Latest / That's Not Spit, It's Condensation! / #204: Everything I Know About Winning Auditions

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#204: Everything I Know About Winning Auditions · That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_04: Hello, and welcome to Finished Condensation.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, and welcome to that nice bit.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's condensation.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Ryan Beach, and on this episode today, what I want to talk about is professional auditions and what it takes to win a professional audition, because there's a lot of people I know that are taking these auditions and they care very deeply and they put in all this effort, and it's an exhausting process.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: It can be frustrating.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: And after taking, I think I've taken 25 auditions at this point, you know, and I've had my fair share of failures and I've had my share of successes.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you've been listening to the podcast recently, you'll know about Atlanta and Philadelphia, which I consider to be successes.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then also after working with uh various clients over the past year, I think it's taking about 40 auditions total.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've just figured out a lot of things that work and a lot of things that are actually important, and a lot of things that aren't necessarily important that people might get caught up with.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, what I want to do is talk about auditions.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: I want to talk about, like I said, what I've learned over the successes, what I've learned over the failures too.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because often, and this is going to be kind of a big part of this episode, is that the failures are often what teach us more than the successes.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so if we can understand how to use this process to teach us things, then even if we don't win, we can still feel like this we can get something from this process.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't only have to take from us, we can actually get something from this process too.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I've got some notes in front of me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: So if you see me kind of looking away, it's just because I'm checking my notes.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um here's the thing: is a lot of people have a lot of ideas about what it takes to be prepared, or what it means to be prepared, or they have a lot of beliefs about what it would take to win.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so until you can sort of figure out this is what it takes to win, and I have confidence in this, and I understand how to navigate the process in a way where it's benefiting me.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: The results can feel random.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: It can feel like auditions are rigged.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: It can feel like a draining process that leads to burnout.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and it's just auditions can just suck.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's kind of the bottom line.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: And we want to understand how to use this process for us, like I said, and there are a lot of things that a lot of reasons that people think that we might not advance or we might not win.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Things like you got to be perfect, or you know, you make one mistake, and okay, I did this whole perfect round and then I made this mistake, but now I'm out.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason why is because maybe I missed that thing, or you know, like I've felt myself that sometimes it can feel like committees, they're looking for reasons to cut people.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: And whether or not this is true, like you can maybe you could even have validated that some of what I'm saying is true in specific scenarios.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: But the point of for me is not necessarily calling people out or trying, it's it's basically that when you don't understand what you're trying to control for, you're gonna come up with a whole bunch of reasons for why you didn't advance, why you weren't successful.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: And they may or may not have anything to do with the reasons that you actually weren't successful.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I want to play a clip I came across fairly recently from uh Jason Heath.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh his podcast or his YouTube channel is Double Bass Headquarters.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: He's at a podcast, like a long-running podcast, and he interviewed a bassist named Orion Miller, who's now in the San Francisco Symphony.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so he's now in the San Francisco Symphony, but he's talking about some early auditions.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: He took one for San Francisco and one for Dallas.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I just want to play this clip really quick because I feel like it kind of speaks to um some misconceptions that you can have early on about what an audition actually is and what like what they're actually quote evaluating.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: I guess San Francisco Symphony in 2022 was my first audition.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I looked at the list, I'm like, I know all this stuff.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: I can play through it, maybe.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then I show up and get cut the first round.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, what?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: I know how to play this stuff.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Are you kidding?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then I took down a little bit later.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And same thing.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I knew the list.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Played the excerpts and was having a good time, and then just got a cut again.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um I thought it was I thought it was a measure of like what kind of bass player you were, and it didn't occur to me that preparation or analysis of the orchestra music had anything to do with it.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was just a pure measure of bass playing, and I, you know, I was sorely mistaken.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think at some point in time everybody has thought exactly what Orion was describing.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes on in that episode to describe what he felt like actually made the difference for him and his auditions.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want to check that out, I highly encourage you to do it listening to someone who ended up winning a job in the orchestra that you know he was talking about not being prepared for.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very cool thing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I would check that out on Jason Heath's podcast.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: But what we're gonna talk about here is I just want to have a conversation with you about what auditions actually ask of you so that your preparation can meet the real challenge.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, what I what I'm saying is we need to understand exactly what an audition is evaluating or what the actual requirements are, because it's different than the requirements of actually playing in an orchestra full time.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: And once you understand what they are, you're gonna be able to design your preparation around this in such a way where it's just gonna be a lot more productive.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: You're actually gonna get the outcomes that you're looking for, or at least you'll be able to build towards those and have a better chance for them.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: And you're gonna have a more satisfying uh sort of journey through auditioning, less burnout, all that kind of stuff.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it just comes down to do you understand actually what you are trying to achieve and prepare for?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna get into this.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: I do want to mention that I've created a workbook that goes along with this episode.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be talking about different things that you can be trying to work with the concepts I'm talking in here, and the workbook houses all that, plus the major concepts talking about that.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want to pick that workbook up, you can do that in the description down below.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: So to get started, the most important thing you need to understand about an audition is that winning an audition is about gaining trust with the committee.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's just about gaining trust.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about playing good enough, although we all have felt that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about checking a series of boxes, it's not about even necessarily playing better than everybody else that's there.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's about gaining trust with a group of people that are seeking to hire somebody to play with them in a specific job, in a specific hall, right, with a specific music director.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: And you're basically showing up and playing and trying to gain trust that they think if we hired this person, it would be a good hire.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: And another sort of a reality about auditioning is that behind the screen, there's a detached nature.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: I've sat on a couple of audition committees, and you know, when I'm not on a committee and I'm listening to someone play, I'm super excited.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, hey, how can we get you to play the very best you can?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And oh, you made that mistake.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's totally okay.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Here's what's great about it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: But I was kind of shocked at how different the experience was behind the screen, where I couldn't necessarily connect with a person.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I was just listening to someone's playing.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, so this audition, one of the auditions I'm thinking of, it went 9 a.m.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: to 11 p.m.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: There were 50 plus candidates.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we're just sitting there listening to what people are presenting and responding and thinking, would we trust this person to play with us?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: And you're trying to gain trust from the prelims to the semis, from the semis to the finals, and then the finals to a trial week or an orchestra round or just being offered the job outright.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: But that's what's happening here.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: And if you think about it as I'm trying to gain trust with a group of people, it really shifts your understanding, right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about, like I said, it's not about being good enough for them.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's they're trying to hire someone that they're gonna sit next to for the next 30 years.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And would this be a good experience for us?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so if an audition is about gaining trust with a committee, we need to understand what would cause a committee to trust you.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so the number one thing, the top of the list, and the reason I believe this is because it best explains the audition outcomes that you see in terms of who is being successful at auditions, is they the committee needs to listen to you and they need to be able to think to themselves, I believe it will be easy to play with this person.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's thing number one.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm I call it the price of entry.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to be considered, they have to think you would be easy to play with.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: If they don't think you're easy to play with, like, think about it from your perspective.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: Think of somebody that you enjoy playing with, and then ask yourself, why do I like playing with this person?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: You're probably thinking it's easy.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: We just work well together.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: Now think of somebody that you don't connect with as well.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe their sound concept is different, or you know, the way they hear pitch is a little bit different, or their rhythm, they feel rhythm differently than you.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: So it it's hard for things to gel.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now imagine if you had a choice between these two people to work with for the next 30 years, who would you choose?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's the price of entry to be considered, is is the way that I think about it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's a couple of things that would make you easy to play with.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is the list of things that you hear from everybody: things like good time, good pitch, you know, good sound, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like great style.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm using the word good, you should have a more clear definition of what those words mean.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: But what with the reason these are important is because you're auditioning for an ensemble.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so when they when a when people listen to you play, if your intonation is not, you know, predictable, if your intonation doesn't feel like it's quite locked in, they're gonna be thinking to themselves, okay, even if this player sounds great, it would be hard.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: This it would be hard for them to fit in, or it would be hard for us, we would have to expend effort to figure them out.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: And same thing with rhythm.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: They might think, okay, that's cool, but the way that they're playing this, it's not quite dialed in, so it might think make things line up not as as sort of not as solid as we want it to, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: So playing with good time, playing with good pitch, these things aren't necessarily important just for some random reason.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: They're important because you're auditioning for an ensemble.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: And the same thing with your sound.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: When you're auditioning for an orchestra, there's uh there are sounds that orchestral musicians make.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so you need to be able to play with a sound and an audition that sounds like the sound an orchestra musician would make, whatever your instrument is.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so you can have your own wonderful, unique sound, and it can be incredible.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying that playing with an orchestra sound is the best, but if you're auditioning for an orchestra and your sound isn't necessarily what you would traditionally hear in an orchestra, I think it's going to be difficult for someone to listen to you and say, yes, that would fit in with what we do here.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then style.