Monday, 5/2/22 (60 min)
Very strange day- kids were both sick and home from school, and the power was out from a storm. I laid around napping most of the day (since I woke up to help sick kids 4x in the night…).
Then I spent an hour practicing the music for the Flower Mound Symphony concert this Saturday, which is a completely different program than next week!
Tuesday, 5/3/22 (70 min)
Have been composing daily exercises (a new one each day) for intermediate students because I realized my students have a big gap in their practice “diets.”
Since the past week was the last (in-school) lessons for many of my students, I spent some time talking about practicing, hoping to positively influence what they do this summer…
So many of them are trying to improve their band music without improving the underlying fundamental skills that are required. But also, many daily exercises are a little too intimidating for intermediate players, such as Maquarre, Reichert, and T&G.
Otherwise, I spent a lot of time fine tuning my phrasing for the Mozart in G exposition. I’m basically focusing on two things for this audition- fundamentals, and phrasing.
Wednesday, 5/4/22 (70 min)
Another daily exercise. I can’t wait until I have time to transcribe these for my students- right now they are just in my TE app as recordings. But I keep on wanting to assign them to my students!
I practiced the duet version I arranged of Firebird, and am trying out an embouchure adjustment, which I think helped some of the intervals and sound quality. Hard to tell though, I’m still experimenting with it.
Thursday, 4/5/22 (110 min)
Last weekend, I had a lesson where we spent the whole time talking about sound/embouchure, and working on a single excerpt.
I find this approach interesting- sometimes in lessons we go for breadth (a lot of material). But in this lesson, I gained a lot of guidance on how to play the specific excerpt (William Tell), as well as how to approach phrasing decisions in general, which is something I had been thinking about.
I applied this thinking to Entracte, and realized that the melody and countermelody weave together in a very lovely way, trading constantly back and forth with the moving line. In this way, it became very clear to me that the phrasing in the first half of the excerpt should basically be the exact opposite of the countermelody (second half). That way, you get a really neat effect of these interwoven lines.
I also practiced the third movement of the Ali’i Suite by Eric Ewazen, which I will be performing at my recital on Oahu on June 12. Basically, my way of learning pieces now is to record parts of the accompaniment and then play the solo part with it. This way, I conceive of the piece as more of a whole from the very beginning.
Friday, 5/6/22 (110 min)
Another daily exercise- today on piccolo. Preparing the music for Saturday’s concert- Overture from the Marriage of Figaro, two movements from Carmen Suite No. 1, Washington Post, excerpt from Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld (can-can), and The Stars and Stripes Forever.
Had a lesson on Thursday (with a different teacher), where I played through the entire list. Very different approach, but also helpful! Got some more insight/clarification on the embouchure/placement adjustment. I think it’s not that I need to roll in or out generally, but that I may need to be more flexible or strategic to access the best sound on each note.
Saturday, 5/7/22 (70 min)
Woke up feeling kind of sick- my family has been passing around a cold. So I took it easy, and had warm up and run through of the concert program, since we only had one rehearsal with this music. It was familiar to pretty much everyone else in the group, I think, but I wanted to do a really good performance. This was my first performance with this group.
Also, the other flutist kindly asked me if I wanted to play Principal for this concert, since she’s playing Principal on next week’s concert (different program). So it was my Principal debut… it’s been a very long time since I’ve played with an orchestra!
The event itself was relatively casual, but it was sort of a big deal for me. Right now, every opportunity to perform with an orchestra is a huge deal to me!
Sunday, 5/8/22 (45 min)
Squeezed in 45 minutes before Sunday’s service.
I practiced a daily exercise from Altes, working especially on the 3rd octave. I noticed my fingers tend to get a little twisted up there, and my legato gets broken (like in Dvorak 8, Firebird).
Sound was a little hard to control today- I think I maybe overplayed yesterday since we were playing outside.
Alyse Hokamp 