why i haven't made videos lately

all right hello um if you're new to the channel uh my name is rob and this is probably a weird video for you this video is more for people who have watched a lot of my videos in the past you know it's been about a year and a half um since i was making videos for real and i know i made one video this summer and that was kind of like a an experiment i was playing with some new cameras one of which you are looking through right now but i really haven't been focusing on making videos and i feel i feel bad about it i mean i wish i spent more time making videos i think there's a lot of topics that i should be covering that people who are preparing for auditions playing percussion uh or you know being a musician um really need to know and things that i should really be covering so um i've honestly i've had trouble getting started um i have an extremely high level of like perfectionism that i expect a lot out of myself i want to make the perfect audition channel i don't know what exactly that means i want to make the perfect you know um classical music uh education youtube channel and so every time i think of a video it's like well that might not be i might not have quite a good enough concept for that or do i really want to start with that and i guess the answer has always been well that's not exactly the right video to start with or i haven't exactly figured out how i'm going to you know structure the videos that i do in the future a lot of things have changed for me so um and i felt like uh i've had all this time i've been away for all this time from making videos that um the expectation that at least i've placed on myself has gotten higher and higher and higher and i look back at the videos i made in the past you know some of them are you know have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people um and there are things that i'm really proud of and i have this kind of curse i guess where if i make a video and it's not as impactful as the best things that i've ever done makes me feel like they've been completely worthless i know that that is actually a common thought in you know musicians and especially professional musicians if you have performed at a high level you feel terrible if you ever go out and perform at even a slightly lower level and [Music] so all of that complicated baggage has sort of prevented me from getting started and along the way i thought well i need to do a pandemic recap i need to do uh like a recap of all the projects i've done i want to do some some kind of you know video about what i'm going to do in the future i want to i want to do a video asking you guys what i should do in the future um i want to go over my goals you know i have all these things that i feel like i want to incorporate in the videos to show you um you know where i am in this project and what kinds of videos you can expect and why i've been away and what i've been doing um and i've thought how can i get that all into one video but have that video be like one of my you know 250 000 view videos um it's stupid like i should have just you know gotten pat like just saying it out loud right now makes me makes me i wonder like why the hell was i uh um living you know under those uh expectations it doesn't matter i decided to jump back in there is no perfect video to start with there's no perfect topic and so i'm going to start with this which is basically like a hello i'm back nice to see you thank you so much for for watching i mean out of the 15 or 16 000 people who have subscribed to my channel um i wonder how many people or maybe it's 14 000. i wonder how many people are still around i mean a lot of you guys probably subscribed to this channel back in you know 2016 2018 and then you were waiting for me to do something and then i didn't do anything and so if that's the case you know i totally understand you know a lot of people who used to be on youtube maybe are off youtube and they're on to tick tock or some other thing doesn't matter i am starting new starting anew and starting fresh and um i just wanted to go over a few things and kind of get you up to speed on what i've been doing where you know where i see audition hacker going audition hacker and percussion hacker what what i'm going to what kinds of videos and content and projects i see as being useful in the future so i have a few notes and i'm just gonna have my cool orange notebook and i'm just gonna go through you know a bunch of stuff and and uh um you know kind of tell you all of that stuff so um yeah it's been uh uh an interesting you know year and a half i am back at the met finally this is uh one of the first weeks that they've actually let us in um and we've had a few concerts already with it's very exciting you know hopefully um nobody you know there's no coveted breakouts they're being pretty darn careful every single person in the house is vaccinated and mostly everyone has to wear masks except for the woodwind players during rehearsal and a couple other exceptions and for instance if you're alone totally alone in the room by yourself and nobody else is in the room then you can otherwise you'd be seeing me with a mask part of the reason why i'm being so careful is um we have a new baby at home which is awesome we have we had a baby in january of 2021 she is now seven months and her name's lily and she she just crawled today for the first time she crawled forward she had been crawling backwards she had been kind of rotating but she had never crawled forwards and uh and she she zoomed forwards which was awesome so she's unvaccinated so i have to be super super careful um and i uh yeah so that that's one thing that's been going on and that kind of has overwhelmed the rest of all of everything else i've been doing which as you can imagine and it's impacted a few things the first thing that it's impacted is she took over my the the room i used to make my videos in at home you know the white wall the black shirt um that's her nursery now so i don't make videos at home i find a place to do my talking and