TEM189: Dale Trumbore Quotes

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TEM189: Dale Trumbore Quotes

This episode of TEM features my favorite quotes from my conversation with composer Dale Trumbore in TEM144.

Quotes:

  • “My idea of success as I defined it as I was 18 was ‘I will know I am successful when I am making my living as a composer’ and that’s shifted over the years as I mentioned before. I have eight piano students. I’m happy to have them. I’m happy to have a source of steady income.”

  • “I love having the morning to do business things and the afternoon to do creative things. Again, that’s what works for me. I know everyone’s different. But once you find your own personal creative rhythm you should do everything in your power to make that possible and to create and carve out that space for yourself.”

  • “That particular essay is also about not getting so attached to particular performers. Like, ‘oh if this one chorus just did my music I would feel like I made it. I’d feel like I was finally successful. I’d get a ton more commissions as a result. That might be true, but looking at my career, and looking at my friends’ careers too, it is very rare that one single performance has that kind of effect.”

  • “Feeling like you have any obligation to put anything on your website is a recipe for disaster I think. It’s up to you completely how you structure your website and what you put on it and why.”

  • "You do all this research and it might take five minutes. You don't have to dig deep into the history of what this ensemble has done. But you get a really good feeling for the kind of music that they do and then you look at your own catalog and you see what music you have that would be a good fit for them. An actual, real good fit. And then you say something like 'I think this piece would be a really good fit for you because I've noticed that you loved doing this piece' or 'you did a really beautiful performance of this piece and so I thought you might enjoy my piece."

  • "I've found too that just labeling things when they come up is so helpful. Recognizing that something is a pattern and that it comes up every time and knowing that you can be like 'Oh, this is the day where I hate everything I've written and tomorrow or two days later it's gonna be fine again.' That helps you move through it, again, without attaching any additional stress or anxiety to that moment."

  • "It's okay if things take time and they will take time. And if you set a very, very narrow, specific goal for yourself you're not very likely to succeed."

Links:

Want to help the show? Here's a couple of ways you can do that!

1. Help me get to my next goal of $100 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. My next Apple Podcasts goal is 150 ratings and 75 reviews. Take just a minute to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to help me get there. Thank you!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

TEM152: David Taylor Quotes

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TEM152: David Taylor Quotes

This episode features thoughts on my favorite quotes from the conversation I had with David Taylor in TEM137: How "Overnight Success” David Taylor Was Named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe List by Working 70-Hour Weeks for Years.

Quotes:

  • “I cut myself some slack in regards to it. That's why at the beginning I thought, ‘I need to be an expert at everything and I need to make sure I'm infused by everything’ and I'm (now) aware that I'm not going to be totally passionate about every single element of the business.”

  • “I totally agree about sort of giving someone a leash to run. I've really had the most amazing orchestra manager intern this summer. We have this whole job description. You do librarian duties, all this stuff, and then we made the decision to go completely digital and use iPads, so her whole job description changed. Then all the staff meet for the first time on the course as well so it was jumping straight into the fire and she just absolutely smashed it. So I'd go to ask how things were going and she'd already thought of all the problems that were coming up, already fixed them all and had already solved them without me having to worry about anything. When it works well, it's an absolute dream. Once you meet people you get on with creatively and you respect I think it makes it much easier to do the navigating side of things.”

  • “This is the most amazing time for anyone to create any business or do anything to improve themselves. In the past, let's say even 20 years ago, I'd not be able to do this. Before, you'd have to go to a library and go and talk to the clerk and work out what books you might want and go and find them. Read the back of them. Make the choice which one you want to take home. Take it home. Read it. Find out it's not good. Come back. Even after three weeks you only learn one thing. Whereas now at your fingertips you can find a YouTube tutorial or a blog that someone has done that can tell you how to do it within two minutes and not leave your house or have to put anything over on top of your pajamas. It's unbelievable.”

  • “I think we're living through the most amazing period of change, not just society-wise, but also in classical music. The organizations, particularly in the UK, that are in the establishment just haven't worked out what's going on and aren't adapting to societal change and the technology change as well. I think they're miles behind in general. So you can completely carve your own path by working out how you can get round these gatekeepers now.”

  • “Of late I've had a little bit of attention, people want me to go and talk at places. I find it quite interesting because I'm doing exactly what I was doing three and a half years ago. Nothing's changed. But all of a sudden, one thing leads to another and you get more awareness as to who you are and what you're doing. Similar thing, ‘Oh, you're an overnight success’ and it's, ‘No, I've been working like 70 hours a week for the last however long. It's quite a time now.’”

