Audition Tips for Singers (from a Pianist)

Art is happening here.

Many people dislike auditions, and I can't blame them - it's unpleasant business trying to convince others you're great in six minutes or less. To make the experience a bit more pleasant, I thought I'd share some basic insights on how to prepare. I didn't think anyone needed to be told some of these things, but all of this I've lived through. Someone somewhere went to an audition and wasn't aware, so here's to you. Next time you'll know.

0. Make sure you know what you're auditioning for. If they want to hear "newer" repertoire but the advertisement does not include the word "musical", maybe just check what the genre is. Pro tip: contemporary classical music differs somewhat from Let It Go.

1. Choose a selection of songs. They might want to hear excerpts from two or three, so bring more scores than one. It's very likely the pianist isn't a walking jukebox and will not be able to play arias from memory - and even if they could, why should they help you get the job when you've already proved yourself to be an unprepared twat.

2. Usually it's wise to sing basic repertoire. The jury likes to hear stuff they know, and pianists like to play stuff they know. With arias like Pamina (that you should never sing in auditions by the way, I've been told by a prestigious jury member), Mimi and the Count, it's more likely that you'll get many right notes and chords to support you, in approximately the right tempo.

3. Make the selection varied: Different languages, styles, and characters. Three slow Mozarts in Italian is boring - they heard from the first minute what they need to know about you and Mozart, so move on.

4. Vary styles, not fachs: Not a good idea to bring both tenor and mezzosoprano repertoire (though if you're a very flexible countertenor it might make sense to go for the gold). When you're trying to sell yourself in a short amount of time, it's better to make the story simple and memorable. It also helps if you...

5. ...Dress according to your fach. Basically, if you want to sing trouser roles, wear trousers. (Ta-dah!) Most importantly, please do wear clothes that are your size and shoes you can actually walk in. Smart casual is good, luxury escort maybe not so good.

6. Learn the songs by heart. It's really not okay to bring scores or to have the lyrics on your phone screen. Learning three songs by heart is possible, and it really is the minimum requirement - why on earth would they hire you to do a full opera production if you can't remember six minutes of music?

Now you know what songs to bring and what to wear. Let's take a closer look at the sheet music:

7. Always. Bring. The. Music. For. The. Pianist. Bring it in paper form, unless they specifically ask for a pdf. And if you are offered the chance to send them the music beforehand, ALWAYS TAKE IT. You never know, they might actually practice and make your life much easier. NEVER ASSUME THAT THE PIANIST KNOWS THE PIECE, because they may not, and who will be the loser in that equation? The pianist is hired to play through dozens of arias, and they'll be paid no matter how they scramble through them. You, on the other hand, might get seriously lost if you have to sing on top of wrong chords played at the wrong time, and it's your very own job interview you're messing with.

Personal anecdote: I was accompanying a violin masterclass where I got the repertoire list in advance. One violinist sent the first Brahms sonata, and I practiced it. When the course started, the violinist announced that they had switched the sonata, and are playing number two instead. I asked why they didn't let me know, since I'd practiced a whole sonata for no reason, and would now primavista my way through a second one - it was my first violin masterclass, so my repertoire was limited at best. Turned out the violinist had just assumed that since I'm accompanying a violin masterclass, I would know all the basic repertoire by heart.

The moral of the story: Please don't assume pianists are Gods. Many of them are, but also Gods have to start from somewhere. And in the end, you're the one who'll suffer from your assumption - like the violinist who ended up getting rubbish accompaniments to lessons they'd paid a lot of money for.

8. When printing the sheet music, make sure the paper doesn't have anything else printed on it already. I once had to play trough an aria that looked like it was either contemporary art or a very complex secret code. There was some kind of text file printed upside down on the same pages as the music was. Don't do that.

9. Tape the damn scores. One tape up, one tape down. NOT JUST ONE IN THE MIDDLE - when the pianist is turning the pages, it's much harder to avoid turning multiple ones when the bottom of the score is not taped together. Don't save tape, save the pianist's nerves.

10. Decide where you want to begin, and mark it extremely clearly. Preferably in colour. You do not want to spend four out of your six audition minutes trying to find a suitable spot for the pianist to begin. Even if there's a traditional place where Everybody Knows It Should Begin, just draw a mark. If the aria doesn't have a clear ending, mark that too. AND JUMPS - do not be vague with jumps. Sometimes singers draw just a slightly thicker black line on top of the barline, and then I'm trying to guess - while playing - whether I should be searching for a similar line somewhere or not. Make it red or green or whatever, but make it stand out! Use "VI-DE" or "CUT" and cross out the beginning of the cut big time. Basically mark things in a way that a 5-year-old would understand. Because what's the worst thing that could happen? Will the pianist refuse to play because your markings are too clear?

Last but not least:

11. Greet the pianist. It's weird when the singer makes no eye contact. A bit of basic kindness goes a long way - just look at the pianist, say hello, and after you've sung your stuff say thank you.

And that's it. You got the job.

How a Pianist Cheats

I cheat a lot. (There, I've said it.) Especially in Wagner, because Wagner piano scores are meant for something else than piano playing entirely. I know there are those pianists who play all the notes because they can, they have the time to learn them properly or their prima vista is just that amazing. This post isn't for them. It's for all the rest of us who need a couple of tricks to do recordings on a short notice.

My basic idea in this is that when recording with a singer, I should be as reliable as possible. I should minimize the possibility of playing wrong chords, muddling the pulse, not following - because usually studio time is expensive, the singer only has so many takes they can do until the voice is affected, and you as the helping hand don't want to be the reason for an otherwise perfect take ending in a discard bin.

Here I've dissected Fricka's aria from The Valkyrie: what shortcuts I use and where. I'm thinking of doing a couple of this kind of posts in the future, so please let me know what was helpful and what wasn't. If you have any questions or things to add, I'd be happy to hear from you! Feel free to suggest other dissectable arias as well.

Fricka: So ist es denn aus

The beginning I play just as it is. It's simple enough, and everything is within reach. The piano introduction is very short, which is a blessing.
 

