a very important skill in any business.  As professional musicians and educators, teachers know the value of being able to immediately adjust to a conductor's demands.  So, our comments are not said to create one particular version for the student, but to see how well they can apply these changes to the music.  If a student has trouble following directions, they are probably not cut out for a career as an orchestral musician.

A symphony orchestra concert is very different from opera, ballet, and musical theater.  When attending the performance of an opera, ballet, or musical theater, it is obvious the show on the stage is not the orchestra, but the singers and dancers.  At a symphony orchestra concert, the orchestra is the show, they are not performing in the pit below the stage.  This requires every musician to be dressed properly and no one should stand out by wearing too much jewelery or sparkles on their clothing.  Management is always looking out for "attention grabbers" that may distract the audience from listening to the music.  Major orchestras usually have a dress code in the contract to insure all the musicians blend together as one from the audience.

This is also true about performing within each section.  Except for solo lines, musicians must sound together as one voice, and no individual member of the section should rise above the general dynamic level of his or her section.

In my next post, I will deal the very unusual audition process to obtain a tenured positon in a major orchestra.

No comments:

Post a Comment