Dear Friends,

Great music, interesting rehearsals and personal growth - they're up to you!

Sound familiar? Do you remember my putting the ball in your court in a previous Tip? As a matter of fact, in all the Tips (in one way or another)?

If you've tried some of things I suggested - preparing and marking your music, listening to the other musicians, and watching your director more (and if you've told your friends to) - I'll bet you've noticed a change.

Here's another way of looking at these things. Sometimes it takes more than approach to achieve what we want:

In my experience, thinking and listening rule!
THINK about what you're going to do.
Play or Sing the music - in they way you've just thought about it.
LISTEN to yourself to make sure you did what you intended!

THINK
In English, Science, Math - or any academic subject - you have to think before you write.

But singing comes naturally, and you've played your instrument enough to get the notes almost automatically. So, thinking about what you're about to do - and what you're doing - may not seem so important...or even necessary. Think about THAT!

If you don't think, though, you won't get the music right, the director will stop (again) for the same thing, you'll get impatient - the whole thing. For instance, how many times have you marked your part but not played or sang what you marked? Right. Happens all the time. And when your director asks if you've marked your part and, if you did, why didn't you do it right?...you have no answer.

I do! It's because you didn't think. You didn't read ahead, note your marking, and think to yourself, "I have to watch in two measures because we're going to take a little time." Here's an example we used in a previous Tip: