You are 25 (or 35) or 27 (or 33).  You dream of a career as an orchestral musician.  You have gone to all the right schools, studied with all the right people; they have told you how great you are, how much they believe in you.  You have gone to festivals and basked in the glow of making music your livelihood.  You are young, happy, and confident; you are budding success just waiting for the Spring.  Then, you go to an audition…  You attend an audition for second trumpet in the Southwestern New Mexico Symphony Orchestra of the Acoma Nation.  The position pays $6,000 per year, and, if you are lucky enough to win the job, you will settle down in a place 263 miles from the nearest Starbuck’s.  You show up at the audition with 5 trumpets, stand in a room with 62 other people with 5 trumpets, collect a number, play the exposition of the Haydn, then three excerpts (all of which sound strained and forced, nothing like you really sound), then you are “Thank You’d”, made to wait in a strangely small room with bad acoustic tile, sit for an hour facing the floor, then someone who doesn’t know how to pronounce Mozart comes and tells you that you have been cut.  Yes, this little plum of a job is just a bit out of reach for someone of your abilities.

Then, you redefine yourself…

You are 25 (or 35) or 27 (or 33).  You are out of work.  You have no employable skills.  You play the trumpet better than 15 out of 62 people who are willing to work for $6,000 per year.  Most of your friends are out of work or… they are wildly successful and texting you daily about how much money you can make when you actually are talented.  Then they complain that they have to go to rehearsal and that the conductor really sucks.  You are having a butter sandwich for dinner, again.  You contemplate mailing a butter sandwich to your successful friends.  You are faced with a wall of anxiety, a wall of fear.  You try practicing, but you can’t shake the way you sounded at the last audition, or you wonder why you are wasting your time practicing, wondering if it will ever pay off.  With nowhere else to turn, you go to the internet.  Somehow you find yourself perusing the writings of some strange trumpet player and teacher who apparently saw the Chicago Symphony once, or something.  Now you are reading this.  This could well be your lowest point.  Now Entering: Rock Bottom.  Population: 1.

Fortunately for you, this article isn’t over, so there is at least the possibility of things improving from here.  But what could I possibly write that could help you find your way out of this miserable corner you have painted yourself into?  Keep reading; you never know what lies around the next corner, or as one of my favorite writers puts it, “the devil isn’t lurking behind every door.”

First of all, ask yourself if I have, to some degree of accuracy, captured the way you are feeling right now, the way your life is right now.  If you are one of those people trying to win that elusive first orchestra job, the answer is probably yes.  And the reason I have accurately described it is simply that I have been down that path before, as have many other successful trumpet players before me and after me, and as will others after you.  Your situation is not unique.  Rock Bottom does not actually have a population of 1, but of thousands, and it is growing all the time.  You may wonder why that makes things any better?  Well, for one thing, there is company in numbers, but more importantly, there is a pathway that leads from where you are to where you want to go, and that pathway contains the footprints of people who have gone on to do extraordinary things.  All you have to do is follow the tracks.  Careful, though -- the path is slippery, and, if you slide too far off, it will be practically impossible to find your way back.  Unless, of course, you slide all the way back to Rock Bottom; then you can simply head off down the path again.  Painful, yes, but it should serve as some recourse, some sort of comfort.

Now that we have established that you are not alone in this adventure, and that many people have gone this way before, we simply need to concentrate on how you can follow the tracks in front of you.  In order to do that, you will need a few tools.  Not trumpet tools or musical tools, but mental tools -- tools you will need in order to achieve the level of refinement in musicality and technique needed to be successful.  Without these tools, your mental abilities will suffer, and you will start sliding backwards before your first step has brushed that icy path.  The tools that are the most critical in this pursuit are perhaps the most often overlooked: objectivity, creativity, and determination.  They are not all you will need, but without them you are lost.

Objectivity

Objectivity is the ability to see yourself and your product as they actually are; to know what needs work and what doesn’t, not relative to other people, but relative to the standard that you must meet in order to achieve your goals.  If you need to improve your articulation, then lay out a plan and execute it.  Assess the results.  Need to improve your musicality, your sound?  There are ways to improve them.  Go about it and gauge your results. Whatever you are working on, your ability to accurately assess your progress will be key to your success.  Assess your abilities honestly; make a plan to improve.  Take another audition; assess your progress.  Repeat.  The first step to improvement is being able to see and hear yourself objectively.  Ever been advised to record yourself leading up to an audition?  I thought so.  Recording is squarely in the domain of objectivity.  It is essential.