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is kind of the one that got me at the audition is you're showing them you've done your homework.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: You're showing them that you understand what these different styles are and how they go.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: And you're doing it in a very short amount of time.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of actually crazy to think about, you know, if if if we grant the premise that it's about trust, like you we get such a short amount of time to generate a lot of trust.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so, again, being able to when you have this list of excerpts that are in front of you at an audition, you know, Beethoven and then Mozart and then Mahler and then Tchaikovsky or whatever they are, you're trying to demonstrate that you recognize that these are distinct composers and they have their own sound and they have their own style and that you can do all these different things because an orchestra plays lots of different pieces from week to week, and you don't necessarily have tons and tons of time to like work up to something together, maybe like you did in school.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: So you have to show them you understand orchestral style, you have to show them you understand the context of all these things.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so again, it's like what I realized this is I was sitting on the committee for that audition I was talking about, and there were players I was listening to, and I could hear there was some good stuff there.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: But I would think to myself, especially related to articulation, I would just hear them play and think, okay, this is great playing, but the articulation, it wouldn't necessarily work with what we do.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I could feel myself saying, I would want to ask everybody, hey, like, can you articulate a little bit more?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Can you do this a little bit more?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then I kind of thought to myself, you know, it dawned on me, like, my like the job is not to coach, you know, like I'm not a coach in that moment.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's the it's the responsibility of the person auditioning to show that they've felt they're playing in a way that would work in an orchestra.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so for this step, and again, this is all in the workbook that you can that you can um refer to, but you should make a list of things that you think would be attractive to a committee.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've named a couple of them here.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're unsure, just think of people you enjoy playing with and ask yourself, why do I enjoy playing with them and reverse engineer that?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then do a self-audit, an honest self-audit.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Am I doing those things?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: And not am I doing them, like here's the thing is it's not about can you do you have the capability of doing it?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: Is it am I displaying that in that exact moment?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you have that capacity to do it, but in the audition itself, you're not showing it, how would they know that?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have to be able to not only be easy to play with and have those qualities, but you have to be able to demonstrate that to a committee at an audition.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that's obviously a challenging part.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: We'll get to that.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: But this is the first thing price of entry, you have to be seen as somebody that would be easy to play with.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: The next thing you would need is the committee needs to think to themselves.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I think you can get pretty far being easy to play with, but I think when you get to the final round and everybody is easy to play with, now I think the next aspect really starts to separate people more, which is having a voice.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: There needs to be something about your playing that separates you.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: There needs to be something that the committee would listen to and they would think, oh, that like this player does all these things really, really well, but there's this one thing that they do extra special, you know?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe their articulation is just a little bit clearer and more crisp than everybody else, and it's super attractive.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe they're playing with more color than everybody else, or maybe their sound is just so to die for.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: They have to think, we would be better if we hired this person.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: We would be artistically better.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: They would be adding something, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so you gotta have something about your playing.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: And this is, you know, backed up from my experience, but actually it's funny.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna play a clip from an episode I did with Chris Martin, principal trumpet in New York, um, where he talked about this too, saying the people who play perfect, it's not advancing is not about perfection, it's about having a voice.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: And just hearing it from someone like him, um, who's taken a lot of auditions, who's heard a lot of auditions, especially at the highest level.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: I want to play that clip just to kind of help um frame this point.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: The fact is that on every committee I've been on that's been successful, i.e., somebody got a got a job or got a position in a studio or whatever, they had a way of playing that was their own, that was true, that was truly their voice.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to have this voice, something that's gonna make it so people listen to us and there's something memorable, something unique, something special.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think it has to be, it could be I'm the best musician there.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think it has to be.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because if just if you if you want to do this exercise, just sort of thinking about it, like think of all of these great players that you admire, and then sort of do like a knee-jerk reaction to what do you think about when you think of their playing?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because I as I think about different principal trumpets in all sorts of orchestras, they obviously all have the capacity to play in an orchestra and demonstrate all these things.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: But if I think about like what's the thing I think about, it's different for all of them.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them I think about their sounds, some I think about their power, some I think about their beauty or dexterity or their ease or their articulation, or you know, like there's all these different things that I may think about.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so this is kind of what I mean.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And and really, one way I like to think about it is in terms of brand.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: What is your brand?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Who are you as a musician?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't know much about branding, I mean it's a buzzword out there.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: And there's like there's a uh a creator that I like to follow, his name is Caleb Ralston.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: He talks about branding as an intentional pairing of things and good branding as intentionally pairing things together done consistently over time.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like, what do you want people to think about when they think you're playing?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you for me, where I am right now, like my I want my brand to be people can so clearly hear the musical intent behind my playing.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: For the longest time, my brand would have been my sound.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: It just would have been um like I feel like I've got a great sound, but it evolved.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: And for a while, it was like I want to play with so much color that I sound like a completely different trumpet player, uh, depending on what it is.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, now it's like when people hear me, I want them to be able to so clearly understand all of the intent behind my playing, which then affects the way I would prepare.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: It affects like what is my value system in terms of like what I want people to hear as a musician.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: What do I care about most deeply?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: And am I hearing that in my recordings?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: And am I hearing that in my playing?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, one way to eat another way to understand this, if you take it outside of music, is if you think about car companies.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Car companies, they're all selling cars, but if you think about Toyota, that's dependable, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Honda is long lasting.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: You have uh Ford is built Ford Tough, right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: These like tough trucks, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: You have Jeep, that's like off-road, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: You have like Hyundai, it's like kind of half luxury.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you think about things like Maserati or you think of BMW, it's like great driving experiences.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like they all have these brands, but they're all selling the same exact thing.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like, how do they differentiate themselves?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: They all have kind of an identity.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: We need this too.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: And like I said, I think it can you it can get you far to have to be easy to play with and to have some sort of a uh some sort of a brand or some sort of a voice.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I think being able to really have that ironed out, that's the thing at the end where it comes down to what does the committee want and what's their preference.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like that's what makes it easier to choose is when someone has decided that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: So a couple more things.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it doesn't, it doesn't guarantee that you will get it, because again, we can't guarantee that because we don't know what this specific group of people on this specific committee is looking for, right?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: Every committee has a different set of values, different orchestra, different things that they care about.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: So we can't guarantee anything, but it does set us up to be somebody who can be memorable, who can stand out.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also important to really understand that your brand cannot sort of supersede the price of entry.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's like your brand can be how easy you would be to play with or how dependable you are, but your brand can't interfere with being perceived as being.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: You can't be so musical and so intense and so unique that they would think they would stop thinking this would be easy to play with.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think that sort of um that uh interrupts that first step.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want to engage with this, who are you as a brand?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like what do you want?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it could be what do people say about you right now?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: What are some compliments you've gotten recently?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: On your playing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then do you like those compliments?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Are those the things you want people saying about your playing?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Or would you want them to say something else?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever that thing is, you want to start then thinking, how would I have to practice to prioritize developing that?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then you would think, how would you know you're getting it?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you can define these things, you can really uh very easily make steps.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to say easily, but it the the path becomes clearer of how to take some steps in that direction.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: So those are the first two things.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: And gotta be easy to play with and gotta have a voice.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's one other kind of frame that I really like when thinking about you know, the relationship between getting the committee's trust and you playing.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it came from uh talking with a client who was at an audition and he was talking about seeing other people at this audition and then thinking to the to thinking to himself, oh, like I see that person, that person's probably gonna have uh like a great opportunity to win this job.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I can remember when I was in Atlanta.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: So when I went to Atlanta, if you've listened to that episode, you know the story.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: But for me, uh like making it past the prelim round was super exciting, but I didn't have I had had a lot of audition failures before that or non-advances.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then when I got to the semifinal round, uh, the first thing that happened, I walked in, I can visualize it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: I walked in there, I looked down this hallway right here, and I saw a trumpet player who had been on an incredible hot streak in auditions.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: And he, this trumpet player uh, you know, was subbing in in different orchestras.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I just thought, oh, I'm sure that person, you know, that's the person who could win.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: I saw another player that also had done really well at auditions.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I started telling myself, well, those people, those people have the best chance to win, you know, and we've all been there, we've all done this.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times people's advice will be just don't think about it.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: Don't worry about them.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think, I think we should engage with this.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think we should engage and think, why, like, why do we think those players should be chosen by the committee?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: And this is sort of like a way to interact with it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Why should they be?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: And you come up with all these reasons, and then you should turn it to yourself and you should ask, why should they choose me?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: What am I gonna show them that I think that they should choose me?