Latest / That's Not Spit, It's Condensation! / #207: The Goal of Orchestral Audition Preparation (No One Showed You This)

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#207: The Goal of Orchestral Audition Preparation (No One Showed You This) · That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome to Vince Minutes, it's condensation.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who takes orchestral auditions knows what the job requires.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Consistent practice, efficient organization, smart practice techniques, recording and listening back, score study, plenty of mock auditions, and some work on the mental game.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can pull all of it together, the hours and the weeks and the years of preparation finally pay off, and you just might be the one shaking the music director's hand at the end of the audition.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But most players who aren't getting the results they want are preparing for the wrong thing because no one has ever showed them what their preparation is supposed to produce.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when their number isn't called after another decent round, they leave once again with nothing to show for all their hard work, and they start to wonder if they're just not good enough.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to That's Not Spit.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's condensation.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Ryan Beach.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Normally I'm joined by my co-host Kathleen Costello, but she caught a bug that I had a couple of days ago.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though we just talked about how we were going to have co-hosts, it's just me today.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you aren't familiar with us, Kathleen and I have a coaching program where we help classical musicians improve their audition results to start passing more rounds.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We teach a method that I've used myself to get to the finals and uh auditions in Atlanta and Philadelphia.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we've already seen results in our clients being able to transform their relationship with their audition process to be able to step on stage more confident and to advance, make finals, and even win their own auditions.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in this episode, what I'm gonna talk about is what the actual end goal of audition preparation should be, what needs to change in your practice to be able to reach that.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about the part that most players skip entirely, which is becoming the person who trusts themselves when it matters most.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna do that today by looking through the lens, we're gonna talk about this discussion through the lens of some books that we have read that really opened our eyes um to these ideas that I'm gonna share in this episode and how we came across these books, what the books are about, and the changes that they've made for us in our coaching program uh to be able to help people improve these audition results and the things I was just talking about.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I have my outline written here for us to go back and forth.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: But um to get started in this episode, uh, there's a lot of ideas out there on what's important about audition preparation.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's this idea out there that if you are just special in some way or super musical, the idea that if you do something on stage that a committee member uh likes or can't stop thinking about or something like that, then you you you're gonna have a great chance to advance.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever heard this.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've definitely heard this before.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I if there's one thing that I like in a person's round, uh there's a good chance I'm gonna advance them.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some people unfortunately think that you need to be perfect.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: That to be, and I understand it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I say unfortunately because I don't think it matters, but I understand the inclination to want to be perfect because to being perfect means that there's just fewer objective things that the committee could point to that would be a reason that you were held back, right?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So having perfect technique, perfect intonations, just not having any gaps in your playing that a committee could point to and and say, Hey, they missed all these notes, so you know we're not going to advance this person.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some people think organization is the way to go.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: This actually used to be me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been following this podcast for a long time, um that my belief used to be that if you could just organize your practice in the right way, if you just practice the excerpts in the right way, you know, then you'd actually just feel super prepared on stage and you wouldn't have any reason to be nervous and you'll play your best.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this idea that the main problem underneath is that you know you're walking into the practice room without any organization.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then other people, they just swear by talking about the mental game, right?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That it's not just it's not even almost about how you play.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's tons of great players, but you know, the thing that it is is that they don't have a strong mental game, and maybe you need to visualize more or mentally practice more, or maybe you have your mantras that you're going to carry with you for the day of the audition.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: These it's this these ideas of sports psychology that have worked their way into uh our audition, our field of music performance and auditioning.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes sense.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sports is ahead of where we're at in many ways, and so we can look to how are they competing at a high level, and we can borrow from them.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: None of the things I'm talking about here are a bad thing.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I believe they're all important components of a successful audition preparation system.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to include all of these things, minus the perfection one.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: You do need to be consistent.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's no doubt.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be able to trust that you can play consistently at the job, but perfection is not one of the important parts of an audition preparation system.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to understand, and this is what we're going to be talking about, I want you to understand that you can do everything on this list and still miss what actually causes you to play your best under pressure.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are actual things we can point to, and we will talk about them in this episode that actually matter underneath everything.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you stay up here and trying to have the right organizational system, if you stay up here and you're just trying to make sure that you've studied the excerpts enough, you could miss the thing that's actually gonna lead you to that kind of high-level performance on command.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm excited to be able to talk about this with you today because we found some things that we believe actually fix this problem when we've seen it, when we've introduced it to our clients, we've seen a shift in the way that they're able to step on stage and produce the result that they would like.