The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 112 Tom Hooten: Shifting Perspectives

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 112. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, violinist, teacher, and high performance coach for musicians, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing amazingly well as you're listening to this episode. Today, you're in for quite a treat. I speak with Tom Hooten, principal trumpet player with the L.A. Philharmonic.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Tom is one of the world's most prominent classical trumpeteers today. He can be heard on numerous recordings with the L.A. Phil, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the National Brass Ensemble. He began his career in the President's own United States Marine Band in Washington, D.C., where he was often a featured soloist. He went on to join the Indianapolis Symphony as assistant principal trumpet, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as principal trumpet, and the LA Phil in 2012. He released Trumpet Call, his first solo album, in 2011. Tom is an active soloist and chamber musician, and he has appeared with many orchestras and ensembles throughout the United States. He's also a passionate and dedicated educator teaching at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, and he leads online programs supporting trumpet players from all over the world. We cover lots of great topics in our conversation, including tips on how to prepare for auditions, the importance of meeting ourselves where we are, exercising our muscle of vulnerability and connection, maintaining skills, and building a tailored practice routine.

Starting point is 00:02:03 This was such a fun conversation for me. As he says himself, Tom is not a trumpet player. He's a musician who plays a trumpet and a very inspiring musician he is. Be ready to walk away highly motivated and fully inspired by his energy and his wisdom. Let's go to the show. tom hooten it's a real treat to have you on the show today thank you it's great to be here with you tom as i've shared in the introduction you're the principal trumpet with the la phil but you also do so much more in parallel with your performance life you're also an incredible

Starting point is 00:02:55 pedagogue and communicator you teach privately you lead online programs and you offer remarkably valuable content on social media i resonate so much with so many of the concepts that you share and you know this and i cannot wait to take a deep dive into mindful practice ideas with you but before please tell us about you and your musical journey and how you got to where you are today. Sure. Thanks for having me and all those things back at you. I just really admire the content and your program. I'm always impressed with how organized and thoughtful your content is. So thank you for that. So my journey, I was a little bit unconventional in the way that I started as a young musician. I started piano when I was probably seventh grade and did not have any

Starting point is 00:03:50 sense of taking it seriously, although I was fairly good at it. But I didn't, I played trumpet in band in seventh grade, but I never really, I had no clue at any inkling about what it meant to be a professional musician or anything like that. So I enjoyed playing. Although I never had a trumpet teacher till I was a senior in high school. I would just kind of played whenever I felt like it. And I practiced piano because I really enjoyed that. I felt like it was a little bit more, um, over time I learned about myself that I'm a really visual learner. And so piano was fun because I could see the keys I could, uh, you know, and, and I could just kind of visualize how I wanted to put things together, whether it's like a little Bach invention or something like

Starting point is 00:04:31 that. Um, but flash forward to college. Um, I still didn't have any idea that you could be a professional musician. I didn't know I lived in Tampa, Florida, not a really hugely thriving classical music scene. And so I remember I decided, well, I guess I'm pretty good at trumpet. And I started taking a little bit of lessons, but I still was incredibly behind, especially compared to today's advanced high school players. So I did my entire undergrad degree. And for those of you that are instrumentalists listening to this, which I imagine is most of you, um, my embouchure or like the fundamental technique of being a brass player was really messed up. Um, and you know, it would sort of be like a professional runner that tries to run with

Starting point is 00:05:21 their feet, three feet apart. It was like, well, I could run, but it was really right there. Yeah, exactly. And just imagine what would that sound like, you know, for, if you were a trumpet player with your lips all messed up and trying to play and you could run, you could have some flexibility, but there would be kind of like a brick wall that you would hit. And I hit that wall at the end of my undergrad year, my senior year in college. And I was practicing. I was really trying hard. And my gut told me that you are not going to get where you're going. I didn't know anything other than that, except what my gut was screaming at me. So I met a man named Armando Gattala, who was the former principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony,