i'll make videos at the hall or on the street or wherever you know nobody will yell at me and so that's the plan over the course of the year and a half of the pandemic i i went through probably similar ups and up and down motivation levels as a lot of you guys i i some people now that the pandemic is over are sort of saying like um i hate to admit it but i had a great time and thankfully i'm i'm one of those people i mean it wasn't all perfect um but i had my my you know my wife i was living with my wife's mother um we had a very secluded kind of house to live in with um good internet access and and amazing cooking um and we had each other so that was that was nice um and i felt like this is my chance you know i always wondered what am i going to be capable of what what could i be capable of if i had a whole year to myself and of course i've always thought about that what if i could take a whole year off i want to learn you know all the baksonatas and partitas on marimba or i want to you know record another two books of dela clues or i want to create you know new courses that um that i know will help people and so um if i look back the big accomplishments that i you know made are first of all i created a new eight-month version of the audition coaching program that i run inner circle um we had 15 or 16 people go through the program and i created a whole new um curriculum for them uh where i you know dug deep into my um uh my background and and my understanding of musicality so so that i can teach about musicality itself in a way that um had only ever been in my head and it i can teach it in a way the same kind of um structured you know detailed uh way that i teach about audition prep and about percussion technique um so it has always been one of my dreams of how to how do i lay out what is essentially a language the language of musicality in a way that makes it obvious for you know people who are um trying to build orchestral level musicianship so that was a big accomplishment i also created um a new course called academy builder which is um a program where i helped some people i taught some people how to create something like audition hacker but of course of course you know whatever topic it is that they want to want to you know teach about um and that was pretty interesting that was i worked with some amazing people who are destined to become you know excellent world-class teachers i loved teaching you know them and working with them i'm not sure i love teaching about business in general i mean i think i've had a lot of experience with doing audition hacker i've been doing it since 2015 or 2014 depending on how you um calculate it but uh i don't feel like i'm an expert in it like i feel like you know i have expertise in percussion and auditions and musicianship but i don't really have expertise i have a few years of trying to figure out what to do in in online business but um it's changing so fast and i still feel like i fail a lot of the time so um i'm not it's like i uh maybe at one some point in the future i'll feel like i have um a leg to stand on when it comes to teaching about business but uh you know and and becoming an online teacher and i'm open to it but for whatever i mean it's more fun to teach about music in my opinion too um so but that was an accomplishment you know at some point when i come back to that i have a great uh foundation of a course that i have created you know um and i just did some other stuff that was kind of interesting i took a three month intensive korean course i think i told some of you guys about a course that i did in korea um on korean in the fall of 2019 i took a sabbatical from my work and i took level three level three out of six it's a three-month program at yonsei university in seoul and i completed it was awesome and then this summer last summer uh 2020 they were offering it online for the first time ever you know this this school it's almost it's only in person but since they were offering it online i did level four level four of six and so i'm not fluent and i'd still suck at korean but it was really amazing to be able to take the next level of that uh it was like a dream come true um and um yeah uh let's see what else happened i got really into scotch and i learned about the different regions and the different tastes you know the isle of isla and like i really want to visit now and and i found my new favorite scotch um and um and i learned about how to take care of a you know pregnant pregnant mother and then how to take care of a baby once the baby's born and also i am by no means an expert but i i tried to learn as much as i can i got a whole bunch of books and audio books um i probably walked like four miles a day most days throughout the pandemic and so i just would listen to audiobooks and i learned a lot it was you know that was great i took lessons through much of the pandemic korean lessons and um and then let's see so then i'm trying to think i oh and then i i had a big failure actually that could be interesting for you to learn about which is that i had a course that i was planning to create called audition machine and it ended up that it just wasn't exactly the right type of course for people for for this summer 2021 and so that actually fell through um just like in auditions and being a musician there are failures in being an online educator um you know an online music educator some of the things that you might you do just don't quite work out and so this is one of those um but uh and then and then this summer i was kind of eyeing a return to these videos and and doing youtube because i think what when i look back and take stock of how i spent the last year and a half um i focused on the uh creating you know experiences and and materials for my for the the coaching students my you know my coaching clients that i work with throughout the year the the coaching program the audition coaching program is eight months long and only a few people can join because it takes a lot of my time and energy which i have found to be one of the most fulfilling