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that it's a problem that a lot of players are looking to solve.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some of my notes here, they're looking to solve it because they're struggling to reach that next level, right?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: They want to win an audition, they want to be able to take that next step.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this is you.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are, maybe you, you know, wanted to win an audition because you're like, it'd be so cool to be able to play in an orchestra or a military.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I, you know, when I talk about auditions, I'm usually I'm thinking orchestral and military band.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you want to play with a professional ensemble because you want to play great music.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then the idea of being able to do it for a living, I'm gonna be able to make money doing this, that kind of seeped in, and you're like, oh, that would also be very cool.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you want, it's almost as if it's like you want to take that next step just in your life in general.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so much just, oh, I want to play great music, but I would almost feel like I I know for myself, this is total transparency.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know for myself that I felt like I would never be able to move forward in a relationship with somebody and like until I won a job.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was I was so singularly minded that I felt like, you know, if I was dating somebody and we were getting you were getting more serious, like mentally, there was like a block.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, as serious as I can get here, like I was like, you know, this is not healthy, this is not necessarily good, but the point I'm making is maybe there are parts of your life that you're feeling like are on hold until you can reach that next level in your life.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, is that to do that, you got to win an audition.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go and you audition, you're stepping on stage and there's it's you're just not playing.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It it may not even be that it's going poorly, it may not even be that you're completely falling apart on stage.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that you know that you can do more and you're unsure.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You prepare in the practice room, everything's feeling good, and then when you step up on stage in that pressure moment, it doesn't feel like it's quite lining up with what you know you can do.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: To me, the only issue here is that nobody is going deep, like nobody's going as deep as they need to, in a way.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like everybody's talking around what you need to understand, but nobody's going as deep on what exactly what you need to understand, and I wasn't either.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Kathleen and I, we weren't either because we didn't understand it, but these books that we're talking about, like this is what I was saying, we it opened our eyes to help us understand what are the true things that matter that are going to make a difference in the way that you perform on stage.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, we're gonna cover each one of these books one at a time.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about what the book is, we're gonna talk about how it kind of changed things for us, and then at the end, I'm gonna come back around and talk to you about how we assimilated all this information into our system, how we are sharing it with our clients, and or in terms of like what are we sharing and um you know how it could make a difference for for you if you were able to incorporate it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the first book is called The Rise of Superman, and it's by a journalist named Stephen Cotler.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Kathleen got this book because she well we became introduced to um the name Stephen Cotler through we met, so wow, okay.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's a a friend of mine I went to school with, his name is Will Baker, he's bass trombone in the in Lyric Opera of Chicago.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um he you know he did some stuff with the the coaching program very, very briefly.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: We worked together a long time ago, and then I was sharing some things with him.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we were just having a conversation.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was sharing some things with him.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the point is I was sharing ideas that I had now, and he was kind of responding to them and saying, Man, you should talk to my brother.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: His brother's John Baker, who was a catcher for, I believe, the Padres, the Cubs, and the Florida Marlins.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, he moved on to work with the Pirates organization as a mental toughness coach, and he did some of that stuff with the Cubs too.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, You should talk to my brother.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I bet you guys hit it off really well.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked with John.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was like an amazing, it was like a moment in our coaching where uh we leveled up quite a bit after talking to him because the things he was talking about just rang true.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave us a couple of names of some books that were good.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them are on this list, and one of them is Stephen Cotler.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we pick up this book by Stephen Cotler and we learn what it's about, which is flow state.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Kathleen was very interested because she had been researching flow state for years and years and years.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: She got interested in flow state because when she was drawing, she would find herself completely immersed in it, and it was almost as like the whole world would fall away and she would lose track of time.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, What is this?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: What is this feeling?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why how can I have more of it, you know?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so Stephen Collar, The Rise of Superman, this book is about is written in 2014, and it's about action and adventure sports athletes.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, like rock climbers, snowboarders, skateboarders, um, you know, this action and adventure genre, surfers are in the book, and it's talking about how much progress has been made in terms of uh like the kinds of crazy things that they've done.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: The amount that the sport has been pushed forward, you know, in the 20 years he was writing about is just astronomical compared to the progress made in any other endeavor.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Why is this the case?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so he writes an entire book, essentially making the case that action and adventure sports pushes you to the extremes of your abilities, and effectively these athletes are doing this because they experience flow state, and they can only really experience flow state on the edge of their abilities, and so they get closer and closer to literal death-defying things, right?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and his argument is that it's about flow state, it's about that feeling where you feel like you're one with nature, where you feel like you're most alive, where it's it's challenging you maximally, and it's flow state that has pushed things forward.