Starting point is 00:06:11 an incredible, and for my, for the purposes of this podcast, my, what was incredibly influential to me from him was not only his trumpet teaching, but he was an amazing person. He was generous, strong disposition. He was caring, thoughtful, all these things. And he was as much a grandfather father as I ever had, because I didn't really know my grandparents. So he and I decided to do an embouchure change. And essentially, this was incredibly significant for my career, my development, because when I started grad school, I started over. I relearned to play the trumpet from the ground up. And for about nine months, there was psychological turmoil. I was depressed. I was frustrated. In a good way, I was naive. I just kept working hard. But I was having a tough

Starting point is 00:07:11 time basically relearning to put my feet closer together, if you will, in the running analogy and saying like, well, my goodness, some things are the same, but a lot feels really different. I lost my confidence. Any semblance of an identity that I was a trumpet player was lost because I could not demonstrate. And so the silver lining of that, the significance of that was, it really was a major shift in mindset about where do I look for ways to improve? In a sense, there was nothing, I didn't feel at the time that there was anything given to me like, oh, build on this strength. It felt like nothing. I couldn't play for nine months. So, you know, that was a long time ago. It was 20 something years ago. But to condense that, that started a shift in realizing

Starting point is 00:08:09 I'm not a trumpet player. I'm a musician that is learning to play the instrument that is the trumpet. And the beautiful thing was that I felt like from then on, I had nothing to lose. I'd already hit rock bottom. You know what? I'll try anything. I will try anything. I'll ask anything. I'm okay. Everybody knows I can't do this because listen to me play. So fine, I'll ask anybody how to do anything. And that was a major shift. I'd already had some of that mindset, but it was just, I poured gas on it because it was like, anybody can help me. And so I started also the idea of how important mindset was. Like I mentioned before, saying that I wasn't a trumpet player was liberating because if I had a bad day, I didn't feel like a bad person. um and so that was really great for me to to start the evolution of understanding how important

Starting point is 00:09:11 mindset um the basic psychology of how to improve were really pivotal to me um and then later on as i started having some success in auditions i my first job was in the president's own marine band then I went to associate principal in Indianapolis principal in Atlanta symphony and then now I ended up here in Los Angeles but you can see from that it was a very step stone you know it was sort of like okay I figured this out okay like then I would ask myself how do I continue to get better what are those things and it shifted between each of those steps it was sometimes it was mindset Sometimes it was a physical distinction. Sometimes it was like, I need more experience.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Sometimes it was like, you need to find a better teacher. And so I had probably more lessons after college than I did my entire undergrad and grad school combined because I realized that I had a long way to go. So that's kind of like me in a nutshell. And then in the last couple of years, I've gained the confidence of sharing some of my experiences with you know a wider audience whether it's like my trumpet mastery course or my USC students or any kind of private students

Starting point is 00:10:33 and to really I'm passionate about meeting the student where they are getting them to meet themselves where their talent ends I feel like that's really important and to realize there's no shame in that. That's actually really normal. And so I'm extremely grateful and happy about the opportunity to create an online curriculum that encompasses all of these things. And today, some of those things might include general basic psychology of how we understand failure to different types of meditation, whether it's kundalini or osha chakra breathing, becoming more aware of the body. And how is that an experience for each of us very personally? How do we hold emotions, emotions like fear or joy? Are there new ways

Starting point is 00:11:34 to experience joy, not just in the mind, in the body? I'm fascinated about that. And how do we bring that um in holistically to uh our musical you know our musical offering to people that listen i i love that that just juices me i get chills thinking about that because that's when the full experience of what a musician is like becomes just even more special you know to the audience that the audience member can feel or you can channel a composer or you can channel an emotion authentically, you know, as the, as the instrumentalist, I just, that really excites me. So that's kind of the journey in a couple minutes there. And I'm excited to see where it goes. I don't know where it goes from here. But right now I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying that kind of

Starting point is 00:12:28 experience at this point. Tom, that's an incredible journey. And thank you so much for sharing this. I don't even know where to start to unpack everything that you've shared and as I've said already I feel like we have so many shared values this aspect of joy the the mindfulness all of those things but I feel that you're such a thoughtful musician and hearing this story explains so much of that because I'm sure and as you've said yourself these difficulties that you had to work through it seems to have given you such a willingness to soak in everything and you had to as you said work through so many difficult moments and of self-doubt and it's really remarkable to hear this because I feel that a lot of young musicians out there probably feel that

