The Best Quote I've Ever Heard About Goal Setting

"A good goal is one that changes your actions in the moment. Like, right now. Goals are not about the future. They are about the present moment. Changing your present actions."

—Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers is one of my favorite thinkers/authors/speakers/entrepreneurs in the world. He regularly makes me think about things in a different way or inspires me to try something new.

This is the best quote I've ever heard about goal setting. I've never heard the quality of the goal attached to whether it inspires you take to immediate action which makes all the sense in the world.

Two summers ago I decided to learn all of my major scales in thirds with the descending scales featuring ascending thirds. I learned ascending thirds on the way up and descending thirds on the way down many years ago. I have played that pattern at most once a year for the last decade and could do it perfectly right now. It is fully engrained. But playing ascending thirds on the way down was like reading a foreign language at first! Surprisingly so actually.

So I made a very specific goal for myself which was something like this:

I will play all the major scales in thirds around the circle of fourths in 8th notes at quarter note equals 100 with ascending thirds on the way up and ascending thirds on the way down from memory by August 20th without making a single mistake.

This goal made me immediately spring into action. It was made around July 1st and I had a very busy summer planned. I wasn't going to have a ton of time to practice because of gigs, family obligations and vacation. Putting a hard date on it that was neither overly aggressive nor so far in the future that there was no sense of urgency was the key.

It ended up forcing me to spend a lot of time on basics and certainly led to me having a few practice sessions that surely would not have happened otherwise. Using Derek's litmus test, this was a good goal since it made me take immediate action.

My students are going to get sick of me saying this quote very quickly because it is about to permeate my teaching.

So if you have a goal that isn't changing your present actions, the question to ask yourself is how can I improve this goal so that it does?

The Brass Junkies: Andrew Balio of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

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Andrew Balio, Principal Trumpet of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra join Andrew & Lance in a fascinating and far reaching conversation. From his time with some of the greatest orchestra on the planet to the four years he spent at an ashram, Andrew's story is endlessly fascinating. We also cover his role at the Future Symphony Institute and talk about many of the issues facing professional orchestras today.

Oh, and there are sheep. Like, a lot of sheep. 

Links:

Website
BSO Bio
Future Symphony Institute

You can help offset the costs of producing the show by making a small donation athttps://www.patreon.com/thebrassjunkies. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

The Brass Junkies: Brian Balmages

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One of the best composers you'll ever find, Brian Balmages, joined me and Lance for an interview on The Brass Junkies. I find it fascinating that Brian can write so well for beginning band, the finest professional ensembles in the world and everything in between.

He is also a great human.

I particularly found it interesting how he shared in the interview that he had a completely different process for writing each of the movements for the piece we commissioned him to write for Boston Brass. Great insights into how a piece like that goes down!

Links:

Website
FJH Music
Soundcloud

You can help offset the costs of producing the show by making a small donation at https://www.patreon.com/thebrassjunkies. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

The Brass Junkies: C Street Brass/Beauty Slap - Episode 36

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Two of the members of C Street Brass/Beauty Slap, Hakeem Bilal and Gabriel Colby, sat down with us in a fun conversation about these cool new interconnected groups.

C Street and Beauty Slap are a sort of Jekyll and Hyde hybrid with C Street functioning as a brass quintet and Beauty Slap a brass quartet plus DJ, giving them the opportunity to play to a wide set of audiences.

Most recently they shared the stage with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and we have fun exploring where these guys are going.

Links:

C Street Brass
Beauty Slap

You can help offset the costs of producing the show by making a small donation at https://www.patreon.com/thebrassjunkies. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

Joan Sutherland: Monday YouTube Fix

Here is a BBC documentary on the late, great soprano, Joan Sutherland titled The Reluctant Prima Donna. It is a fascinating look at her career and features a lot of clips of her singing different pieces from throughout her career.

All that any of us instrumentalists are ever trying to do is sound like vocalists like Joan Sutherland.

Enjoy!

