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So it’s been over a year since I have posted anything onto this website. Crazy, right? In the past year, I’ve dealt with the most difficult thing to my education and also my trumpet playing: COVID-19. When I last posted on this website, COVID was something that nobody even knew about and could have never expected. Since then, I’ve had to learn how to do online school and adapt to COVID-style trumpet playing. I have not had an actual performance in over a year now, and it has been detrimental to my creative flow. However, it has also allowed me to realize a few things about myself.

Throughout this process of adapting to a new style of learning, I found out what my true career path should be. Even when I created this website last spring, I was starting to feel less and less inclined to play my instrument, which is why I added on a Biology minor to my degree. Now, I am fully invested into the biology side of my life because I have decided to finish my undergrad and continue on to grad school for a degree in genetics so that I can become a geneticist. While it is difficult to accept that music is not what I plan on doing anymore, I still love doing it. It has just become extremely difficult to stay passionate for my craft whenever the part that I enjoy the most, performing, has been completely taken out of the picture.

Music has and always will be such an important part in my life, which is why I continue to study music while I’m here at LSU. It would absolutely wreck me if I decided to cut music out of my life completely, and it has been a difficult battle ever since COVID hit. I’m still continuing to take lessons and play my trumpet, but I find myself becoming less and less passionate for it.

Hello everyone! My name is Rebekah Hinson and I’m an 18 year old music major at Louisiana State University. My main instrument is trumpet, but I also play piano and sing! I’m writing this as a freshman in my second semester of college, and I’m here to report on the tea I’ve gathered so far. To be a successful music major here at LSU, you have to practice. A LOT. I’ve been struggling with this recently because I’m also minoring in Biology, meaning that my time is also being taken up by other classes that help towards my minor. One of my biggest struggles is trying to balance all of my classes and making sure that I give all of them an equal amount of time outside of class. I love playing trumpet, but I’ve always hated going into the practice room because 1) they sound horrible and 2) I didn’t really know how to practice properly in the first place. I had a great lesson with my professor yesterday and had a breakthrough in the way I practice. He told me, “Imagine that you’re playing a video game. Whenever you first start out, you suck at it, right? So to get better, you just keep playing it and eventually you learn how to play and the game becomes so much more fun because you’re actually good at it.” That really resonated with me because I like playing video games, obviously. After I got out of that lesson, I had probably the best practice session I’ve ever had because I actually knew what to do and what direction I wanted to go in. So I’m just here to tell you that if you are also struggling because you hate practicing, think about it like that and hopefully it will get easier for you, too!

“The nerves are a problem on trumpet, because when you mess up everyone can hear it. Just remember most people are too polite to say anything about it. That should calm your nerves.” -Wynton Marsalis

Hello, everyone! My name is Rebekah Hinson and I am a currently a freshman at Louisiana State University. I am currently working on getting my Bachelor of Arts degree in Music, but I am also minoring in Biology. I’m a trumpet player, so this website will be a place for me to express my love for music and the trumpet.