  • “Also, even though I failed at the YouTube channel, it was an important learning success. The skills I learned from video editing and filming were then taken and put into the orchestra in summer. So it's not as though it's been an entire waste of time. I've come through it learning more and learning more about how to talk to people, learning some filming skills. So it's been beneficial in the long run. But yeah, it's totally important to talk about when things go wrong and I'd love to say the last three and a half years have been perfect and I'm some sort of demi-god, but sadly that's not the case.”

Want to help the show? Here's a couple of ways you can do that!

1. Help me get to my next goal of $100 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. My next iTunes goal is 100 ratings and 75 reviews. Take just a minute to leave a rating and review on iTunes to help me get there. Thank you!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

TEM136: Deanna Swoboda Quotes

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TEM136: Deanna Swoboda Quotes

This episode features thoughts on my favorite quotes from the conversation I had with Deanna Swoboda in TEM135.

Quotes:

  • "I had designed a program, an assembly program, that could be turned into something that people would be interested in having at their schools. It was a program that music stores and music dealers were interested in collaborating with in terms of recruitment. Sam Pilafian really pushed me to organize that program into a business."

  • "Working in a nonprofit organization gave me skills, business skills…how to organize my thoughts of forming a business, and how to market, and how to plan, and how to organize."

  • "I think as musicians, sometimes we think about success, what success means to us individually. We really think it should be from point A to point B, and it should be very clean. In reality, it's the zig and the zag…the roads less traveled that you decide to take that have a direct influence upon your career."

  • "Really, at the heart of entrepreneurship is opportunity recognition. I think a lot of people may attribute their career to fate or destiny, being in the right place at the right time, et cetera, getting discovered or something, getting lucky. There is something to this. But I think that's a little bit of a passive approach. I really believe that it is that combination of talent, hard work, your work ethic, your attitude, and your determination and perseverance, and recognizing opportunities when they come your way."

  • "It's so important to be honest with yourself about what is truly going to make you happy. I think that it can change throughout life."

  • "Speaking of failures, I've had so many failures during my career. Without failures, there wouldn't have been self-improvement and moving into what's next. How do I do this slightly different so that it works, and it's a success."

  • "Everything leads to something else. Every person that you meet knows somebody else who might have an idea for you or be interested in what it is that you have to offer. Everyone and every one of their friends is a potential customer."

  • "You also have to communicate what makes you distinctive, and what makes your thing distinctive, and how you set yourself apart."

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon (only $8 to go!) by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. I am ONE REVIEW SHY of my next goal of 75 ratings on iTunes. Who is going to help me out by taking just a couple of minutes on iTunes and then emailing me to tell me they were the 75th person?

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

TEM133: Alarm Will Sound Quotes (TEM Short)

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TEM133: Alarm Will Sound Quotes (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts on my favorite quotes from Michael Clayville and Gavin Chuck of Alarm Will Sound in TEM132.

Quotes:

  • "We basically made a commitment to each other to continue to grow with each other. And what that means I think is that, the sustainability of the group is very much about giving everybody in the group a stake.”

  • "Why is it that we stuck together and what's different between us and those trios and those, you know billions of other small ensembles that exist in colleges around the country? I think a lot of it comes back to communication and feeling that your voice is heard, and feeling respected and appreciated by the people around you, even if you don't always get your way.”

  • "The skills and talents that you've built up as a musician, working collaboratively, having disagreements that are productive you know, learning to actually harmonize music together, all those things and many more, are skills that translate into organizational culture. If you can take that kind of thinking, then you're essentially repurposing a set of skills that you already have, and refining them towards I think a goal that becomes a sustainable career model.”

  • "So it's an experience that we can share with people who may not have heard things like this before. They may come into our concert and not know what to expect, and come out maybe, you know, completely blown away by, you know, the fact that they never heard anything like that. Or, they come out scratching their heads but they still had an experience. They had something that they can say was not run of the mill, and I think that's generally what you get out of an Alarm Will Sound show.”

  • "I have a feeling I don't know if this is true that people ... musicians that go through conservatory music schools, tend to need to think about the experience of a concert much more than say somebody who studied theater or dance. I know that dancers and theater people are trained from the beginning that they are performing from the moment they are in the wing. Everything about that is a performance, and that takes into account what the audience is experiencing. By contrast, when you look at say a symphony orchestra, before the concert quote unquote begins, there's a bunch of people that are sitting there disengaged or when they stop playing, they disengage and it seems that they are not thinking about the fact that actually the experience is continuous over those two hours or whatever it is. And maybe that partly comes from the culture where we focus so much on the notes and the technique that we think are our art and our performance lies in just between the double bars. And one thing that I want to always stress when I talk to people just starting out in their careers as performers is to learn something from our colleagues in theater and dance and to think about the concert as an experience. And one that has to be shaped just as much as you're shaping phrases within a piece, you have to think about what happens between the pieces. What happens in the two minutes before the concert and the 30 minutes after the concert. Those are all important parts of the experiences. When you think that way, it's going to lead you to more innovative and more rewarding involvement with your audience."

