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A blog about performing music, teaching music and the business of music.
Learn the audition preparation strategies that won Carol Jantsch the audition for Principal Tuba of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 20 in this Winning the Audition workshop.
Purchase long-term access to this through the Hitz Academy archives for only $19!
A big thank you to Rob Singer of the President’s Own Marine Band for hipping me to this video surfacing on YouTube!
This performance is a master class in so many things: Style, pitch, phrasing, matching articulations, note releases, dynamics, storytelling. So good!
Enjoy!
Principal Trumpet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Tom Hooten joined me for a very special Winning the Audition. I can't recommend this session any more highly - and not just for people preparing for auditions! His detailed thoughts about how he goes about approaching his practicing is something every musician should hear.
Tom went really deep on all things relating to auditions!
Tom's five pillars to audition preparation
Why Tom had to get brutally honest with himself about what he could do on the trumpet and where his approach to practicing needed improving
The importance of intentionally addressing all of our weaknesses on a regular basis rather than inadvertently avoiding them in the practice room
Why the judgements we have of ourselves and our limitations on the instrument are frequently just an issue of a lack of time spent in that area
What is Neuro-Associative Conditioning and why Tom relied heavily on it during audition prep
And much more!
Purchase long-term access to this through the Hitz Academy archives for only $29!
Last year I had the privilege of presenting at the International Music Education Summit. My presentation was titled “Instilling a Growth Mindset in Your Students for the Practice Room, Rehearsal Room and Beyond”. It focused on the far reaching impact of having a growth mindset as a musician, student, teacher and human.
A big thank you to Elisa Janson Jones for having me as a part of this incredible event.
I hope you enjoy it!
Between The Brass Junkies and The Entrepreneurial Musician, I’ve done over 350 interviews. Every once in a while, one changes you.
This was one of those interviews.
I’ve been friends with Marty Hackleman for many years now. He is someone who went from being a hero of mine (literally on a poster on my wall when I was a kid) to being a colleague and friend.
(As a side note, the fact that you can grow up to play with your heroes is one of the coolest things about the music business. Most industries don’t work that way!)
I cherish the conversations we’ve had over the years. In fact, we interviewed Marty on The Brass Junkies way back in 2015 for TBJ13. That was an incredible look at his career in Canadian Brass, Empire Brass, the National Symphony Orchestra and many more. His career as a horn player was unparalleled.
But this most recent conversation was remarkable enough that I feel like it rewired my brain.
Shortly after we spoke back in the summer of 2015 Marty started dealing with dystonia. That led to him retiring as a performer. He tells us all about how that felt like experiencing a death but also a rebirth. The way he spoke about it all made me feel more present in the moment. That’s a gift.
He talks about art and why we make it. He shares some incredibly deep poetry that he wrote as a late teenager. He talks about his love of playing Spanish guitar, which he now does every day. And he never plays it for anyone!
After this conversation I was inspired. It was pretty intense. Close to 10 years ago, my Brass Junkies partner, Lance LaDuke, was getting rid of an electric bass he had owned for a while. He told me that he had bought it brand new and played less than 300 notes on it. I bought it from him for $100 because I had always planned on learning how to play the bass and thought why not?
It then sat in my closet until five minutes after this conversation with Marty.
It is now a month later and I have played the bass every single day but one. I am in love with being a complete beginner on a musical instrument. It’s the first time I’ve experienced that since 1984!
I was actually struggling with musical motivation during the entire quarantine. I was still playing the tuba some because I’ve been teaching lessons but with every single gig cancelled, and so much going on in life and the world, I wasn’t feeling it. The bass has actually inspired me to play more tuba! And I’ve even started playing a little piano again! Wut??
I have since gotten an amp, a strap and a bass stand. I’m basically pro at this point!
Anyways, if you find this interview 10% as inspiring as I did then you should watch it right now. Incredible stuff.
Thanks for the inspiration, Marty!
(You can find the show notes for this episode over at Pedal Note Media.)
This is a fantastic interview with James Clear, author of the book Atomic Habits.