Then I start not playing things. Because the tempo is quite fast, I keep just one line per hand. (When things could be played legato, playing wrong notes is less likely. The more you have to lift your hands from the keyboard, the more risky it becomes.) I do play the first interval on the right hand though, I don't know why I coloured that. It is necessary for the harmony.

 

Then it's just chords that need to be sharp. I can't reach all of them, so I've changed some notes around to be able to play them without breaking them. I wouldn't break chords in a place like this, because I think it doesn't suit the character of the music.

Ok this I'm not proud of. I basically only play the yellow stuff, and add some random D major stuff around it. If I'm not alert here, I might also skip the fanfare chords to be on the safe side. But I swear that when I listened to recordings of this, that was basically all you could hear - a strong horn melody and a big D major chord surrounding it. So sorry Wagner. (From the piano bar onwards I play as written.)

   

At the end of the first line I skip the yellow stuff for clarity (and because that's not so important), but the next bar I try to play as it is. Except the very last triplet octaves - there I tend to leave the lower octave out (B & C sharp) for legato's sake. And here I don't do the grace notes. For that there's no other reason than that I only noticed them now. They're so small I missed them. (Oops.)
When the singer comes in, I skip the middle part because it's a hassle to combine it to the melody. From here on I take quite a few shortcuts with the rhythm, because when this is played in tempo on a piano all those little notes easily start sounding very busy. On an orchestra the feeling is forward going but relatively calm, and I say to myself that I'm just trying to project that. Also I add an octave here and there for sound.

It's quite straightforward from then on. I leave the higher octaves out from the left hand to keep the dynamic lower and to make my life easier, skip the rhythm like before, and leave a note out of the left hand because I can't reach it.

Now we arrive to a beautiful B major section. I simplify the left a lot: Always keeping the bass even though I forgot to color it (always, always keep the bass!), I just play something chord-related in the middle. Here's one version in red of what I might play. To add sound, and to compensate for the left, I fill out some chords in the right hand. The yellow stuff I still leave out.

Then I cheat even more. I don't know why the middle stuff is so hard to play, but I leave out a lot (most) of it. Then in the last bar shit starts to happen. It's supposed to be very quiet, and what you can hear from the orchestra is the sharp ta-taa -rhythm in the yellow box. So. From there on I'm playing only that with the right hand, even though that rhythm isn't exactly anywhere in the score. I've added a third on top of the first right hand chord, to make both chords the same. (I'm playing C double sharp & E sharp in the fist box, and the second half of the bar would be D sharp & F sharp, possibly adding the lower note written or leaving it out, and I continue like this until the next page.)

Here I've skipped two rows, as they're uneventful from cheating perspective. Now the last climax starts building up, and I start making shortcuts again. I play the chord in red, and bring out the left more (plus the half-note B in the right hand), same when it modulates. Then I cut some corners in the left.

This is difficult to explain - here on the first row I come back to the ta-taa -rhythm that I've already used in the right hand. And on the second row I've highlighted the important stuff in red. I add the same rhythm to the right hand chords (my beautiful drawings), and add notes to the chords to fill them up. The same system applies to the beginning of the next page.

In the orchestra - at least in the recordings I heard - the right hand stuff doesn't sound as high as it's written here - so I play the yellow box an octave lower. Then I leave out octaves again (I do not completely hate octaves, guys, I promise!) and then the piece pretty much ends.

So that was Wagner's Fricka, cheated.

COVIDiaries 3 - Easter Edition

The Baroque Babes (and me) 

Two singer colleagues asked me to join them to make music in the time of corona, and yesterday we recorded Stabat mater by Pergolesi. We're publishing it on YouTube as an Easter offering. I'd never heard this Stabat mater before we started rehearsing (shocking, I know) and I thought it would be fun. It was. Here's what I learned in the process:

• When living through a crisis - this pandemic is arguably the biggest one so far in my lifetime - making music together becomes an act of hope, defiance, prayer even. Working on Stabat mater with Johanna and Elli has yet again reminded me of how much I love what I do. (Listen to 'Thank you for the music' by ABBA now and be grateful. Then continue reading.) 
• Stabat mater is an insanely beautiful piece when played by a baroque ensemble.
• A piano is not a baroque ensemble. It's important to understand all the implications of this - I didn't. I listened to recordings of ensembles, did my best to imitate them, and quickly discovered that things that sound good with a continuo aren't necessarily applicable to piano playing. Steady, heavy pulse? A robot playing slightly too slow. Walking bass all portato? Directionless shit. Trills together with singers? Not great.
• I understood just how little I had studied baroque - I have played the harpsichord, but pitiably little. I have basically learned enough to know how much out of my depth I am - and knowing this mainly helps in making me aware of how much I'm offending the baroque gods. Whatever I do, it's probably somehow wrong, and who plays baroque music on a piano anyway?
• When you have to baroque as a pianist, however, you've got to pay attention to staccatos. I always end up using them too much and too sharp everywhere, making everything sound light, bright and cheerful. Sometimes it works, but just as often the line and drama disappear, taking the oomph out of the music.
• Trills are hard. "Relax," you tell your fingers, "you've known how to do this since you were ten", but your muscles have already frozen, refusing to co-operate.
• Taping scores is even harder than the trills. This time I copied just some of the pages to avoid page turns, and taped the copies to the score. Well. Not only once but twice I actually managed to tape the upper and lower half of the same paper to different pages. Trying to detach the tape I tore some of the pages and essentially made a huge mess. Finally I managed to tape page 29 next to page 41. I have two masters degrees.
• Recording is energy-consuming business, so bring food. Bananas are the best.
• Buy new tights. If you think the old ones won't break when you start manouvering yourself into them, you're very much mistaken. Counting on a small tear not showing in the video? Of course it will. Forgot to check the colour? No worries, surely no-one will notice how weird your orange legs look compared to the deathlike white of your arms.
• It really is possible to cry so tragically over wrong notes and badly formed phrases that the person who you live with thinks someone has died. (In my defence, I was very tired and hungry, and that's when things get tragic.)
• Things might not sound as shit as they feel like when you play them. We're professionals, so in the end all the music we make sounds quite alright, even if it's not the greatest performance ever. All the embarrassing mistakes I bumbled through in this particular recording are just mistakes, after all. While they make me cringe, they will not destroy all the pleasure another listener gets from the performance. A messed up trill here, an ugly forte there - turns out I'm just human. Who would've thought.
• Looking at the video afterwards I realised that I still have the same mannerism I've had for years now - I tend to rotate in a circle, always counter-clockwise, with varying speed throughout a performance. There I was playing, going round and round. A couple of times I managed to pause the movement and sit still for a phrase or two before continuing my rounds, and that felt like a small victory. Baby steps.
• Concerts are fun. Okay, there was no audience and we didn't actually get paid, but who cares when the piece and the people you work with are awesome. Returning to ABBA I'm saying thank you for the music and wishing you all a happy Easter, while we wait for better times to come.