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because sometimes we show up to an audition and we're just trying to play well.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: We're just trying not to mess up.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: We're not necessarily thinking, what am I showing them that would make them say, we gotta have this player.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: I just sorry, it's like almost like I'm just I feel so strongly that now when I go to an audition, I understand who I am, I understand what I'm about.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: That took some time for me to develop and to reconnect with uh from you know when I was younger.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: But this is such an interesting frame that I think takes us outside of like, how can I be good enough?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it puts us in what do I want to show them about me?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: And can I make that a priority when I'm actually doing it?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: One other uh way of thinking about it that's very close to this is auditioning is for employment, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so in other industries, you have interviews and then you get to a point where you might start negotiating.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: And in some ways, you could think about auditioning as the interview process as some version of negotiating.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you walk into an audition, it almost can almost always feel like the the people listening, they have the job, they have the salary, they have the health insurance, they have the opportunities, right?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: They have everything we want.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: But if you can try to see that they also want something, what they want is a candidate who is going to come in and show them why they should pick them.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because they also want a great candidate, a great colleague that's gonna inspire them and be a great addition to their ensemble.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: They're not looking to just get some random person.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: They want the the very best person who's gonna fit in.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you can think, yeah, maybe that could be all these other people, but why not me?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Why not?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Why, why, why couldn't I be the person that's chosen?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: What am I offering them?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: What do I have to offer them that they would want?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: It just puts you in the seat of sort of feel of recognizing that it's not, you're not trying to play good enough, you're not trying to make the fewest mistakes, you're not checking the boxes.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: You are demonstrating what you have to offer.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: And we're gonna, we're about to go into sort of the next section here that I think is really important to discuss.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we'll cover this even more in depth.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: But basically, you're trying to you're trying to put forward something that's not that's that is you, I guess.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And to do that, to do that, you have to trust yourself.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: So you need to be able to gain the committee's trust, which is are you easy to play with and do you have a voice thinking about things of like why should they choose me?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: But you have to be able to trust yourself because if you go on stage and you do not trust yourself, you will play like someone who does not trust themselves, and even under the very best circumstances, you have felt like you prepared like crazy.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: You feel like you've got something to offer, and then because you don't trust yourself, you won't show it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then they won't respond the way you want them to because you're not showing them the thing you know you can do.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: So you have to be able to trust yourself.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna talk about trust because this is actually if you have the capacity to trust yourself, auditions are a completely different experience.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is what I've seen with my clients more than anything.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: When we dial things in to I know exactly what I'm gonna do on stage and how I'm gonna navigate it, and I'm confident I can recreate my best playing, the experience changes from this very nerve-wracking experience to I'm not gonna say that nerves don't exist, but you understand how to navigate it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: You understand how to put your best foot forward.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: What I want to say before we talk about trust is I actually want to show you that there's a lot of players, you might be one of them, where the way that you're practicing is leading to the opposite of trust.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so what happens is a lot of people they practice and they're like, I want to get better.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so they're playing and they're playing and they're playing, and then they make a mistake.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: So they notice that mistake and then they're like, okay, I got to catalog that away.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Or they listen back to their recordings and they notice all these mistakes that they made and they want to fix them.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: And all of their practice is about noticing mistakes and trying to fix them.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: But here's the deal: when you practice that way, you're training yourself to evaluate yourself while you're playing.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: Which means it's shifting from I have something to say, I have something to offer, and I trust myself to do it, to I'm going to evaluate whether or not I am good enough the entire time I'm playing.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: And if that's how you train yourself in the practice room, what do you think is going to happen when you step on stage and you feel the pressure?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: And there are even more things that could distract you, even more things that could throw you off your game.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think you are going to pull it together and all of a sudden get into the music and just let it let it go and trust yourself?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you think you're going to do the thing you've trained yourself to do?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a balance here because we want to make sure we're acknowledging our weaknesses.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: We don't want to give the committee any reason, any more reason to cut us than they probably already have, right?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: But, and I remember, I remember like I study with Barbara Butler at Northwestern University.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: She's at Rice University now, and she would talk a lot.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: She would say that it's like stuck in my mind.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: She would say, the second you try to get the committee's approval, like you'll never have it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can't go to an audition hoping that you can get their approval, hoping that it's good enough.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: And we can't necessarily think about trying to put forth some perfect thing as the reason why that they would that would be the thing that they uh would find attractive or would build trust.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Those players you're auditioning for, they're not perfect.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: They understand that mistakes happen.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's how you handle them.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: How seriously do you take them?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: Do you care?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Do you care about them?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: And the the committee can tell when someone's on stage playing and evaluating, they don't trust themselves.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: The people that the committees want are people who have enough confidence to just play like themselves.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: And again, I understand that there's a lot involved with being able to do that, but at its core, that's what's going on.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: People who trust themselves enough to just let their bodies play almost.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: The stakes you're gonna feel are real.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's part of the deal about an audition.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: The stakes are there.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: You want to win the audition.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: You want the income or you want the ability to feel like your life is going to start.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: I remember that's what it was like for me.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: I won my job in Indianapolis, and it was like, oh, I my life can finally start.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: I started talking about buying houses shortly after that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that I it was like a it was a it wasn't, it wasn't just winning the audition.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, okay, now I can move to the next phase of my life.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I get it.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: The stakes are real.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: But focusing on trying to get that outcome will, it'll divide your, you won't have access to your skills.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you know this because the best performances you've ever had were ones where you trusted yourself, where you weren't trying to impress anybody.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: You were just kind of in the music, and you were just playing, and you played well and you enjoyed it.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's what we want is we want you to trust yourself to the degree that you can just be on stage and play and not worry.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you'll think about the committee, but you're not worried about the committee.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And what we're gonna talk about is how you can do that on purpose, how you can do that on command, on demand, whenever you want to.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we're gonna talk about here next.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so to be able to trust yourself, you need two things.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, you need to know how you are going to keep your attention on the task at hand in the present moment.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: And two, you have evidence that when you do that, it produces the result that you believe will gain trust with the committee.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna say that again.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: Two, trust yourself, you need to understand how you will concentrate or keep your attention or be in the present moment and keep yourself on the task at hand, and that you have evidence that when you do that, it produces the result that you believe will gain trust with the committee.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's all you need.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, more reps of that might help you feel even more solid about it, but that's the core of how you can trust yourself.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: If you have those two things.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: So when I'm talking about attention, I'm talking about what you're concentrated on.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: And again, think about great performances you've had and think about where your attention was.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime I ask this question to people, it's almost always like I was totally in the music, or maybe I wasn't even thinking about anything at all.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: And the performances where people were feeling like they weren't great.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was on uh I had a bad, like I've talked to Basudis, I had a bad read, trumpet players, my chops were kind of out.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, it could be my sound was weird in the hall.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: It, you know, it could be I was focused on the I couldn't stop thinking about wanting to win and the pressure that came with that.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: I was wondering what the committee thought.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like these are all distractions for your attention.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: The reason we take beta blockers is partially it is to reduce the physical symptoms of nerves on our playing, but actually, it's more to remove noticing and focusing and bringing our attention to the physical symptoms of our nervousness that so it won't distract us from being in the moment.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: All of these things, it comes back to keeping your attention in the present moment and all of your best performances.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: I I can almost guarantee all of your best performances were like that.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, sometimes people call it in the zone, in the music, right?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: There's all sorts of different names for it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: The actual name for this is flow state, by the way.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's the actual name for this.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's a documented thing.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: There are conditions you need to meet it.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the condition is to be able to stay in the present moment.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm getting ahead of myself and my notes.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: So practice needs to acknowledge that you're training attention in your practice.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: You need to train your attention because that's the to stay in the present moment in your practice, because that's the thing that you need to be able to do on stage.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about your skill.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: When you're under pressure, your skill does not degrade, your attention degrades.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's what's going on.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you're driving your attention to the present moment, then you then you listen to your recordings to genuinely craft what you want the committee to hear.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: And eventually, as you learn to drive your attention to the present moment in your practice sessions, and you observe that you're creating a result that you think will gain trust with the committee, this evidence builds up.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: And you go, I know what to do to gain trust with the committee.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: Or at least I know what I need to do to do something that I think will gain trust with the committee.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because again, we we don't know exactly what every committee would be looking for.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: And like I said, what we're looking for is to meet the conditions for flow state.