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's that it's to being in flow state is what gives them access to their maximum amount of skill, which is the ultimate test for them.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so for us, this like things were ringing like crazy, if that makes sense.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like Kathleen had been reading about flow state for years.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had understood it, but when we read this book together, it was like I was finally on the same page as her.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Holy crap! Like, this is incredible.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most important things that we really took away from this book is this idea that flow has triggers, and these triggers are clear goals, immediate feedback, and managing and balancing the skill challenge balance, meaning the the skill you have and the challenge that you were asking from your skills, there should be a balance there.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, very quickly, I want like so we were when we read this book, we had taken like a couple of days.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: We had gone to this little cabin in Tennessee, and we just kind of had some free time, and you know how this works, or maybe you've experienced it when you kind of get away from your life and you just have open-ended time.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's when like the creative juices can flow, you know.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were reading this book together and talking about it, and we went on a hike when our our time was finished in Tennessee, and the hike was pretty rocky.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a hard hike, but it was pretty rocky, and so you know, you had to really kind of pay attention to where you were going, and um I was stumbling all over the place because I was ranting basically about flows, not ranting, but I was like fired up, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was fired, I was like, oh, this is it makes so much sense.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were walking up, I noticed or I saw that there was somebody running down the trail.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said, you see, that person, it's like that person borderline has to be in flow state.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: That person can't be thinking about anything else other than where is their foot going next.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they don't, they could roll their ankle or fall and break something, like they could get injured.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so their focus has to be super dialed in on the task at hand, which is what you need for flow state.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you listen to flow state language, they'll say concentration must be fully invested in the task at hand.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: You must be in the present moment.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's why these action and adventure sports athletes dig it so much, is it forces them to zero in on what am I doing right now?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I'm not focused on what I'm doing right now and I make a mistake, I fall off of the cliff and die, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so when that happened, I thought to myself, what is that for music?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked Kathleen, what is that for music?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: What's the task at hand for music?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Kathleen said, Whatever then, you know, the next note you're playing or the phrase that you're playing.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you start to like piece together that, and I'm I and I'll I'll I'll ask you to sort of think about if you think about your best performances, or could you can you think of one performance that sticks out to you as memorable or what you would call great or one of your best performances?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then think to yourself, were you if you can really embody that moment and like kind of almost put yourself back there if possible?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can you remember, were you thinking about missing notes, or were you thinking about the audience, or were you thinking about trying to be good enough or not trying to make any mistakes or anything like that?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or were you totally absorbed in the music, not really worried about anything, just enjoying the moment, letting things happen.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You were probably playing, you know, near your best ability on your instrument.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like these are all descriptions of flow state.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the big epiphany I had is that flow state is the thing we're all looking for.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let me repeat that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Flow state is the thing we are all looking for in our practice.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of them, uh single one of us, because that is how we describe, like we did an Instagram thing where we put it out there and we said, Hey, how would you describe your best performances?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And people wrote, wasn't thinking too much, playing really, really well, not worried about mistakes, like time went by fast.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're all descriptions of flow state.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that nobody is saying what I want is flow state.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of my practice is to produce flow state.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of my practice is to meet the conditions of flow state, right?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so if that's you don't understand that's the end goal, you might say something like, Well, what I want is to feel confident on stage.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the problem is, is that confidence could be anything, maybe, but flow state has specific triggers and conditions.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you understand that flow state is what you're looking for, you can then orient your practice and the way you do things to meet these conditions to actually give yourself a chance to enter flow state intentionally.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can't control flow state.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to pretend that flow state is just something that kind of just happens when the conditions are right, but you can understand what those conditions are and meet them.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, the conditions are clear goals.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for the longest time, I thought clear goals was I want to have a great sound and I want to play in tune, and here's the phrasing I want.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a definition of clear goals.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of flow state, if we relate it to the present moment, it's actually more about your attention.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's more about is it clear to me how I will stay in the present moment of what I am doing?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not so much what is my goal, how would I know if I was successful?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's super important.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: But so much more especially in the moment of the audition, the pressure moment or whatever, is it clear to me how I will keep my attention locked in on what I'm doing?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then immediate feedback is did I do it?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're that's the thing you're calibrating, is trying to improve your attention, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third thing, skill challenge balance.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this makes organization insanely important.