ways of working with musicians i mean it's it's been amazing working with those musicians and already this summer and and the past few weeks um i've had a student from you know inner circle win a assistant principal job in an exam orchestra get to finals in another orchestra um and um you know get into the the conservatory the master's degree they were looking for um and so yeah it's it's really fulfilling to work with somebody through a whole year you know and then see them succeed um but i've been doing that to the detriment of you know my youtube channel and you guys you know i can't i can't create uh um an experience you know that's such a deep experience for just a few people and ex and and just ignore the you know the 15 000 people who who watch my youtube channel or who follow my emails and um have come to rely on on my materials in there and they're practicing or else they'll forget about it and i won't be able to have the impact that i want to have and i felt a little bit bad about that um you know my goal with audition hacker and percussion hacker has always been the same it continues to be the same i went through so many struggles as an up-and-coming musician i feel like i you know i have this perspective of my my own journey my own like you know from when i was in eighth grade uh well since fourth grade taking drum set lessons and then eighth or ninth grade taking classical music lessons and then the next decade um taking auditions and finally winning my job i the whole way through i felt like i nev i had a love of music and i had like a passion for i needed to win a job but i never had any real talent i never had any like uh innate ability to skip you know like things never just came to me easily it took an incredible amount of of work to to you know get past whatever struggles or obstacles i was experiencing like every obstacle seemed like like if i had a problem with my role if i felt nerves and auditions if i missed a note it felt like the end of the world and i never had good answers i never felt like i um found answers easily it took just huge amounts of struggle and difficulty getting getting through um through my musical journey and so i've always felt like if i have solved problems in in my own playing and and my own musicianship if i have overcome struggles then it's almost my duty i need to share the answers the things that helped me um i had you know this as a as a younger player up and coming i had this dream i just want to sit in the practice room of a professional see how they practice what do they do how do they build their chops how do they learn music how do they avoid wasting time and avoid all the struggles that i had to deal with and i also wanted you know those same professionals to sit in my practice room and watch me and tell me what i'm doing wrong and help me um guide my you know my decision making process and of course you never get that so i but i always felt like i need that i can't just have one lesson a week it's not enough i need to have supplemental ideas i need to have the best ideas and and as an up-and-coming player i just did i felt like i didn't have those except for my one amazing lesson a week with my you know my great teachers in high school and college um you know just as an example with dela clues for instance i i recorded these deliclus etudes in 2014 because i felt like there's no recording out there there is no definitive recording of the de la clue's etudes there's no recording that you can just listen to and know that it is a you know high level definitive excellent example of how this piece could or should sound um and i don't want my version to be the only way i don't want my version to be the way that everybody tries to copy i want you know jake nicely in san francisco and chris lamb in new york and cynthia in chicago i want every major percussionist on earth to record their own version of de la clue so that students like you like different percussionists around the world can hear all sorts of different examples of the greats doing you know the best version of what they can do and that the same thing as applies to audition preparation you know i might not be able to solve every struggle that you're experiencing you are your own person you have your own set of struggles um and you know i can't strug solve every one of those for you but if i have solved any one of the struggles that you're experiencing if i found a way past the obstacle then wouldn't it make it so much easier for you if i just shared that answer with you so my goal is to find ways of encapsulating the answers to my biggest problems that i that i had as an up-and-coming musician and delivering them to you in bite-sized chunks like this youtube channel my my vision for it my concept is you know you're running to a lesson you have five minutes between now and your when your lesson starts you realize that you forgot to practice your tambourine thumb roll and you have no idea how to do it and you just need the spark notes version so you jump into the practice room you watch a quick five-minute video and boom you are totally ready for playing your thumb roll in your lesson that you forgot to practice um or you know when it comes to whatever it is you know uh musicianship learning rep how to self record how to do mock auditions whatever it is that i feel like i have um um tended to you know that that have really spoken to me the answers the practice methods the strategies um in the practice room that have really spoken to me that have really worked for me those are the things i want to share with you i mean i feel like it is my duty to figure out how to share them with you so um and that is also what made me feel worse about um not coming out with anything for the past year and a half so anyway uh the reason i was talking about that is is this last summer you know summer 2021 one of my goals was i want to come back with a vengeance i want to start making great videos i want to make more of them i don't want to have any sort of obstacles to making them i started doing a lot