Lifestyle, Music

2019 Goals – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Hello and a belated Happy New Year. How was your first week of 2019?

The House.

As I’m writing this, a plumber is replacing our boiler, which of course packed in just days after Tim and I moved in to the new house.

So it’s been a cold few days for us.

Nevertheless, it’s taught me to be very grateful for our usual way of life – have you ever thought about just how amazing it is to have hot water on tap? How wonderful it is that our houses heat themselves automatically? How blissful it is to have a hot shower and dry yourself with a warm, dry towel?

I’m feeling very grateful for these little things today.

This is a time I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. Tim and I are in the house, and things are finally starting to settle down into a rhythm. The only things missing right now are a washing machine (lost by the removals company *sob*) and internet (being installed on Friday *yay!*).

Life.

My plan going forward is to put these blogs up on Mondays, but as you can tell, this week’s is a little late due to not having sufficient internet/spending all my time doing laundry at my parents’/trying to stay warm in the freezing-cold house.

Last year I feel like I made a lot of progress with procrastinating less, achieving most of what I set out to do and generally staying a bit more organised. In 2019 I want to continue all of that, but I want the increased productivity to result in more income, please. It sounds shallow, but my goal is to make more than I spend. I don’t want or need loads, just enough to pay the bills and have a bit left over for a rainy day/doing up the house/getting married.

I’ve signed up for some extra work online – teaching English to Chinese children – which is actually really fun and will hopefully tide me over while I find work as a harpist and harp teacher in York. I’m very grateful to a friend of mine for recommending this to me – you know who you are – thank you babe.

My piano will be brought over from Congleton in the next week or so, at which point I can start giving piano lessons in York too – hurray! I am also starting to give harp lessons online (when I have internet) so that is a super-exciting new venture.

Health.

Another 2019 goal of mine is to prioritise my physical and mental health, I’ve gone back to the beginning with my running and starting to work my way through the Couch 2 5k app, I’ll be practising yoga and meditation regularly and trying to eat as well as I can – nothing too strict but my long-term goal is to have a good, healthy quality of life for as many years as I can. Of course, once our garage gym is all set up, Tim and I can do our strength training in there as well.

This may be the subject of another blog post (let me know if you’d like to hear more on this), but the life of a freelancer can be a little chaotic (just a little), with late nights, early mornings, disrupted meal times etc., so keeping our bodies on a schedule when it comes to eating and sleeping really helps our bodies and our health. So, as I’m reading The Circadian Code by Dr. Satchin Panda at the moment, I’m trying to stick to a regular eating/sleeping/waking up schedule to see if that results in an increased amount of energy. Fingers crossed.

So, that’s probably enough from me for now. I really hope you are well (and warm) wherever you are. Check back next week for another post.

Chat soon,
A x
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Career, Music, Places

Diary of a Wedding Harpist

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There’s a new video up on my Youtube channel – a little vlog of a recent weekend where I had a couple of weddings to play for. Firstly I was playing in Liverpool’s gorgeous St. George’s Hall, then the following day I was playing for a church wedding ceremony up in Chorley.

Summer is a busy time for harpists and it feels so good to have a full diary for the rest of the season.

 

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Career, Lifestyle, Music

Staying productive all day.

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When you’re a freelance musician, all the responsibilities of organising yourself fall on you. So you’d better have it together. I’ve done posts before on productivity, the benefits of getting up early and keeping a realistic schedule, but I recently had a bit of a break-through in this area and I wanted to share it with you.

I had been thinking that I can get the same amount of productive activities done at whatever time of day. So theoretically, if I can’t practice until after dinner, so be it. I saw my energy levels as a constant, horizontal line on a graph that spans my waking hours. Sure, I feel groggy and tired mid-afternoon, but that’s just too bad and I need to get on with being an adult and actually sorting my life out.

I’m starting to see that there may be another way.

Having recently discovered that I am in fact, a morning person (I haven’t drunk alcohol in over 100 days, I think that has something to do with it), I find that the morning is the best time to get important stuff out of the way. For me, as for most musicians, that means morning practice. I’m finding that if I do anything reactive in the morning, replying to emails, checking social media etc., my energy dwindles and I’m left feeling like I don’t have the energy to practice later. I mean, I still do it of course (most of the time) but it’s not the golden, focussed, immensely useful practice that happens first thing in the morning.

This article probably explains the idea much better than I can. But the basic idea is to do the most important, focussed tasks when our energy levels are highest (probably between 8am-11am) so that would be my best time to practice (sorry, housemates) then while our energy levels are ok, we can do tasks that aren’t as crucial but still need doing, replying to emails, making calls, running errands etc., then, when our energy dips further, we’ve reached chill time, time to read, listen to podcasts, do any housework that needs doing.