Starting point is 00:13:21 the professionals that are working today might have had a straightforward line from picking up the instrument at five to lending a position and we're not always aware of someone's intricate journey through you know working out difficulties one sentence that you said in particular really is so important to hear is about how you want the students to meet themselves where their talent Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just find that that seems to be the first, let's acknowledge that, that nobody ever in the world of being an instrumentalist had all the talent to create the career that they might want to build. we all have different levels of strengths and weaknesses and and i would even encourage the listener to acknowledge what kind of you know air quotes here talent they have and it it might be things that seem like insignificant to being a musician but i again i i challenge the listener to

Starting point is 00:14:28 to be open-minded about like what does organization have to do with this like if you're a person that's like you're just really good at being organized like well that's not gonna yeah that could really really be an asset, um, in terms of your ability to, to grow. But, but if, but if you're a person that's the opposite, let's say your person's incredibly disorganized, well, that could also be a big detriment to your ability to improve. So, you know, whether, whichever side of the fence you fall in that just one little topic is that it's important to be willing to, and I'm not saying that we all need to just tackle all of our weaknesses, because if you don't master those, you're not going to be successful but it is important i think for us to acknowledge from

Starting point is 00:15:11 sort of a bird's eye view of like what here's another example that's maybe more relevant to being a musician is that like my wife she can listen to a song on the radio and pretty much like after one or two times she could probably figure out the melody on trumpet like there's just like a seamless like she hears it and she can almost like she knows what buttons to push you know, on the trumpet. It's like, I am just not like that. And sometimes hearing something and like really clearly in my head is just not as easy as it is for her. And so just simply me acknowledging that, like, oh, is that something that as a college student, you think someday you're like, oof, maybe this is not, I'm just not cut out for that. It's like, no, that's my talent

Starting point is 00:15:59 is not there but what would it be like for me to work on that as a baby like what would it be like it would be like well try to play um mary had a little lamb in all keys okay i'll start there and just because somebody else in my same class is sitting there playing changes on you know caravan you know like it's like i'm not even close that but doesn't matter and in fact i think you You know, that kind of transparency, that kind of willingness to meet yourself wherever it might be. It might be remedial. That's okay. It's totally fine.

Starting point is 00:16:36 Yes. I love that sentence. I say that to my clients all the time, too. It's one of my favorites. And I feel like this is probably, I mean, do you think I'm wrong? This is probably the reason why you're so great at helping so many people is because you have spent time researching, dedicating yourself to figuring things out. That's probably one of the reasons why you're so great at communicating effectively how to practice. Perhaps.

Starting point is 00:17:08 I mean, I think it really comes down to problem solving, you know. and and you're you have something that you're trying to do um and and if attempt one two three don't get you what you want well you know this is overly cliche but how many light bulbs did Edison try before you know and it's that and it's help it's in a way trying to help the student find that correct creative non-judgmental creative mindset that says like you know there's another book called Soprano on Her Head. What silly, crazy way could you devise that will help you find a distinction, to find a perspective, to understand context, to get out of ourselves, to understand what is it like for Renee to do that shift? I'm just going to sit there and

Starting point is 00:17:58 brainstorm and think about that. What does it feel like? I wonder how she's sitting. I wonder how she's breathing. I wonder what the tension is like in her arm. Does she hear it? Is she looking at the shift? Just to get kind of annoyingly curious and just ask a bazillion questions. And then you might, that little thought experiment might. And what I want to do is jump alongside the student. And I want to find out, I want to get behind their eyes and say, but what does this look like to them what are they not seeing what are they presuming is true that maybe doesn't have to be true that i love that that is just that juices me um and then when you see somebody have a light bulb like oh and then you know that i want to help students find that

