Covid lockdowns in Italy are starting to lessen. People are starting to come out of their homes and you can tell because the usual Naples traffic, complete with crazy driving habits, is back. I saw at least 6 accidents on the road in the past week.  Fortunately, accidents in Naples tend to be less severe than those in the states since many drivers do not have insurance, so they drive carefully. It's definitely a different culture on the road that's for sure!

Recently I got to be an "inspirational speaker" for my old youth orchestra. I got to see my high school orchestra conductor again, it was like 14 years hadn't happened! 

I started this blog in high school (or just before) in an effort to document the journey of a musician in all phases of development and while I haven't been the most faithful blogger, I think this blog certainly gets across much of my musical experiences if anyone cares to dig that far back into the past of someone else's life. 

The band did this video recently, it's a good one. I got to edit, drone pilot, camera woman, schedule and choreograph this. It was fun working with our amazing Italian friends to make this happen. This video was in honor of the Italian Liberation Day where we celebrated the collaboration between US and Italian troops in the fight against the Nazis in WWII.

I'm not actively in a small group at the moment, so I try to keep myself busy with my own independent projects so as to avoid getting too rusty. It's also a great opportunity to learn new skills and you never know when you'll need them. Playing in the band means doing lots of things you might not expect like writing/arranging music, editing sound/recording engineer, or being a videographer and if you didn't have experience beforehand, you learn on the job. These little projects, for me, are a way to get ahead of the curve so that I'm not completely panicked when I have to do something new. Call it professional development.

In this project, I tried three new things: singing, improvisation and audio mixing. None of those things are completely new, but they are the first time I made them public.

In this project, I wrote the music and experimented with the Leizinger bocal, which allows you to hook directly into an amplifier. Try as I might, they still haven't agreed to let me play in the rock band. A bassoonist can wish, right? This is a section from a Tango I am in the process of writing/recording. Definitely going through some writer's block, while I love tango and love dancing it, writing one is proving to be more challenging than I ever expected. I hope this is just because I love the art form and am nervous about producing a product I don't feel is up to the standard of real tango music.

That's all for now. My bassoon is in the shop getting repairs. Special thanks to Fox Products for taking on my bassoon on super short notice and doing a rush job on the repairs. You guys rock.
Peace.

Video Projects

Recently I completed my first major video editing project for the Navy. It was a lot of work, to say the least! The title is Segazz, some people have described it as a retro 90's throwback. It was fun.

Recently I had fun compiling some drone footage and riffing some rock bassoon to accompany it. I wish I could play more "rock bassoon."

I've also been working on another project that will come to a conclusion in the next three months, no later than the month of May I hope. The tune is Bachianas Brasiliera no. 6. Not only is it a great opportunity to play and perform but it's teaching me a lot about video editing, which is now something I'm diving into. Video editing was interesting before, but now I'm learning as much as quickly as I can since I need to do it for work as well. 

 It's been a while. I've gone through a significant career shift since joining the Navy Band and moved halfway across the globe with my husband and dog.
Since I'm not teaching lessons much online due to having a regular salary and not wanting to compete with other bassoonists who may not be so lucky, I have not been keeping up with this blog. However, since the onset of Covid-19, the Navy band is deliberately increasing its online presence in order to stay with the times and keep everyone just a little bit safer. All in all, it seems like a good time to get back into my blogging. We will all pull through these times together and when we get through them we will have learned so many new coping mechanisms and valuable skills. 
Since last year I have found myself writing and arranging music for various projects. I've also started learning how to fly a drone, edit video, and edit audio using more advanced software like Adobe. 
I really enjoy editing video and audio, almost more than performing. Here's an example of some of the droning footage we've taken in Europe (yes this is a two-man operation) that I paired to a song I wrote the lead sheet for 6 years ago and in which I am playing the bassoon.

All that being said, I did enter an online bassoon competition. Fingers crossed I didn't totally embarrass myself. I haven't heard if I made this round and I'm not sure when I'll know more but I check my email somewhat anxiously every day even though I have no certainty that I'll advance.
It's been a great time to catch up with old acquaintances who suddenly find themselves a little less busy. The winter months can be a little lonely for folks stationed overseas who can't afford tickets to go home when holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas come around. Then add the time difference, 6 hours for the east coast, and 9 for the west coast. Not that I'm complaining, I absolutely love living in Europe and learning a new language. Parlo un po d'Italiano adesso, non bene ma va bene cosi.
Playing in the Navy Band has created a new kind of financial stability that was initially quite shocking for both me and my husband. It's very different from the freelancing/teaching life. Overall, it's great. I've learned quite a bit about Navy culture and how to wear a uniform, salute, use the chain of command, etc. It's always fun when you find out old pals from high school or college took the same path and are living their Navy dream somewhere else around the globe. I think if I could stay in Europe, I would. I love being able to use, however poorly, my German and French skills in countries like Switzerland, Germany, and France. I found a new love for the UK and am always down to try a restaurant's fish and chips, only to complain bitterly about small portion sizes or soggy crust and undersized chips. It's hard to find legit fish and chips outside of the UK. Likewise, it's hard to get excellent beer outside of Germany. The Czech Republic has good beer, but it's not as good as a solid German Dunkel on tap. You may find yourself wondering if it's beer or soda since some of them can be surprisingly refreshing and sweet.
Italy is weird when it comes to their cuisine, the north can't do what the south does; fried foods, pizza, pasta with a variety of crustaceans and bread that is hard to stop eating when dipped in olive oil, and the south can't do what the north does; florentine steak, truffles and chiantis that will have you feeling light after one glass. Bologna has the most incredible pasta bolognese, you may think you've died and gone to heaven.