Remember that audition for the Southwestern New Mexico Symphony Orchestra of the Acoma Nation?  Remember that you were one of the worst there?  Right.  Now forget about it.  You can’t forget the experience and you can’t forget the feelings, but that critical point where you assessed yourself relative to the other people at the audition?  Forget it.  It’s irrelevant.  There is only room for one on this pathway, and if you bring others along they will make you slide.  You cannot waste time comparing yourself to others who are trying to achieve the same goals.  The only thing of value that you received from that awful audition experience is knowledge about how you can do better next time.  Your sound was forced, and you didn’t play like yourself.  That is something you can work on.  Your entire focus needs to be on your playing and your audition package, not on how well you are doing relative to others.  If you work on it long enough and hard enough, it will improve.  It’s that simple.  Think about what you can do to better prepare yourself for the next audition.  What can you do to be able to actually play the way you do at home?  There are answers.  There are solutions.  You are not the result of your last audition.  You are not the result of your next audition.  You are a work in progress.  The devil isn’t lurking behind every door.

Creativity

The first thing many people would think when seeing the word “creativity” is of artistic or musical creativity, but, while that remains an important part of any artistic pursuit, that is not the kind of creativity that I see as an essential tool of achievement.  No, the kind of creativity I am talking about is the kind needed for creative problem solving.  Through objectivity you learn to see your product as it actually is.  Through creativity you will learn to find solutions to your challenges -- solutions that are not obvious on the surface.  Is there something that you can’t quite resolve, some weakness that you can’t quite remedy?  This is where your creativity comes into play.  Think about that weakness.  What makes it tick?  Look at it from another perspective.  Look for parallels to other strengths and weaknesses.  Turn it over and over looking for any place you can get a better grip, a little more leverage.

Having a hard time playing cold at an audition?  Try practicing cold at home.  Try making your home environment more adverse for performing than the audition environment.

Having trouble with upper register playing?  Try a new approach, a new method.  Maybe it is the way you are practicing it, or your equipment.  Look for creative ways to solve your problems.  This may be just the thing you need to complete your audition package -- the final piece in a complex puzzle.  Discuss your problems with your friends.  Think about them when you drive.  The solutions are there; they are just waiting to be discovered.  Creativity is the key to that discovery.

Determination

This could also be called focus, sacrifice, or discipline; all different words that, for our purposes, mean much the same thing.  And that is… Get off your butt.  Get to work.  Stop making excuses.  Stop allowing distractions.  You are in control of your product, of your life.  Achievement takes work, so get to work!  Think you are working hard?  Work harder.  Think you are doing everything you can?  Think again.  This is perhaps the most essential of all tools of achievement.  Without determination, none of the rest of your skills will matter.  Are you a fantastically talented trumpet player?  Great.  But you won’t be going anywhere without the determination needed to address your inevitable weaknesses.  Many very talented people have come up well short of their goals because of a lack of determination.  No one is talented enough to survive without a hefty dose of it.  You will have to make many a sacrifice, whether personal or professional, in order to achieve your goals.  I have sacrificed family holidays for audition preparation.  I have turned down lucrative tours in order to be able to attend or be adequately prepared for one audition or another.  You can’t wait for everything to fall into place, like the perfect Tetris piece for your life emerging on the horizon.  Sometimes things don’t fall into place so neatly.  But you should be right there, pushing and pulling for all you’re worth.  Sometimes round pegs do go into square holes; the hole just has to be big enough.  Determination, focus, and sacrifice will make that happen.  Think I am making too big a deal over this attribute?  Some people might, but these are the rocks against which dreams are dashed, crashing and splintering on the jagged edges of reality.  You do not want to be left picking up the shards of your dreams, wishing that you had worked harder, that you had given it your all.  Those would be dark days indeed.

It easy to think, after the emphasis I have placed on determination, that somehow it is the most important of all of these tools of achievement, but that is not the case.  There are many tools and attributes that are needed for any of us to achieve our goals, and they tend to work together, like the flow of water in an Escher painting: one leading to another, to another, then somehow – astonishingly – back to the first one again.  Each attribute is essential and cannot be compromised in any way, lest you stumble where others prevail and find yourself wending the well worn track back to Rock Bottom. 

It is true, however, that these attributes are not an end, but only a means.  The end goal remains unchanged.  You must present a package that is technically proficient and musically inspiring.  You must excite your listeners and make them interested in working with you based on the sounds that you make.  And you must prove your ability to do that on an empty stage, in an empty hall, with nothing but extremely critical ears to serve as witness and judge, and nothing but your well trained abilities and expressions to represent you; nothing more; nothing less.  The goal is quite simple, really.  It is just difficult to achieve. View yourself accurately and fairly.  Think critically and creatively.  Put your head down, block out distractions and temptations, and drive yourself relentlessly forward.  Objectivity.  Creativity.  Determination.  Use them well and you will find that even the wildest of aspirations can fall within your grasp.  Rock Bottom has just lost one more resident.

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