Oh fuck, that’s the email.
“Hey everyone, the parts for [title of piece] are now up in the production folder.”
Until now, the publisher or composer of this particular piece was actively absolving me of my burden: the rental parts weren’t available yet, or the piece wasn’t done yet. I couldn’t learn the part yet, because I simply did not have the part yet. Nothing I can do yet. Not my fault! (yet).
But now it begins. The period of time where I know I can be preparing for the gig, and every moment of every day becomes a conscious choice to either be doing that or to be not doing that.
How much time do I need to "feel prepared" to perform? My brain has a simple formula:
Hours Required = Hours Available + 1
y = x + 1
… I would prefer not to
As I write this, I am sitting in room 742A, Kings County Supreme Court, waiting to go back into the courtroom as a juror. As a person who's spent the last 25 years in endless cycles of preparation and performance, what an obscenely delicious pleasure this gig is. No preparation necessary. It's just divine. We show up. The whole room stands every time we walk in. We sit there and listen. Whatever we are capable of is good enough. It's the most organized, rule-based environment on the face of the earth. The chance to learn about my own potential biases is wonderful and useful. Everyone is thanking us constantly. Apart from some kind of financial duress from loss of work, I'll never be annoyed to get jury duty. It's like a hall pass to leave my own head. It's like switching to a whole new career and being treated like a trusted expert on my very first day.
I subtly examine the lawyers before they give opening statements: piles and piles of documents, books, and notes in front of them. They’ve been Preparing for weeks, months. They are about to perform — to step on stage for the show.
I realize that right now I do not envy them.
There are other areas of my work (and life) that don't include the pressure of "preparation." Writing this essay, knitting a sweater, making an album… I publish it, I wear it, I upload it to bandcamp. It’s done. The final product is of course not perfect, but it is an accurate representation of itself — a representation of whatever it was at the moment I pronounced it “finished” (or when the deadline arrived). At that moment I can know for sure that it can never be worse, or better, than it is right then.
But: a first rehearsal, a recording session, a concert — these are performances, with the threat of variability. How can I guarantee that my playing will be an accurate representation of itself in these situations? How can I know that I'm "prepared?" I can’t. Because:
human variability exists (that’s me)
environmental variability exists (that’s literally everything else)
No matter how much I prepare, I can never completely control the outcome of the performance.
Psychologically, I've never stopped struggling to cope with this.
… it’s out of my control
As contemporary music groups go, Alarm Will Sound is pretty democratic. Ultimately the artistic and organizational decisions are not made by the players, but we all do have a fair chance to weigh in. The group was unanimously stoked to have George Lewis as a guest composer for our yearly festival this summer. We'll work with him in person for over a week, watch him mentor eight early-career resident composers, and perform two of his works.
This is my first time playing his music. I’ll be getting deeply into it, but I have yet to start, so I'm not sure what to expect. Even so, it's a done deal — The Deformation of Mastery is on the program. An ominous title. As I write this (June 4), I haven't seen the part yet — and publishers, perpetually stuck in 1994, offer only paper parts, and make it super difficult to get them in advance.
If I'm really desperate, I can make our librarian order a "perusal score" and try to start learning my part as one line on a 150 page pdf. It's not ideal. More often than not this merely makes the task more intimidating. Do I know anyone who's already played it? I could ask them to scan it for me, but (apart from that being illegal) do I really want to ask someone to send me a copy of their personally marked part? It feels like asking for trade secrets.
That email I mentioned at the beginning of this article actually wasn’t hypothetical, it arrived yesterday. As I write this, the first rehearsal is 5 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours, and 49 minutes from this moment, and the part is here, in my email. All of this is out of my control.
I did finally get the nerve to open that email shortly before I decided to start this article, saw this passage, and now my upcoming journey has been partially revealed to me.
Let’s have a little looksie:1
Oh, hello again, bowling ball in my stomach! Back again so soon?
I've spent the past 25 years in a non-stop cycle of "preparing for gigs." Please, please tell me I'm not the only person who is often disproportionately overwhelmed in a way that seems totally unhealthy. Seriously please tell me that. Lie to me if you have to.
