Recently, I had the opportunity for a new experience – adjudicating recorded submissions for a competition. I’ve been on the submitting side many times, but this was the first time I was on the listening side. I have listened to many auditions in person, but this was the first time I could hear and not see the performers. It was a great learning experience for me, as a flutist and as a flute teacher. The following ideas are my opinion and others may disagree.
1) Tone is so very important
Within the first thirty seconds or so, I found that I had already decided what I thought about the flutist’s tone. Rarely did my first impression change by the time I got to the end of the recording. Maybe this goes back to my band director days, but I don’t care how fast or how many difficult passages you can play if you don’t sound good while you’re doing it. In my opinion, there is absolutely no substitute for being able to produce a full, gorgeous tone throughout the entire range of your instrument.
2) It’s all about making music
I am listening to hear phrases and an overall shape of the entire piece. I want to hear music, not just a bunch of notes and rhythms that have no direction and are all the same. If the piece is programmatic in nature, then you need to demonstrate that you have read the program notes, understand what the piece is supposed to be about, and then play something that matches the composer’s intention. If the composer asks for haunting, desperate, flowing, bubbly, or cantabile, then you need to be able to do that. If the music requires these emotions explicitly or implicitly and I don’t hear them clearly in your playing, then I wonder why you’re not doing what the composer has asked. I would much rather hear a musically engaging performance with a few wrong notes or rhythms and a minor intonation problem here and there than a performance that is only notes and rhythms. Unfortunately, I think many flutists start to learn a piece, especially one that is technically challenging, by looking at notes/rhythms and then trying to add the other stuff back in. Too often, the other stuff doesn’t make it back in! I encourage my students to learn the emotions, the shapes, the phrases, the musical intention right from the beginning at the same time as learning the notes/rhythms.
3) Details matter
You need to play everything that the composer writes. When you are playing a repeated rhythmic figure and it is marked with different accents or dynamics, and you play it the same way every time, that’s a problem for me. Some composers carefully notate all kinds of dynamic markings and articulations and you need to accurately reproduce them. If there aren’t very many markings, then you need to come up with your plan for how you’re going to make that section or piece musical. What is your musical intention?
4) About the tempo
I prefer to hear a difficult technical section played musically and under tempo, rather than at tempo without the articulations, dynamics and musical intent. That’s a smart decision – play it as fast as you can, musically. If you chose this approach, though, be aware that if another flutist plays it musically and up to tempo, then you can potentially miss out.
5) New-to-you Techniques
You may discover that the required piece or excerpts have techniques that are new to you, like flutter tonguing, beat boxing, quarter tones, multiphonics, circular breathing, or a significant amount of playing in the extreme high register. This is a great time to learn some new techniques. However, what do you do when the new techniques aren’t quite there yet or are a problem for you? If you can choose the music, pick something else. Don’t advertise your weakness. If you have to submit the required piece, understand that if other flutists nail the extended techniques and yours are a work in progress, you’re going to miss out. Maybe nobody else can play it either—you never know!
6) Intonation matters
Interestingly, I discovered that I am much more annoyed by sharp playing than other issues. Check your intervals. If you’re playing octaves or fifths, take care of that. Make sure you know what to do when you’re playing notes that are characteristically sharp or flat on every flute in the universe. Understand what you need to do to avoid going wicked sharp on a trill when you’re trying to also to a sforzando-crescendo. When I hear consistent problems here, I wonder if the flutist doesn’t know how to fix the problem or if they don’t even hear the problem.
7) Know the piano accompaniment
There is no substitute for adequate preparation. You must know what the piano part is doing when you’re resting so that you can nail your entrances. If there are times when you are playing in unison with the piano, you must know that and make sure your intonation matches. In my recent listening experience, I felt that many flutists didn’t spend enough time in rehearsal with their collaborative pianists before recording. Make sure your pianist is up to the challenge if the piano part is very difficult. As an adjudicator, I don’t have time to figure out if the problem is the flutist or the pianist. I simply note that ensemble precision isn’t good and move on.
8) Recording issues
First, are you recording yourself without your pianist? Are you doing this early and often? If you think you are being musically expressive and you listen back to your recording and you don’t hear that, then you need to do even more. This must happen before you go to make your final recording for submission. You should be recording your rehearsals with your collaborative pianist for the same reasons. How is the balance between flute and piano? Do you need to move the microphone closer or farther away? How is the recording level? Is there an annoying buzzy or whistling sound that is constantly present? If you aren’t experienced with recording, ask for help from someone who knows. I was immediately annoyed by poor microphone placement and incorrect recording levels and had a hard time listening to the end because I could not hear what I wanted to hear. Schedule enough time for doing multiple takes of everything you need to record. My personal plan is to test the softest and loudest sections and immediately listen back to adjust recording levels. Then I play each thing three times, and then use any time left over to redo as needed. Listen to your recordings and pick the best one of each piece. If you’re not happy with the quality, then schedule another time to record and try again. It’s a fantasy goal to think that you’re going to get it the way you want it in one take that happens the day before the submission is due. Make sure that there are several seconds of silence before you start and after you end. Hearing page flips and foot steps on the stage detracts from the quality of the submission.
9) Rhythm Oopsies
Carefully attend to:
~ notes that are tied – take the ties out and practice articulating everything and then add the ties back in
~ triplets and quintuplets – we tend to do better with rhythm patterns that divide into twos
~ long notes – are you subdividing accurately? In grad school, I learned a technique from Katherine Borst Jones to help this. Figure out the smallest unit for a passage, let’s say 16th notes, and play the whole passage in 16th note mode. If you had an dotted 8th-16th passage with F to G, it would be FFFG. If there’s a rest, add a note for what ever comes after the rest. When you can do that successfully, play as written but think the extra notes in your head.
~ long rests – are you counting correctly?
~ Is that pickup note an 1/8, a 1/16, or a 1/32?
10) Free sections/cadenzas vs. metered sections
If it’s marked as a cadenza or with freedom, then play it that way. It shouldn’t sound like it’s metered. Use rubato….do all the things. If it’s metered, then don’t do those things. If you have sections of both in the same piece, then make sure you know what you’re supposed to be doing during each section.
11) Formatting
Check to make sure that you are submitting in the required file format. In most cases, the competition coordinator will specify how to label your file(s). Generally, they don’t want your name in there. If they ask for composer and title, then list it that way. DOUBLECHECK that you do not have typos in composer’s name or title. I notice these things and, to be honest, if I see that you haven’t taken the time to check the composer’s name, I wonder what else haven’t you taken the time to attend to? This is before I even click the “play” button.
12) Just do it!
Preparing well and making a good recording are skills! Most of what we learn to do in music is skill-based learning, and as we practice the skills, we get better. Take the auditions, submit the recordings for competitions, put yourself out there. This is how we grow! The people listening want you to do well!