AllState

Of course.  Of course, of course, of course.  For the AllState Orchestra auditions today, I was practically the first person to play.  Seriously.  Auditions started at 9:00 and my time was 9:06.  Out of all the people there, how did I end up with such an early time?

Not that a later time would have helped much though.  I had some time to practice, but there were so many people playing in such an echoy corridor/rotunda thing that I could barely hear my own notes.

Perhaps I would have done better too if I had played the excerpts before the sightreading pieces.  Because really, the sightreading was easy this time.  But I was too nervous for the first lyrical one, and I got the rhythm and notes, but it wasn't very pretty.  The second one had odd slurs in a 9/8 tempo, so I gave up on counting and just played it...Usually I can judge the rhythm well in my head, but afterwards I realized that I should have just subdivided early on.  30 seconds is no time to think over anything.

My excerpts were, and there is no other word to describe them, completely eh.  They were slush.  Started off well, got nervous, pulled it back together, then a big stumble towards the end.  I hope the judges are lenient in the mornings.  Or are they cranky and harsher?

I've never figured out when the best audition times are.  They should all be the same.  But humans can't suppress emotions, so there should theoretically be a difference in, say, auditioning before lunch and auditioning after lunch.  Would they be kinder before because they want to hurry and have pizza or would that lead to the opposite effect? Perhaps after eating pizza their brains would produce endorphin and, feeling happier, attribute it to the music? Psychology really does interest me, but I would spend more time stumping around with hypothetical questions than decoding human thought and intuition.

Well.  At least one thing went better this year than last year.  I learned my lesson well, and went to the restroom ahead of auditioning.  Cheers.