of research to up my game when it comes to making videos i got new cameras i got new lenses i got i learned about lighting and i mean it's not perfect of course and you know it's whatever but i also created this contraption where i can actually put on a microphone and a light and a camera and i can like walk around with it let me see if i can show you it's on wheels so i can walk around with it and i can take um video anywhere and it's perfectly lit and um i can take video you know i knew i would have to take videos at the met or outside so i can just like roll this into the orchestra lounge oops i have my little wire hanging there roll this into the orchestra lounge roll it um into the orchestra room into the percussion room um i don't know maybe i'll sneak inside the pit one day and do something hopefully no met staff are watching this um but um yeah i spent the summer learning how to make better videos and and trying to plan a way where i could uh make videos more quickly and with fewer obstacles so i can just like uncover my frankenstein monster of a camera sand and start so uh the kind of videos that i want to make are you know i have a lot of ideas i i i want to pursue audition videos and percussion videos so i want to do more audition hacker videos that are for all instruments i want to do more percussion hacker videos that are just for percussionists i feel like i have a lot to share in both of those areas um and so like for audition hacker i do want to keep making audition preparation strategy videos i think i can do more having to do with musicianship you know working on having better time rhythm dynamic uh phrasing character style that kind of thing i want to do more like join me in the practice room as i prepare this music kind of thing more um one thing i want to do is i want to interview people who have just taken an audition in certain orchestras and asked them what was it like taking an audition for the cincinnati symphony you know or the kansas city symphony or or whatever um so that you know you know a little bit more about what to expect as you are um um preparing for an audition at one of those facilities and i want to do more about the industry of classical music so how how what is it like to be an orchestra musician in terms of your salary and benefits for instance what does the union do how does the union protect you at an audition how does the union work and how do you know how do um how does the union work in general how do negotiations work i think that's really fascinating and important for you to know as a as a future orchestra musician um terms of percussion videos i have this this dream about what i want to do next i want to create a uh um in the same way that i created the de la clue's etudes i want to create kind of a definitive educational library for every excerpt and so i would i would do you know i foresee it be or i've envisioned it as being kind of similar to how [Music] a specific like cooking online cooking channel was my wife one of her projects was to get into cooking and and baking and this one baking um website butterbookbutterbook.com it was very cool i mean i'm not into baking at all but i i just studied it uh thinking about how great it would be for excerpts and so for every excerpt there or for every i guess i'll talk about it like this for every you know baked good there was a main video about how to make it but then there was a whole bunch of tabs where each one went over some you know deep information about that particular recipe so one of them was like the recipe step by step one of them was ingredients including links to all the different ingredients so you could look at them um and even buy them i think uh one was um it was sort of like prerequisite so if you're gonna make a croissant you have to know the background a prerequisite of laminated dough i don't know what these things are really but i think laminated dough is like the flat dough with like butter in between or something um but um yeah so like it's easier to do croissant making if you've studied like the foundational topics of laminated dough for instance anyway uh the and and the final one i think was really cool amazing really troubleshooting it was like that is the problem with all recipe books it's like i try to follow it and then something goes wrong and i have no idea which step i went wrong in and this troubleshooting one was like okay if this went wrong then this was your problem if that went wrong then that was your problem and i want to make this but for excerpts for percussion excerpts i want uh this to be the place that you go both for you know when you are first starting to learn the excerpt and every time you have a problem with it after that i want to make you know amazing performance quality videos including slow motion demonstrations i want to go over stickings and which recordings you know i i recommend practice strategies to learn each part uh you know um maybe troubleshooting when this is going wrong here's what's wrong and how to practice it um it should just be your definitive place to go to understand and build up excerpts so um so that's you know i feel like i'm kind of like sufian stevens like he decided he was going to do all 50 states one album for every one of the 50 states he did michigan and then illinois and then that was it so i haven't done any but this is my vision so i'm starting with i'm planning on starting with bartok concerto for orchestra and we'll see what happens i really want to do it and uh yeah we'll have to see so um yeah that's a few different kinds of videos um i'm gonna make i'm thinking of making um there are a lot of things that get in the way of of me pursuing you know audition hacker to the level that um that i you know expect out of myself you know time time is always an issue and it's even a bigger issue now because i have a baby so i mean i'm trying to do a full-time job i'm trying to raise a baby and be a good husband and practice enough so that i don't suck an orchestra and all that stuff means that um i mean i'm well situated