Starting point is 00:18:51 because then if i can help that then implementing is like much easier but we need to we need to find like-minded viewpoints, context, perspective, self-awareness. Where is the sort of the blind spot? Right. Yes. This is so great. I love it. Tom, I know that you have a world premiere coming up very soon. Yes. A work by Esa-Pekka Salonen, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, no. This one's actually by Steve Mackey. He's like a shredding guitarist. That's amazing. Yeah. It's really challenging. one of the thing i'm really curious about and i'm sure you get that question asked all the time is your process in the practice room so maybe this could be a good example to use as to how you take a work from the beginning stages to the concert stage do you mind sharing a little bit about that

Starting point is 00:19:49 with us sure well i will say i mean i have done that in many ways but actually this is the first time I've ever done like a a piece that's been commissioned for me kind of it's not I don't think he's writing it for me but I mean it's been commissioned for the LA Phil with this performance so I've never actually done a full concerto new like this but um so I really had to think about it and some of the things in this really pushed me are really pushing me to uh my limits of endurance range different techniques different sound profiles um the title of the piece is trumpet fantasy or shivery which is like to make a like a calamity a noise and um there's 12 movements and so there were probably six to ten things in here that were like oh my goodness

Starting point is 00:20:44 this is really really hard i don't i've never had to do tongue slap before where i make a pitch by going and then immediately go to play like stuff like that. So let me back out in a second. So how do I, I tried to get clear on what do I want to happen? I think that's a great question for us. You know, if you're trying to do something, what is the end result? Well, I want the end result to, I want to be present on the stage when I'm playing this I want to be confident um I want to be relaxed to some degree I want to be prepared okay so let's let's start backing up from that so I started making a list and if if um if people want to go to my website tomhooden.com there's a practice chart there there's a self-assessment questionnaire that I can come back to in a second

Starting point is 00:21:41 that really plays a large part in how I teach. Um, so what I did is I, I just got really black and white about this. I said, all right, in this, this board, you see me behind here. I literally just erased it, um, this morning and, uh, you're hiding all the secrets. Yeah. Well, I, this was for my IG live this morning. Does that look, Oh, it is backwards. I mean, does it look backwards to you? Can you read that? No. Okay. I actually had to write it backwards for the, uh, IG live, But anyway, so what I had on this board here was a list of about 12 to 15 things, specific things. These are things that are going to need my consistent attention that I'm not going to be able to cram for. I'm not going to be able to just put together in a couple of days. So I wrote that list and I did a couple things. And maybe I'm jumping forward a little bit in some of the questions you might want to ask. But one of the most difficult things for at least the people that I coach trumpet is how do I create a routine? How do I do things like how do I manage my time? well. I mean, we can even go back to say like, are you planning your next day when you're going

Starting point is 00:22:55 to practice? Today's Friday. Do I know when I'm going to practice tomorrow? If I'm in college, it shouldn't be too hard to plan a couple of days in advance. Like here's what I'm going to practice. I'm actually, that's my job right now. My job is to practice. I'm going to put that on the schedule. Just like if I have to go to my other job where I make money right now, I'm making the investment. So, you know, it's really important for us to get into the driver's seat about that, like to be intentional about this time is my time. It's important to do that. And so, because if we could talk about all the practice techniques, all the practice charts in the world, but if you're not giving yourself the commitment of the time that it's going to take to

Starting point is 00:23:40 facilitate those things, well, then all we're doing is creating a frustration cocktail. It's not going to work. So I like that term frustration cocktail. I just made it up. I've had several of those. So, um, so what I did is I just get black and white. I I'm the first thing is I'm a hundred percent honest with myself. What can I do? What can I not do? Um, there's no judgment there. It's like, okay, I, I can't do these things and here's what they are. I'm going to implement a way to work on this. So there's an app that I use that your followers might be interested in. It's called Seconds Pro. Looks like this. And this is a workout interval trainer. And so if I wanted to create a new workout, there's different ones. You can see this is like a gear towards exercising, but there's

Starting point is 00:24:36 like Tabata timer, HIIT timer. But I can go to custom timer and I can start implementing trumpet, tonguing. How long? Five minutes. And then I go and I build another one. And so what I've done is I'll show you what I've built for this concerto. For the Mackie concerto, this is an hour and a half routine that I start. And it times through this and I say, look, lip trill is one of those things. Another thing, flugelhorn. I might want to go deeper on these, but if I definitely want to have incremental improvement on these over time which is really how we get better then high e there's i have about 75 high e's in this and it's extremely difficult um and so it keeps going through and i i know your viewers can't see this but this is basically like a

