- I'd like to speak a bit about the environment
with which you keep yourself
if you want to win an audition.
I find that positive breeds positive
and negative breeds negative,
and here at Rice, within the Horn department
we've tried to establish what we call the Rice Horn Crew,
the reason we believe in that is because,
we know that the strength of the pack
is greater than the strength of the lone wolf.
And if you find that you have a dream
and you share that dream with someone else
and they can buy into that dream
and maybe they have a similar dream, it helps fuel the fire.
So I would say, it's very important
for you to look at your environment
if you wish to be a success.
And ask yourself, is the environment that I am in,
my social environment, my musical environment,
is it positive and productive?
Is it helping me or is it somehow bringing me down?
Be declarative, and don't be scared to be declarative
about what you wish to accomplish.
By being declarative,
you're in essence taking your inner dream
and you're making it public,
and there's strength in doing that,
there's responsibility in doing that,
when you actually say you're going to do something
and say it in front of your peer environment
there's a certain amount of internal pressure
to make that happen.
And so I would very much endorse
choosing your compatriots wisely,
seek out people that have similar positive dreams as you,
that don't mind being declarative,
that will be supportive in a non-competitive way,
and at the same time,
help fuel you by seeing what they're doing
so that you're all feeding off of one another
and working together towards the same goal.
You'll generally find, that the same four to 10 people,
make the finals in every audition,
and more often than not, you guys become good friends.
I can remember when I was on the audition circuit,
the same people, and we're all good friends now,
and it wasn't even so much who was better or whatever,
it was just a matter of who won the day,
and we all knew that it boiled down to who won the day.
And so as a result, there wasn't any real
negative ego involved, just a lot of respect
because we all were the warriors in the audition arena,
and we all respected one another for being the ones
that would make it into those finals each time,
and to this day, they're some of my very best friends.