On Neighbors

A musician is not always a pleasant thing to their neighbors, but we can try. Here's how.

1. Soundproofing

There's not that much one can do to a piano - if you're rich, you can "float" the room, making it completely soundproof, or you can buy a detached house and take neighbors out of the equation. If you exist on a (musician's) normal income, however, your options are a bit more limited.

I used to diminish the sound by having a big blanket between the wall and the piano, but it didn't look all that elegant. So last week I devoted some time to a craft project: I bought foam sheets usually used in cars and glued them together to form one large sheet. Then I taped it to the backside of the piano with two-sided tape and that was that. Basically it reduces the sound about as much as a thick blanket would, but it's a much tidier-looking thing and doesn't gather all that dust. If you're interested, you can find these sheets from Biltema, for instance (thanks for the tip, piano tuner Tuomas Sievänen - his page www.sievanen.fi has a lot of good advice on soundproofing in Finnish).

Foam, two-sided tape, and the yellow felt meant to be under the piano.

Messy business, gluing the thing.

End result: barely noticeable 

The biggest issue is the noise going straight to the house structure from the wheels or the base of the piano. That carries very well and it's difficult to do anything about it. I've tried the solution recommended by F-musiikki: I have plastic cups under the wheels, and they have two extra tricks: a piece of felt under them, and a piece of rubber on them to block the sound.

Ta-dah!

Last but not least you can put a thick carpet under the piano, or use noise reducing felt - I already bought some, but that redecorating is still under progress.

Made to measure? Not quite...

2. Communication

Whenever I move to a new flat, I try to introduce myself to at least the closest neighbors - the ones I'm most likely to annoy. I tell them I'm a pianist and practice at home, and I ask them to come let me know if my playing disturbs them at some point. I've learned that people react to noise (aka. music) much better when they know what it's about: who's making it and why, and how to make it stop if necessary (by ringing the doorbell). One particularly adorable example of the latter is from a couple of years back.
I was practicing on a Monday morning when my doorbell rang. My downstairs neighbor had come to say hi looking really quite hungover. He told me that he'd been partying the previous night and the piano was not making him feel any better about himself, so he was going to go for a walk. He then politely asked how long his walk would have to be so that he could return to a quiet home. We agreed on half an hour, and everyone was happy. Not all the neighbors are as kind as he was - I have had some very loud rock music played on top of my more classical soundscape, which turned into a long and nasty argument about who has a right to play what and when, and what is just plain bullying.

The truth is that you can't please everyone and someone is going to get upset whatever you do, but you can still try to do the polite thing. I practice only at daytime when most people are at work, and I keep the amounts small. If I have to play a lot, I go to a rented space elsewhere or I switch to a keyboard with headphones. But as much as I'm taking others into account, it's important to remember that as a musician I have a right to practice at home. I'm being as considerate as I can, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to play and practice my profession at home. Communicating with neighbors is key, but if they're insisting you're a disturbance, bullying you somehow, or you just can't agree on what's decent, you can contact the housing manager (isännöitsijä) and the board of the housing company (taloyhtiön hallitus) to settle the matter. If you're renting, your landlord should be made aware of what's going on, too, and he might be able to help you. You have rights, too.

Hopefully you'll never have to act on my advice. It could be that all your neighbors now and forever passionately love listening to music being practiced (a whole different thing from music being played). One neighbor of mine told me, when I went to talk to her about my playing and asking if she minds it, that she really likes to listen, and the only thing that bothers her is that she doesn't know what the pieces are. That was such a lovely thing to say.
May all your future neighbors think like that.

The Pianist's ABC (Or A Random List Of Things Trying To Appear Meaningful Because It's Based On The Alphabet)

Analysis, Schenkerian. Structurally important tonic? Urlinje? Drawing complicated graphs? Love it. Don't understand half of it, but love it. 

Bench, wrist-friendly. Know the ones where you can just turn a handle and the bench automatically goes up and down? Magic. (Very expensive magic.) Then how about the ones with which you kill your wrists trying to roll, roll, roll away and the bench refuses to get any higher or lower? Especially delightful in a recital where pianists alternate.

Collaborative pianist, the term. Much cooler than "accompanist". Means exactly the same thing, but in a politically correct way.

Damp chaser, otherwise known as the piano life saver. These are the weird blinking lights under the keys that fool people into thinking you've got an electric piano. The damp chaser helps the piano stay in tune for much longer, and keeps piano tuners from earning the money that used to be rightfully theirs. Also I amuse myself by telling young students I'm watering the piano to make it grow into a grand and they buy it, dear hearts. 

Earplugs. Working with singers in practicing venues that are always just a little bit smaller than their voice? Good quality earplugs are indispensable to keeping your ears intact and thus keeping your career going. Yes, I know Beethoven was deaf. He wasn't a collaborative pianist anyway.

Franz Schubert. I've never met a pianist who didn't like Schubert. There are people who don't like Mozart (too cheerful), Chopin (too cheesy), Liszt (too many notes), or Bach (who remembers fugues by heart anyway), but Schubert? Loved by everyone. If you don't like him, please say so - I'd love to get to know you.

Grants. Money rich people and societies give to poor musicians who have a knack for making their artistic aspirations sound convincing on paper.

Harpsichord. Basically an electric piano from hundreds of years ago. When I was a child I loved electric pianos because you could change the sounds (sadly I never had one), and now I love harpsichords for the same reason. You can change the sounds by pulling and twisting things, even mid-piece. How exciting is that?! Also many of the sounds are much nicer than what a modern piano makes. But then, alas, you'll have to...

