My Pathway to Clarinet Excellency

I haven't been very good about posting lately....obviously. The last month or so since my last post has been somewhat unproductive. Maybe not unproductive, per say, but I'm definitely feeling lost. I am discovering that I need clear cut goals to progress at anything. Like auditions, ha! Right now, I'm sort of practicing for the ICA orchestral audition competition, but I've been sort of a waffle about actually doing it.

So I'm making a decision right here, right now. I'm NOT doing the competition. Here are my reasons: one, my broke-ass cannot afford the $50 registration fee. Two, I really don't have the time or the money to find a good place to record all those excerpts. Three, I really want to concentrate on other things besides excerpts right now. Like, FUNDAMENTALS, ha. I feel like I got NO fundamentals when I was younger and now I'm paying the price. I still have a lot of catching up to do.

This is an interesting blog entry from one of the many blogs that I read and (try) to keep up with. It made me think about my practicing, and especially WHAT I should be practicing in my period of "no auditions": http://musiciansway.com/blog/?p=1491 . In it, the former (retired) principal oboe discusses what he did in the months prior to winning his job with the philharmonic. While I haven't gone so far as to make a chart (but maybe I should...) I have started to emphasize long tones, scales, and etudes instead of excerpts (and solos, I suppose). While I don't have the time to do 2 1/2 hours a day of long tones, scales, and articulations, I'm thinking that should get as close to that as possible, even if I have to sacrifice practicing other things for awhile.

So the last couple days I've been trying to figure out a daily routine of scales, thirds, long tones, articulations, etc that I can do that will take about an hour or hour and a half to do that I can really commit to do EVERY DAY. I've been really bad about even playing my horn every day, so I need to make some changes so that I can.

I'll try to keep an update on my progress!