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April 30, 2006 at 7:58 PM

So, as I continue to prepare for my audition Saturday, May 6th, I get worried. I went through the Minuets from Partita No. 3 slowly and brought them up to speed, making sure that everything was in-tune and I was in the right part of the bow, and I especially made sure not to crunch chords.

I went through my Mozart excerpt yesterday and finally got it to sound the way I wanted it to. The Schumann excerpt is a different story, haha. Oh, I should probably focus on Schumann on my finally few days before the audition. I think this excerpt will make the difference between me making Franklin Pond or sitting at home my entire summer.

The first movement of the Haydn concerto no. 1 is okay. I could play it right now as it is for my audition and still do better than okay, but I have some things that I could do to make it better. I hate learning concertos and then having to come back to them for auditions. I always forget the concertos and have to re-learn them before the auditions. The same thing happened when I played Mozart Concerto No. 3

But, the cadenza isn't that great... I have so many intonation problems.

The audition is only 10 minutes long. It will probably be the longest ten minutes of my life. Either that or they will be the quickest ten minutes of my life. I have to have a movement of Bach prepared, as well as a movement from a concerto, two excerpts from the string quartet repertoire given on the website, and then sight-reading.

By the way, I am interested in buying some kind of recorder so I can listen to how I play and find things that I wouldn't normally hear to work on. Would a voice recorder with a casette tape work? Do they even sell those at Radio Shack?

I'm thinking that I might want a digital recorder... or maybe something I could buy that would save the sound files to my computer. I don't really want to spend more than $30, and I would be reluctant to buy anything up to $100. Let's just say I want something cheap. What do you guys use?

Thanks

From Jim W. Miller
Posted on April 30, 2006 at 8:54 PM
Nothing wrong with an old cassette recorder. For digital under $30, get a computer mic for $15 or so, you might already have one, and download a free copy of Audacity. You'll be surprised.
From Donna Clegg
Posted on May 1, 2006 at 3:13 PM
Good luck with your audition. I think you will do great! You sure are preparing a lot of material- I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

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