Starting point is 00:25:26 an interval trainer the app is called seconds pro so i create these programs for myself because i here's going back to like, my talent is not to be super focused for hours and hours. That is not my talent. I know that I am super easily distracted. I hate that. It's just, it's the way I'm wired right now. And I, and so rather than just say, oh, I'm an idiot. I can't do that. I'm going to meet myself and say like, hey, this timer is going to give you about a minute of rest and it's going to say beep go to the next thing because i could easily just stick on the first one for like 45 minutes and not get to the others so so this thing has there's 19 intervals rest is a large part of that and it goes through each

Starting point is 00:26:16 of these techniques and so i that's one that's one tool lever if you will that's helping me prepare for this. Another one might be a normal general practice thing. Like here's, here's, um, a routine and I have dozens of those that I've created, um, for myself. And so that there's one that helps me stay well-rounded. And then I will do that periodically, um, in tandem or not tandem in um sort of like seesaw between those you know um so that's that's one way um it and i'm focusing on technique right right now i'm focusing on tools that are going to help me have a musical offering um sometimes people will get critical of my teaching and and it it doesn't bother me um but they'll say like you talk a lot about technique you talk a lot about amateur yeah

Starting point is 00:27:15 And the reason is, for me, is that there were, there's still times where my technique dictates the, my lack of technique or lack of skill dictates the way the music goes. I don't like that. I think that goes for everybody too. Right. I mean, if there's a difficult passage that you have and there's a, you, it's hard and you kind of play it how you can play it, you don't have any options. That seems, that seems sad. It's like it would be awesome in the ideal world. You'd be like, well, I'd like to have I'd like to play it softer, faster, louder, slower, whatever. I could do all those things. And so I want to have those choices.

Starting point is 00:27:56 So I try to build in a fundamental base that is something I try to hit consistently, either daily or several times a week. And then I try to build around that sort of, you could think of it as like a core set of skills that is over time is atrophying unless I tend to it. So if your vision, if you're, if your listeners can visualize, imagine a circle and inside that circle is all of your skill. And if you don't tend to that, it'll just slowly shrink, right? Of course, if you don't practice things it'll shrink if i tend to it daily i can get that to grow well growing actually starts encompassing things that are outside of me now organic in organic nature so if i'm practicing single tonguing finger techniques and arpeggios and i get those things to a certain speed i can

Starting point is 00:28:56 play Petrushka, the solo in Petrushka, because my circle of skill encompasses that. So I hope that makes sense for your listeners. But that's kind of like, I hope that's clear. You know, there's the core, and then there's certain things that I'm trying to extend for this particular piece. And of course, there's the musical message of, you know, I'm studying the score, I'm trying to get in touch with what i want to communicate and making sure that my technique serves that this is such invaluable information and to tie it into something that you've said before is you met yourself where your talent ended and you figured out systems to overcome the challenges that you were facing and you really spent a lot of time thinking about ways to make all of these

Starting point is 00:29:51 visions come together. And one thing I want the listeners to keep in mind is a quote that I shared on social media recently about focusing less on the structure and more on the purpose, because I could feel that a lot of people would hear what you're just saying and try to mimic exactly those systems and methods that you've just described, which I'm sure would not be a bad thing. But it's Also, how can you take everything that Tom just said and turn that into a system that would work for you, be inspired by what you just said, have a little bit of introspection as to how you function and who you are, and then create a system that works for you as well? Well, I think the word that I would highlight and what you just said was create. Like, not just make, create, like from a place of what's the why? What does each person listening right now, what do they want to create? Not just, you know, of course, you want to create a routine. Okay, you want to create an exercise, but why? That's what you're saying. It's like, and then why, why, why, why, why? eventually you'll get to the point where you know it's really clear but um yeah we and you know mimicking it there's been lots of opinions about mimicking you know in classical music we we can