I am an audiobook person. I bought Atomic Habits on Audible and I was less than 30 minutes into it before I hopped on Amazon and bought the hardcover version. This is a reference book that is filled with data while being incredibly easy to read.
To say something is life-changing is cliche. But this book has changed me as a father, a performer, a teacher, basically in every way.
I really enjoyed this short interview with James and I bet you will too.
And for those interested, I spoke about Atomic Habits in the very short TEM167.
Hello there!
It’s been a long time sine I’ve checked in on this blog. Life has been good but busy. Sound familiar?
But everything has come to a screeching halt. All gigs cancelled. All in-person lessons cancelled. School cancelled for my wife. School cancelled for my son. It’s crazy.
For those of us trying to take our private teaching online, Chris Bill has put together an incredible resource. He lists the platforms to use and then both traditional and non-traditional ways for you to utilize this technology for your students.
Whether you have taught online in the past or are just trying to begin, this is a really helpful list.
And be on the lookout for an episode of The Brass Junkies that drops tomorrow featuring Chris talking all about online teaching.
Stay safe everyone!
25 years ago today was possibly the most validating day of my life.
I took Sam Pilafian to his first ever Phish show and he completely lost his mind.
It was maybe during the third song of my first ever Phish show (the previous New Year's Eve) when I thought "Sam has to see this band." It became my mission to get those five humans in the same room.
I flew from Chicago down to Phoenix with the sole purpose of taking him to the 12/9/94 Phish show at the Mesa Amphitheater, even though it was under the guise of "staying in touch with him and checking out ASU for graduate school." I was only a sophomore LMAO (Thanks for the plane ticket Mom + Dad!)
Mesa Amphitheatre
The band came out and launched into a tune called Llama which was at about 180 bpm. Sam's eyes were on the band and I my eyes were glued to him. He was staring without any expression whatsoever. He was giving me nothing. He seemed to be into it but just standing there like a statue.
Trey Anastasio's guitar solo on this version was crazy. Lots of noise and effects. Angular and almost violent while slowly building like a giant angry roar. Just before it peaked, the drummer, Jon Fishman, played a measure of quarter-note triplets on the kick drum underneath the madness.
That drum fill was the precise moment when Sam, who was still standing completely still, suddenly unleashed a double fist pump and at the top of his lungs screamed "%&@$ YEAH!!!" He didn't yell this towards me. He yelled it AT THE BAND. He got "IT" instantly. What they were capable of individually. How cohesive of a chamber group they were. The whole thing. Like, all of it.
After the first tune he said to me something to the effect of "Okay Hitz I get it!" That was already obvious but still filled my heart with pride. Can't put into words how validating the first five minutes of that show were for me as a musician and a human.
The rest of the first set could not have been drawn up any better to show off everything the band could do to a musician like Sam. During the second song's guitar solo, the entire band diminuended until they all completely dropped out except for Trey. He is playing unaccompanied at pp and eventually the rest of the band rejoins him as softly as they can. They then execute one big crescendo to ff together until it all peaks. A band playing pp at an outdoor rock concert literally moments after the the violent, tweaked wall of sound opener. Sam was floored.
The third tune was a song called Guyute, which is one of the most intricate and complex compositions in their entire repertoire. And they nailed the shit out of it. Like walk off the stage positive you advanced to the next round nailed the shit out of it. Again, he was floored.
I could speak at length tune by tune on Sam's reactions but I won't. The perfectly executed accelerando in Sparkle. A barbershop quartet tune. A couple of acoustic bluegrass tunes. Sam commenting on the stage presence of the drummer for his two humorous solo numbers "What a showman. He had that crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. That's how you do it." The versatility they displayed took his breath away.
He saw all-time versions of three Phish tunes that might all be on their Mount Rushmore: Antelope, You Enjoy Myself and Tweezer. The Tweezer is a 26-minute monster jam that featured the jam of another one of their tunes embedded in the middle of it. That jam featured one giant, Mahler-esque build that when it peaked had Sam smiling from ear to ear.
