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by Eric Awuy
Orchestra playing requires different approaches and abilities than what is usually needed when performing as a soloist. The most different aspect about playing in an orchestra is the ability to communicate, listen and an overall consciousness about the musical and technical outcome in an ensemble format.
What and how any player of the orchestra should play his/her music parts depends on the how is the music is currently played, how it should be played and in what direction it should go. Every player has to some extend, an influence to the general outcome of the performance.
When an orchestra is trying to find musicians either as additional players or to fill in a vacant position, there are specific areas where the performance of a musician will be tested and carefully monitored. There are different methods for auditioning players, the tryout method (playing with the orchestra) and the single/private audition method. Both method have each positive and negative aspects and it is not uncommon for orchestras to adopt both methods when looking for a suitable player.
In the present days, due to time and budgetary constraint, the most common way of accepting musicians in an orchestra is the private/single audition method. Whatever the method used in an audition, an experienced team of evaluators (conductors, audition committe) will have basic guidelines to evaluate the performance of the orchestra candidate.
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He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes
A few years ago while hosting a daily music appreciation program in a local radio station, a listener called in and asked about what music should they put on for their newly born baby, as they read that classical music or more specifically music by Mozart will actually make their baby smarter when they grow up. The Mozart Effect as it is often called is popular subject, and if we shop around for music in a record store, we find a variety of compilation cd based on “The Mozart Effect” with various titles like Mozart Mathematics, Genius Baby, Smart Baby, etc...Although more than once we find the music is not by Mozart at all. We will not embark in a discussion about the truth of the Mozart Effect, but about music as part of the education process. Eric Awuy
Music is an art, a language. It requires emotion, cognition, aesthetics, and as a music player it develops individual and group skills. Above all, it develop the brain’s auditory system, which are is to often overlooked in our present day “visual” education system. These things have to be develop and synchronized, and the results are a kind of mental stretching that in general will help in learning other things. According to some research, the notational skills in music correlate positively with achievement in math and reading. The ability to process musical symbols and representations is a leading predictor of of music’s association with learning in other subject areas (Larry Scripp, Harvard Project Zero). This research also found that musical pitch is more predictive of mathematical ability while rhythm is more predictive of reading ability.
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