That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!
That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!
#203: Why Do Auditions Burn Players Out (and To Do About It)
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SPEAKER_00Hello, and welcome to That's Not Spit. It's condensation. I'm Ryan Beach, and today it's just gonna be me, and I would like to talk about auditions, professional auditions, and specifically why do professional auditions burn so many people out, and why is this process so difficult? When we do this thing that we love, we want to get into these ensembles because we want to be able to play in a professional ensemble and enjoy making money doing this and to be able to play great repertoire and to play with great other uh great colleagues and other players that we really admire. But we have to go through this process that can drain a lot of people. It can make them feel like it's sucking their soul away. It's just, it can be so brutal. I myself have had kind of the gamut, the wide gamut of experiences with auditions. When I was younger, I took a lot of auditions that didn't go well, but I was very sort of gung-ho and excited. Every audition I was like, oh, that one was devastating. And I would, there's a couple of auditions I actually cried after. Um, but I but I was ready to go after the next one. And then my ninth audition, I won Principal Trumpet and the Indianapolis Symphony. So now I'm on top of the world. Everything is cool. And I've talked about this before, but seven months after I started that job, I found out I didn't get tenure. This was back in 2013, 2014. And so I went on another string of auditions. I think I took six more auditions, and the last of those six was principal in Alabama, where I um I have been for the past 12, 11 years or whatever. Um, and then after that, so I won my job in Alabama, and I've talked about this before. I had a string of eight auditions over 11 years where I didn't advance at all, which is very frustrating. And that string of auditions specifically, I was very burnt out. And I was really just questioning is this for me? Can I keep going? I I felt like I was playing better than I've ever played in my career, and yet somehow I couldn't get these audition results that I wanted. And every time I would finish an audition, you know, you put so much of yourself into it and you spend so much time and so much effort, and you do all the studying and everything, and you play for people and you get feedback and you're trying to do everything right, and then you go to the audition, and it's like you get five or maybe 10 minutes to play, and then when you hear thank you next enough and you don't advance, you start to just wonder, or at least I did, it can I keep doing this? Not just like, is this for me, which I was feeling, but like, can I keep putting myself in that position? Does this make any sense? Or do I just need to stop doing this and find something else to do? And so I wanted to make this episode because I've just been thinking a lot about I've I have many clients that are taking auditions, and so we have lots of conversations about auditions, and I just find myself constantly talking to them about ways to think about auditions and how can we frame success in a way that has nothing to do with the outcome. Are there things that could be more valuable to us than just winning? And I think when players are getting burnt out in auditions, I think part of the problem is they don't necessarily know what elements that they can play with, right? They don't necessarily know how to structure things, they don't know what a quote proper practice session would look like, although there's many definitions of that. Um, they don't necessarily know how to score study or listen to recordings. They just, there's so many things they don't understand. And so what ends up happening is they just sort of start putting in a lot of work. And instead of guiding towards a specific goal or reason or thought process, they're just like, I'm just gonna work hard and I'm gonna hope that it's enough. And hope really becomes the driving factor of their audition prep is let me just try as hard as I can and we'll see what happens. And for a couple of auditions, that can be okay, right? Maybe your first audition, you don't expect to do well, so you just go in and see what happens. But your 13th, your 20th, your 30th audition like that, that can be harder to deal with. And that's where I think this burnout really it maybe comes in at different places for different people, but I think eventually it can catch up with anybody who is really using hope. And I have experiences like that that I will share in this episode to kind of help make it hopefully make sense what I'm saying. Uh, I want to walk through four different situations that you might find yourself in, or musicians can find themselves in, where maybe from the outside everything looks like it makes sense, but in actuality, they're just kind of hoping for the best. And they have a specific way of thinking about it, but it's really rooted in hope. And so I want to talk about these four different situations. So, what are they? Why is it not necessarily the best approach in terms of why it might lead to burnout? What are different ways that we can think about uh that particular approach? How could we reframe it to be healthier or better? And then what's an action step? I want to provide an action step because it's one thing to know the difference, but to be able to take a concrete step forward if you see yourself struggling with that, that's really where the change of behavior can happen, right? So it's I see myself over here, but I don't necessarily know what to do. I want to try to provide a first step for people who are a little unsure of what to do next if you see yourself in this. So, very quickly, before we get into this, helping players with auditions, whether it's trying to develop a system that's gonna prepare them to play their best or to get strategies and ideas for how to make sure that their mind is not gonna sort of freeze and betray them, so to speak, at the audition, or just like how do I organize a huge list in a way where I can fit it into my schedule and really feel like I'm I'm making progress? This is stuff that I help players with all the time. And if you see yourself in any of these situations, or you just want help in general, you want to chat about your particular situation and get some ideas on what you could do differently that could yield different results. I'll have a link in the description for an audition strategy session where we will talk about all those things. I will provide some ways forward for you so you can really know what those next steps will be for your specific situation. If it's not right for you, that's totally fine. I just wanted to make you aware of it. I hope you enjoy sort of digging into this with me uh for the rest of this episode. The first situation that players might find them in is one that I certainly am guilty