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: All right, so flow state, your best performances was in flow state.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: It was easier, you played great, it was enjoyable.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you don't even like remember it.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: Time dilates, it goes by really fast, or it goes by really slow.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: The cares of the world have fallen away, right?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: You're not worried about all of the different things you're stressed about.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: You're so absorbed in the moment that it's almost like you and the moment are like the same thing.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're just there.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: You and this moment are one kind of.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: And this self-consciousness, this thing where we think about ourselves, it gets dialed way, way, way back.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so this helps with nerves.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: This helps with overthinking and all those types of things.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: But here's the deal we can only meet the conditions of flow.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: We can't control it.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we're not necessarily saying I want to control for flow state in my practice sessions.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: We want to design our practice sessions to regularly meet the conditions for flow state so we give ourselves the best chance to audition in flow state in the pressure moment.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: And attention is the byproduct here.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so the easiest way to get started with this is decide ahead of time where do I want my attention while I play?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And do I have the capacity to hold my attention where I want it while I play?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: And if my attention wanders, do I have the capacity to bring it back to the present moment?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: If this is a struggle for you, which it likely is, because our whole entire world is designed to annihilate our attention through social media.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's I mean, in many ways, it's literally TikTok and the endless feed, right?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: You can just keep scrolling.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: It just destroys our capacity to pay attention.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to train it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: If we want to play music at a high level, we have to train our attention.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like if you want to do anything at a high level, you have to train your attention.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: Another way to think about this is if you've ever done like a breath meditation where you've closed your eyes and you've just thought, you know what, I want to focus on the air coming in and out of my nose, or I want to focus on sort of how my body reacts when I breathe in and breathe out.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna set a timer for a certain amount of time, and I'm just gonna try to keep my attention there.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: And when it wanders, I'm gonna bring it back.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's very, it's the same exact thing that I'm advocating for in your practice.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: You're deciding ahead of time where do I want my attention, and your practice becomes I am practicing doing that, and the skill will come to me.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: When you have that, you can trust yourself.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know when I walk on stage, I can do it.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: I know what to do.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: The what to do is not try really hard to sound good.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: The what to do is drive my attention to the places that give me the results that I want.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so you know that through a system of preparation that does this, you'll have that knowledge, you'll have that evidence.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: We're not building confidence based on well wishes, we're building confidence based on evidence in your practice sessions that you can do it.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: But here's the thing.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Can I trust myself and will I trust myself are two different things.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: Can I trust myself as an evidence-based thing?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: Will I trust myself as a values-based thing?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: Am I the type of person in the stressful moment to trust myself?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: Or am I the type of person who in the stressful moment will let the self-doubt, will let the anxiety, will let my fear get the best of me and derail me?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: What type of person are you?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: For many people, this is as hard as the preparation.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: For a lot of people, they're not even dealing with this side of it.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: They don't even know that this is a side of things that they actually need to deal with.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Are you the type of person to trust yourself in the stressful moment?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: When I say the stressful moment, I mean literally sitting on stage.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: You notice, your brain notices, okay, I know that committees out there.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: And then you think about how cool it would be to win the audition.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then you pull the the, you know, you pull your trumpet or your instrument, you lift your instrument to play and you notice you're shaking a little bit.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: Are you the type of person to let those things be what you dwell on and to guide this experience?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: Or are you the type of person to say, My job right now is to drive my attention to the task at hand.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: What am I doing right now?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: And to keep bringing it back.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: Are you that type of person?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: So, what happens for a lot of people?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: You sound great on your recordings, you'd be so excited if you could do that for the committee, and then you get there.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: And again, you think about how badly you want to advance.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: You hope that the committee will like it, or you hope that you're good enough.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_03: Or you hear somebody through the wall who sounds great.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: And all of a sudden you start to question if you're gonna be good enough.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: Or your body doesn't respond the way you want it to.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or one thing that has gotten me, and I know that it's gotten other people, is you get there, and then the hall is not responding.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: Your sound is not what you expected it to be.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: The feedback is different from your practice room.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I practice in here, in this very dead room.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so then when I go out into a hall, like I don't, you know, I don't have access to the Alabama Symphony Hall anymore.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so like it was a little bit of a shock.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe you blank on something you've played a million times.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: Are you the type of person where those things will hold you back?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: Or are you the type of person who knows how to navigate it, who's decided ahead of time how you will navigate it.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: This is such an important part of winning an audition that I don't hear a lot of people talking about.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: There are people out there talking about it, but it's I don't think it's as understood as it needs to be that the move, like the move you're trying, you're trying to get from.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: I hope I play well to the experience that I'm going to have at this audition, is at the other end of intentional choices I can make for myself about who I want to be.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: And those choices are guided by values.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: So examples of values, just so we're all on the same page, discipline, focus, commitment, honesty, vulnerability, trust, presence, creativity, curiosity.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you're thinking to yourself, what values do I want?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: So that's something you can do for yourself.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: You could just stop and think to yourself.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we'll get to that in a second.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I'm getting a little bit, I'm getting I'm excited.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: So let's say creativity is a value that you want to be guiding you.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: So what this could look like in the practice room is you come across a problem.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: And if you want creativity to be a value that helps guide you, you would think, okay, I hit a problem.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: What would somebody acting from creativity do?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it might be, well, let's find some unconventional solutions to this problem.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: Let's try some out-of-the-box stuff.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: Let's not stick with the same things I've always done.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: Let's be creative and view this as an opportunity to just do some fun stuff that might fix it.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Let's do some improv.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Let's play every note really short.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like somebody who values creativity would go more to that side.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now, somebody who is driven by anxiety and fear might hammer that thing over and over and over and over and over again and maybe feel like it was better.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: Neither I'm honestly, I can tell you which one I think would produce a better result, but it's up to you.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: What values do you want guiding you?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: In a performance, creativity might be something like I want to show myself as an artist, as a creative artist.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: I want them to listen to me and to think, man, this person is just so creative with the way they play with color and the way they phrase.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: I really hear it.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe audition day creativity is not as is doesn't make as much sense.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so maybe for the audition day, it's more about trust or commitment.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be the type of person who sticks to my plan and makes the intentional, conscious choice to do so.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: Now, when you make these values, you really need to wrestle with the idea is of is this value conditional or unconditional?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I mean by that is if you were somebody who wants to be a patient person, just in life, or maybe in the practice room, if things always came easy to you, would you know that you were a patient person?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because if everything came easy to you, you wouldn't have to really exercise patience.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: So to know that you are a patient person, that patience would have to be tested.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so what happens for a lot of people is they walk into a situation with the very best of intentions.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna commit, I'm gonna trust myself, I'm gonna be musical.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then when they feel that stressful moment, they feel that fight or flight, they start thinking about the committee, they uh start operating from a different value of trying to prove themselves, of trying to not mess up.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: The fear, the anxiety of not being good enough takes over.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: In that instance, their desire to be patient was conditional on it being easy to be patient.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so on the flip side, if it's unconditional, it means that I guess in this case, an unconditional value of patient.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think I mixed this up.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, but an unconditional value of patience would be when I get stuck, when things aren't happening at the rate that I want them to, when I start to feel frustrated, that's when patience needs to kick in.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: Patience isn't something that I do only when it's easy.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: Patience is just something that I am.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: I just am patient.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the only way you can start to develop into somebody who's patient is if you start making the hard choice to show yourself you can make that choice.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: So, again, in an audition, if you're somebody who wants to trust yourself, but when it's like when it's hard to trust yourself, when you feel that fear or that anxiety or that desire to prove or to feel like you're good enough, that's when you double down and remind yourself, nope, that's not what I want leading the show here, driving the bus, as I like to say.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: Trust is what's gonna drive the bus.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: What does that look like?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: It looks like no matter what I'm feeling, my job is to trust my preparation, to drive my attention to the present moment, to make music, and to let the committee decide what they think instead of worrying if I'm gonna be good enough.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: So a couple of things you can do here to interact with this.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: The first is to pick three to five values for the practice room and for audition day.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: They can overlap, but they don't have to.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: You want to pick these values and you want to describe what acting on them would actually look like.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I've given you some examples of what that looks like, so you can do it for yourself.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: And in the workbook, there will be, you know, more values listed that you can choose from.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then it's also important for each one of these to identify when it would be hard to act this way.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: What could I be a feeling or what could I be experiencing that would make it hard to act this way?
