“When you step on stage, your awareness of your material will anchor your control and set your creativity free.”
–The Musician’s Way, p. 37
Having coached countless aspiring musicians, I’ve found that many commit an avoidable misstep that profoundly limits their development.
That is, they don’t maintain sizable repertoires of pieces that they can perform with relative ease.
Instead, after learning new titles, they set them aside and move on to other music.
By comparison, we veteran pros regularly pick up fresh music but also practice and perform large amounts of deeply learned compositions. And those long-standing compositions form our core repertoires.
What do pros understand that students don’t?
Here are 6 reasons why building a sizable core repertoire elevates musical artistry and careers.
Six Benefits of Maintaining a Large Core Repertoire
1. Artistic Freedom
By regularly reviewing our long-standing repertoire, we can perform the compositions with minimal effort, freeing us to be expressive and spontaneous in myriad ways.
2. Musical & Technical Development
Practicing and performing compositions over long periods of time leads to profound mastery, provided that we practice deeply. And that mastery enables us to reach pinnacles of musical and technical fluency.
3. Work Readiness & Capacity
With many solo and ensemble titles stage-ready, we attract more engagements and can handle busy concert and gig schedules without exceeding our work capacity.
4. Professional Identity
The music we become known for performing – i.e., our core repertoire – communicates our identities as musicians. By assembling distinctive repertoires along with must-know standards, we can not only win more bookings but also differentiate ourselves as artists.
5. Collaborative Flexibility
As we amass large repertoires across several styles, we acquire the flexibility to partner with diverse musicians, thereby expanding our musicality, connections, and appearances.
6. Work-Life Balance
Titles in our core repertoire require relatively little practice time to prepare for performances, which helps us attain the work-life balance that underpins career sustainability.
See The Musician’s Way for inclusive guidelines to choose, master, and maintain a far-reaching repertoire.
Related posts
The Benefits of Accessible Music
Practicing Performance
Renewing Your Repertoire
The Secret to Sustainable Music Careers
© 2016 Gerald Klickstein
Image © Nejron Photo, licensed from Shutterstock
This is a fantastic piece of advice. Thank you, Gerard.
You’re welcome, Nicky – I appreciate you reading my posts and participating in the MW community.
I totally agree with this idea, I have found great opportunity for improvisation when I practice my core Repertoire. Thanks to your insights from your book, I return to my older songs and am amazed how I am able to relax and play since the music is anchored in my heart. It doesn’t take very much time each day to touch on the established Repertoire and that is when is such a joy to improvise.
Hi Barney. Thanks for sharing your experiences. You make a powerful point about core rep and improvisation!
Students can find a core rep valuable for at least 2 reasons: 1. Pieces they can actually play while trudging ahead with everything that advances them on their instrument.
2. A benchmark to return to at a later point and assess their progress and growth as musicians. (Now I can get that bar more easily, – play it a bit closer to ideal tempo, – create more depth of expression, etc.) (An aside, as a child learning piano, I’d occasionally mystify my mother by playing little pieces from my first book – because now they were easy & rewarding – then back to the tougher stuff.)
Love the story from your childhood, Mary Jo – thank you for contributing!