of. And it's one where you place I want to win this job as the ultimate goal. And you're almost saying to yourself, I want to win this so badly that that's what's gonna be my motivation. And I hope that my desire to win is gonna be enough to get me through all the hard days. It's gonna cause me to ask the best questions, right? It's gonna be the thing that gets me across the finish line, is just my drive and my desire to win. Now, this is great if you happen to win a job, but it can be an intensely difficult and uh emotional roller coaster as I experienced when I was younger. You know, when I was at Northwestern, I had a lot of blind confidence. I think I got most of my confidence from studying with Barbara Butler at Northwestern. If you're aware of who Barbara is, she's at Rice now. And I just had this blind belief that I could be successful and I wanted to win more than anything. I I just would outwork everybody. I would be like, this desire to win is gonna make me do things that other people aren't willing to do. And again, when I was successful, that's really great, but I was not successful far more than I was in terms of the outcome that I was looking for. And I can remember one audition in particular, where I was auditioning for Principal Trumpet with a major orchestra, and at this time I was dating, I was engaged to um a woman where things in our relationship at this point were tough. And it was in a city that she was maybe interested in moving to. And so, in addition to my desire to win this job so I could make money and be able to play in a full-time group and just feel like, yeah, I can finally start my life. There was an element of wanting to win where I just thought, well, if I could win this, maybe everything would be okay in our relationship and we could start together. There was so much pressure I was putting on this audition. And so I worked to the best of what I knew how to do at that point in time. And wouldn't you know it, I did not advance. I played fine, probably, but I didn't advance. And I remember leaving that audition, coming back home, sitting on my hotel bed, and I just started crying because the devastation of I couldn't win this, therefore I can't start my life. And you know what I mean? It it this idea that like I put everything on the outcome of this audition. And when that's the case, it it for me it was just like not sustainable. It just wasn't sustainable. If that was the whole thing that made the whole thing worth it, was to win the job, and I couldn't win the job. And maybe there's some people out there who would tell you, yeah, like I really wanted to win this audition and then I won it, but without some sort of acknowledgement of like there were other things going on, there were other things that were happening and whatever, it just can really seem like, well, if you win the job, that's because you wanted it more than everybody else. And if you don't win the job, that means you didn't want it enough, that your drive and your motivation wasn't enough and that it's on you. And look, when we don't succeed, there can be a reason to analyze what we're doing, right? There can be a reason to look at what we did and can we improve? This is a necessary part of the process. But when it's just effort-based, like, did I want it enough? Then we're just left with, well, I wasn't enough, right? And this is just not healthy in any sense of the word, but it's also not a valuable goal. And so basically what happened is I had that audition and I had a whole string of auditions that didn't work out. And then the answer to a better goal, what is a better goal for auditions, kind of came to me by accident. Where I had basically gotten to a point in that string of eight auditions that I was like, I'm not sure I want to keep going with this. I'm not sure I can keep taking auditions. I remember talking to our tuba player in the orchestra, being like, I don't know, that might have been my last one. And he was like, You're way too young to stop doing this, you know, like you got to keep going, whatever. And so I wasn't sure where I was, but then Principal Trumpet in Atlanta opened up and I was like, well, it's close and I know somebody there, so I can stay there and I won't lose any money, basically, to take this audition. And it'll give me a reason to continue learning about the audition process because I had at that point decided I would like to dive into coaching. I had already done stuff like that, and I was really hoping I could get a good outcome or a successful sort of outcome in terms of advancing or winning, so that I could say, hey, look, this system works. But because I wasn't getting the system that worked, I was thinking, well, maybe I'll just get the data and the feedback elsewhere by helping other people be successful. And so I had had some successes with people making finals and auditions around that time. So I was thinking, well, obviously the system is good. Let me take another audition to see if I can get this kind of outcome for myself. So I put the goal and the emphasis not on winning, but on let me do everything I know how to do and just see what happens. And at this time, I also started incorporating things like mental training, which I hadn't done in the past. And I was still working on developing structures for my audition preparation. And I made a whole episode about this. So if you haven't seen that, you can check it out. Um, but I ended up getting a trial as principal in Atlanta. And so interestingly, about this audition, and I know I in that episode I shared all about this, but for the for the sake of the context for this episode, you know, I went there and my goal was can I play the way I know I can play in the first round? And the answer was yes. I played a great round in the first round, and so I was like, cool, I am satisfied. If I don't advance, which I wasn't sure I was going to because of the circumstances, that's okay. But I ended up advancing and then I made it to the semifinal round. And so I played later that day and I did the semifinal round. It didn't feel as good to me. I didn't feel as strong about it, but something about what I did, the committee liked it, and so I ended up advancing to the finals. And when I drove back to my friend's house from uh from the hall, I started crying, right? But instead of that previous audition story that I told you about where I was crying because I was devastated, this time I was crying because I thought to myself, I finally have some proof that this system is good and that I could do this. Like if I kept going, if I wanted to win a job, I could keep going and I could get there. I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I can get there. And so I then use this same system with some small tweaks in my next audition for principal in Philadelphia, where I made the finals, like I mentioned earlier. And through all of this experience, plus working with my clients to work through this, I now have a different definition of what it means, what the goal of an audition