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: So you can already start to identify in this difficult situation, I still need to choose the thing that would be in alignment with my values.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then specifically for auditions, uh, you could name three or four things that have knocked you off your game.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're the person who hears people through the wall, or if you're the person who's had experiences with like dry mouth, or if you're a person who's experienced uh, you know, the pressure of wanting to win or thinking about the committee, all these different things.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: Write these things out and then decide in advance how would I handle that?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: Decide in advance how would I handle that.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: So that when you walk into that situation, these things won't throw you off your game.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: These things that have thrown you off your game now serve as challenges for you to act in an intentionally in alignment with your values.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: For me, auditions are just this uh just knocked my mic over.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: For me, auditions are this incredible opportunity.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've been through the ringer, I've been through the gamut.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: I remember the very first audition I took, I didn't advance, but that's normal.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then the second audition I took, it was I think third trumpet in San Francisco.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: I advanced to the semis.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh, this is awesome.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: The third audition I took was for principal trumpet in the National Symphony, and I did not advance.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I just thought, oh, well, that one I should just make the finals, right?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna keep going.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember being devastated.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then it just started this like very difficult process with auditions where I put so much of myself into it, and if I didn't win or if I didn't advance, it was crushing.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm there have been times in my life where I've just been like, I don't know if I can do auditions anymore.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's just too much.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't see it that way anymore.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't take auditions all the time.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I could see myself if I was taking, you know, seven or eight auditions a year, I could see myself getting burnt out because of just playing the excerpts that long.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: But for me, I see auditions as this incredible opportunity where, like, there's no really no other thing that exists for a lot of people to push themselves as hard as they do to improve.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I've actually got I've got this awesome clip from my 2019 podcast with Barbara Butler, where she talks about this exact thing, and it's stuck with me for so long.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I just want to play this clip and then we can talk about it.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: As much as possible, you are making your own luck and you are setting yourself up for success.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: The huge, incredible best preparation in your life for everything you want is it not only ensures that you're likely to succeed, but if you don't succeed, then you have the satisfaction of having done that preparation, lifted yourself to a new higher level you never were before, and you'll never go back to that one.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: The people that don't take professional auditions anymore, I'm including myself, I'm it's a little sad because every if you when you take them seriously and you do them the way you're supposed to, you are permanently better by every one you take.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't slide back to that level 16.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm on level 17.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: I love this clip because she's expressing this idea that, like, for her to say, for people not taking audition anymore who have lost that vehicle, like her, it like she's like sort of mourning this something that was amazing for her about doing it.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I can say, in my life, in my auditioning journey, the kinds of leaps I've taken in my playing have just been incredible.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: I I remember I was auditioning for St.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: Louis, Principal of St.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: Louis in 2022, and I was playing for my colleagues in Alabama at the time.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then I auditioned for uh Principal of Cincinnati in 2023.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know, it's like three or four months later.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that same colleague was like, You should like, please don't ever stop taking auditions.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: She's like, the amount of improvement there was from this, the previous audition to this one is is like pretty remarkable, you know?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I don't know.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: I I feel like when we can stop talking about auditions as this test of are we good enough?
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: And we can start talking about values, it stops becoming a test and it becomes a chance for you to prove that you're the person that you think you are, you want to be, when it's hard, even.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, nothing else just makes, I mean, yeah, you might work hard for a recital.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe a competition can drive it, right?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like a competition, like a big competition, that actually can start people's careers.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that could cause them, but it's the competition aspect of it that often pushes you that hard because you're competing with other people, and there's money and uh job and repertoire and colleagues and status from being seen as somebody who's in one of these things.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, make no mistake, there's like part that part of it can be life-changing too.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: The opportunities that come from being in various orchestras.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, sorry, I it's it's like funny.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just like reading through my notes, and it says here what it actually costs.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, like we're doing things like locking ourselves in a practice room.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: We have all this mental effort for six to eight weeks.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: We're sacrificing other things that we would rather do.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: We've got to study all this stuff and listen to recordings, we've got to pay for flights, we got to pay for hotels, we gotta go out on stage and in vulnerability play for a group of people that are evaluating us.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's just so vulnerable.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like, well, why do it?
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I like I was saying, it's like it's such an opportunity for growth.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm sure that you would agree with me that we all we all learn more from the times that we failed than from the times that we succeeded.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so to put yourself out there, whether you succeed or whether you fail, the um the amount of growth that can come, and and one of the questions that I like to really like I like to wrestle with with clients, and I'll I'll sort of present it for you, is if auditions are this amazing opportunity to improve, is there a world in which not winning, quote, failing, although I don't think about it as failing, but not winning and learning things about what can make you better for next time and having the opportunity to go after it could be better than winning.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: If there's a certain player, type of player you want to be five years from now, is it possible or five auditions from now, is it possible that it would be better to win audition number five than audition number one?
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_03: To me, I think it's a really interesting question.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because from a growth standpoint, it makes total sense, right?
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_03: From a growth standpoint, it makes total sense that we would be like, yeah, take as many auditions as you possibly can, but like we want to start our lives.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_03: And like the sting of not winning sucks.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: We don't like to feel it.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the sort of um realizations I had after my recent audition in Philadelphia is even though I was like, I just was unsure about exactly what I wanted out of that audition because of course it's like a dream job.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I've got a family here and I've got kids in high school, and my wife has a job.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_03: I like my life here in Alabama.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's kind of like, well, if I won that job, it'd be amazing, but it would also blow everything up.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just saying, like, there's there were I was conflicted, and even in that space, I still felt the sting of not getting as far as I could have in the process.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: Would it have been amazing to like play a trial week or play with Philly?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like, wow my gosh, yeah, that would have been incredible.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a certain sting, but that sting is what motivates us.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if you handle it correctly, feel the sting.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like you should feel the sting, you should feel your feelings.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if anybody ever tells you you should just like get up and whatever, like, no, feel the sting, feel the full weight of it.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_03: And when you're ready, look at the next audition.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: And if you can say to yourself, if you can say to yourself, like, this sting sucks.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to feel this anymore.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know what the reason I won't advance in the next audition will be, but I know it's not gonna be why I didn't advance in this audition or the previous auditions.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: If you can approach auditions like that, where every single audition teaches you something new about what could be holding you back, there's no way you can't be successful, literally.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like you, if you do it long enough, you will learn all the things you need to learn if you understand how to use the process that way, and you will be successful.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: But think of who you will become in that process.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: And think about how if you won an audition way before, would you still become that person that all that hardship and all that failure would have crafted you into being?