Here's a great picture of Napolitan Pizza I found on the web, you can expect to pay around 6 euros, about 7 US dollars for an entire 12" pizza, and you're expected to eat the whole thing, by yourself. This is your dinner, never lunch because the dough is still rising, and while some Italians eat it with a fork and knife, the more savage amongst them just tear off pieces and roll them up since the crust at the bottom is so thin. One of my dear Italian friends came over to show us how to make pizza dough. Unfortunately, it was a flop and I have since come to realize that the art that goes into making this incredible dough is not to be underestimated. This is why you will never get pizza in Naples for lunch. 

Positive Practice

Turns out I'll be stationed in Naples, Italy!!! 

I couldn't be more excited. Part of the job will be to play in the touring quintet which will take me to all sorts of countries all over the world, including Africa!! I can't wait to see Paris, and the Swiss Alps and Rome and so much more!!!!


Back-tracking to the audition preparation, when preparing for the Air Force and Navy auditions, there was a lot more to my process than was listed in my last post. Here are some more details about that experience and what I learned from it all and how I played my inner game.

While recording I tried to separate the creative process from the critiquing process. This is a mental technique I learned about from books like The Inner Game of Music and Performance Success. The first book states that the critiquing and creating processes cannot happen simultaneously in the brain. So I began actively trying to separate those two processes.
So when I was "creating" I was ONLY focusing on producing the sound. When listening back on the recording, I was "critiquing" by isolating what I wanted to fix. I did not critique while playing.
I tried to keep my criticism constructive and focused on what I wanted to do better.  So instead of beating myself up because I played something wrongly, I would isolate what I didn't like and set positive goals for my next performance every time I listened to the recordings.

An example of a positive goal would be "sustain pianissimo" or "use harder articulation."

What I did not do; I did not hear a bad take and tell myself what an abject failure I was at life, which anyone can do for any reason, or dwell upon all of my life's short-comings. It took years to let myself practice positively but it's been worth it. It's also much more objective to say "I didn't like my pitch on that note" or "I didn't like that articulation" rather than turning into an unproductive session of self inflicted injury like the monks below.

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem...

An unintentional side effect of positive practice was that I found myself performing with a type of determination that was fueled by all the goals I had set for myself while listening to my practice takes. This focused determination was the perfect antidote to stagefright, which used to be quite severe for me.
The type of mental direction created by aiming for positive goals gave me a sense of fearlessness that cut right through stage fright. It was a 180 degree game changer and all started with how I practiced on a psychological level. It's cliche to talk about the power of positivity but practicing positively instead of negatively gave me the mental fortitude to play excellently under pressure.


Check out my bio on the UT Austin alumi page. I'm famous now y'all!

Gone Pro

I won the Navy bassoon audition!!!

I'm so excited to have a performing job that will pay me a decent salary, even if I have to go through bootcamp to do it. (yes I still have to do bootcamp, bummers) I'll be with a fleet band, no idea where I'll get stationed yet but it could be 1 of 9 locations. I'm voting for warmer weather...

This of course means I won't be attending grad school after all. I'm sad to be giving up my dream but excited to be making a decent living and going on this exciting new adventure to unknown places!!!

Now let's talk about the audition process.

Making a tape for the air force band taught me a lot about how I practice and showed me exactly what I sound like. The sheer level of honesty I had to have with myself was difficult initially but got easier and caused my overall level of playing to increase significantly.
By becoming very picky with myself over the span of 2 weeks, I was able to make huge leaps and bounds without spending a ton of time practicing. I probably spent 2 hours a day with most of it spent recording myself and listening, so realistically I only had the bassoon in my hands for 45-60 minutes a day. I did not do this for 2 hours straight, I would break it up into chunks. Luckily for me my schedule permits that style of practice, it wouldn't work for everyone.

• My practice sessions started with 5 minutes of long tones, I set a timer and turned off all electrical distractions and didn't stop playing long tones (in all registers) until it went off. 
• Then I started recording.
  Record - Listen - Delete - Repeat
• When I got a good one I saved it by writing down its number and proceeded to continue recording it until I had reached 30 minutes of recording (at least.)