So time management becomes energy management. It’s time management, but also remembering that we are human and we aren’t robots who go through the day feeling exactly the same and always willing to knuckle down to that tax return we’ve been meaning to get to for months.

I’ve been thinking of how I can take and use this technique in my own day-to-day life. Schedules, of course, are subject to change, but I’m thinking here of a regular day at home, no gig, maybe a few private students in the evening, but basically, a big chunk of the day to do with as I wish.

My priority needs to be getting practice done in the morning. I already have a rule about screen time before 9:30am but maybe I can extend this to no phones before I’ve practised. I will try this and report back. I’ll try and get a decent pomodoro of harp in before lunch time (a pomodoro is made up of 4 lots of 25 minutes of focussed work, with 5 minute breaks in between).

These mornings need to be sacred, I’m going to try to limit other activities encroaching on this time. I feel so good on the days where all my practice is done before lunch. This needs to be the case most days. 9am-11am – where possible – is harp time.

At that point it might be a good idea to get some exercise in, either going for a run or doing some yoga before lunch. Then after lunch will be admin time, emails, sorting through paperwork, and starting my tax return. Maybe another pomodoro of this? I realise that I’ve fallen off the blogging (and the vlogging) wagon recently so this is a good point to jump back in to that.

Then, any housework that needs doing, and chill time has arrived (unless I’m teaching).

Angelina’s ideal schedule:

7:30am – Get up, get ready and have breakfast

9am – 11am – Harp

11am – 11:30am – Break

11:30am – 1pm – Exercise

1pm – Lunch

2pm – 4pm – Admin

4pm – 5pm – any housework that needs doing

5pm onwards – Teaching / Dinner / Chill time

Good points about this schedule:

  1. Practice is done first thing, no guilt, yay!
  2. Two hours of harp & admin per day is good going
  3. Plenty of time to relax in the evenings

Crikey, this has been a long and rambling post. My apologies, I find it hugely helpful to write these things down, I do love lists and schedules (as anyone who has met me will tell you while rolling their eyes). But I’m really going to try this and will report back with how I’m getting on.

How do you organise your life if you are freelance? Let me know, let’s share the wisdom.

Chat soon,
A x

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Career, Music

Orchestral Etiquette: how to get conductors to like you

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You think being excellent at your instrument automatically makes you an asset to your orchestra?

Well… not necessarily.

I started playing with orchestras as a child, going away for week-long orchestral courses for IAPS and NSSO. These early experiences of playing in an orchestra are absolutely fantastic and get you into some great habits. As a young harpist, I was lucky to receive guidance from many amazing harpists – all of whom I still know and respect today (Honor, Gabriella, Eira, Rachel, Georgina and Anita to name just a few).

The following is a list of some of the things I’ve learned about playing in orchestras, if you are new to orchestral playing, following these tips will certainly help you make a good impression. 

If some of these seem stupidly obvious, please forgive me, it’s my attempt at being thorough. Please know that this isn’t me being ‘holier than thou’ – believe me I’ve often fallen short of these standards. But I believe this is what we should all strive for.

Being on time is not good enough

First thing’s first. If a rehearsal starts at 10am, turning up at 10am means you are late and inconveniencing the conductor. I’d recommend if you have a large instrument (harp or percussion), aim to arrive AN HOUR before the starting time of the rehearsal. Everyone else, half an hour. 

Hear me out here.

Arriving sufficiently early means you have time to find somewhere to park, unload, sort any potential disasters, find where you are going, settle in and tune before wind and brass start warming up, and maybe even grab a coffee too. By the time 10am rolls around, you’re relaxed, warmed up, caffeinated, and good to go. Plus, with traffic and the (very real) possibility of getting lost, we often arrive later than we expect – so this plan at least gives a good margin for error

No chatting, NO PHONES, no reading, unless the orchestra is rehearsing a movement you’re not in.

I get it, you’re not playing for a hundred bars and you need the gossip from last night. Maybe just send a quick text to see what’s going on. 

No.

Conductors see everything and being on your phone in a rehearsal is unprofessional and rude. Just don’t do it. If you’re not playing for a whole movement that’s perhaps different but in general, keep in off, in your bag, away from you so there’s no temptation. Personally, during movements I’m not in a prefer a good book or a crossword/sudoku.

Whispering and chatting to your deskie while the conductor is talking is also a no-no, it’s obvious and distracting to others.

Tune quickly and quietly, when it’s your turn, and stop playing when you are in tune.

Oh, the joys of getting an orchestra in tune. Harpists, sit back and hope that you tuned to the same A that the oboist is now playing – personally I prefer 440 Hz but different orchestras might do things differently (441 or in some places even 442 *shudder*). Everyone else, tune when directed to do so, but please do it as quietly as you can (so as to be considerate to the players around you who are also tuning) and stop playing as soon as you are in tune – to make it easier for those still tuning.

