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This is a question for those lucky people who have got a job playing in an orchestra/band.
How many auditions did you go to before you got your first job?
If you know orchestra musicians who don´t visit this bbs you could mabye ask the this question and post the answer.

I think this could be pretty interesting to know and comforting to us who haven´t reached all the way yet.

Lots. Here is a piece of advice I wish I had followed myself early on. If you lose an audition, then double your efforts for the next one. Lose the next one and double again. The effort required to win high end performance jobs with major groups is well beyond the mental grasp of most of those who try.

"In the game of life, nothing is less important than the score at halftime"
- Anon.

"Without perserverance, talent is a barren bed."- Welsh proverb

"The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running." -Anon.

"Men do not fail, they stop trying" - Elihu Root

"The line between failure and success is so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time that with a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed a hopeless failure may turn to glorious success." -Elbert Hubbard

"Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up" -Thomas Edison

"The difference between perserverance and obstinancy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other comes from a strong won't." -Henry Ward Beecher

"When you are a professional, you come back no matter what happened the day before."- Billy Martin

"We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter; we perservere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them." - William Hazlett

"I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people that came in on the bus with you." -Harrison Ford

"Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming..."- Nemo

6.

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Auditions pissed me off. If I didn't have to see and speak to all the other nervous tuba players fighting for the job, I may have been able to handle it. When I got shaked down by the mob over one appearence I made at an audition in New Jersey, I decided to give it up and join a heavy metal band. I don't think the audition committees ever appreciated my bass stack and tuba distortion pedals.