This means that I would only get to 4 excerpts (or less) a day. Sometimes I would get an acceptable take, sometimes I wouldn't. I made an effort to forgive myself for the latter and exercise patience.

The way I critiqued and isolated what I didn't like in my recordings was based upon two factors: Pitch and Rhythm.
I would often practice with the metronome in my headphones and my tuner in front of me. This gave me instant feedback during practice performances (I treated each recording like a performance) and also helped in the focusing of my goals. Ultimately you cannot have a metronome and tuner on you while actually performing so it's important to truly internalize the precision required to execute the excerpt flawlessly.

I also used a Legere plastic reed for both the Air Force audition and the Navy audition, which was another game changer. While I loved using that reed (which is no longer fully functional sadly) I will say that bias against plastic reeds is still VERY strong. I mentioned using a plastic reed in the Air Force audition but did not for the Navy audition. I won the Navy audition. 'Nuff said? Obviously there's more to that story but you'll have to talk to me in person to hear it. lol

If you got through all of that, congrats and thanks for reading! I hope it was helpful. Remember to subscribe to my blog to hear more candid first person experiences from a bassoonist in todays musical climate.
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Mental Practice

Some may think this crazy, but mental practice can actually be much better for you than physical practice and ANYONE can do it!

Mental practice is rehearsing a known skill by visualization or variations of practice that don't involve the bassoon, such as Eurythmics or singing.

Here is an inspirational TED Talk suggesting that practice is fundamentally a mental game and that practice time in a distraction free environment is *critical* to effective practice.

Of course if you have never done something before, like play the bassoon, and you try to do mental practice to learn how.. this will not work.
Now before you throw your hands up in despair because 'mental practice doesn't work!' consider this:
you ARE in fact practicing even when you have no clue what you're doing.. but this is bad practice and it is likely to end up being a hindrance.

So mental practice IS effective, but be careful how you train your brain! We already know that focused practice is the way to improve but what if you practice badly? Will you perform badly? In short; yes you will perform badly. Preparation is everything!

In essence, mental practice is most effective when it is the mental clarification and repetition of a previously practiced skill.

Note: it is easy to do mental practice incorrectly, so this is the time when you should be very careful and strict with yourself.

   ♫♬♪♩♫♬

   In this video Dr. Duke at The University of Texas at Austin and the Colburn School, who has done some brilliant research as to how our brains absorb information best, interviewed some of the top music teachers in the nation.

You can find this video and more like it at Center for Music and Human Learning: https://cml.music.utexas.edu/online-resources/

Try your Voicing

By the end of the year there are 2 questions I ask that I expect my students to answer and on which they can elaborate. We review these questions at every lesson and they guide my selection of every assignment for my students.

Teacher: "What are the two most important things in music?"
Student: "Pitch and rhythm." 

Teacher: "How do we control pitch on the bassoon?"
Student: "Air speed, embouchure and voicing."

Now if you're scratching your head and asking, "What is 'voicing?'" please let me elaborate.

All teachers know what it feels like to instruct a student to adjust intonation and it can be tough to teach if your student doesn't have much instinct for it.

Teacher: "Try to match the tuner."

Student: *grips instrument firmly, inhales deeply* "H00000OOOOoooooonk"

"Voicing" can make even the most confused students better able to grasp an otherwise difficult and advanced concept and helps put them in the driver's seat when playing their instruments. It gives them something quantifiable to use.
Bassoonists and all wind players, have been unwittingly using voicing for years, but this is my attempt to make the process more formulaic and address it in familiar terms.

There are 4 vowel sounds that make playing the bassoon much easier to explain and understand. Each register has its own recommended voicing. These are general markers, but bear in mind the lower you play the more open your voicing and the higher you play (until G4) the more closed your voicing.

Bb1-E2 using /U/ is advisable

F2 and G2 are transitory using full or partial hard /O/ 

A2-A3 is /AU/ as in taught 

B3-F4 is hard /E/

I will include an educational demonstration video soon. 

The Orchestral Bassoon addresses a similar topic but refers to voicing as merely a way to change "color" rather than pitch. There is much overlap between color and pitch so I focus on pitch over color. To clarify, I do not think that I and the author of The Orchestral Bassoon mean exactly the same thing when we use this term or even on how to use it. I am linking to it here so that you can see what someone else has to say and to pay due homage to a concept that did not completely originate with me.

Without terminology, expressing voicing in an unquantified way is very difficult and our only option. This is why playing exactly in-tune, especially starting in-tune, is considered an advanced skill. We teachers have a hard time explaining it and thus our students are left to themselves to discover (again in a non-verbal way) how to play in-tune with only their blinking tuner and undeveloped ears for feedback.

Once we start using familiar terms, in this case linguistic terms, we can start to make more accurate suggestions for what our students should do.