should be. And I believe that the goal of the audition should be to play on stage the way you prepared in the practice room, regardless of what's going on at the audition or how you're feeling. So if I break that down, I should say consistently perform on stage. So we want to we want to prepare in a way we have a consistent product, we want to be able to produce it on stage, meaning under pressure, and we want it to reflect the work we did in the practice room. And then also we let's assume there's going to be things that happen at the audition that aren't what we want. Let we might not get as much warm-up as we want, or we might get too long to warm up, or maybe the excerpt round isn't great for us, or also let's assume that we might feel nerves, or let's assume that we might feel some self-doubt, or maybe our face is really beat up if you're a trumpet or a brass player, or maybe you've got a bad read or something if you're a woodwind. Excuse me. Let's assume those things are going to happen and we want to prepare, we want to make the goal to prepare in such a way that we can still play on stage the way we pref prepared in the practice room. And the reason I think this is a better goal is because you start to think about the things that are in your control and to start to think about how I can manipulate variables in my practice so that I can push towards this consistency. Instead of just saying, I'm gonna try really hard to win, and I just hope that it's enough. Now we're able to look at the way we're practicing, and we're able to say, I have a much more specific, valuable goal that's all about me and my own improvement, has nothing to do with the committee. When you are hoping that if I just want to win badly enough, you're basically giving your sense of success to something external, and this new goal is a way to reclaim it. And so the action step for this is to define exactly what you want on stage. Ask yourself questions like what would it look like to be successful on stage? What would I sound like? How would I feel? How would I have to play? What do I think I would have to do, or how would I have to play to prep to play something in a way that would advance? Just like sort of hypothetically, what do you think you would have to do? What kinds of elements do you think you would need? Asking questions like if I make a mistake or when I make a mistake, how will I handle it? You're trying to define exactly what it is that you want to reproduce on stage so you can track in your practice whether or not you're moving closer to being able to do that consistently. And then, you know, you can add in adversity training type things at some point in time so that you can practice the despite what's happening or what you feel on the inside. So things I generally recommend are play around without warming up. Or what I did was warm up and then wait, you know, an hour, an hour and a half, not playing any notes, and then sit down and play around. You know, just do things that seem difficult. And the purpose of that is not so that you can say, look how good I can play. The purpose of it is to be able to dial in your focus on your goal. How can I, even though things, the chips are against me, even though things aren't what I want them to be, how can I still play or perform the way I've been practicing in the practice room or preparing. These types of things are far better to focus on than just I'm gonna try to win. And when you have outcomes that are not advancing or are not winning, you can then begin to ask, what tweaks would I make to the way I approached it to see if I could get a better result? Instead of being critical of yourself, it's more about all right, where am I on my journey to that particular goal? So that's the first one, which is you're relying on hope by putting winning as the focus. I want to win this, and I hope that that will motivate me and drive me to do the type of work that will win. And instead, what we want is to put the focus on consistently or learning how to, and this is the goal, is to consistently perform on stage the way you prepared in the practice room, regardless of what's going on around you at the audition or inside of you. The second situation that a lot of players will find themselves in is falling sort of for the belief that winning an audition is just a numbers game. I just have to take a lot of auditions and eventually I will win one. And the hope in underlying that is I hope that if I take enough auditions, I will eventually win one. Now, am I out here saying that you don't need to take a lot of auditions to win them? Uh no, you a lot of people have to take multiple auditions to sort of figure out the conditions for success. That is part of the deal. But if you're just approaching it, like I will take a lot of auditions and hopefully that will take me there, you're probably thinking about it as I don't need to look at what I'm doing. What I'm doing is okay. I just need to keep taking auditions and eventually it'll work out. I hope that will work out. Now, the strongest argument I have against this is it's just not supported by the data. If you look at players who are winning auditions, there are many players who are winning their between first and fifth audition, and there are also other players who are regularly in the finals having not taken nearly as many auditions as some other people. So there's gotta be something else going on here. And what I perceive the problem with this is that if you just keep going at it like a numbers game, you'll just keep going. And if you do get the result you want, congratulations. That's great. But if you don't get the result you want, eventually it's like, well, can I keep going and doing this? Like, I gotta start my life, you know, I have to find something else to do to make money, and then those things begin to take over. And it just becomes harder to stick with taking auditions over the long run. And I think this is why a lot of people feel like I would relate it to uh something I uh discussed in an interview a long time ago on this podcast with Chris Smith, principal trumpet of San Diego, where he was saying that winning an audition is a game of attrition or just the audition game, you know, being on the circuit, it's a game of attrition. It's how long can you stay on the circuit? And I think this is why a lot of people feel like, well, I got to win one soon. And when that doesn't work out, they might think, okay, cool, this will just take a while. And all I'm saying is if you think it's a numbers game, you are likely to just keep doing the same thing over and over again in auditions, hoping that eventually you'll hit it. And we all know that saying about doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result. And so what do we do instead? Well, what I'm going to suggest is that the players who are advancing in winning auditions, they're not just doing that because they're taking a lot of auditions and it's just happening to work out at some point. But in addition to being