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you don't care about that, but for me, it's like an incredible thing to think about that auditions can serve that purpose.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it's how we can take some of the it's like how we can wield auditions for ourselves instead of it just being about am I good enough for these other people.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: What I want to do now is I want to walk you through what this has looked like for me in the last five auditions that I've taken.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because I want to show you that each and every audition taught me something that brought me further along the road to the point where now I can make this podcast episode and we can talk about these things and I can feel confident in what I'm talking about.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, as we talked about earlier, the early auditions, I was I didn't advance, I advanced, and then I didn't advance, and I was devastated.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: And at that time, I was just preparing the best I knew how.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: I and if I remember correctly, I was just running the excerpts a lot.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was just running them a lot, but I also had Barbara Butler in my corner every single week, helping me refine the excerpts.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, Indianapolis was my first win.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: It was my ninth audition.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I gotta say that I did trust myself in that audition, but the trust was kind of borrowed, you know, the trust wasn't in me, the trust was in the teaching that Barbara gave.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I was like borrowed from her.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: When, you know, she's had so much success that when Barbara looks at you and and says, You're ready, you are like, all right, like there, I'm I why wouldn't I win this audition?
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, there's a certain kind of confidence and trust you borrow from her because she knows what she's talking about.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so I got that.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: But when I left Barbara, I lost it, right?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_03: Because I was no longer with her.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's where I started having the seven years of no, or seven auditions over 11 years not advancing because I wasn't necessarily working the same way that I was with Barbara, even though I wasn't thinking about it that same way.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: And just again, it went back to like I'm running excerpts, feel like I'm playing better than ever, but I'm not getting the result that I want.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the the big shift that happened for me was in 2019 for the audition for Chicago Principal.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: This this was the second time I auditioned in 2017 and 2019.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_03: In this audition, I wrote a program for the first time.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I've talked about this before, but quickly, the program was week one, every excerpt at 50%, week two, everyone at 55%, week three, 60, week three, uh, four, sixty-five, week five, seventy, week six, seventy-five.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_03: I then went to Houston and I interviewed Barbara in 2019 for that interview, for that podcast interview that I talked about.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then I had four weeks of running mock around.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a 10-week process.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that one set the foundation.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I played well, but there was one excerpt, or there's probably more than one excerpt, but in the actual round, I played really well, and then I had to play Schumann 2.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I just didn't have a clear enough picture of how to portray Schumann 2 with the kind of confidence that would gain trust with the committee.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_03: I played soft, I played timid, and that was the end of the round for me.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_03: That was the end of the road.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_03: Three years later, I auditioned for St.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_03: Louis Principal.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: I made the process significantly more dialed in.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_03: I did some deep study.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_03: I actually did the study that I should have been doing all along.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_03: And this is where my borrowed authority ended.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_03: I actually could make my own decisions about what I wanted to say at the audition.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: I started to understand who I am as a musician by listening to these great players and saying, why do I like these great players?
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what I want to embody in their playing if I could.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of turned this corner as a player in terms of that deep study of like, you know, hours and a day for weeks, just listening to recordings uh and and going into it and learning about things.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I went to the audition and I felt so prepared.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_03: This audition actually was the one that made me think I've I'm on to something.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_03: I've got something figured out.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: But, and I even like kind of read some Don Green stuff.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_03: May you rest in peace.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I read some Don Green stuff and it was really interesting, but maybe I didn't understand it as well as I needed to understand it because when I ended up going and sitting down on stage, I was like, okay, I was good to go.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't too nervous, but I went and I sat down on stage.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_03: It was like my heart rate jumped 20 beats per minute.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so I struggled to play the way that I wanted to.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_03: I was still focused, I was still in it, but I just struggled.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_03: It just affected me.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_03: I did the best I could, but ultimately uh was did not get enough votes or did not gain enough trust to be advanced to the final round.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that was that one.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_03: But that one taught me something.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so we moved on to Cincinnati principal in 2023.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I made the process even more efficient.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: And this one, I tried beta blockers for the first time.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_03: I thought, okay, like I was so prepared in St.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_03: Louis that if I wasn't gonna get nervous, I wouldn't have gotten nervous.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's almost this subconscious thing.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna experiment.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I wasn't like sold.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_03: I was just like I've never done I've never tried them before.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so I took beta blockers for Cincinnati, and I I I remember I was on stage.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_03: I felt good.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: There were no nerves.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't feel the effects, but I remember being on stage and I played the first excerpt, it was like.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_03: Really good.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the best pictures at an exhibition I had played up until that point.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then I got some dry mouth.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like the quality of the round just went down and down and down and down as the round.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was like kind of a like a ship that was slowly like, you know, we landed safely, but it like wasn't, it was like an emergency.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't great.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_03: After this audition, I was kind of convinced I was gonna stop.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because, you know, I had learned a lot of stuff.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_03: I finally had, you know, experimented with beta blockers.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_03: I even had a conversation with a friend who revealed to me that I was trying to take, I was taking, you know, dumping liquid IV into my water.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_03: And somebody said, Yeah, like if you're not super active, sometimes that stuff can dehydrate you too, because of the sugars and stuff in there or whatever.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh, maybe it's not the beta blockers because I had heard beta blockers can cause dry mouth.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then so I wasn't gonna do it.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_03: That was like January of 2023, and then you know, September, August, September of 2024.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's when I applied for Atlanta because I had more things I wanted to learn.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that was close.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh I did the beta blockers again, but I took a beta blocker at a performance two days before I went to my first the prelim round, where I spot where I would normally not get nervous and I did not experience dry mouth.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I was like, okay, it's not the beta blocker.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then I I remember on this one, I was like, I need to I need to connect with that kid version of me who just like believed he sounded great, and was just like people are gonna like me because I sound great.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, I had more confidence than I had any any you know reason to or any right to have when I was younger.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: But basically, I was trying to get back in touch with that version of myself that had trust.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: That version of myself that just like played and didn't care.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, if you've listened to my podcast, that went well for me.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_03: I I got to a try I got offered a trial with the orchestra.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then Philadelphia was right after that, and Philly was intentionally about trying to find flow.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_03: So every single audition taught me something.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm I and to the point where it's like I feel so much like I know exactly what to do in an audition.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_03: I know how I would prepare, I feel like I could tackle any list, I feel like I could go and compete with anybody.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying I would win.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many great players out there, but I do feel like I could compete.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I did not feel that way seven years ago or whatever.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so the point I'm making is if you can use the process like this, I mean, I'm just a better musician all around because of that.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not just we're limited to auditions.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_03: I understand how better to recreate my best playing at all times.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: I had just have more confidence in general.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_03: And if you understand how to use the audition process for this, gosh, it's like the sky is the limit, in my opinion.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_03: Here's some things you can do.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, think back to your last audition.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_03: Think to what actually held you back.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then think to yourself, what's a concrete thing I could do in my next preparation to fix that?
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_03: So that that won't be the thing that holds me back in the next audition.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, another thought worth thinking is like if I told you over the next seven years or the next five or six auditions, or whatever, that after that period of time you would have a system that you totally trusted if you just used it to learn more each time.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it's after five auditions you would have that.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_03: Would that be worth it to you?
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, would you wait five auditions to have that result?
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_03: If not, what's your number?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_03: Is it the next audition you have to have it?
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Or can you have a little bit longer view of this?
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_03: Can you think to yourself, well, you know what?
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_03: If I had it in the next two years, that'd be amazing.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_03: Or if I had it in the next five years, or the next ten years, whatever the number is for you.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then you want to ask, let's say it's the next two years.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what what should you do today to be that person in two years?
