Another learning experience with Solo and Ensemble Contest

For the last couple of weeks we have been putting the finishing touches on performances as students prepared for Solo and Ensemble Contest (which happened yesterday.) I encouraged each student to write a positive personal pep talk to review right before they entered the room to sing. This pep talk was to include reminders about anything that we had discussed in lessons to improve their song. It could include "remember to get a deep, relaxed breath", or "send the sound to the back of the room". I also asked that they really focus on phrasing things positively. Under pressure and stress, your brain deletes the word "not", so "Don't mess up the high note," becomes, "MESS UP THE HIGH NOTE! MESS UP THE HIGH NOTE! MESS UP THE HIGH NOTE!" A better, more positively phrased option would be, "I will sing the high note with space and freedom." I thought that avoiding the word "not" would be good enough, but a student showed me another way that we can sabotage ourselves. When I asked this student to share something he might put in his pep talk, he said something like this, "I will sing to the end of the phrase instead of breathing in the middle of the word." Ugh. That "instead of" just gave his brain another option that we don't want it to have. We talked about how in this last minute pep talk, we only wanted to include the things we want to have happen. "I will sing to the end of the phrase."

I also explained to the students that this personal pep talk was like downloading the latest updates to the computer. Once they entered the room, I wanted them to trust that the computer (their brains and bodies) would run the program (installed through practice and updated with the pep talk) and only focus on keeping the body free and expressing the text. If you don't know what to do before you enter the room, all the worrying in the world won't make it happen. OK, I didn't include that last part, but it is true.

Some of the kids thought it was a dumb exercise, which is fine, but I think it really makes a difference and the kids that did it, benefitted from it.

Solo and Ensemble Contest is such a stressful experience, and I'm not talking about what the kids feel. Take the nerves one student feels and multiply it by the number of students I have participating, (in this event it was somewhere around 40) and then you will see what I go through. I know what they are capable of. I know what they have practiced (or not practiced). I want them to succeed, sometimes even more than they want it.

But yesterday I got thinking about the pep talks and the computer analogy. I have to trust that I have done all I can to prepare my students. I have to let them go. I have to let them claim responsibility and ownership for their preparation and performances. If I am the person accompanying them, I need to let go of teacher mode and focus on the expressivity and beauty of what they are creating.

No, that's not totally new to me, but it's also not something that I've totally mastered either. I have a lot of room to grow still.

Here are some highlights of my day:

• a student with Asperger's conquered her nerves, sang her song, and responded very well to the clinician that worked with her.
• a student who stutters had even more difficulty announcing his song than he usually does due to his nerves, but he didn't let that create frustration that would affect his song. Once he started singing, he nailed it.
• 2 students who have had a rough year (or years) (partly due to their own poor choices) sang for completely impartial clinicians who knew nothing of their pasts. The kids brought the best they had to offer (which was amazing) and the judges saw that and let them know how wonderful it was.
• in more than one case, the nervous energy actually improved the sound quality and tuning and kids gave better performances than they had given at their lessons. (Love it when that happens.)

I survived another year of Solo and Ensemble Contests! Yay me! Now on to the preparation for the end of the year recitals. No pressure there. Just parents wanting to see that the money they've been paying was well spent.