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: It makes structure insanely important because you can orient and structure and design your practice sessions to meet this, I need to stay on the right part of the skill challenge balance, so that I'm constantly being challenged just enough to make progress, but I'm not challenged so much that I'm failing all the time.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you're trying to manage that balance.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what that does is that builds up your confidence.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you get into the actual pressure moment of the audition and you're sitting on stage, instead of saying, I hope this goes well, or you start playing and you notice a uh a mistake and it or you make a mistake and it kind of derails everything, you're you're saying to yourself, I know what to do.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know right now my whole job is just to stay in the present moment.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this is how it was, it just completely changed things for us.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And now we are thinking to ourselves, we have our clients need to understand that flow state is the goal.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're one of our clients watching this, you'll remember this period in the summer where it became, I'm letting everybody know flow state is the point.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that when you're practicing, you understand what is the point.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: We understand what we're looking for.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: It gives our practice so much more purpose than just am I sounding good?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's book number one.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, just drinking some coffee.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Book number two also was a name that we got from uh John Baker, that uh that baseball player and mental toughness coach.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's called Peak Mind by Amishi Ja.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And all these books will be uh in the description of this episode, so you can uh check them out.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Amishi Ja is a neuroscientist at the University of Miami and she studies attention.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of work with thing, you know, soldiers and athletes under insanely high stress, and their work.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To understand attention and how it works, she has her own stories that are very compelling as to you know why attention um is important, and a couple of things that I remember from this book.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a figure that um John presented to us related to attention research that has just stuck with us, which is I think it was in maybe 2000 and it was like 2003 or 2013 or or something like that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I forget exactly when, but they studied people uh looking at screens, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: How long could they stay focused on the screen?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then let's say, let's say it was like two, let's just split the difference.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say it was 2009.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember exactly.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: In 2009, it was like they could focus for two minutes and 45 seconds, and then they retested maybe the same group of people, maybe a different group of people, not important.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever they whoever they tested, um, it was like 47 seconds, right?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna like the studies that were done.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's I mean, I'm not fully up on it, but I'm going to assume that basically the conclusion that they made was they could have they had evidence that suggested our attention spans had declined in the way that they were tested and all those kinds of types of things.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the point it the point that it is is like something happened between 2009 and 2023.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we all know what that thing is, which is social media, like we're in an attention economy where people are you know vying for attention, and then I think TikTok with the endless like bringing in the endless feed and feeding you things that you're not following, and every social media platform following that.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our attentions are just being eroded and destroyed.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the problem is she makes a direct cut like link between our ability to pay attention and the quality of our life.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a very compelling book because it's like you finish reading that book and you're you just sort of think to yourself, like, I need to learn how to pay attention.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a couple of very interesting things is she points out that there are actually three functions of our attention.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not we don't just have one way of attention, we have what she calls a flashlight, which is a very narrow, focused beam.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: That would be like if if I told you to like uh, you know, like just focus on feeling like if you breathe.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you're focusing on your breath, that would be a very narrow focus.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a floodlight, which you can imagine if it's outside, the floodlight turns on and it goes everywhere.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh that's more of like uh I'm gonna pay attention to lots of different things, and then there's the juggler, which basically goes back and forth.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what I have in my notes here is the flashlight is deciding where your attention goes, the juggler is noticing that it has drifted to bringing it back together.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, like basically, um it's hard to like summarize this book in some ways, but I'm just gonna skip ahead to the problem that it solves.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: The problem that it solves is it reveals that attention needs to be trained, that if your attention is shot, if you really struggle with the capacity to direct your attention where you want it to go, that it's going to in the in a specific instance of talking about auditions.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who knows it could affect all of your life, but for auditions specifically, it's going to be very difficult to succeed and to play at a high level if your attention is shot, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is that she says attention can be trained, and that's what a lot of the book is is looking through different ways that they were trying to see how attention could be improved, and that it can be trained.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, she provides a very specific four-week protocol to do it.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so we also learned this uh from a friend John, and and we've done these protocols, and they're incredibly interesting to do.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing that's important to understand about attention is that what the what your attention does is it notices things, like its job is to notice things.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're performing and you want your attention to focus on the sound you're trying to create or the music you're trying to create, and then you miss a note and your attention notices that that's like completely normal.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just what we are training in these when we're talking about attention training, the big thing we're training is bringing our attention back to what we want.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so much holding it, it's noticing that it's wandered and bringing it back.