Making the Leap—A Guide to Joining Your Community Orchestra

By Emily Wright | From the September/October 2025 issue of Strings

Imagine a swimming pool on a hot day. Whether your preferred method of entry is one inch at a time or a splashy cannonball, once you’re in the water, it seems like the easiest thing in the world, the best place to be. This is how I see community orchestras. It can feel like a leap into the unknown if you’ve never joined a local group, but I can attest to their transformative power and want to take a few pages to lobby you to my side. I’ve seen the metamorphosis of my students—from timid to confident, from aimless to focused, from socially isolated to hosting salons—and I very much want this for any string player considering jumping into the world of local music. 

Minimum Skillset 

In terms of playing experience and ability, you’ll most likely feel best if you can do the following: 

• Comfortably play through Suzuki Book 4 three-octave major and minor scales, all keys

• Sight-read simple pieces

•Understand the main conducting patterns (2, 3, 4, and 6) 

• Quickly determine whether you’re sharp or flat

• Play light/medium-duty music for two hours 

Of course there are groups that welcome all comers, and others still that are highly selective. How do you find the right one? The answer almost entirely depends on where you live. Major metro areas, especially those with prominent professional orchestras, tend to have numerous amateur ensembles of varying levels. Some of them are hybrid groups, where professionals comprise some percentage of the permanent members or are hired as “ringers” to anchor a section. Ensembles like these tend to have a more stringent audition process, and for that, rookies should be grateful. No matter how daunting the prospect of an audition may seem, it’s the very best way to prevent a deeply uncomfortable situation: being admitted to an orchestra where you will be a liability. 

Don’t be afraid of taking and failing any audition. In most cases, if you return after a year or two having improved, it only speaks to your dedication and aptitude. And if they somehow think less of you for trying multiple times, it wouldn’t be a supportive home for your musical efforts, and you’ve survived the rare but unpleasant brush with a buncha jerks. Celebrate your good fortune, having escaped a community orchestra with zero actual community spirit. The right home will present itself.

General Etiquette

Once you’ve found the right ensemble, the main idea to keep in mind is that this is an ensemble. The collective is the priority, and especially while you’re figuring out the culture and customs of this new situation, the idea is to be mostly invisible and quietly friendly. Introduce yourself to the conductor, the librarian, your section leader, and your stand partner before rehearsal or during a break. Don’t ask a question of the conductor unless it is specifically requested. Show up early and stay late to clean up. Bring an extra copy of the music, even if this means you have to make a copy: Doing this gives you a shot at becoming someone’s hero if they left theirs behind.

While it is typical for the principal to share a bowed part so everyone can mark their music, there are different practices in terms of writing fingerings in parts. Some people need a lot of fingerings, others find them distracting. Using the same fingerings isn’t strictly necessary, but in professional orchestras, they tend to match more often than not to preserve tone color and deliver a blended section sound. If you find yourself at odds with the person you’re sitting next to, you have a few options: 

Put two stands next to each other, or find a jumbo stand, and play from two separate parts. It necessitates a bit more distance between players, which isn’t a bad thing if there’s room for it. This was the way many orchestras dealt with coming back from Covid; some community orchestras have kept the practice. 

You could also agree that one person writes above and the other writes below the music where fingerings differ.

You could also ask the orchestra manager what to do: They may suggest a solution custom to your situation. Make sure to frame it as something youneed, and you are not lodging a complaint your erstwhile stand partner could also claim is true of you! 

You might want to check, subtly, about this bit of etiquette: It is customary to follow the section leader. You know this. Look to them for bow apportionment, phrasing, dynamics, and most importantly, cues. A section leader should do things like put their bow on the string before an entrance and make a small gesture with their head or body to help everyone agree on when to come in. Most ensembles expect the section to follow the principal no matter what, even if they’re incorrect. It is certainly the more deferential practice, so unless the seating is one where players rotate, follow your leader, wherever they may take you. 

Preparation

The aphorism goes something like this: Practice is for learning your part, the time between rehearsals is for learning how the music goes, and rehearsals are for learning everybody else’s part. If you receive the music early, you have an imperative to learn it beforehand. Here is the way I approach learning orchestral music: 

• Tape and number your part, if necessary 

• Visually scan the part for tricky passages and note where they are

• With the part in front of you, listen to a recording and conduct along

• Put on a practice mute and play along with the recording

• Get to work on the measures where you struggled

You might not nail every note in the first or second rehearsal, but the goal is that you know where you are, you know where the rough spots are, and most importantly, you know how to recover and keep going after a mistake. 

The Great “Fakeando”

One of the most damaging ideas amateurs get attached to is the notion that you have to be conspicuously flawless, that not only do you have to get everything right at every moment, but also that everyone is listening to you, waiting to pounce on a missed accidental or an inelegant legato. As stated above, there is the small chance you will run into the occasional jerk who really does gleefully remark on someone coming in early, but this is truly rare, as most people are in exactly the same boat, using every bit of focus to get as many notes on time and in tune as possible. I would wager it far more probable that you could show up to rehearsal in a scuba suit with the wrong instrument and nobody would even notice. 

Still, there are a few skills to learn in the inevitable event you do not have what
it takes to meet the moment with any hope of accuracy.

Try starting from a random timestamp within a recording and practice finding where you are. The priority at all times in any ensemble is to be with the group, and training like this at home will give you confidence. 

Speaking of recordings, know how the piece sounds! This is a step so many players skip, to the detriment of their contributions to the group. This is especially important if there are tricky rhythms and big moments. Having a real sense of a piece is insurance against blunders like playing in a pause or coming in at full volume when it’s supposed to be quiet. 

If the music is too quick, commit to playing the first note of every measure. That way, you’re still together with the rest of the ensemble and contributing the right notes! As you become more familiar with the piece, you might add other downbeats. 

Forward is the only direction. If you make a mistake, get used to moving on, quickly. The instinct to go back and fix will not serve you well when playing with other people. 

“Fakeando” is the humorous term that describes an attempt to play a bunch of notes in an approximate way. How many accurate versus approximated notes varies, but at minimum, you want to start and finish on the right note at the right time and mimic the shape (ascending? descending? jumping?) of the section. Frequently, in longer passages, there are notes that are either easy or important to include: downbeats, arrivals and departures, melodic motifs. Listen to a recording to determine if the notes you’re worried about are part of a gesture or effect—which, maddeningly, is the case for many devilishly difficult passages—or if they’re exposed, requiring more precision. 

Few things are better for a player’s musical development and overall confidence than playing with others. In a community orchestra, the lessons are continual. Changing section makeups means you have to be nimble with your sound. The repertoire requires you to understand and develop a variety of styles. You get used to tackling tricky rhythms. Performances provide incentive to concentrate your practice and measure improvement. Every rehearsal provides reassuring proof that the world doesn’t end when you make a mistake. But my favorite aspect of community orchestras is the way they give adult amateurs a chance to partake in music in a meaningful way. The toxic narratives surrounding the question of who gets to be considered a real musician can weigh heavily into the decision to join a group. You’re a musician if you are working on your craft. You’re a musician if it’s your first time playing with other people. Try to resist the urge to find reasons to diminish yourself and your efforts. You are a real musician. See you at rehearsal!