Starting point is 00:31:12 go too far i'll just stick with classic music for now but um lots of places mimicking is obviously a good thing if we go too far then it starts to lack creativity and i i'm going to just say i've been really guilty of this. As I get older, and as the people that I aspire to imitate or mimic, I don't know, I hope this doesn't sound egotistical, but like, where my skills start to be more parallel to theirs, then I become, I have become more and more free to feel like I can be more creative with the way I hear it, the way I think it should go, and using all of their inspiration in creating my own cocktail of how music can go or what I want to express or share. So I don't think imitation is bad, but it is not the end. It is the beginning of creating

Starting point is 00:32:12 your own version or journey. I love this. Tom, this month on the podcast and in the Mind Over finger facebook community i talk about audition preparation and i know that you've got some experience with this what is some advice that you would give the listeners on audition preparation it's a big topic but yeah some golden nuggets yeah sure so um again if you go to my website there's a practice chart there and this practice chart basically i can i'll try to keep it to two minutes here um what i basically did was i let's use a simple analogy of like i wanted to make a meal. And the meal was all of the pieces that were required for the audition. So it might be like a big smorgasbord, you know, it's going to be a little bit of everything. And that's, that's kind

Starting point is 00:33:00 of the point of the audition. It's like, can you know, can this chef make all these meals? And how, how different are they? How flexible are they? Is this how good can you use all the tools in your kitchen? So what I did was I created one practice chart, which you can see on my website, it. And I listed all of the excerpts on the left-hand side. And then it was little boxes for like the, the month, the days of the month. And I wanted to know like, how often was I getting to these? Because I wanted them at the end of the day, I wanted them to all feel close and fresh, right? Some of them I did every day, but others, I just kept on a couple of day of rotation. And that chart was important. Cause I would notice like, oh my God, that one that I just

Starting point is 00:33:43 don't feel good about, well, son of a gun. It's been two weeks since I played that one. You're like, okay, I'm not going to judge myself. It's just really clear. I don't like practicing that one. That's probably why it doesn't feel good. Then maybe the more important chart, I think it's the more important chart. I would look at that first list and I'd say, okay, these are the meals I need to create. What are my ingredients? And I started with the most simple. You need water. That's going to be air for brass players. I need, you know, and you keep going. You say, well, I need flour.

Starting point is 00:34:18 I need something crispy. I need something gooey. I need cheese. I need meat. You need all these different things. And what are those? What are those ingredients? So as a trombone player, I'll just brought all of a dozen here.

Starting point is 00:34:28 You need range. What's the range? Low and high. I need speed of fingers. Well, how fast? I need speed of tonguing. I need intervals. I need scales.

Starting point is 00:34:39 I need flexibility. I need loud. I need salt. And I just keep going. I'm like, holy cow, this is a lot. This is too much. That's why you have the chart. You're not supposed to keep track of it all in your head. It's too much. It's impossible. It's impossible for me. It was impossible for me. So what I would do, I would look at all those ingredients. Some of them I would do every day because it was like creating my core set of skills, which served probably 50, 60% of all of the excerpts I needed. and then let's say one day i'm like i need to go deep on this tonguing thing and why am i doing

Starting point is 00:35:16 that because i have to play alborado okay i will work really hard that day on triple tonguing and i won't practice alborado that's totally fine i'm actually working on alborado and then vice versa i worked hard on alborado one day but two days went by i didn't work on triple thing that's fine you're still working on triple tonguing so i'm working on the fundamental and i'm working on the application and i'm i'm just constantly going back and forth and of course there's a million different things about mock auditions and mindset but from a technical standpoint i was going to be much more confident if i felt like all these things were close and my technique was in the best place for me yeah to serve those and that really served me

Starting point is 00:36:02 well because at the end of the day, I hate to say this, auditions are won by trust and people, and how do we develop trust is no holes in your playing, like massive holes. You're going to have notes you miss. There's going to be things that don't go well, but if it's at a high enough level that people trust, like that was a mistake. Well, that was great. Well, it was great. There's no way that was a mistake. So developing trust with the committee is our ultimate goal. And the more honest we can be with ourselves and discipline to make sure that we spend the time to make those skills in a place that elicits that trust, you're going to have room to make mistakes, which I did in every audition I won. And you're going to be in a great place to make really nice