Improvise. Playing harpsichord means making a lot of stuff up based on numbers you were supposed to learn during theory lessons. 476+? 529-8? Then add a million trills and things, and do it differently every time. It's soooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard.

Jovial. That's what you need to be in order to make it in today's work environment - no suffering artists needed anymore. Unless you are a cursed genius who is so superbly superb that you'll be celebrated and revered wherever you condescend to go - then you probably can be as much of a twat as you like. The rest of us must remain friendly and cheery to keep our jobs.

Knitting. Literally the only interesting thing I could think of starting with K.

Legato, the concept of. An endless source of frustration for pianists, since our instrument is all about pressing buttons. "Imagine you're playing the cello", yes yes, but I'm not, am I? I'm pressing these damn buttons and trying to trick you all into believing they create a continuous melodic line.

Metronome, device or app. When I was a child I had a metronome that had an actual stick-thingy swaying from one side to the other. It was so cool. These days I have an app on my phone that blip, blip, blips away mercilessly. Still helps me practice whenever I bother to use it, though.

Nerves. The ones that make you sweat and tremble before a concert.

Opera. The king of artforms, claimed Kierkegaard. Dozens and dozens of people coming together to create a spectacle of a piece with flashy clothes, hours of singing, orchestra playing their souls away in a black pit where no-one can see them, and stories about love conquering all and about whores dying. It's quite awesome.

Piano, the instrument. Grand, upright, electric, they're all frenemies of sorts. Every time you perform somewhere new it's a voyage of discovery - one piano is soft and gentle, one has a menacing metallic sound, one has pedals so low you break your ankle trying to press them when in heels, one is missing three keys, one is an electric piano that cannot do a glissando but rather stops sounding completely, one has a pedal that is supersensitive and reacts to the slightest foot movement, another has the pedal completely broken or missing... Such adventures!

Question, is "pianist" really your profession? Love it. Yes, yes it is. I live in this elitist cultural bubble where my biggest problems are whether Brahms intended the crescendo to begin from the middle or the end of the bar, and am I going to die of poverty and malnutrition this year or the next.

Rehearse, aka. practice. Something you should do quite a lot if you ever want to do anything well. You know this, at least in theory, because your parents told you so years ago.

Singers. Pianists love them. We also loooove to complain about them, much as old married couples love to complain about each other. Honestly our musical lives would be miserable and meaningless without singers, but we mustn't let them find out we need them! Never!

Tape. A pianist's best friends are (after singers, of course) scotch tape and a pair of scissors. Finding the perfect brand of tape takes time and effot, but it's worth it.

Una corda, the pedal. You press it to make the piano sound a tad softer and quieter. In some pianos it works only for some of the keys, which is awkward to notice mid-concert, let me tell you... Personally I have a very distant relationship with this pedal. I rarely use it and find its existence slightly baffling. So I'd be happy to hear your views on this.

Vivace, meaning of. When I was a child I was told it means I need to play super fast, but later I found it means "lively". So basically whatever tempo I'd like. Thinking about it further I realised it applies to all tempo markings ever written, whether they include the metronome numbers or not - I could choose for myself, and the dead folks could not stop me. What freedom I felt, what joy.

Wagner, Richard. Everyone has an opinion about HIM - unless you're a pianist and you don't actually have to have one since he didn't really write anything to piano anyway.

Xylophone. I've literally got nothing more to add.

Y...

Z.

On What Pianists Don't Like

Nope, don't like!

1) New Bärenreiter opera scores

The score wants to be closed. It has absolutely no interest in being open for you to see the notes inside, so you'll have to hold the score with one hand and play only with the other. That's a meaningful contribution to music, right? Don Giovanni, the left hand version? Bärenreiter folk, a friendly tip: do start developing new score technology - an EasyToTurn page system and an EasyToKeepOpen pianist edition of all your operas. And if you could deliver them before I get any more gray hairs that would be great. Thanks.

2) Being told how difficult a piece is

The scale starts from somewhere like "It's super easy, you'll sight read it in no time" and continues all the way to "This is very, very hard. It's better that someone else plays this, someone who already knows the stuff". It can put a pianist in a tricky situation - if you're told it's not that hard and for you it is, can you admit it? Or should you just smile and nod and try to hide the panic rising to your throat? And if you're told it's way too hard for you, should you try to prove them wrong or smile and nod and only burst into tears when you get home?

Singers are notoriously bad at estimating what is easy and what is not for a pianist, but this applies to pianists themselves, too. So many times I've been told how difficult a piece is to learn or sight read just to find that for me it's much easier or harder than what I've been led to believe. The truth is, and this should be obvious to everyone, that different things are difficult for different people. I'm really good at sightreading stuff, leaving out whatever I don't have time to deal with and bringing out the harmonies and the basic form of the piece. What I'm not so great at is accompanying with chords. I know how to read a score, but to invent something out of thin air using only my imagination? Let's set something straight here: I don't have an imagination, so please don't expect me to improvise on the spot just because the other pianist had no trouble with it. I'll work on it, ask friends for help and come back later with a tolerable version, but that's that. Also, I hate playing from handwritten scores and French editions with their minuscule print.

This works both ways now: pianists, do not believe any assesments of a piece but rather make your own, and you non-pianists expecting us all to be God knows what kind of monster geniuses - remember we're all individuals with different personalities and skillsets, just like barbies or cats.

3) Conducting and finger snapping

Snap at dogs, not at pianists, and if you're not an actual conductor, don't conduct. Don't wave your arms or try to guide the poor player into the correct tempo with any sort of gesticulating, thank you very much. It is seriously annoying and won't make you any friends. So what is a poor singer to do when the pianist has a wrong tempo? Either sing faster or slower and let them follow you, or just tell the pianist. With words. They'll love you for it.

I was performing once with a teacher turning the pages, and they started to conduct my intro to an aria because they felt my tempo was too slow. We were onstage and there was an actual spotlight on us so the whole audience could see the teacher's displeasure with my choice. Did I change the tempo accordingly? Hell no. Did I seriously contemplate setting their car on fire? Oh yes.