2006 BBC Documentary on the career of Dame Joan Sutherland - focusing on Lucia and Alcina. Documentary about Dame Joan Sutherland, one of the greatest operatic performers of the late twentieth century, who died in October 2010.

2006 BBC Documentary on the career of Dame Joan Sutherland - focusing on Lucia and Alcina. Documentary about Dame Joan Sutherland, one of the greatest operatic performers of the late twentieth century, who died in October 2010.

2006 BBC Documentary on the career of Dame Joan Sutherland - focusing on Lucia and Alcina. Documentary about Dame Joan Sutherland, one of the greatest operatic performers of the late twentieth century, who died in October 2010.

The Brass Junkies: Harry Watters of the US Army Band

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Trombonist and probable alien Harry Watters sat down with me and Lance and hilarity ensues.

Harry has had an amazing career, including a four year stint with the Dukes of Dixieland before detours to Las Vegas and his current position in Pershing's Own Army Band. Harry has played with just about everybody on the planet and give us some tips on learning improvisation.

He may or may not also have been present at a casino during a takeover by the Feds.

Links:

harrywatters.com
Harry's Latest Recording: The Great American Songbook featuring the Salt River Brass

You can help offset the costs of producing the show by making a small donation at https://www.patreon.com/thebrassjunkies. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

Article: "This Is How To Make Good Habits Stick: 6 Secrets From Research"

This article from @bakadesuyo is money. It is so applicable to being a musician and our constant attempts to get better and more consistent at what we do.

I had never heard the term Minimum Viable Effort before but I love it!

Article: "This Is How To Make Good Habits Stick: 6 Secrets From Research"

Stefan Dohr: Monday YouTube Fix

The horn doesn't get much better than the Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, Stefan Dohr.

Here is a clip of him performing Strauss' Horn Concerto No. 1 live with the Okayama Symphony Orchestra with Hansjörg Schellenberger conducting.

What phenomenal playing and artistry.

Enjoy!

Stefan Dohr Okayama Symphony Orchestra Hansjörg Schellenberger (conductor) -- Okayama Symphony Hall July 2015

The Brass Junkies: Tage Larsen of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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Tage Larsen, 4th/utility trumpet with The Chicago Symphony sat down with me & Lance for a fascinating look at his highly successful (and highly diverse) career.

I played for one season with Tage in the Dallas Brass and can't even begin to describe how much I learned from him. He is such an efficient player and sounds totally fluent in more styles than I can count.

As I shared in the interview, I remember my third day on the job with Dallas Brass when we had been having intensive rehearsals and my chops were toast. I was a very inefficient player at that age because I could get away with it. I vividly remember Tage playing the intro to Mahler 7 about five minutes into his warmup on that third day and it looking as if he was playing a long tone. My face was toast and his tone was still silk. I learned an awful lot in that moment.

Tage spent time in The Marine Band, Dallas Brass and the St. Louis Symphony before his current position and he explores what he likes about playing 4th/utility. We also get into the role of classical music in society and the notion that we should have sincerity in all that we do. Shockingly, he only uses one mouthpiece. That's what he said anyway.

Links:

Tage's DePaul School of Music Page

You can help offset the costs of producing the show by making a small donation at https://www.patreon.com/thebrassjunkies. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

Article: Fact Resistance by Joey Tartell

"Access to information is more easily accessible than at any time in history, but there is no built in truth filter.  When there is no filter, all information- true, false, misleading, outright lies- can be treated equally.  So what happens when people go looking for information?  They get bombarded with all kinds of information, and sometimes don’t know how to differentiate the facts from the garbage.

Too often, people that want to convince you that their way is the right (and sometimes only) way are the loudest voices, working hard to drown out any that disagree.  There seems to be an idea that if something is said loudly enough and often enough, it must be true."

This is an excerpt from a great blog post by phenomenal trumpet player and professor at Indiana University, Joey Tartell. It is a very thought-provoking piece about the times we live in, when anyone can be an "expert" and the loudest voices can seem the most correct.

Well worth the three minutes it will take to read.

Fact Resistance by Joey Tartell