Practise the music beforehand

I hope this one is obvious, particularly for harpists. If you can get your hands on the music in advance, do it! What helps me a lot is finding the score online (try imslp.org) and then listening to it on spotify. Notice any tricky or solo passages and work on those. Mark up your part as necessary. The better you know the music, the better prepared you are on the day. Preparation is key and no one wants to get caught out.

Be prepared

Have a specific bag that you bring with you to rehearsals, or keep these bits in your instrument case. A couple of 2B pencils (darker lead and easier to rub out), a wire stand in case there aren’t any at the venue, and a folding light just in case the light is poor for the concert. 

Depending on your instrument of course you will need other bits and pieces, for me, I take my gig bag, the contents of which I list here.

Having these bits with you just puts your mind at ease that you won’t be caught out. It’s embarrassing to not have a pencil when you need to mark important instructions (cuts, repeats etc.)

Always, always, count.

So you’re not playing for a hundred bars, cry me a river and just make sure you count. All the time. SO many times I’ve been counting for what feels like hundreds of bars only for the conductor to stop just before I come in. Classic. But it’s still useful. You learn and can note down any important cues and get so much more of a feel for the music this way – and ultimately – that will add to your confidence when it comes to the performance. You’ll know exactly where to come in – and the conductor will love you.

Never rely on getting a cue from the conductor.

I say this with love, I really do. Conductors have so much to think about I don’t know how they do what they do. They won’t always be able to bring you in for your entry. This is why you need to count 100% of the time. Still WATCH the conductor at all times, but don’t be afraid to come in if they don’t give you a cue.

Harpists and other lone instruments: if you are not sure about your entry, come in anyway, if it’s wrong, it can be addressed, if it’s right, great work! Have the confidence to just come in, even if you’re not completely sure where you are. This comes with time and experience.

After a concert, sit when the leader sits, leave only when the leader leaves.

All this bowing, clapping, and standing after a concert has finished can seem silly, I mean, some of us actually have homes to go to, homes that are really far away. If in doubt, do what the leader does, when they sit, you sit, when they have left the stage, you can leave the stage.

Just don’t actually bow, you’ll feel ridiculous and you’ll be the only one. Smile at the audience and stand up straight, act like you are proud of what just happened.

Long Black is more professional that All Black.

Ladies, when it comes to concert clothes, let’s keep it decent. You don’t want the audience thinking you must be going clubbing right after the concert. This is less of an issue in winter, when church concerts make you want to put at least ten layers on as well as a hot water bottle and mittens.

But seriously, smart, professional, and long is best in my opinion. No miniskirts. ESPECIALLY if you straddle your instrument (I’m looking at you, cellists and harpists).

I used to love flouncing around in a black ball-gown at every orchestral gig I did. Nowadays I prefer smart black trousers, a black plain top and a black cardigan for smaller concerts and I keep the dresses for the bigger concerts halls and solo gigs.

So there you have it! Just a few tips to help make a good impression on your colleagues at orchestral gigs. Thanks for reading and I hope you find them useful.

Do you have any others that I’ve missed? Leave them in the comments below. 

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Career, Music

Music Business Myths #1 ‘you only get one shot’

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As a new experiment on this blog, I thought I’d share what I think are some misconceptions about the big bad music world and us mere humans trying to navigate our way around it.

The first one I’d like to address is the idea that, you get one chance to really make your career amazing. It could be a big concert, a presentation, some sort of performance or audition that you feel could be a huge break for you, and if you fail or do less than your best, that’s it – career ruined, minimum wage job for the rest of your life – no more chances.

This, in my opinion, is a mindset that is so unhelpful that we need to put it to bed right now.

Sure, some gigs might lead to more work, better work, with influential people – fantastic! – but if those seemingly ‘more important’ gigs don’t go well, you can recover, you can regroup, you can carry on and learn from failures instead of thinking of all the missed opportunities.

In fact, some of my ‘failures’ have actually taught me way more than the concerts that went well. As musicians, we dedicate our lives to learning, and this is true of freelancing as much as it is true for mastering your instrument.

Having an important string break just before a big concert? We learn to always have spares of everything. Just in case.

Late to an important gig? We learn to leave enough time, even when we think there won’t be traffic.

Solo performance could have been better? We learn to evaluate our performance, see where we went wrong, practice differently, and do better next time.

Instead of looking at all our failures, all the times we went wrong, all the times we didn’t fulfil our potential, let’s look at what went well, what we can change for the better, how we can improve.

A career like this is a journey for us. A huge learning curve. Nobody starts off knowing everything, we learn by experience. If something doesn’t go well, as Taylor would say shake it off and remember tomorrow is a new day. It’s a big world out there, don’t be afraid to jump in and move forward.

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