Sam went to a number of other Phish shows in his life. Some with me and some on his own. He got it. He really did. And he bent over backwards while I was his Graduate TA to help cover my studio responsibilities so I could continue to get to shows (which was hard while living in Arizona!) He knew how much they meant to my musical development and my soul.
Sam was one of the first people I called when I found out I was going to be sharing the stage with Trey Anastasio and the National Symphony Orchestra back in 2013. He was almost happier than me! Almost...
So if you see me smiling extra wide tonight from the podium at the Kennedy Center, yes I'm happy as hell to be conducting another Tuba Christmas. But I also might be thinking about Sam's involuntary double fist pump during Llama 25 years ago tonight which holds a very special place in my heart.
The following comes from Episode 11 of the Performance & Pedagogy Podcast:
Remember that when we are practicing we are the student and we are the teacher as well. Treat ourselves like the student. Be kind to the student. If you are a teacher and you have ever had a student who could not get past something, do you ever just get really mad at them? Do you ever yell at them? Do you ever make it personal and pass judgment in their direction that they can't do this one particular thing in this particular moment? No?
“If you are a teacher and you have ever had a student who could not get past something, do you ever just get really mad at them? Do you ever yell at them? No?
Well guess what. We do that kind of crap all the time to ourselves when we are in the practice room.”
Well guess what. We do that kind of crap all the time to ourselves when we are in the practice room.
We move the goal posts for a student when it's needed, right? Sometimes you have to break down the problem into a more manageable chunk. Sometimes you have to put the problem down for five minutes and get a little momentum, mental or otherwise, and then pick it back up and try again. But we will always move the goal posts for our students.
In fact that's one of our most useful roles as a teacher: showing them how the path to getting to the mountaintop of any given proble might not just be tonguing something fast enough or getting the fingers right or memorizing something better. Sometimes it's linear and then there's all the other times.
But we sure as hell aren't just stubborn while setting them up to fail over and over again and then being baffled or passing judgment when they snap. Sometimes snapping means shutting down. Sometimes snapping means lashing out at themselves or someone else. So don't treat yourself that way in the practice room, which I think we can all be prone to do.
This is where ego comes in. I know that I can fall into this trap of thinking ‘I should be able to do this’. Or ‘my student can do this better than I can right now’ or ‘I could play this three years ago’ or ‘I can't believe how much time this has taken me.’ There's a lot of should’s in there.
Am I looking for results or am I looking to placate my ego is really the question that I always have to be asking myself. And if I'm being frank, I don't think that I'm below average in terms of the ego thing. I don't think that I struggle with that more than the average human. But that last part is important. I am a human which means that I occasionally struggle with it. ‘My son should be behaving better in this restaurant because I've spent so much time teaching him what the proper behavior is in a restaurant’ is the kind of thought that can frequently be going through my head. And the last part of that thought is true! I have spent a lot of time teaching him. And yet he is behaving exactly how he's behaving and me reacting is not getting him to to amend his behavior, right?
I need to have this exact same approach to myself when I am practicing. I must actively avoid the should’s and only deal with reality, whatever that may look like in that moment. I must avoid talking to myself in that unhelpful, fear-based, ego-driven way when I am in the practice room. That's very important for me to remember.
Did you know there’s a Performance & Pedagogy Podcast?
Become a Patreon patron of The Brass Junkies to hear every episode as well as the Jacobs Quotes Podcast, the Music Practice Coach Podcast, and more!
For Episode 13 of the Jacobs Quotes Podcast I have the usual two quotes from Arnold Jacobs but also one from a jazz legend!
"Play known material from memory. Spend time learning to tell a story. Sing the music."
"Suck in air and the brain orders the machine of the body to perform correctly."
Bill Evans: “Keep searching for that sound in your head until it becomes a reality.”
Enjoy!
The Jacobs Quotes Podcast is available exclusively to Patreon patrons of The Brass Junkies.
Click here to become one today and unlock a treasure trove of bonus content including the Performance & Pedagogy Podcast, the Music Practice Coach Podcast from Lance LaDuke and much more!