Starting point is 00:36:56 music. Such great advice there. Thank you so much for this. Tom, I'd love to speak more and I'm sure that the listeners would like to hear more, but how about a round of rapid fire question before I let you go? Oh yeah, I love it. I love it. For the people who are dreaming of a career that resemble yours, and we know that we all create our own, so that's why I say resemble. Can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? It's very busy. I have two children and I have a lot of interests. So my weeks are a mixture of LA Phil rehearsal performances, teaching at USC, teaching online, some recording in the movie industry. I've had the opportunity to do great some really awesome fun movies Jumanji and stuff like that um or Lion King um and spending

Starting point is 00:37:52 time with my kids that's um but it's it's quite busy um in all honesty um some of it's my own doing but I'm I I'm up at like 6 30 um maybe earlier and I usually go to bed at midnight almost every day and a lot of that is doing things that I'm passionate about um but yeah it's it's a lot of time commitment. And, um, my, my biggest challenge now is, is creating time to not do. Um, but that that's, you know, but I like it. I love what I do. Um, so it's, it's my choice, but, but it is busy. And, uh, but yeah. Awesome. What's a habit that you have that you think contributed to your success? Um, being a really good question asker. I love that. That's a great one. Then moving on to the skills that you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments.

Starting point is 00:38:50 Try not to judge yourself too much about where you're not at yet. And yeah, I want to come back to this question. Like, don't be afraid to ask a question. Don't be afraid to show you don't know. that's really important to hear i really think it's important and and and the thing is um if you're in school and you're perhaps maybe you're considered one of the better players in your school do not wrap your actions around maintaining that visual or that optic in fact be a better leader and say look hey i am one of the best people in this school and i'm the first one to ask questions about what i don't know that actually will garner more respect and you'll continue to be a top player rather than the person that holds on to what you the the few things that got you to that position i was the tortoise i was the underdog and nobody

Starting point is 00:40:00 in the million years would have thought me being a into my undergrad oh tom's gonna be principal trumpet of the la phil no way no way um but it's it's that that insatiable curiosity i love this so much how about a favorite tool in the practice room oh um oh boy god oh that's a hard one um well i i i have this thing oh it's you can't see i forget um i have you can hear it this is a little it's a little bead counter that i have on the bottom of i screwed to the bottom of my stand a little sort of like 20 bead counter and when i'm looking for consistency and my brain says, oh, you got this. And then I look down, I'm like, I've only played it twice, right? I'm like, oh, okay. So it's a little accountability tool. There's a million

Starting point is 00:40:57 tools though. But I'll just stick with that one. I love it. I think I'm going to need one of those. Can I order that on Amazon or something? Yes. I'll send you a link. Thank you. I'll put it in the show notes too, because I know that you like tools. You talked about that app. I'll share a link to that in the show notes too, in the metronome. I was not expecting a bean counter. I love it. Okay. I'm going to buy one. That's done. How about, oh, I'm really interested in this answer. A favorite book that you would recommend to the listeners. Okay. Well, I'm just going to tell you what I'm reading now. And I will preface this by saying there is colorful language this person does not hold back at all david groggins can't hurt me

Starting point is 00:41:44 this guy basically goes to the limit and gives you it gives gives me an idea of like um what we are capable of as human beings is so much farther than what we imagine is possible um and so from an exercising standpoint um i've been pushing i don't like the word pushing i've been exploring what it's like to embrace discomfort you know and i'm not saying we should be discomfort i'm not saying bad technique in violin or trumpet or whatever i'm saying of like discomfort of like oh i think i should stop now or you know you you get the slightest bit of resistance of like oh this is hard it's like muhammad ali said they said how many push-ups can you do because i have no idea like what do you mean you have no ideas like well i don't start

Starting point is 00:42:34 counting until it hurts wow okay you're like oh wow so david groggins can't hurt me is um it's an incredibly inspiring chronicling of what this man went through in his life it's really amazing i knew you were going to have a good answer to this question it's another thing for my amazon cart yeah finally how about a quick actionable tip that listeners can implement today in their musical lives? Let's say it, I would encourage people to wherever you're at, if you're in school, if you're in a profession, um, explore a more moment of vulnerability with a colleague or a friend about something you're struggling with and ask them if they have any advice, you know, you say like, Hey, you know, I'm, I've been working on my range