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem is, is if you don't know where you want your attention in the first place, you have no way to bring it back.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what so many players experience is that they start off okay in a in a round in a pressure situation.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: They start off okay, but the second they make a mistake, or the second they notice their nerves, or the second that they think about winning, it distracts them, and then their mind has ran away.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just because they don't un they don't know how what they're trying to bring it back to, and more importantly, they have not trained doing it in their practice, okay?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so like this is uh so if I if I said to you, if you think about the things that we do to try to play well at a at an audition, okay, so we try to like improve our fundamental skill.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we do that?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: We want our improve our fundamental skill so we miss fewer notes, so our intonation is better, so things are cleaner.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we care about that?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that it is not a I mean, of course it's for the outcome, so we can say, hey, we're good players, but why is it a problem for us when we don't have clean playing?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: When we notice our intonation, it's a distraction.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: It pulls us away from focusing on what we want to focus on.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we take beta blockers?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, to reduce the physical symptoms of nerves that could affect our actual playing, but when we're in the actual middle of doing the thing, noticing our nerves, noticing our hands are shaking, noticing our heart rate is a distraction for it pulls us away from what we want to be focused on.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why do people try to convince themselves they don't want to win an audition?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they are like, they're thinking, oh, if I think about winning the audition, that makes me feel like I like, you know, that's a distraction.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like I'm thinking about winning the audition instead of thinking about the music.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all about your attention.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can train your attention to be where you want and identify where you want it, it's so much easier to intentionally navigate around.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'll tell a very quick story about uh the breath meditations that I did.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the very first time I did a breath meditation, I thought to myself, well, this is stuff that I already really kind of value, you know.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had taken that Philly audition, I was driving my attention and I'm working on it and playing in flow state.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is stuff that I already can do.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the first the first time I did it, you know, you're supposed to basically focus on your breath, your inhale and your exhale for 15 minutes straight.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And my mind wandered a lot.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was starting to get really frustrated with myself.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm supposed I want to be good at this.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why like so every time my mind wandered, I viewed it as I was bad at it.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then by day three, I kind of was like, all right, I'm I'm understanding what's going here.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: The point is not so much to quote be good at it, being it's just like, hey, I noticed my attention wandered.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's so much more about non-judgmentally navigating it.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then by day five, I remember feeling this feeling of like, I'm actually if I'm not actually concerned if my attention wanders at all, because I'm confident that I can recognize when it's wandered and bring it back.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a different level of confidence when you can say that.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you can say, I can go into an audition and I can experience anything, any distracting thing, and I'm confident that when the moment comes and I'm on stage and I'm playing and I'm trying to play my best, I'm confident I can direct my attention where I want, and I'm confident I will be able to recognize when it's not where I want to bring it back.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different level of confidence.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what we've seen with our clients is when they start training their attention, when they start thinking about practice, training and attention, so they're building the exact headspace on in the practice room that they want on stage.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more carryover and confidence in the way that they play.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: The third book is called Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this there's a lot to this book, uh, but to summarize it, it's about your values.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a piece of the puzzle that came around most recently for us to understand that there are so many people who are currently good enough, good enough players to be successful in an audition to advance and to win, but they don't believe that they are.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so they won't be able to access it.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: They don't, they don't do the things that that people who would advance or win do because they don't believe it's possible for them.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't carry the attitudes of those people because they don't think it's possible for them.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: That now it could be lack of experience that says, I don't know, or it could be I've got a ton of experience of things not working out for me.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we let the past, we let so he talks about the critic, the trickster, and the monkey mind.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the critic is that voice in your head that says you're not good enough.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: We all have it.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's that that voice that's negative that says these things have happened, that means you're not going to be able to do it.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have the trickster.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is the voice that lies to you, that gets you to believe this story you're telling about yourself that you're not capable of doing it.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have the monkey mind, which is giving into the distractions, leading us to overthinking, right?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: We all have these aspects of our brain, and the way through it is not to like what I've learned with values is that it's not about saying, don't overthink, don't do this, don't do that.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually replacing it with things you do want.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of thinking, I don't want to overthink, what do you want to do?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: What's the opposite in some ways of overthinking?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you could say trust, or you could say simplicity.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then you would ask yourself, okay, what would it look like for me to audition with a value of simplicity?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe that's just me focusing on my breath and playing.