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of trying to be that person today, what would you have to do today to lay one brick so you could have that house built in two years?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like thinking about the long term here.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Who do you want to be in the future?
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And how can you be building towards that person's?
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because the time is gonna pass either way, right?
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_03: It just depends on what you're gonna do with it.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: And trying to make the thing happen today, right now, is what's getting the results that are already getting.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you think if I keep going for the two years the way that I'm gonna go, where do I think I'm gonna be in two years?
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_03: Or you could try to approach something like auditions and say, how could I make each one be like this systematic surgical.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now I understand that problem, so that won't hold me back in the future.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_03: And again, where would you be in terms of auditioning?
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_03: But where would you be just in terms of you and your own confidence?
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's worth thinking about.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_03: Couple more ideas here.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, you gotta make peace with a couple of things at auditions.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, you gotta make peace that you can go there, you can play your absolute best and not advance.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_03: And number two, you gotta make peace with the idea that you may prepare like crazy and something could still happen that might throw you off your game where you won't play your best.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_03: You have to make peace with those two things.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_03: And where I sort of started thinking about this is I recently watched that documentary called Free Solo, where Alex Honnold uh free solos El Capitan.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't know what free soloing is, it's like where you climb a rock face, but you don't have any ropes.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_03: So that if you slip, you just fall like hundreds of feet and die.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_03: And just when you listen to him talk, he it's like it's like he has to make peace with the fact that he could die doing this.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason he has to make peace with it is so that's not a thought that's constantly in his head while he's doing the thing, so he can actually focus on the stuff that will actually keep him alive.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_03: If he's up there thinking, oh, am I gonna die now?
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Is this the one where I'm gonna slip?
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_03: Is this the one where I'm gonna slip?
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it's almost like you make peace to say any one of them is the one I could slip.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_03: I accept that.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_03: What do I want to be thinking about while I'm there?
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And he's got it all laid out.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_03: He knows exactly mentally, you can tell, he mentally knows exactly what he's gonna do for the entire four hours, which is what I was talking about about your attention and knowing how this thing works.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just I have the skill, it's because is my mind in it?
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_03: This is why things like visualization can be so helpful.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so we need to do the same for auditions.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's not life or death for us, which thank goodness.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, imagine if it was.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine if you missed a note and you died.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_03: But what I'm saying is we got to make peace with these ideas so that they are not things that you're thinking about on stage.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, truly make peace with it.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_03: Are you okay with the idea?
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_03: You could play your best and not advance.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's part of the deal with auditions.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're okay with it, then what would you do if you weren't worried about is this good enough?
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna free you up to put your attention and to put your mind on the things that are going to be more productive.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_03: And basically, the last the last thing I want to talk about is I want to talk about belief.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's the thing everything else is built on.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Does anybody buy these sparkling eyes things?
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're super good.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Belief is the lowest layer of being able to be successful at anything, really.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_03: But let's just for auditions.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_03: When you walk into an audition, sorry, let's not even go there.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_03: When we all start our audition journey, we all have to start it with the belief that it is possible for us to figure it out, for us to eventually like, I will eventually understand how to prepare, how to get my mind right, how to learn the excerpts, how to play with the right style, how to put it together on stage, and how to do it at a time where a committee will then say, Hey, this is great.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_03: We have to have that belief because if you don't have that belief, you're probably not going to engage with the journey at all.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you may know that it's going to be hard, but you're like, ah, I think I can do this.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_03: We have like, whether you've acknowledged that's your belief or not, if you're doing it at all, you have that belief.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_03: To win the audition, you have to have the belief that it could you could win.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you're not trying to like it's funny to talk about this because I feel like the immediate reaction is like, oh, you're like saying you're like gonna win.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody can guarantee anything.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_03: What I'm saying is if you think about players who win auditions regularly, it's like these players show up with the belief that I can make the finals, I can win.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I'm going to win, but I believe it's possible.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to play like somebody who believes it's possible.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_03: I believe that I have something to offer them.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_03: I believe they should pick me.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_03: I've got things and reasons why they should pick me.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so it if you go to an audition and you s and you think to yourself, you know what?
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I've got it today.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I've got it.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I'm skilled enough.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I mean I got some fundamental stuff I got to work out.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's not as clean as or it's not as easy as it needs to be.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's totally fine.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_03: All you got to do is just think to yourself, all right.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_03: So the goal of this audition is to learn so much from the experience that the next audition has a significantly higher chance of being the one where I will feel like I'm ready to win it.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_03: If the answer is yes, play like it.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_03: Trust yourself, play like it.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_03: But you got to wrestle with it.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was talking to one client who's taken a uh a principal audition for a large orchestra coming up, and I was just saying like do you see yourself?
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_03: Do you believe it's possible that you will be the one shaking the music director's hand at the end of the process?
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's the thing we have to sort of engage with.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_03: Do we see ourselves as that person?
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Again, if the answer is no, that is totally okay.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_03: We want to make sure that we're like, but this audition experience is gonna teach me a lot, and I'm so excited because I worked so hard because I wanted this to be worth it.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the thing regardless of whether you say yes or no, you gotta enter into the bout, the audition like it's possible because nobody knows what's gonna happen.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_03: You may think you don't have a chance.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_03: I interviewed Chris Martin and he said this exact thing.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_03: He said he believed that playing in the Philadelphia Orchestra when he won that job was something he could do, but he did not believe he had a chance to win.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_03: But he played like he did, and then he won.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_03: So here's the deal.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_03: You may think, you know what, what I want out of this experience, I'm not really I don't really care about winning, I don't think it's possible.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_03: But you gotta go into it with the positive, like you got to go into it like you could win because you're gonna let the committee decide what they think.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_03: You don't want to decide ahead of time for the committee whether or not you should be picked.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna play like you're gonna do your thing, you're gonna drive your attention to the present moment, you're gonna do your job, and you're gonna let them decide.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a couple stories to finish this episode out.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_03: The first one is I I I kind of I want to read you, I just want to straight up read you.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_03: So when I was doing the Philadelphia audition, before the prelim round, I I talked about this on my podcast, so I'm not gonna go super into depth, but and before the prelim, I did a podcast episode about Philly uh right after I did it, so you can go listen to that.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_03: But for some context, I was feeling nervous before the first round.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, why do I feel nervous?
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because I felt so prepared.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: I felt like I was gonna play the way I wanted to play.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_03: I had a lot of confidence.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, why do I feel so nervous?
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so I pulled out Chat GPT and I was like, hey, I want you to like interview me.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_03: I want you to like ask me questions to help me get at to understand like maybe why I'm nervous.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of figured out through that initial thing.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_03: I felt confident in my ability to produce what I wanted to produce, but I didn't know if it was going to be seen as attractive to that committee.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_03: There's no way for me to know that.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_03: But it was helpful.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so throughout the entire process, I actually kept giving it reflections.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_03: And in that episode, I shared how like the prelims were on a Tuesday, and then I had Wednesday off, and I was playing on Wednesday, and my face kind of just like shut down, and it was a really bad playing day for me.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_03: But I had sort of thought to myself, well, this is kind of normal.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I have an off day, I just play through it, and then the next day everything's back to normal.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_03: So when I started warming up on Thursday for the semifinal round, it was not normal.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to read to you what I shared in my um in my journal or in these reflections.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_03: So this is the warm-up room.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Chat GBT's question was as you were waiting to play in the warm-up room, what was happening in your mind and body?
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_03: I wrote, so this is the most interesting part of the day for me.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yesterday I had had kind of a rough practice session.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_03: My upper register wasn't feeling good, and I wasn't worried about it because I had had days where my upper register and some of my playing felt harder than normal, but usually the next day it worked itself out.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_03: So when I got into the warm-up room, I began to warm up.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_03: Everything felt completely normal.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Response was good, sound was good, stability and pitch were good.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_03: But as I continued to warm up, that problem with my upper register crept into my playing.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I wasn't worried, but I was like, oh no, how am I gonna handle this or how am I gonna deal with this?
