This is the time of the school year when thousands of student musicians are spending countless hours in band rooms around the country trying to learn their solo for this year’s Solo Ensemble Contest.
Anxieties are starting to set in and each performer wonders how they will play and what grade will they receive at contest.
In order to help those faced with this nerve wrenching experience I will try to give a few hints as to how you can more productively spend your time preparing your solo.
Here are a few of my observations when judging a young student at Solo Ensemble Contest.
• Most students spend a great amount of time learning the notes and don’t even know the composer of their solo or in some cases even know the full name of their piece.
• Most students have prepared the beginning of their number but are less prepared on the material at the end
• Most students rush into their solo without first settling down for their performance
• Most students fail to prepare fully the black or faster areas in each solo
• Most students rush the slow sections and many times fail to observe the resting sections
• Most students fail to fully observe the dynamics
• Most students do not take enough time to tune to their accompanying instrument
• Most students enter the room with a defeated attitude
• Most students attempt to play all of the notes without playing in a musical style
Preparing your solo is much like building a house. Every house has different rooms and your solo is built the same way. Each section of your solo is different yet it is still connected to the adjoining room. When learning a solo, first identify each section and learn it by itself. Then learn another section and so forth until you are able to play each section correctly. Once you have each section learned, then you connect each section to the following section. Too often students are not able to see the connection of these parts and try to learn the piece from the first measure all the way to the last.
I have broken this well-known clarinet solo into several individual sections and have recorded the clarinet playing each section and along with the clarinet, I have included a click track so that the player can first hear the correct way to play each section and repeat as the player imitates the clarinet.
From the standpoint of a trumpet player, the sections prerecorded by the clarinet serve as an example of how it is to be played and at the same time gives the trumpet player a chance to rest. This concept follows my “Rest as much as you Play” philosophy.
The following material includes-
1. A printed copy of the original clarinet solo
2. A copy of the practice version of the solo broken down into separate sections for rehearsing purposes.
3. Three MP3 recordings of different speeds with a clarinet playing each section and a click track for the trumpet player to follow when repeating each section.
The advantages of this approach to learning a solo or any material is obvious for each section receives the same amount of attention and the solo will be more equally prepared. Learning through listening to the correct performance and followed by the students’ performance is the best way to prepare material.