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, you've got a whole new way to move forward that's that's that's intentionally chosen by you.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this book is about.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: This book is about when we focus on us and trying to, you know, an expansion of us.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Look at how good I can play, I can do this thing or whatever.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: We often have a lot of problems.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when we can have purpose outside of ourselves, when we can be serving a greater purpose, whether that's, you know, uh your community or you know, your there's like a you know, a culture that you're a studio culture that you're in.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: It could be religious, or it just could be the greater purpose that I'm serving is that these auditions are serving to uh drive like insane progress into my playing so that I can share music at my highest possible level with audiences.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just got it's just bigger than I gotta win.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Winning the audition is a motivator to do the type of work you need to do, to be the type of person you need to be.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, what we're seeing, what we're working with and our and our clients as a result of this book is really challenging what do you believe?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And who do you need to be to win the audition?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've this is something we we really, really uh focus on.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the goal is not to win the audition, the goal is to become the person who can win the audition, right?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And how can the difficult moments in the audition process or the audition itself serve to be the thing that challenges you to grow in the ways that are most important to you?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that the audition process is serving, growing you intentionally as a person.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've had situations with clients where they we had a client recently who made the finals of a big audition, and he saw some names at this audition who also would be in the finals, and he thought to himself, well, that person's probably gonna win.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've experienced this.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had a lot of conversations surrounding not, you know, maybe that person will win, you know, but like why should like why should they choose you?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you want to be?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you want to offer?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment when things are difficult and you're doubting yourself, who do you want to be?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not how do you want to play, but looking at how you play as downstream of who you want to be.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is such an important shift to make because we can intentionally be who we want to be regardless of the result.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so making the goal, like making the goal, being the person you want to be, and then figuring it out from there.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that it's all you know, it's gonna, you're gonna guaranteed win every single audition that you've ever taken.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: What I am saying is that auditions start to serve a larger purpose.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can start to feel satisfied in auditions, even if you don't get the result that you want.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's going to be the thing that actually sets you up to be in the best headspace to stick with this the for the long term, right?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know how many auditions it's gonna take.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some people win auditions on their first one or their second one.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people win on their tenth one, sometimes it's their 25th one.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: We just know that the person who gets to that end goal, no matter how long it takes, is the person who's got a headspace that keeps them in the game, keeps them learning, keeps them hungry, keeps them growing.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so this book has been very um, it's been very awesome to read because in some ways it's teaching us things, and in some ways it's just affirming the direction um that we've gone, which is again to challenge who people are.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I can talk a lot.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I just want to cover very quickly like these are the changes that have happened in our program.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is sort of some of the application of if you want to read this, I'm gonna read this as the changes.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear this as things that you would do in an audition.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one, understanding that flow state is the end goal means we know our attention has to be in the present moment to access our best playing.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now the goal is not so much how do I play good, the goal is how do I train my attention to stay in the present moment.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, knowing that we can train our attention and even how we can train our attention means we can orient our practice to reflect that the goal of practice isn't just to play a lot to try to get better, it's to train the headspace we want on stage.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: And to think of our practice as training our attention where we want it to be.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Simply put, we know we can train our attention.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so what does that look like in your practice?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing flow state happens when skill and challenge are balanced means we think about organizing our practice, not just in terms of what we should play or how many times we should play it or whatever, but we're actually thinking about the difficulty of what we're engaging with and trying to keep it at that balance so that we're getting maximal gain.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And number four, knowing that our beliefs and values play a crucial role in our overall success, we now deliberately outline values our clients believe will lead the to lead them to success.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: We identify situations in which it would be difficult to carry out that value, and we choose the action or behavior the client would choose that would be in alignment with that.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, what value do I want to live by?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: When would it be hard to be that person?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be patient.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: When would it be hard to be that person when I'm in traffic?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: What would it look like for me to be pay what would it look like for me to be in rush hour traffic and to be patient?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, take a couple of breaths and refocus my attention on something more productive.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then so just to cover this, like the like incorporating these ideas has created the biggest shift we've seen in our clients and the results they're getting so far.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: On the practice side, the shift, oh, shifting the goal away from proving worth and forcing results towards training attention.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: This has really helped our clients have just a lot more productive sessions and a lot less emotional practice sessions.