4) Not getting attention

Let's be honest here: pianists working with singers don't get their equal share of the limelight. Singers are interesting to the general public, and pianists - not so. This manifests itself in so many ways it would take a couple of blogposts to do justice to them all, but shortly and simply: it's not nice to hear that your contribution to a concert is irrelevant or uninteresting. Of course we know that a vocal recital with just the singer would in most cases be found wanting, but it's sad that we have to defend ourselves by pointing this out. No picture in the advertisement, no name in the program, requests to work for free or significantly cheaper than the vocal expert because it's "just accompanying" - I've encountered all of these and more. And why did we perform again? Because we're attention-seeking narcissists who want to be in the spotlight in fancy clothing. So you, singer, yes, I'm talking to you! - next time you're working with a pianist, make sure their name is out there and praise them a little. Tell them they are indeed important to you. And look, you've acquired an obedient, adoring piano slave who'll stay with you for life.

5) Badly copied scores and untaped ones

Scores that have the vocal line and plenty of space above but with most of the bass line missing from the lowest staff? Scores with the last bar missing from every line? Yay! How am I supposed to know what The Great Composer was thinking there? As mentioned above, pianists aren't evil monster geniuses that possess a hidden mental vault that includes all music ever written, so they cannot dip into that reserve when notes are missing from the page. Of course one can make an educated guess of what might logically come next, but that kind of exercise was aplenty on my theory lessons back in the days, and personally I'd rather not go back to that sorry time. I completed the courses and now I have zero interest in guessing what Schubert / Strauss / Grand Something had in mind for this particular passage. I'd rather be tempted to believe the composer had a brief Schönbergian period on that particular gap, and fill it with accordingly delightful sounds.

Untaped scores, however - let's see, how many here like taping scores? How many of you can't wait for the next intense session of you, sheets of paper and scotch tape? If there are any people passionate about this, please contact me at once; your passion will not go to waste. The rest of us just have to deal with it the best we can. On singing lessons these flyabout papers are a particular annoyance, because they will fall and they will be in the wrong order at some point and there will be chaos, wasted time, and tears of frustration. This could be avoided, I'm told, by buying an ipad - an expensive digital item that can contain all your scores forevermore. Well I don't trust machines. There has to be something deeply wrong with playing music from a screen instead of paper. I'd much rather tape and rant instead.

6) C sharp major

What can I say. It's a shit key.

A Ranting Pianists Christmas Wish List

Dear Santa, would you please send me... 

• The energy to Google whether it's pianists or pianist's... Bloody grammar...

• Finnish Tax System for Dummies and Freelancers. (Audiobook with free form-filling tutorials would be lovely.) 

• A nice long holiday, with the ability to enjoy it. (After two free days the thoughts start coming: Free means no money - Holiday means nobody needs you - Time off really is just a fancy way of saying unemployed - Aren't you such a failure and a disgrace.)

• A left hand technique improving night cream. (Apply a thick layer to clean skin, leave for the night. Play Chopin etudes in the morning with the ease and velocity of an Asian child prodigy, no practicing required.)

• A grant or two, or three. Preferably ones I don't have to apply for, or write reports about. (So if you'd just send me money, basically, that would be great. Or a millionaire sugar daddy could also work.) 

• A magic potion that erases stress from my life. (Feeling anxious, panicky, stressed, freaked out? No worries! Just take a sip of this and all of it magically goes away! Sounds a lot like alcoholism, doesn't it? Probably not a good idea to publish this one.) 

• The motivation to complete the Yoga with Adrienne 30 days of yoga challenge. (Last time I tried I managed to do five of them, and that took me four weeks or so. I know I'm better than this.) 

• Work, work, work, but not all at the same time. Could you spread it evenly throughout the year this time? With that stress-free holiday in the middle, thank you! 

• Joy and gratitude. About things big and small, every day. 

• 12 new blog post ideas. Please send the first one asap.

On Doing Great

"I. Said. I'm. Fine."

Hi! How are you?

Hi! I'm doing great! Super busy right now, so many interesting projects going on that I hardly have time to sleep! So inspiring!

(...and when I would have time to sleep I just can't because my to-do list keeps spinning around in my head getting longer and longer, I have no clean socks anymore and no time to wash them and every new work request makes me want to vomit the lunch I forgot to eat because it's just all too much and I want to die on a desert island with a book and a bottle of wine and never hear a second of music ever again.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm great, thanks! I'm working less nowadays and it feels awesome. I have so much more time to enjoy life and take care of myself. It's really important for a musician to have other things in their life as well, not just their career.

(I'm having a dry spell. Very little work coming this way, and I lie awake at night worrying about next month's rent and whether I should retrain as a shop assistant. I'm having so much me-time that I'm starting to thoroughly despise myself, and I'd pay to get a gig.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm good! So busy applying for all these grants that are due now - I've got such a cool concert idea I'm looking forward to creating!

(...but I'm pretty sure other people will get all the money I would've deserved. My confidence in the idea sails from high to low - one day I'm booking Carnegie Hall sure that the different foundations are dying to pour money into my brilliant scheme, and the next I'm burning my application papers because the idea is commonplace, outdated, and hopelessly naive.)

Hi! How are you?

Couldn't be better - I'm teaching so much these days, and my students give me so much energy. It's so inspiring to watch them learn!

(I have hand problems but I really don't want to talk about it. I'm afraid I'll never perform again if this doesn't heal, and I feel like I've lost half of my identity. Without my students I'd starve in a ditch. My cheeks hurt from all the encouraging smiling and my head is full of recent pop tunes spiced with some Für Elises and Walking in the airs, and the next time someone tells me they simply forgot to practice I'll retire for good.)

Hi! How are you?

Awesome, just awesome. I have more concerts than I can fit in my calendar, but I'm loving every minute of it.