able to accomplish the goal we described in the previous one, another major thing they're doing is playing in a way that's attractive to committees. I I can think of a player off the top of my head that sort of struggles with this. He's actually had success at auditions, and he has gotten a lot of great feedback, but things are inconsistent enough that there's some frustration surrounding the results. And I've heard him say things like, you know, I just wish it was good enough. I wish I, you know, I wish it was just good enough that I could be regularly advancing and having being putting myself in the position where I could be successful. And he and I have had talks about this, that, you know, it may not be just showing up to auditions and assuming that what you're doing is, quote, enough, but what if there are things we could do to tweak your presentation to be seen as more attractive to a committee? And I, you know, it makes sense to me, but I think a concern of this player is that he doesn't want to sell out. He doesn't want to not be himself in an audition. He feels like I should be able to be myself and win an audition. And I totally agree with this. Here's the problem, though, is that if there are lots of qualified people at an audition, lots of people who sound great, if you play great, but you are not having a presentation that sounds attractive to a committee, and there's somebody else who also sounds great, and they are attractive to a committee, guess which one they're gonna pick? And I think personally there are some players whose voice in their head is sort of just lends itself to being attractive to a committee, and there are other players I would put myself in this boat, or the voice I hear in my head is not necessarily immediately attractive to a committee in the context of an audition. And so, what do we do about this? Well, my suggestion is observing some areas that we can sort of think about and tweak to be seen as more attractive to a committee, and I'm gonna share those areas with you, and then we will talk about an action step. So, in my mind, there are three elements that we need to consider when trying to be attractive to a committee. Number one, and I think most people are aware of this, you have to know how it goes, and you have to be able to demonstrate that you know how the music goes to the committee at the audition. We have to be able to do it on stage under pressure, show them that we know the style, we know what sound we should be creating, we know what articulation is appropriate for the style. We need to be able to play in time and in tune. And these are important if you think about it. It's important because what is an audition? An audition is hey, I want to be a part of this ensemble. And what is ensemble playing? You're not a soloist, sometimes you're a soloist, depending on the chair, but generally speaking, you're an ensemble musician, meaning the committee needs to be able to hear you and needs to be able to say, I trust this person. I feel like I could play with them. I feel like I they the intonation makes sense to me. The styles they're playing with are appropriate for what the music is. I think this person would make my job easy to play with them, as opposed to somebody who comes in and they are good, but certain parts of the presentation aren't quite um, let's say, mature or or thought well thought out. They might say, this is a great player, but this person doesn't know as much about playing in an orchestra as maybe they need to. And the problem is, is there's people who are probably capable who just don't understand how to present it or or what even elements to present. So this is thing thing number one spending time understanding how do you present your product at an audition so that it's attractive to a committee. Generally speaking, this is going to be done through things like listening and score study. That's where you would start with those types of things. The second element that is attractive to a committee is ease. And this is actually pretty straightforward. It's impossible to argue with someone who can take the demands of an audition list and make it sound effortless. And so I have three sort of little areas, I'll go over these very quickly, that you can play around with to control for ease. And this bias is as a trumpet player, so if you're not a trumpet player, see if some of these still apply to you. I think some of them will, some of them might not. But as a trumpet player, there are three main areas that I think we can play around with. Number one is dynamics, number two is tempo, and number three is articulation. So, in terms of dynamics, I might take an excerpt like Mahler Five and temper the loud end just a little bit. I don't want to temper it so much it no longer sounds like Mahler Five in terms of intensity. But if I can pull back and focus just a little bit more on ease so that my loud end doesn't sound forced, then that's gonna be more attractive than if I'm going in there and I'm blowing the house down as loud as I can because I want to say, look at how exciting this is. On the flip side, the soft side, I've really struggled with this in auditions on things like Schumann 2. Maybe on the soft side of things, we don't go quite as soft as we feel like we might have to, and maybe put a priority on let's play just a little bit fuller so that the sound never loses confidence or security. In terms of tempo, there may be fast excerpts where the recordings you've listened to go a certain speed, and you might make a specific choice to shave like 4% off of that tempo, or maybe 6% off of that tempo, so that it's still in the range of what's acceptable for that tempo, but you're also feeling like, yeah, I'm gonna shave a little bit off of that and put it into a tempo that I know I can own that's still appropriate, so that it will always sound easy. On the slow side of things, maybe you want to play four to six percent faster so that when you're playing by yourself and you don't have the rest of the orchestra around you, it's a little easier for the committee to hear the musical line and to feel some flow. And then on articulation on excerpts that are very well articulated, Helden Laban battle scenes, some of the Mahler excerpts, things like that. Maybe you want to think about not being absolutely aggressive with everything. I have a tendency to tongue very hard in the orchestra when I'm playing music like that. So I think about could I just dial that back slightly so that instead of it being this huge over-the-top thing, it's exciting and it's appropriate, but it's also easy. And then on the soft side of things, we might have a little bit more firm articulation just for security, so that the committee is hearing things. And no matter what we're doing, no matter what we're presenting, the committee is going, this person doesn't sound like they're approaching a limit in their playing at all. And that's attractive because I've talked to people on committees and they've basically said it would like