Starting point is 00:43:24 lately like how do you work on range and exercise the the muscle of vulnerability and and connection with other people and see what happens um it might spark something you know it it might give you a different perspective uh it might start other conversations that you know and that i think this idea of competition is really more like conspiring together and um and we're all trying to do the same thing we're all trying to make beautiful music and so to not we spend so much time by ourselves in a practice room like so much like i think it's really healthy for us to remember that a lot of people on the same journey together and um and just because somebody else you're not trying to hide all your secrets you're trying to share them um i know that's hard for

Starting point is 00:44:17 people to realize sometimes but i really believe that it's like there's a movie called a beautiful mind with russell crowe and he it was a mathematical thing that that was significant but the idea was that if we feel that there's scarcity and back in the day before unions helped protect musicians blah blah musicians would hold on to their their what's the word proprietary ideas you know it's like oh no i figured out how to do this i'm not going to share with it because i could get fired that's understandable. But I think now it's good and it's beneficial for us to share ideas. And that would be what I would say. Fantastic advice. Tom, you've already mentioned some resources on your website. Where can we find everything? Please tell us more about what you're offering

Starting point is 00:45:06 as well in terms of courses and where we can hear you, all of the good stuff. I would say the most active place I'm at right now is just Instagram. I do have a website. uh, in, in, in through Instagram, I have a link tree, which so shows some things that are in my bio. It's the link tree, which goes to several different places. Um, if you're a brass player, you can check out some of the things I have on my Amazon store. Um, you can check out my trumpet mastery course, which, um, I will be having offerings, uh, probably in the spring and definitely next summer. Um, I'm really excited about next summer, what I'm going to create. I've had two offerings the last two summers and learned a ton about how to create effective courses.

Starting point is 00:45:49 And so this summer, I think, is going to be the child of those learnings. Yeah, so I think Instagram would be a great place to start, whether it's ideas around self-improvement and or good old brass playing. Awesome. I'll have all these links in the show note. Tom, thanks so much for this amazing insight. I really enjoyed our conversation and I know that the listeners will as well. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great, great questions. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with musician and trumpet player Tom Houghton. I just had the greatest time with Tom and so many things he said will stay with me in the coming days. I can't pick a favorite, but I want to invite you to take a second listen to Tom's actionable tip and see what that would look like in your life this week.

Starting point is 00:46:54 I think it's so important for all of us to step away from the scarcity mentality and remember that we're all on the same journey together. So exercise your muscle of vulnerability and connection, share your insight with others, spark conversations, ask for help and offer support to the musicians around you and let us know how it went. If you relate to this conversation, don't forget to share with everyone you think could benefit from Tom's wisdom. Connect with us and let's keep this discussion going. I'm mindoverfinger on both Instagram and Facebook, and he's Tom Hooten.

Starting point is 00:47:36 Now, if you're looking to take your practicing and performing to the next level, I have something for you. Practicing for Peak Performance, my performance preparation workshop is now available for download. If you're looking for a process that works and that will allow you to enjoy more efficient practice sessions, gain confidence, and perform at your best, check out Practicing for Peak Performance at mindoverfinger.com. When you join Practicing for Peak Performance, you gain access to all the recorded content that's over 7 hours jam-packed with information, guidance, and effective high-performance systems. You get detailed handouts and worksheets, access to the PPP Facebook group community for support and answers to all your questions, and for a limited time, a complimentary private 30-minute coaching session with me. So if ease and joy in performance sounds like the kind of results you'd like to experience, head to mindoverfinger.com right now and access all the tools that will help you transform your practice, gain confidence in your process, and start performing at your best today. As always, I'll have all the information related to this episode in the show notes. You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com.

Starting point is 00:49:07 And while there, you can also find more information about mindful and efficient practice, performance preparation, and how to work with me. And don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a productive, mindful practice using the metronome. So that's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 112 Tom Hooten: Shifting Perspectives

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