(I would really love performing if I'd had the time to practice the stuff properly, which I now don't since there are all the other concerts and so many different programs and so much music and so little time. My performing outfit reeks of sweat, I have trouble sleeping and my personal life is falling apart. The apartment is full of dying flowers stuck in random bottles since the landlady refuses to accept grand flower arrangements as rent, and the fridge is empty since shops don't want the damn flowers either.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm great! I'm a freelancer, so my life is a permanent mess of either too much or too little work - I'm trying to keep either a burnout or financial ruin at bay. But as I'm a professional musician I market myself as a thriving, busy artist with heaps of confidence, gigs, plans, hope, and creative potential. A professional musician is not desperate or insecure, and they certainly don't have physical problems, injuries, or any mental issues for that matter.

Hi! How are you?

What if next time I really answered the question instead of responding with marketing talk?

 

On Female Composers

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the history of classical music is a predominantly white male effort. I find it weird that I never questioned this until a few years ago. It wasn't a good or a bad thing, it was just a fact, like water being wet. A debate about whether female composers should be more present in concert programs has been going on in Finnish media this year, and this question has been circling in my own head for a while, too. A great summary on the different views can be heard - in Finnish - from Yle Areena: Kare Eskola has a radio program Välilevyjä in which he comments on the matter. (The other episodes are awesome, too.) My view is that yes, womens voices should be more present. Why, you might ask. What I'm wondering is - why not.

When I was 19, my vocal teacher wanted me to sing Er, der Herrlichste von Allen by Schumann. I disliked the song from the beginning and found it hard to relate to the poem. The woman seemed like such a submissive idiot, crawling in mud in front of a god-like hero lover. I still don't like the song - now I just have more reasons to find it problematic. For me the main issue is that both the music and the text are written by adult men trying to relate to the feelings of a young girl. The whole cycle, Frauenliebe und -leben, is built on this extremely common foundation: a woman being portrayed through the eyes of men. Whereas Winterreise and other big romantic song cycles deal with the deep and dark stuff going on in the philosophical mind of man, Frauenliebe und -leben is about finding a guy, getting married, and then dealing with his death. Six songs were enough to sum up a womans entire existence, focusing solely on how she feels about men. I do not object to men writing about women (or to women writing about men), but what I thoroughly despise is that this particular song cycle is still being presented as the female view of things. IT'S NOT THE FUCKING FEMALE VIEW - THE CREATORS WERE BOTH MALE. THE FEMALE VIEW IS MISSING FROM ALMOST THE ENTIRE CLASSICAL MUSIC CANON BECAUSE WE WEREN'T INVITED TO THE PARTY UNTIL YESTERDAY.

(Oops, got a bit upset there. It's just really hard to talk about this calmly because I'm so overwhelmingly angry at the entire Western Civilisation.)

My personal anger aside, here are some thoughts on why I think more female composers works should be a bigger part - or at least some kind of part - of our concert repertoire.

The people who think we're fine as we are often use the same argument: if we start adding female composers works to the programs for equality's sake, the quality of the music will diminish. The E in front of quality suddenly makes the latter disappear. The problem with this argument is that most of the music I'd like to perform is extremely hard to find. So how did we know it's shit again? We haven't even heard it. One answer to this is that if the music was good, it would've become famous already. For me this seems like horseshit - becoming famous depends on so many factors. And even Bach himself, the mighty God of Music, was quite unpopular at one time. I wonder what would've happened to the canon we hold so dear if the musicians who rediscovered his stuff had decided that since Bach was forgotten once, he should stay that way. I'm not saying that every unknown female composer is a forgotten genious, but one of them might be. Bach was. 

Got sidetracked, again. What I wanted to say earlier in the midst of my anger was that many Finnish female composers works from the 20th century have not been recorded or even published, so I would argue that these equality critics are not acquainted with even a fraction of the feminine music out there. It is disheartening that these compositions are cast aside as inferior and uninteresting before they're even given a chance.

I'm currently spending a lot of time researching and planning concerts with only female composers music. Why? Because I think it deserves to be heard, and the way to make it heard is to play it, not rant about it. (As satisfying as ranting might be.) I want to perform music created by women and composed to texts written by women because it's a viewpoint I'm interested in. Because it's so rare, unfamiliar and hard to find. Because I've spent most of my career studying the male stuff and I'd like to see what else is out there. The unquestionably great music written by men has always had plenty of attention, and I'm not suggesting it shouldn't. It could, however, make room for others too. In my concerts it will. 

On Becoming an Entrepreneur

​
I had a lot of questions about becoming an entrepreneur, and for many years I was firmly against it. Last week I decided to start a company anyway, and now I'm sharing with you the Q&A that went on inside my head before I made the decision. I must warn you, this is a very boring blog post that contains information instead of funny bits. Sorry. Also the information is only valid in Finland. Sorry again.

Will I lose all unemployment benefits?  (This was perhaps The Question for me.)

The magic word is PART-TIME. If you work through your company only part-time and you can prove it (=if the hours are so few you could realistically accept a full-time job), then you will be considered a PART-TIME ENTREPRENEUR and your unemployment benefits will be just fine. This is not related to money, I'm told - it's literally the hours you work they're interested in. If you earn most of your income as an employee, you can still stay in your old unemployment fund (työttömyyskassa). If, on the other hand, you'll start earning most of your income as an entrepreneur, they have unemployment funds of their own that you can join.

What do I even need it for?? 

I founded the company mainly to be able to work with singers professionally. The other options are not great for me, but they might be great for you - so here they are:

• Use cash and everyone's happy. No hassle. It is, on the other hand, quite illegal. 
• Use a company to do the billing for you. This is not very cost-effective, because they take a certain percentage of your income as a fee for making your life easier. Your life will not be that much easier.
• Use your daddy's company. This might be a fantastic idea, except that I don't have this option available so I had to fly solo.

What should I charge? What about all those taxes and other weird stuff? 

Charge what you want to earn, PLUS your expenses. If you keep the company very small, the expenses will be equally small, so you can also charge less. If you earn less than 7800€ per year through the company, the only thing you need to pay is taxes. Then up to 10.000€ per year you need to pay for a pension as well, and that's 18% of your income. Earning over 10.000€ in this business you'll have to start paying ALV, which is a Finnish something something tax, and that's 24% for teaching, less for some other things. So, earning more, your expenses might suddenly skyrocket, and you'll have to be aware of more stuff. 