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing it's done is it's allowed them to really connect.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: When I focus on this, I get this result.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: That connection is what builds confidence because you would say, well, when I step on stage, if I just focus on this, I'll get this result.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's built more trust and confidence in their practice.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh balancing that skill challenge balance means there's a lot less anger and frustration in your practice.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean things are always easy.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that on average, you're feeling it's you know, there's a lot more flow, a lot more productivity in their uh in their practice.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then like this is such a cool reframe that we've been able to have for the hard days where things aren't working the way they want, our clients have already decided who they want to be in that moment, right?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so the thing that's very cool about this is so you have a good practice day, right?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: That good practice day is like, all right, I'm building good habits and things feel flow.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna appreciate it.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have fun doing it, right?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: On bad practice days, you're thinking, okay, this is a bad practice day, but now it's a good values day.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now I like instead of like, you know, thinking about how I got to practice my instrument and like, okay, now it's a bad day, so it's like inhibiting my ability to get better.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna replace it and say, Today my values will be challenged.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Today I will be challenged to be the person I want to be in the midst of difficulty, and today will grow me as a person.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so everything serves to grow you in the way you need to be able to grow to become that person who can get the results that you want.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we've seen it with our clients in exactly that way.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: So in practice, you're not gonna be hoping things will go well in the audition.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna be hoping things will go well, or that you'll get the right list, or that others around you, you know, you're you're you don't have to hope others around you have a bad day.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you're gonna know exactly what to focus on because you trained it in practice.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna know that you're going to do it, right?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll, I know what to focus on because I've trained it, and I know that I'm going to focus on it because I've already determined I'm the type of person who will do that.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: These are the shifts that we have made that's transformed a lot of our uh coaching.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Before things were great, now things are really great, right?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to help people be successful in auditions before, but now we're really getting to the nitty-gritty and the meat of things that that totally affect how people will be able to succeed.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, and this one client, this uh hopefully we'll have a chance to interview him.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: But this one client I'm thinking about, he was not advancing in auditions before we worked together.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he wasn't even getting through the first round.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, our first audition together, he made he got through the whole first round and didn't advance, but that was a win.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Second audition he took, he got through the whole first round, it didn't advance, but he felt like he played the way he wanted to play.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Third audition is this major audition we were talking about where he made the finals.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in the finals, he was able to walk on stage and deal with his insecurity or deal with the fact that there's all these good players, and he was able to say, But I've got something to offer too, because he had decided he wanted to be that person.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: So his ability to play the way he played, he did not end up advancing to the super final round, but like he walked off stage being like, I was who I was.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is and he understands how to do it again.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, hopefully we'll be able to interview him at some point in time.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's that.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, like I said, it's a little bit long-winded.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I apologize for that, but your action step for this, the thing you want, if you want to know more about this and you want to like get these, is pick the top, whatever topic felt like you listened to and you're like, yeah, I need that the most, buy whichever book that is related to that.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: Be the person, like the people who get these outcomes are the people who invest in themselves, right?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: They invest in themselves through knowledge, they invest in themselves through outside help, they invest in themselves by doing the work, learning and growing.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of ways they invest in themselves.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if there's something I spoke about in this episode that you're like, yeah, I need to understand more about attention by peak mind.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need to understand more about flow state, you know, by the rise of Superman, et cetera.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're the person who's like, my playing is great.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I need to know more about like intentionally choosing my values, that's inner excellence.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: But buy the book, read it, think about it.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like get something from the book that's gonna change the way you do things moving forward.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is all for this episode.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you are interested in auditions, you're taking auditions.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's obviously what we've been talking about.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in understanding what it takes to win an audition, uh, I've got a free workbook down below in the description that you can check it out.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's just gonna walk you through step by step.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you need to know to be able to win an audition, and it's gonna help even walk you through taking your first couple of steps towards being able to um understand how to implement that kind of thing into your practice.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: So check that out if you're interested.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, next week we will be back talking about what I said we were gonna be talking about last week, which is more specifically now.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know we talked about attention here, but more specifically, we're gonna dive into um attention, which is the thing that will transfer your practice to the stage and make it so all of your hard work feels like it's worth it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I guess we will see you uh in that episode.