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I stopped my normal warm-up at that moment and I started just doing some easy scales into the upper register to try to see if I could find some centering on the notes.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because it was literally feeling like the notes didn't, like the high C sharp and the high D, that they didn't want to come out of my bell at all, which would not be a problem, except I had to play Alpine Symphony at the end of the round, which has a high D in it for those of you that aren't aware.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a round of like 12 excerpts.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I needed to try, I needed to try to set myself up with the best habits I could.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then essentially I was just going to trust my preparation and trust God that whatever happens, happens.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_03: My mind was also on the fact that I had had a lot of confidence that I could play consistently enough up until that point in the round that I could potentially not play that excerpt to my very best and still advance because there was a lot of music in that round.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I was more focused on I just want to keep my head in the place of wanting to make as much music as possible.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_03: So there's as much about my playing that's special for them.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_03: So when they hear me, it's hard to say no, even if I end up not playing Alpine as well as I want.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_03: I continued to try to play into the upper register with good habits, and it was not really working.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like all of a sudden the upper register was opening up.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so I reached a point where I thought, I need to stop playing.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I put my instrument down and I did not play another note until the first note of the round.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_03: That could have been anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes of playing.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought back to a lesson from Charlie Geyer when I was studying with him at Northwestern.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_03: He talked about a story with Bud Hursith where Bud was playing the Brandenburg and he was warming up for it and he was struggling.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_03: He wasn't sounding good.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_03: And Charlie was worried enough that he was thinking he might have to play it if Bud couldn't pull it together.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then he said he observed that Bud eventually just put his horn down.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_03: He stopped warming up and he just sat there in silence.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then when the concert came, Bud went out and he sounded great.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_03: And after the concert, Charlie asked Bud, What were you thinking about at that time where you were just waiting?
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Bud told him he was just thinking about all the times he had sounded great.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_03: So that has always been a very influential story to me.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very interesting concept, but I've never had the opportunity to live that concept more than I did in that round, where I put my horn down and I just started remembering every single time that I had nailed the Alpine Symphony excerpt, to feel that, to visualize it so deeply that I was going to give myself the very best chance to do well.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, maybe if I can, even if it's a little bit soft, but I can get the note to come out, that would be better than not.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, playing more is not going to solve this problem, it's going to make it worse.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I just stopped playing.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing I was thinking was watching the documentary The Last Dance with the Chicago Bulls and the game where Michael Jordan had the flu against the Utah Jazz.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_03: I was just thinking nobody would have faulted Michael if he wasn't able to play or wasn't able to play up to his usual standard.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_03: But Michael's mentality was so strong and he's such a fighter that he ended up having an amazing performance in that game.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't see being sick as something that would stop him from playing like himself.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought to myself, maybe I don't need to be a hundred percent to be able to play all this stuff well.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not saying it's the same thing as having the flu, but I was very cognizant that this, this thing with my playing, could stop me from playing the way I want.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I was really focusing on shifting my belief from I don't know if this is possible to nothing is going to stop me from playing the way that I want to play.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_03: And if I don't play up to my potential, that's one thing.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_03: But if I just give up because things feel terrible and I try to play it safe, that's an unacceptable outcome for me.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_03: For me, this is it's like I wasn't even like thinking about it the way that I've been talking about it in this episode about values and deciding who you want to be.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_03: But you could see I'm like wrestling with this.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_03: Who do I want to be in this moment?
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_03: Do I want to be the person that just gives up?
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_03: Do I want to be the person that like has the story to tell afterwards?
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, like I could have done better.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_03: I could have made the finals maybe, but like my face was feeling off.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody would have looked at that and said, Yeah, that happens.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_03: But like, is that who I wanted to be?
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously the answer, this was like this was I would have given these reflections like that day.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_03: So it was the freshest it could have been.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_03: And the obvious answer is no, I didn't, I didn't want to give in.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not guaranteeing that that's even gonna get the outcome that that you wanted.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't guaranteeing that it would get the outcome I wanted, right?
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know what was gonna happen.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_03: I just knew how I wanted to approach it.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to approach it with trust.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_03: That was the value.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to believe it was possible.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I've got one more story that I think is really great, and then uh we will get out of here.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_03: In February of 2026, I played a recital at Oklahoma City University.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_03: I was the featured artist for their brass day, and uh, like I said, they wanted me to do a recital.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so I the recital was for those trumpet players listening, the recital was um Rustiques, Centennial Horizon, um Honegger and Trata, and I ended with Cascades by Vazutti.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if you don't know, Cascades by Vazutti is kind of a crazy piece.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I I programmed it specifically because I wanted to challenge myself.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think the last time I had played it was like literally like 10 years earlier.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so I started practicing it and I got it to a point where I kind of understood how to navigate it and I was feeling good about it.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but you know, the week before when I was doing runs of it, it stopped feeling great.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_03: I was, you know, I'd go out into my living room and I would play through it and I would try to start it, and it would just kind of fall apart and I would restart it and it would go better.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_03: But obviously, in performance, you can't do that.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't, it kind of sucked.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like I was like, I really want one of these to just go well, but they didn't.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then I flew to Oklahoma City.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_03: I remember waking up at the crack of dawn.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_03: I got there, I did a bunch of stuff during the day, and then I had a dress rehearsal, let's say at seven o'clock the night before my 10 a.m.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_03: recital.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_03: And that dress rehearsal did not go as well as I wanted.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so when the recital came around, I played the whole thing and I got to Cascades, and then I was essentially telling the audience this story.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly what it was.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I was Saying, like, I wanted to do this to push myself.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_03: My goal was to try to play this as fast as Alan Vazutti.
• 1:28:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think I reached my goal.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was saying, but if I'm I might be six weeks into something that might take me two years to accomplish, and I'm okay with that.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it doesn't mean it's over because I didn't get it right now.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was like talking to them about uh, you know, like I was talking to them about this values and the and then the belief and things like that.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I was basically like, I've got all this evidence that it's not been going the way I want.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, but I've got a lot of other evidence that I know exactly how this goes.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, I'm gonna choose to focus on that.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm going in this moment to choose to believe it's possible for me to nail this.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, but we don't know what's gonna happen.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_03: You don't know what's gonna happen.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we both get to find out together.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like this kind of cool moment where it's like, what's gonna happen?
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I basically played it about as well as I could have played it.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a very satisfying performance.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_03: Now, is this like uh a guaranteed path to like that's gonna happen every time?
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_03: But it is to illustrate, again, I I made even after the audition, I made this conscious choice in the face of what I'm seeing, in the face of how things have been feeling, I'm gonna believe it's possible.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think belief is so important.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_03: Do you believe it's possible?
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_03: Ask yourself, this is for your next audition.
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if you got an audition coming up, ask yourself, do you believe what do you think is possible for you?
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_03: Do you believe advancing is possible or winning?
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_03: If not, what could that audition provide for you?
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, just kind of wrestle with what do you believe is possible for you?
• 1:30:07
  SPEAKER_03: Auditions are hard.
• 1:30:09
  SPEAKER_03: They can be heartbreaking and frustrating.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_03: But now that we understand what they actually are, we understand what outcomes we are trying to control for, we understand it's about committee trust, we understand it's about trusting yourself, we understand it's about intentionally choosing who you want to be in those stressful moments, and we understand it's about learning from each experience so that the audition serves to grow you as a player and as a person.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_03: And we understand that at its core, at its root, it's about belief.
• 1:30:45
  SPEAKER_03: Auditions now can serve you.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_03: You can take it back and say, these auditions, they're for me.
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, cool.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_03: They want to hire somebody, but there's a part of this that serves me, and I'm excited to do it to see how much I can possibly learn.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's all I have to say about auditions right now.
• 1:31:07
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate you listening to this episode.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just thankful that you've been here.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_03: If, you know, if this is the first episode you're listening to, I'm glad you're here.
• 1:31:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you've been here since the beginning, I just really appreciate all of you.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I appreciate you very much.
• 1:31:22
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you so much.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we will see you in the next episode.