My plan: keep it really small and simple for now to have time to learn all the stuff - plus it's less of a bother that way.

Should I make my prices public? 

I did. For me there's too much secrecy going on in our field, so I wanted to be transparent. It's so frustrating to always have to negotiate your salaries in the dark, not knowing if you're grossly underpriced. I still don't know if what I charge is in any way related to what other pianists make, but at least they'll have one point of reference now on my website. I wish I'd had that when I started working.

Will I have to get a corporate account? They're expensive! 

For a company that consists of a single person (toiminimi in Finland) you can just open a normal account that's free. Technically you wouldn't need even that - you could just use your own account - but it's easier for yourself to keep them separate. For tax purposes you'll need to separate the company's expenses from your own anyway, so best to have them in different places altogether. Then you can "pay yourself salary" from the separate account by simply transferring money to your own. No complex calculations needed.

How will I ever learn how to send invoices? 

By reading instructions and by downloading a free example from online. There are hundreds available. What you'll need is all the basic info that you know an invoice has, plus you'll need to number them. As far as reference numbers go, you do not want to get into those. They're a bitch, and they only work on corporate accounts. You can use a message instead - all you need to do is to somehow connect a sum coming to your account to an invoice you've sent.

Bookkeeping is so hard. Should I hire an accountant? 

If it feels impossible, you should. I decided to learn it. The simplest thing of all, if you want minimum hassle, is to just bill your clients and not use the company for buying things. Then your taxes and bookkeeping is really very Marie Kondo. Nothing there. If, however, you buy things for the company, you just need an explanation of each sum that goes out of the account. A receipt and an explanation. Then at the end of the year, you'll send all this stuff to a tax person who wants them. Not higher mathematics, this.
If you want to minimize the amount of taxes you pay, you can of course spend thousands of hours optimizing this and saving in that, but I couldn't care less. The taxes I pay would make you laugh (or cry), so I don't really care if I would save three euros per year in clever tax schemes. Let the state take all the euros they will.

What if I have to hire someone else?
Don't. I don't know anything about it, and I don't want to start reading about it either having read through all this other shit. Less people, less stress.

What does it cost to register a single-person company? 

If you do it online, it's 60€.

Will it be fun at all? 

Not sure yet, but I'll keep you posted. See you on the other side!

On Posting Recordings On Facebook

I posted a recording on facebook.

I haven't done this in a long time because of the questions. Every time I think about making a recording public in facebook or on my website, these questions appear in my head like an army of very loud mosquitoes. You've probably never heard them since I'm the Only Musician On Earth With Issues, everyone else looking pretty sane and normal and calm from where I'm standing. If one day, however, you hear this strange buzzing sound approaching you from a distance, you should know what's coming. Here they are.

"Is it good enough?"

It could've been better, you know. The bassline could've been more distinct, better shaped. There was the pedal at the end that I'm not sure about - too much? Too obviously romantic?

"What would Ilmo say?"

Ilmo Ranta is a Finnish pianist and one of the best lied coaches on this planet. He has very high standards that are always just out of my reach. Surely he would cringe at the first bar and make me play it again in a far more imaginative way that made the music shine.

"What if people will think that I'm really proud of this recording and not aware of the shit things?"

I have the urge to post recordings with explanatory essays that detail everything I'm not happy with, so that people would know that I know: "To whom it may concern: I don't claim to be perfect or great by posting this recording. I know the beginning is really quite normal (as in 'not extraordinary in any way') and that the transition on page three is a bit clumsy. I'm also aware of all the unclear left hand stuff that appears throughout the piece. With these shortcomings, your humble servant still has the audacity to offer her recording for the world to hear. Sincerest apologies, Jenna"

"Is it any good?"

This question has a tendency of repeating itself a lot. Usually there are no answers.

"What does this say about me?"

What sort of message am I sending with this particular piece? Have I posted too many pieces like this before - will people think I can't do anything else?

"Can I say I love this piece?"

Admitting that a particular piece is close to my heart - that makes it even worse. If I care about a piece very deeply, I'm supposed to have a Super Interpretation of it. My recording should just Pour From The Heart like little drops of magic gold wisdom and love. Listening to it should be a transcendental experience because of all these emotions that drip from the speakers like nectar. Oh well.

"There are already millions of recordings out there - why would mine be needed?"

Of course it's mainly about advertising myself. I hate that, but it's how it is. The songs are musical calling cards I put out there so people would get curious.

"But why not?"

If I get to this question, I'll post the damn thing. Because why not, indeed. However it could be improved, it is me playing the piano to the best of my ability on that particular day, in that particular space. That is how the song shaped itself in front of me that day, and I felt happy and content travelling through its landscape.

P.S. Us musicians, we face fear all the time. Fear of failure, fear of rejection. We find ways to cope with it and we learn to control it, but let's not fool ourselves by pretending it's not a part of our lives. One way I'm facing my own fears is writing them out for all of you to read - and with that writing process, letting them go. Another great way of letting go is simply focusing on the music. It is why we are what we are, after all.

On Loving a Musician

Are you in love with a musician? Perhaps even considering moving in together and sharing a life?
Congratulations! You have made an excellent choice. Before you commit, however, there's a couple of things you should know:

1. Musicians differ somewhat from a normal person. Living with them you'll notice they keep very different hours - not exactly your nine to five schedule. Most of the work happens in the evenings, so if you're hoping to have nice harmonious breakfasts together at seven, dream on. Your musician will be fast asleep at that point, and the most you'll get out of them early in the morning is a kick in the face for having tried to wake them up. In the evening they come home late, very hungry. You should always have some food ready, or at least a snack and a glass of wine. This is a safety measure you'll learn not to laugh at as the years go by.

2. After teaching it is impossible to smile and have a polite conversation. Do not be alarmed if your musician comes home grumpy and silent - it doesn't mean they hate their job. Teaching is very energy-consuming business, and it's quite normal not to be able to sparkle immediately after. The batteries need to be recharged before a normal level of communication can be achieved. (The aforementioned wine may speed up the process.)