  • "So it's a constant thing you know, I'm on it every day. Marketing is not going to do itself, there's nobody sitting at home at any given second thinking that they want to hear us play, but hopefully we're trying to build that. And so, they are thinking that more and more frequently. It's like ‘Oh, hey, I remember that tune, I want to listen to that again.' So I'm just trying to get some mental space, some brain space and say hey we're there, and take a listen and if you make it to a show that'd be great, come on out to a show, too.”

  • "I think there are so many interesting things happening in new music today, and really in performing arts across the board. It's a really great time to start something new and to come up with a new idea. I mean we have the incredible power of social media that can make the barriers to entry lower than they were maybe 30 years ago. At the same time, the digitally driven world, where everybody has something in their hands, I think makes live performance more valuable. Having an experience that you share with an audience is becoming more valuable. And I think that's the really interesting moment that we're living in right now, for young musicians to be really thoughtful and intentional.”

Links:

  • TEM132: Gavin Chuck and Michael Clayville of Alarm Will Sound on Having Conversations With Your Fans, Creative Collaborations and Sharing Meaningful Experiences With Your Audience (TEM Rewind)

  • Alarm Will Sound

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon (only $8 to go!) by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. I'm up to 69 ratings and 46 reviews on iTunes. Help me reach my goals of 75 ratings and 50 reviews (so close!) by taking just a couple of minutes on iTunes!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

TEM131: Jeff Nytch Quotes (TEM Short)

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TEM131: Jeff Nytch Quotes (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts on my favorite quotes from Jeff Nytch in TEM130.

Quotes:

  • “The lesson that I try to share with my students about that is that no educational experience, no thing that you throw yourself into, is ever wasted. Even if it might seem at the time like it's a dead end, or you pursue something for a while, and you say, "Well, I guess that's not what I want to do." It still has intrinsic value, and you'll be amazed at how sometimes things can come back to serve your career in new ways, in ways you never would have guessed at the time."

  • "I would look at them and say, 'There's no way that I could ever be as good as they are as teachers' not realizing, of course, that they'd been doing it for 30 years.”

  • "I spent a lot of the book talking about things that musicians do already that are, in fact, entrepreneurial, to help dissolve this idea that these two things are mutually exclusive. So, I talk about customer focus, for instance. Well, that just means that we are trying to reach our audiences. Isn't that what we all say we want to do? Entrepreneurship gives us a vehicle for doing that.”

  • "One of the most important things that any entrepreneurial venture has to have is that there's something distinctive about it, something defines itself as being different from or better than whatever else is out there. And if that's at the core of thinking entrepreneurially, then for us as artists, that means our artistic voice, our whatever it is that I personally bring to the world that is uniquely mine, that's my most valuable asset. I don't want to compromise that. If I compromise that, that's not only quote-unquote 'selling out' or 'hurting myself artistically.' That's just not good business.”

  • "Entrepreneurs are constantly asking questions. Both, 'How can I do what I'm doing right now better or differently' But I think even before they get to that point, young musicians need to answer the question, what is it that they're really passionate about? And not just the music. What else are you passionate about?"

  • "Yeah, and that's entrepreneurship, really, at its core, because it's about identifying that opportunity that solves somebody else's problem."

Links:

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon (I'm getting close!) by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. I'm up to 62 ratings and 42 reviews on iTunes. Help me reach my goals of 75 ratings and 50 reviews by taking just a couple of minutes on iTunes!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

Nobody starts on top

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"I'm a big believer in stepping stones. It's very rare in life that all of a sudden at the snap of a finger or the drop of a hat you are on top of the world with everything you possibly could ever imagine for your career. It's a process, and I think it's really good for young artists, or just up and coming artists, to realize that. So, as long as you're going on the trajectory that you want to see for yourself, you should consider yourself a success at all times.”

—Ranaan Meyer of Time from Three (from TEM125)

Ranaan Meyer.jpeg

LOVE this reminder from one of the best and most successful bass players in the world, Ranaan Meyer.

This quote has extra meaning for me because Ranaan has been one of my best friends for over 20 years and it reminds me that he was "just" a really good bass player who happened to be a ridiculously nice guy when I met him.

He wasn't one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the music business. (yet)

He wasn't a household name for bass players. (yet)

He wasn't living in a huge house with an awesome wife and two beautiful children. (yet)

The fact that nobody starts on top is obvious when we focus on the people we have known for a long time who happen to be successful. We also know that the Ranaan's in our lives weren't "overnight sensations'' (whatever the hell that means.) It was a process.