if you play in such a way where you're not approaching a limit, the committee will assume you have more. The committee will assume that if you're playing loud and it sounds effortless, they'll think, wow, I want like they could probably play so much louder. But if you show them where the limit is, they start to think, is loud playing a problem? And you start to signal to them that you don't have as much range as maybe they would want. And so we just want to think about how to increase ease in our playing, but like not at the expense of style. And that's why that first element is there. We're trying to balance these things so it's not just, you know, we don't want to play Mahler five at mezzo forte, right? That's not Mahler Five anymore, but we don't want to play it so loud that it sounds forced. And and again, you're also you're by yourself. And again, this is a very trumpet sort of biased way of thinking about it, but you're by yourself near the front of the stage as opposed to in the orchestra at the back of the stage. And so we just want to think about how we can adjust this presentation in a way where it will be successful in that context. And the third element that is worth discussing is prioritizing showing the musical line so that your audition preparation, sorry, your audition presentation is not just about look how well I can play this music. Look at how good I am, look at how fast I can play, look at how loud I can play. It's not necessarily just like some random tests, but you're actually transcending that into let me show you how much music I can make of this. And generally speaking, I think about can I just show the musical line a little bit more? This came from a colleague of mine named Valerie Sly. Um, she really sort of helped me see this component and how helpful it can be so that they're hearing a musician, they're hearing a musician who is appropriate in terms of style, things sound easy, and they're making music. Like this is hugely attractive. And then in order to make sure you don't just completely sell out to the committee, though, and say, I want to make you happy, because trying to make the committee happy will not result in a win. It won't result in you playing with conviction. And so you want to balance these elements with making sure that you have defined parts of your voice that are uniquely you so that you're not losing who you are in the process. You're just saying, here is what I am, and are there elements of my presentation that I could slightly tweak or play with to be more successful in this specific context? So the second situation that we were talking about is people thinking that it's gotta be a numbers game. I'll just keep showing up, I'll keep doing the same thing, and eventually it'll work out. I'm saying I don't think that's right. Instead, what players should be focused on is considering how I can make my presentation attractive to a committee. So the audition or the action step is to pick one of those elements that you think you have the most room for growth in and to work on it. And I've given some ideas of what that could be, but also take some time to write down who are you as a player? What do you value? What makes you unique? Is it your sound? Is it your articulation? Is it your musicianship? Do you feel like you've got a great high range and you want to make sure that is something that's a part of your presentation or a great low range? Do you play soft really well? Like where do your strengths lie and how can you make sure you're showing that? This is all we're all playing with this and bringing together a presentation that reflects who we are, but again, trying to be successful in that context. So that's the second one. The third situation is a situation that is it's a very common musician way of thinking about things, which is to say more practice is better. If I practice for one hour, that's good, but if I practice for two hours, that's better. If I practice for two hours, that's good, but four hours is better. Just this idea that volume of practice itself is good. So then it tra it sort of follows that there are people out there who believe in order to win an audition, I have to practice an insane amount of hours. I have to put in more hours than everybody else. And if somebody else tells me that I've put in more hours, then somehow I'm falling behind. If you're not practicing, somebody else is practicing and they're getting better. This idea that these external things of people and how much they're working, it train it sort of boils down to the variable I have control over is time and hours. And I just think it's sort of an easy variable to track. If I practiced again, if I practiced for like five hours yesterday, and then today I practiced for six. Well, I did better work today. And the thing is, I've actually I struggled with this when I was younger. I remember putting in four and five hours a day, preparing for certain things, and I really had this mentality that I mentioned this earlier. I'm no one is gonna outwork me. There's a quote, I guess it's Derek Jeter who said it. I remember thinking it was Mark Toshera. Uh, both are baseball players for those of you that don't recognize the names. And a quote is I thought it was something like I might not be the most talented person or I might not have the most talent, but nobody will outwork me. And the problem is, the problem with that is almost always we're thinking about that in terms of effort and time, right? So when we think about working hard, we're like, yeah, I'm gonna work hard. I'm gonna put the most hours in. Like I used to get it sort of like I used to think about it in terms of like, well, when you listen to very intense people like David Goggins, he's like in there doing crazy stuff, and I gotta go do that. But it's interesting because when I say I was willing to outwork everybody, that literally just meant time. That meant I'll put in more hours. You know what it didn't mean? It didn't mean me thinking through how am I practicing? How am I making sure that I'm getting better? How am I tracking progress? Like just using curiosity as a superpower to actually make progress. Like I wasn't willing to look at my actual process of practicing. I didn't think that mattered. I just thought if I spend enough time, I'll get better and then I'll eventually win an audition. And you're essentially relying on hope in this situation by saying, if I just put in the hours, I hope that's going to be enough to win an audition. And we've already talked about a couple of elements, like the new goal and playing in a way that's attractive to a committee. There's another thing that's really important to consider here is that I've interviewed a lot of people who have won jobs at this point. You can go back throughout my podcast and you can listen to all of these. And when I talk to people and I ask the question, you know, what do you think contributed to your success? And we have a very long conversation about it. Literally nobody says, Well, I think what made