3. The amount of work varies a lot, and the mood swings accordingly. One week your musician will be super busy, full of enthusiasm and excitement - and then there'll be days of Netflix, pure procrastination, and sighing over a career that has "passed them by". On the latter occasions you can try to be supportive, but your musician probably won't respond that well to phrases like "honey, if you actually practiced or tried to contact someone instead of watching Orange is the New Black and eating only cheese, things might improve". There will come a time when you'll be wise enough to save your breath and, seeing the first signs of a Netflix coma, go stay with friends for a week or book a hiking holiday just for yourself. A good relationship needs distance, you've heard.

4. Before concerts your musician can turn into different kinds of weird. Sulky, angry, weepy, deeply concentrated and quiet, overly cheerful and loud, obsessed with their hair... Again, the best advice you can get is to ignore them and remember that the concerts pay their share of the bills.
Another thing to know about concerts is that you'll need to attend. Your musician might say that you don't have to go, it's not that important, but they don't mean it. You do have to go. After the concert there will be either ecstatic rambling about touching people's souls, or angry muttering about how nobody appreciates art anymore. Agree with everything that's being said and whatever you do, do not try to be reasonable. Reasonable doesn't go well with a post-concert adrenaline rush.

5. If you expect your significant other to be mainly making music, practicing and performing, you're so mistaken. Your musician will spend way more time writing stuff - concert advertisements, program notes, emails and texts to students, emails and texts to colleagues, invoices, grant applications, tax return forms, unemployment benefit applications, blogs, biography updates, website updates, and so on. The music is the icing on the cake, and the cake itself is other things.

6. If your musician is a pianist, they'll spend an equal amount of time attaching sheet music together with scotch tape. (Like this: Put two sheets of music next to each other - put tape up, down, and center - realize the papers aren't in the right order - swear - repeat.) You'll feel sorry for your musician and to help them you'll buy them an ipad for their birthday. They'll use it to play solitaire, keep taping their scores like they've always done, and next year you'll just buy them more scotch tape.

7. Music is not a sport, you say? Think again. As your musician gets older, the amount of money spent on physiotherapy, massages and the like grows exponentially. Saving for a trip to Thailand? Not in a million years. Saving for a Tempur motor bed? Yep, already opened an account. You think you don't have to worry about these things before your musician is 60+ but you're fooling yourself. The moment a musician hits 30, they start going on and on about the benefits of yoga and ergonomic pillows - and all they'll want for Christmas will be gift cards to chiropractors.

8. You will not choose a single piece of music for your wedding. That's for sure...

9. ...but you'll be the one buying the house.

How to Be A Succesful Musician (in 10 easy steps)

Succeeding as a musician requires two things: first, you need to be taken seriously, and then people need to remember who you are. I've received plenty of advice on how to succeed, and all of it comes down to these two essentials. Most of this advice I've got completely free of charge from colleagues who want to help a friend out and show the true path to greatness - and now I'll share these nuggets of wisdom with you, spreading the love. All you need to do is follow these 10 simple steps, and you'll succeed in no time.

You're welcome.

1. Wear make-up. Nobody will take you seriously without it. (You'll be surprised to know that a soprano told me this. I assumed it only applies to women, but hey, what do I know - a little mascara never hurt anyone.)

2. If you live in Finland, be in the Sibelius Academy. In the bachelor program, doing your masters or doctoral studies, teaching, as a janitor, just get in. Because if you're not in the Sibelius Academy, your career is as good as over - people will forget you in a flash. (Sorry, majority of Finnish musicians. Apparently everyone forgot about you.)

3. Win competitions. That's the true way towards greatness. If you just can't win, then at least (4.) have CDs to your name. Nobody buys them or listens to them, but you've got to have them to look like a pro.

5. It's easier to win competitions if you look artistic when you're playing, because then everyone will know you're a serious musician. (This nugget comes from a competition jury member.) Looking artistic means waving your arms around a lot, making faces, closing your eyes for emphasis, and keeping it visually interesting in general. The only people allowed to just sit there and play are 60+ male pianists whose CVs are longer than them. Everyone else must keep moving.

6. Build and nurture a strong online presence: facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, soundcloud, blog, vlog... - update them regularly and curate your content so that it resonates with your target audience. Then make millions from ads and sponsor deals.

7. Have a teaching method, it's the new black. (This is forward-thinking news from Continental Europe - Finland is always years behind, but this is our chance to catch up.) I've launched the Color Star Shiny Pumpkin method that makes every child play like Lang Lang in just six weeks. It's part video game, part coloring book, and I'm selling the material on- and offline for 1.600$ per student.

8. Get your concerts right. A succesful musician only does two types of concerts: conceptual and market-friendly.

Conceptual concerts get shitloads of funding because they're innovative and new. They take classical music out of dusty concert halls and into the real world: to shopping malls, swimming pools, forests, and fire trucks. It's important to add new layers to the musical experience: at least you have to have an app for the audience, preferably an interactive video game, or then just make the audience build their own kites and fly them in an abandoned factory while you play Bach fugues on a guitar made from potatoes.

If you can't get funding, you have to make the audience buy tickets. The audience doesn't like difficult music (I've heard this from a few different singer sources), so stick to the golden hits of opera, throw in some relaxing piano classics and finish off with a musical number or two. You will get rich and then die of brain explosion during the 19.576th performance of Meine Lippen Sie Küssen So Heiss. May you rest in peace.

9. Have a company. (This I've heard from everyone who has one.) Nobody wants to employ a musician these days - they don't want to take care of all that legal hassle. Have a company and just send them the bill, that's how it's done these days. If you don't, they'll never hire you and you'll starve to death in the gutter.

10. Have attractive (and slightly suggestive) PR photos because sex sells and that's what everyone does these days.

...and that's it. Needless to say I've ignored most of this feedback. I want to believe that the work we do speaks for itself, and we will get by if we respect our colleagues, audiences, and the music itself. What more is there than performing and teaching from our hearts sincerely and honestly? Sharing music with others in a way that is true to ourselves, coming from our unique point of view? No matter how you define success, take a moment to appreciate and admire the career you have right now. Whatever it looks like, obscure or brilliant, love it. It's your very own.