Most of the time it's like this weight on my shoulders that will not lift, and makes everything else in my life cloudy. But in the worst cases I've become so depressed that I just straight up considering quitting music. I couldn't even remember why I wanted to do it in the first place. Sorry, dark. I never hear anyone talk about this. Maybe because I'm the only one. Here's my experience:
… it’s a mind game
Rational, healthy self-talk:
”This passage looks like it will be really fun to work on. That’s half the battle won. Tempo's not so bad. The lines are idiomatic. Might need to be partially memorized for accuracy’s sake. It’s only this one page, the rest of the part is manageable." [Glance at the full score] "Oh no, it’s kinda exposed. It’s gonna take some time, but I've been much worse off many, many times. This will weigh on me, but I know I can handle it!”
“Just try to relax and enjoy the process.”
Actual self-talk:
👋 Oh hey, my algorithmically-generated dysfunctional brain-voice Sad Will! What’s your take on preparing this piece?"
Sad Will:
… it’s documentable
Sad Will is right about our pianist… he would sight-read this passage. With one hand. He’d play it off the top of his head in the style of someone’s ring-tone that goes off during rehearsal. He’d simultaneously harmonize it with the chord progression of Don’t Stop Believing.
Me? Hoo boy. You know that thing where you’re supposed to bravely do something even though it scares you, for like, personal growth? Pulling back the curtain hard here on my real working life would expose just how much I’ll probably struggle with this. Is "I must always be a professional" an irrational expectation? If I could give myself license to try hard but also be a human being, would it help?
Could the complicated truth about my strengths and weaknesses (mostly weaknesses) maybe be way more interesting than whatever perfect thing ends up on the record, or on the instagram reels?
I’m tired of hiding behind finished product.
I pretend it's all easy. I pretend I'm a pro — and that being a pro means making sure I never look bad. But I look bad all day long… for hours and hours at a time while I hack through stuff I feel I “should” be able to sight-read, with that awkward grimace on my face (why do I look like that?).
I’m going to document this. Maybe everything will be fine! Or maybe it will be a train-wreck. Either way, I promise to be honest and try to show what practicing really looks like for me.
BUT… is "practicing" what I'm actually even doing?…
… it really isn’t “practicing”
Musicians often refer to preparing their parts as “practicing.” But to describe what I do before the gig as “practice” never feels completely true.
To practice is to engage in work on your instrument with the goal of growth as a player, or at the very least, maintenance. Different instrumentalists need to do different amounts of this. For example: I do not envy brass players, who simply cannot let regular practice slide for even a week or they lose their chops. I would have to stop playing completely for much longer to see any real difference in my hands — it’s just the nature of the differences in human apparatus.
But when I talk about preparing for the gig, 90% of what I’m doing isn’t “practice” at all — it’s learning notes.
Practicing — the one thing I’m usually not doing when I’m “practicing.”
Learning a lot of notes for a specific gig means putting real practice on hold. Depending on the nature of the music, the process of preparing a part can be beneficial, or neutral, or actually even detrimental to my playing overall. Either way, that’s beside the point — hopefully, I “practiced” enough when I was 23 because now I'm 45, and the notes need to get learned. And what that takes is time:
… it has a very complicated hourly rate
In my world, nobody gets paid for the time it takes to learn the notes. We get paid for rehearsals and concerts, for recordings and workshops. We are “called” for “services” of specific lengths, weeks or months in advance. We say yes to the gig before we even know what we're playing or how much preparation will be required.
But it would be impossible to set an hourly rate for personal preparation, because everyone spends different amounts of time depending on their ability, temperament, and the part itself. It would be an impossible can of worms to try to quantify, so nobody ever tries. We consider preparation time to be implicit in the official call times.
The fee to rehearse a piece three times and then perform it, broken up into an hourly rate, can seem alright. But factor in the preparation time… 30 minutes… 5 hours… 3 days… months, even? The hourly rate can plummet to minimum wage, and way below.
That takes us back again to that email, and that recurring realization: “it’s out of my control.”
As I open that email, I’m about to find out:
What my near-term life is about to be like.
How much the gig is really going to pay.
What Sad Will thinks about all this.
… it’s never over
Read on to Part II:
Thanks so much for reading. You can subscribe for free:
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1 this tiny portion of the work is excerpted for purposes of commentary under fair use, but I will take it down immediately if requested!
Thank you so much for your candor in sharing this! It's so spot on to say that "learning" the notes is what most time is spent on rather than practicing/getting better as a musician or technician. Looking forward to your other entries as well.
I laughed, I cried, I perspired. More, more, more, please!