#49 Contest.

Have I talked about contest before? I can't remember. Well, if I did, you probably forgot, too, so here we go.
I'm going to piano contest tomorrow. Am I practicing on the night before? Apparently, no, I am writing a blog post. I've literally played the piece hundreds of times before. If it's not ready now, it never will be.
Anyway, whether you're going to piano, solo, ensemble, or large group contest, you always have to face...
THE JUDGES.
...and, beside the normal, you-did-this-good-this-needs-work type judges, there are basically four kinds you need to look for...

1. The judge who hates your guts.
Good luck getting anything better than a 3 from this guy. This judge hates you, and everything about you. He is, as my dad says, a musical snob, and you picked the ugliest, most unmusical song out there, and he hates it. He also hates your interpretation of it; his is much better. Why is he playing a song he hates? Who knows? He also hates your posture, your clothes, your hairdo, how tall you are, and the fact that you can say the alphabet backwards with your tongue rolled, and he can't do either. How does he know that, anyway?

2. The judge who is just kind of...dumb.
This guy is more of a rarity, but he's out there. It's one of the mysteries of life, how smart, hard-working people can fail at many things, but some really stupid people somehow get through the education system and become police officers, nurses, and, occassionally, musicians. You never know what kind of a score he'll give you, but even if you do a really horrible job, there's a chance that he'll give you a really high score.

3. The judge who can't read music.
How did this guy get here? You probably ran over the real judge's dog one time, and when he heard you were performing, he got depressed and hired his identical twin brother to take his place. This guy will ask for the score an inordinate amount of times, and pretend to be studying the section that looks the most difficult to him. He then tries to figure out what the terms on the score sheet mean, and not to give the same number on all of them. This guy is really easy to spot. He'll most likely give you a high score, since everybody who performs will impress him, and he won't leave any comments at all on the score sheet.

4. The old guy who falls asleep during every performance.
This is just one more reason to play a loud, flashy piece rather than a quiet one. This judge is probably about 114 years old, is a professor emeritus at the college, and has been to contest, as a contestant or a judge, since he before he was born, and it's kind of boring now. He's also kind of deaf, and doesn't feel like straining to hear your music. He, like the last guy, has to fake the score sheet, but he's better at doing it. After all, he has been at it for the past seven decades.