I remember getting a call from Ranaan telling me about Time for Three when they had just started out. I could hear the joy in his voice. But he certainly didn't call to tell me he had formed a band a week ago and that they were already booked to headline shows in Australia! There was a very slow build to their seemingly meteoric rise.

Hell, 95% of all success stories I know in the music business sound something like Ranaan's. Supremely talented and motivated musicians who keep showing up and keep working their asses off who eventually find the right people to partner with or the right niche or get their “big break” (or insert just about anything here) and the rest is history.

Unless you are longtime friends with Ranaan or Sara Bareilles or Jacomo Bairos, you first hear about them when the rest of us do. When they've already "made it." But we always have to keep in mind that just because we weren't hip to their journey before they made it onto our radar doesn't mean it wasn't a long journey filled with lots of stepping stones.

So focus on your next stepping stone and you might be lucky enough to work your ass off until someday someone labels you an "overnight sensation."

TEM123: Chrysanthe Tan Quotes (TEM Short)

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TEM123: Chrysanthe Tan Quotes (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts on my favorite quotes from Chrysanthe Tan in TEM122.

Quotes:

  • "It’s just the cost of not being yourself makes it so not worth it. I mean I can't even imagine advancing in my life and career turning 40, 50, 60, 70, and then realizing how many decades I just wasn't being myself. That's ... I can't imagine that. That sound torturous.”

  • "I grew up either you're going to be a soloist or if you're not good enough you might try to get into an orchestra, but even that's rare. Then you'll probably have a teaching studio, and otherwise just find another job or good luck or your path should end here. I never wanted to do any of those. So I thought 'Well, I guess there's no spot for me.’”

  • “Suzanne is a coach that I've had for almost two years now, just on a more regular basis. And then when I first got back from tour I signed up for sort of a bootcamp course with a coach and got additional coaching from a different person as well. That was necessary for me to ... I needed a whole mindset shift basically. I had so many hang ups and had thought to myself for so long 'Oh, I'm a composer. I'm this and that.' But I wasn't actually going out and doing the things that I wanted to do. And there was some road blocks. I was tired of the inertia. I needed someone else to...shine a spotlight on what I was doing, and make me look at myself, and kind of kick me in the ass a little bit."

  • "It's really nerve wrecking for me to rely on other people and to rely on such big structures as the pop world, as the gig world, TV world. It makes me really nervous to rely on that for my income, for those big ticket checks. I would much rather craft my own world, my own career, my own path that allows me to be me so I don't have that straight jacket feeling."

  • "Yes, don't judge someone else's highlights reel to your behind the scenes bloopers."

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. Thanks to everyone who helped me get to my goal of 50 ratings on iTunes! I appreciate it very much!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

TEM108: Seth Hanes Quotes (TEM Short)

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Seth Hanes is a horn player, digital marketer and author of "Break into the Scene: A Musician's Guide to Making Connections, Creating Opportunities, and Launching a Career".

This TEM Short features thoughts on my favorite Seth Hanes quotes from TEM107.

Quotes:

  • "The tactics don't dictate the strategy. The strategy should dictate the tactics."

  • "I think the first step that anyone should take, before they do anything...don't make a Facebook page, don't even make a website, don't do anything. The first thing you should do is first figure out what is the product or service that you have that solves an actual problem that people have? You have to identify a problem that you can solve."

  • "That's how I got on all of these (podcasts and blogs.) How can I be even kind of useful to this person? That's how I did that. And it cost me zero dollars."

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. Help me get to my goal of 50 ratings at iTunes (I'm only two away!) by leaving a rating and review.

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

TEM104: Dr. John Parks Quotes (TEM Short)

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TEM104: Dr. John Parks Quotes (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts on my favorite Dr. John Parks quotes from TEM103.

Quotes:

  • "I wasn't good at this thing, and I wasn't good at this thing, and I was kind of good at this thing and then realized it was really hard. So instead of quitting, I just decided, 'I'm gonna practice my butt off'. And so I did and I started getting a lot better and then I started getting addicted to being better."

  • "I think the goal for every teacher is to teach your students to be their own teacher and there's no better way to do that than by listening to recordings of yourself. It's always humbling. No matter how well you are playing, it's always humbling because it never lies to you.”

  • "We've recorded several CD's of the percussion ensemble and it's amazing. We get in there to record and the red light goes on and they don't even flinch. You can take really good guys and put them in a recording situation and say you're rolling and all of sudden they (are freaking out.)"

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including topics discussed, links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. Help me get to my goal of 50 ratings at iTunes by leaving a rating and review.

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Joey Santillo