me successful is I just practiced more hours than everybody else. I don't think anybody says that. Now, of course, they did put in the work, but they, these people who are advancing and winning auditions, they're not using hours as a metric that they are tracking, as like, well, I did, you know, I did this much work. It didn't matter what I did in the room, I just practiced for this long. They don't do that. They understand how to use the time that they have in the practice room to drive progress. And this is actually the differentiating factor between people who are advancing and other people who are just using time as a proxy for effort or quality. And so what they do talk about is their system for improvement. Okay. They talk about how they practiced, they talk about how they structure their work, they talked about how they did mock rounds, how they built in adversity training, they talked about the mental side of things, how they prepared themselves to be mentally ready. They talk about how they incorporated recording. They have all of these things that added up to a system that they used to improve and to be prepared for the audition. And it's just the opposite end to me. It's the complete opposite end of using time as the measure, is instead of saying what I need to do is practice more hours than people, what actually needs to happen is I need to have a system that prepares me to accomplish the goal in step one, but at minimum, a goal, uh system that uh prepares me in a way that will be effective. And so if you have a system that allows you to practice one hour per day and you can produce your goal, then you don't need all those other hours and you can live your life and be a human being instead of being trapped by practicing your instrument all the time. And of course, practice time is completely personal. I'm not suggesting that there's a correct amount of time to practice. What I am saying is that just focusing on how many hours you're practicing is not really a great metric for are you being productive? And so if you follow me for any length of time, you know I'm all about systems. I love talking about systems and developing systems. I've spent the better part of eight years developing the current audition systems that I have right now that I use in mine and that I've share with my clients to help them be prepared and successful. And if I were to describe a system to you right now, I would be here all day. So, what I want to do is extract the most important first step about building an effective system so that you can use this as your North Star for how to create a system that's going to work for you. And that first most important thing is clear goals. Now you hear people talk about goals all the time. And so I want to tell you exactly what I mean by this. What I mean is not I want to get better or I want to prepare this excerpt or I want this to sound good or whatever. What I'm talking about by clear, I mean specific. And by specific, I mean you could start with something like instead of I want to sound good, you could say I want a clear and resonant sound. That would be more specific. The kind of specific I'm talking about for an audition, though, is, and I will give you a speci I will give you an example of how I think about these excerpts. For pictures at an exhibition, my mental picture is not some abstract sound. My mental picture isn't even like, oh, I just want to sound like Bud or I want to sound like Phil Smith. My mental picture is I want a very stable sound on every single note, but I don't want it to be loud. So it's not about volume, it's about stability and sort of this sort of almost like weight. Right? So I'm not playing aggressive, I'm playing bi ba ta i ti. Everything should be very weighty and noble. That's a great word a lot of people use. I want my articulation to be very clear, but I don't want it to be harsh. I don't want it to be ta ta, but ta ta ta i ti, where the the front of the note has a lot of energy to it and it sends the sound out. I think about the structure of the phrasing of this is of course two bar phrases, but I think about grouping them as b da da e di da i di ba bi. So that's actually in my head when I'm playing it. I'm thinking about those groups. And then I'm also thinking about letting the eighth notes flow. So you're really feeling kind of a quarter note pulse with just a floaty eighth note. Like this kind of specificity will do wonders for how effective you can be in your audition preparation systems because you'll have this clear goal, and then now you can start to develop a system that will allow you to ask, how can I get feedback and data on what I'm doing right now and how to move closer? That's going to involve things like recording. It's going to involve things like journaling and all that kind of stuff. But it starts with a very clear goal. So your action step for this is simply to find that kind of specificity for every excerpt on a list and watch how that can transform the way you prepare because you know exactly what you're looking for. So then you just need ways to make sure that you know you're doing exactly what you want to do in terms of your goal. And of course, we could get into the nitty gritty about structure, which I think is incredibly helpful. But without that clear goal, your structure means nothing. So that's why it's the first step. Again, we're talking and saying practicing more hours to win an audition and to believe that that's what you need to do. That's relying on hope. We don't want to rely on hope. We want to rely on building an effective system for our preparation, one that has a clear goal, so that we can take clear steps towards that goal. The last situation that someone might find themselves in is I think every single musician has probably struggled with this at some point. And it is the belief that you need to play perfectly to win an audition. I think everybody, again, everybody struggle with it, and it makes sense to me why people struggle with it because it's basically a very easy thing to judge. When we're trying to figure out am I doing what I want to do? Am I being successful? We could judge very subjective things like, well, what do I want to do in terms of sound and articulation? And how do I know that I'm right? How I know I'm doing the right style. Is this the right tempo? Like, does this sound the way it's supposed to sound? But it's very easy and objective to look at, am I getting all of the notes? And especially when you think about being evaluated in audition, it's something that you think a committee member can look at and say, well, if they played perfectly, that's like objectively, we can't argue with that. And it makes sense to me. I'm not, I don't actually think it's irrational to believe this, but I have to say it's you're essentially saying, I am hoping that if I play perfectly, I'm going to advance. And I've got a couple of stories to say that I don't think that's the case. The first story that I would tell you is number one, I've got examples