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In notes dating back to 2008 I’ve been working off and on toward a possible book on accuracy. Some of the notes have found their way into Horn Matters here and there (click here for a list of articles on the topic), but a lot of it is new material that I anticipate I will be adding to the site over the next year or so in this new series.
Accuracy: A touchy subject
Accuracy can be a touchy subject. Some horn teachers seem to view it as their personal mission to point out all of your mistakes as a way to improve your accuracy. To be more specific to my own studies, Verne Reynolds during the years of my Masters study certainly did this. The problem with this method is that lessons can degrade to sort of an “accuracy through fear/survival of the fittest” experience or some version of an aversion training session. It is not a healthy situation for anyone.
While there is value in giving clear feedback and setting expectations for students, my feeling is that most horn players actually basically know what they missed. Furthermore, trying hard to be accurate often results in worse results overall; when you as a player trust yourself, and let it happen you will tend to be more accurate.
With that being said, there are tactics that can help improve accuracy and can be applied as you practice the horn.
At least 1,000 ways to miss notes!
From conductor perspective, conductors it seems to me often think the reason horns miss notes is they are either not that good, or they are nervous or not focused enough. But I can assure any conductor reading this, I can be completely relaxed and focused and still miss notes!
As to why we miss notes, as players and teachers we tend to gravitate toward certain reasons in our own thinking. On a high level, players are not missing notes because they can’t hear them. I tend to think in my own case that I am mostly missing because my chops are not set quite exactly right. Other fine players I have known have focused on the tonguing being just right, or on the air as being the culprit that sends notes flying in the wrong directions if not managed just right. But, really, there are at least 1,000 ways to miss a note.
Adjust your thinking
Which brings us to the topic for this first article. This series will address topics alphabetically, so the first topic for the encyclopedia has to do with adjustments related to your concept of “good enough.”
We are all wired differently, and I think a lot of good horn players are the type that tend to be hard on themselves. Being very critical of yourself is not going to help your accuracy, it tends to only make it worse. In the big picture, you will do better if you trust yourself more and tried less hard to play perfectly.
There are, by the way, a LOT of reasons you might be missing notes and lack of effort is probably not one if you are in the hard on yourself category of player. For just one example, you really might find a change of mouthpiece or horn ups your accuracy level instantly. Experiment!
But we are all wired differently. Yet other horn players, I begin to think that they are so used to having accuracy problems that missing some percentage of notes just seems normal to them. They think they are playing well or at least well enough. But actually, they could, I think, correct some problems quickly with some very focused effort and hit a higher level – if they insisted on a better result.
Like lots of elements of accuracy, it is complicated. Extreme thinking either way causes problems. But if you see either of the extremes of concept as being close to your normal, give yourself some space to experiment and adjust your thinking, it might just help.
Continue in Accuracy Encyclopedia
This is the first article of a series on accuracy, drawn from notes developed for a book on the same topic. Articles will follow roughly every week.