because opera percussion doesn't isn't as busy as a lot of other instruments in the opera orchestra so i can come downstairs and make a lot of you know videos as you have seen over the past few years um hopefully now that we're back in the routine it'll make it easier for for me to incorporate this into you know my life into a more consistent way um but um yeah time is always an issue um and it's like i get a lot of feedback and the feedback ranges from you know from to both extremes right i get messages all the time that say like you know i watch this video and i applied what you had to say and i actually got first chair in this audition that i took i'll get that from like latvia or from like south africa or mongolia you know i'll get messages from all over the world of people who have seen videos or students of mine who have had success and it's so amazingly fulfilling and for every you know um for every 10 or 20 of those that i get i might get one person who feels like they should say something negative to me and and i had a a few of these over the summer somebody um these for whatever reason tend to be very impactful for me um if somebody sends me a message saying that they don't agree with something it's like i have this you know reaction in the moment that's that's kind of like um uh well screw them you know they they um are just mean but it it kind of eats away at me like and it affects the way that i make future videos um i had somebody when i was doing one of my programs this summer somebody make a comment this is a person who has made comments before and i tried to block them because i just don't want to see these kind of negativity this kind of negativity saying you know this is disingenuous and um it felt bad because it made me feel like am i not a genuine person am i not acting in a genuine way you know i know that i really want to help people i know that my audition hacker and percussion hacker programs i've only made them because i feel like like it's part of my mission to help people um but it really made me look inward and i i think that in a lot of ways these negative comments towards me um you know have also contributed to my lack of making videos this um this last year and and i i need to remind myself that the person that i'm making this for isn't a jaded you know orchestral musician or freelancer who already decided that the orchestra industry is you know terrible and that they have to go and complain to people who are trying to make things better the people i'm doing this for are the people who are like me who are out in like you know where i grew up rural michigan who you know the next kid out there who's 17 and in rural michigan or you know in oklahoma or in hawaii or in somewhere in you know europe not not near who doesn't get to study with an amazing player i want to make stuff for them so that they have access to the best information and i don't know that my information is the best in the world but it's the information that helped me become a professional musician so i want to share it with them i want to share it with you wherever you are you wherever you are watching from wherever you are on your musical journey if you're interested in um in learning what it takes in detail to become a professional musician if you're interested in learning just one example of what kind of mind what kind of lifestyle what kind of habits what kind of personality um wins an orchestra job you know that's my goal i just want to lay out what it took for me exactly what i did what got me through the obstacles what were the hard parts and how i dealt with it um and if that can be helpful for people um i'm so grateful and i really appreciate it um so um yeah i think i i have gone through all of my uh my notes and um this video was different you know this this is not how most of my videos will be i want mostly most of them to be like punchy and rapid and immediate those five-minute spark notes kind of videos that's what i want most of my videos to be like but this was just kind of a recap and a reset you know i feel like it's it's really a moment of reset it's like we had this year and a half and whatever happened good and bad we need to forgive ourselves for the bad congratulate ourselves for the good but kind of uh look at what happened as you know it's over it's so not that the pandemic is over the pandemic is not over but classical the classical music industry is essentially trying its best to go back to normal and i'm trying to go back to normal um so i want to pick up the pieces and move on basically pick up the pieces meaning gather the accomplishments of what i did before acknowledge the things that i have lacked and make a plan going forward of how i'm going to live my life to more accurately represent the ideal version of how i want to live my life and that includes pouring my heart and soul and energy into making you know materials and resources and trainings and educational um educational information available to to you basically so yeah if you are somebody who has watched my videos before if you've made it to this oh my light went off all right my battery went out um yeah i was just gonna say uh if you're somebody who has made it this far in the video if you're somebody who has watched videos of mine in the past and gotten something out of it or have some feedback for me you know if you uh have appreciated something that i've done in the past and and if you want to see more and i would really love to hear from you you know let me know in the comments below um let me know um if there are topics that you'd want me to cover if there are particular you know reactions you've had to anything that i've talked about i'm curious what you think and um and yeah i think that's it if you like this video give me a like subscribe to the channel and i will see you in the next video

Channel: rob knopper

Views: 2,316

Rating: 4.9669423 out of 5

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Id: vqL53kwBnoU

Length: 36min 28sec (2188 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021