on my podcast from my Atlanta episode of how I did not play perfectly and advanced. In my Philadelphia audition, I did not play perfectly and I advanced. I actually think people you talk to, they will say you don't need to play perfectly people who've won auditions, I mean, that you don't need to play perfectly. In my interview with Chris Martin not too long ago, he was saying out of all the auditions he's listened to, he thinks that he may have heard, what did he say? One round of one audition from one person where that person played perfectly and they did not end up winning the job. And so I get, again, I understand it's an easy thing to measure and to judge. The problem is, is it's not actually what causes people to win is playing perfectly. And if we spend so much of our time and effort trying to control for perfection, we could potentially be missing out on figuring out what actually needs to happen for us to win an audition. I also have another story. I remember this. This might have been my first or second audition I ever took. I remember uh, you know how it works in an audition. If you've taken an audition, you know how this works where you play on stage and then you get sort of put in a holding room, like a green room or something like that, with other people who played in your round. And you're just sitting there talking to each other and just waiting to find out whether you advanced or not. So I was already sitting in there and I remember, I can picture it. Somebody walked into the green room and they sat down and they were like, man, I just played like a perfect round, except for Petrushka. I like messed up just a little bit, like a tiny bit. And if they don't advance me because of that, like this is ridiculous. And I was sitting there being like, I did not play perfectly at all. So, like, I guess, you know, I don't know. And I remember I ended up advancing at that audition, and the guy who was frustrated didn't. Again, this is anecdotal. I'm not saying that I'm not saying anything. I'm just telling you stories to help illustrate that we should question whether or not perfection is necessary. And on the flip side of it, what I'd like to do is share a story about a client I've been working with. Um, she is a flutist and she was recently in the finals for a major audition. She had gone through our entire program for the, you know, for the audition preparation. She was in the finals, and she was in the last phase, which I call phase three, which is where you're running mock rounds and training your mind to focus on what you want to focus, focus on, and really building that capacity to um keep your attention where you want it. And she was describing in a session how she was struggling with this because while part of her wanted to focus on the right things, she was making mistakes. And these mistakes were taking her out of it. And she was just trying to say, like, I don't want to be making these mistakes. It's like, I know, I know like mistakes are, you know, you can st you can still do well and and advance while, you know, and win without making mistakes. But she was sort of saying, it just feels like maybe if I could just work a little bit harder, I could get rid of these mistakes. If I just practiced a little bit more, I could figure this out and not have them. And not having them would be better than having them. And so we I asked her some questions, and we eventually got to talking about a concept called flow state. If you're unfamiliar with flow state, the general definition is that you are engaged with an activity that is not too hard, that you're frustrated, and not too easy that you're bored. There's this middle Goldilocks zone. But for the case of this conversation, it's also describing a situation or a state in which you're engaged with something and you're not overthinking, you're not over trying. You trust your skills, you're letting go, you're letting your body just do the thing. And I would be willing to bet you listening have experienced this at some point. This I this state where everything just felt good and it was easy. And I was saying, I don't think you need to play perfectly to win, but I believe you need to play in flow state to win an audition. You need to be in this place where you trust your skills so much that you can let go and put communication and connection in terms of the music you're creating at the top of what's what's important to you in an audition. I want to communicate my musical ideas to the committee with the least amount of interference, and flow state is the place where we can do that. Now, I could go really deep into this. I don't necessarily want to because we've been here for a second. But suffice to say, Flow state, again, is that place where we don't overtry, we're not overthinking. And the thing I think a lot of people miss is they don't practice this part of the of the of the um process. They're thinking about, like my client was, they're thinking about I gotta try to fix, fix, fix, fix, fix, fix, fix all the way up until the audition. And then when they get to the audition, they haven't practiced letting go. They haven't practiced trusting their skills, they haven't practiced letting their body just do it. If you've read the inner game of tennis, I'm talking about self two. They haven't practiced this. And so the headspace that they're used to being in is the one where they're thinking about trying to fix and looking for their mistakes. And guess what's gonna happen at the audition? You're gonna be looking for your mistakes and you're gonna be playing protectively because you don't want to make a mistake. And then when you make a mistake, it's a big deal because the whole point was not to make any mistakes. So instead, what we want to do, and this is what I recommend recommended to my client, is we just got very specific focus points. And then I said, your only job is to focus on this. You don't need to worry about perfection. And in a sense, the this time in your preparation, when you make a mistake, this is actually an opportunity to practice handling it the way you would want to handle it in the audition. So not making mistakes actually, in some sense, is bad because we want opportunities to practice how are we going to handle a mistake in an audition. And if we don't make any mistakes, then like maybe we'll get lucky and not make any mistakes in the audition. But if we haven't practiced how to handle mistakes before the audition, then a mistake in the audition can really throw us off. So we should maybe even welcome mistakes as opportunities to practice how we want to handle it when it really matters. So this is what I recommended to her. At this point, my client had about a week and a half left in her preparation. And so we just had her focus on these types of things I've been describing. And then she went and took the audition. She did not end up winning the audition, but she felt so good and satisfied with her playing and just walked off being like, this one didn't work out, but you know, she's just really feeling like it's a matter of time. And like that's the place you want to be. At a certain point, you recognize that you can't control a lot about auditions, right? You can't control which what committees are gonna think or if you will be attractive to them. Like you have to make a choice and you have to put it in front of them. But to be able to have your own definitions of success, instead of worrying about perfection, you're gonna think about how do I practice being in flow state, which is your action step, by the way. The action step is towards the end of your preparation for your next audition, I would highly recommend you mentally say, I have done great work. I trust this work. I now need to practice not overthinking things and just letting my body take care of it. This is a huge part of what I believe can lead to this kind of effortless performance is actually just recognizing it's something we need to practice. It's not something that some people have and other people don't have, but it's actually, again, the result of a system. This is all building on each other. Hopefully you've been seeing that. But it's a result of a great system, but it's also something that we intentionally need to practice. And the more that you practice it, the more you'll feel like you'll be able to trust your system, the more you'll get recorded evidence that you are prepared and ready to do this. So that when you go to the audition, you have a different goal, you've thought about what could be attractive to a committee, you have a system that you've followed that you trust that has prepared you, and you have practiced being in flow state. If you do these different things, I know that I talked about these as individual situations, but maybe if you see yourself in more than these individual situations, but these four elements together, if you do all of them, they could dramatically transform how your next audition goes. And how this helps with burnout, this is the most important thing. How this helps with burnout is it shifts the goal from I gotta win, and if I don't get the outcome I want, this sucks, to let me use this audition as an opportunity to find out what I'm capable of, to try to develop systems that will just make me a better player overall. Think of how that could benefit all of your performance, not just auditions. If you had a system that made you better under pressure, even if you don't win the audition, could that be beneficial to you outside of the audition? When thinking about being attractive to a committee, you're trying to drive more ease into your playing. That's never gonna be a bad thing to consider that. And to be able to really show the musical line, any audience is gonna want you to be able to do that. So while I'm framing this in the context of auditions, because it's high stress, high stakes, it can cause burnout, it applies to everything that we would do in performance. And so I wanted to cover this. I wanted to share these ideas because it's really, in a sense, recognizing first what potential belief or situation are you in currently? And then asking yourself, where is this leading me? Is this leading me to feeling fueled? Is this leading me to think of auditions as an exciting opportunity to improve? Or is this making me feel burnt out and like maybe music isn't something that I'm capable of doing? Depending on how you answer that question, you have the option of potentially thinking about how do I adopt a different view? And what would that look like? What would it look like for me to follow this other view or this other belief? And then again, if you aren't sure exactly where to get started, I've provided some action steps for you here. So a full recap. Situation one, you are putting the desire to win as the main driver and motivator, and hoping that's going to be enough to get you across the finish line. What we want instead is to be able to consistently perform on stage the way you prepared in the practice room, despite what's going on at the audition around you or inside of you, and the action step is to define exactly what you want to be on stage. Situation two the belief that auditions is a numbers game. If I just keep taking them, I will eventually get there. And I'm hoping that after a certain amount of auditions, a committee will eventually just pick what I'm doing. The way to think about that on the flip side is we need to be able to play in a way that's attractive to a committee. And we can do that by playing the music the way that it goes to build trust, making things sound effortless, and showing the musical line. We also want to make sure we don't lose what makes us unique so our voice can stick out and be unique among all the other ones at the audition. The action step for that is to pick one of those elements and to begin to incorporate that into your next preparation as a specific focus point and goal. The third is the belief that if I just practice more hours than everybody else, I will eventually be successful at an audition, and I'm hoping that just the amount of hours will be it. And the other way to think about it is it's not about hours, it's about a system. And using the audition preparation processes to continue to refine and build a system that will get you to a place where you can trust your skills, where you know and can get evidence that you are the player that you want to be. When you have this evidence, you're no longer hoping. You're saying, look, I am this player. I've heard myself be this player. I just got to do it again at the audition. And the action step there is to clearly define your musical, I guess, interpretation or your clear goal for each of the excerpts with specificity so that that can begin to be your north star for all of your efforts and your practice sessions. And then the fourth one is the belief that you have to play perfectly to win an audition. And instead of thinking we have to play perfectly and win an audition and hope that perfection is going to be what is enough for a committee, we actually want to think how can I prioritize playing the audition in flow state so I'm not over trying. I'm connecting, I'm letting my body just do things so that things can be uh communicated freely in terms of the music that you want to make. And the action step for that is to literally set aside time where you are focusing on training yourself to play in flow state rather than just trying to get better at the excerpts. Again, there is a link in the description. Uh, if you would like some help with this, applying these ideas, seeing yourself in these and applying these ideas to find a path forward for your specific situation. I've got information in the description for the audition strategy session. I hope this has been helpful. I've really enjoyed going over this with you, and um, that's gonna be all for this. So I want to thank Brandon. Well, that's gonna be all for this. I want to thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast, and we will see you in the next one.