Skip to main content

Dealing with Mistakes

Dealing with Mistakes
As horn players, mistakes are just in the nature of our instrument. The Guinness Book of World Records lists us as the hardest instrument to play, along with the oboe. Every time we feel comfortable with the horn and things are going great, something bad happens. It is in that moment of comfort that we relax and let our focus slip just enough for mistakes to creep in. There are countless variables that lead to our success and if one of those gets slightly off, we can crash and burn before we know what happened.
It is important to learn to accept these mistakes. Take a moment when you can to analyse what happened and make sure you can recover quickly. It does no good to spend time being mad at yourself and beating up your mindset just because you cracked a note. By no means am I saying that we should not be striving for perfection at all times, I am just saying to give yourself a break.
Your mental health is important and you need to take care of yourself and check in with your thoughts from time to time. Find a system that works for you so that instead of hating yourself for making mistakes, you learn from them and grow as a musician. It can be very frustrating to fumble in front of important audiences and it can leave you feeling embarrassed, but the show must go on and you have to move past your mistakes and keep going. It will all be ok. It was not as bad as you think it was and honestly, most people are not going to walk away from your performance remembering what you think was catastrophic. Accept that you are not perfect and as long as you are putting your best foot forward, you will survive.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creating Your Brand : A Guide to Freelancing

Creating Your Brand : A Guide to Building a Successful Freelance Career By Tracy Bass University of Missouri - Kansas City Dissertation Points Credit Spring 2019 Introduction So you wanna freelance but... where do you even begin? The freelance life can be extremely rewarding, but requires more work than most people realize and is rarely an instant success. You need an attack plan and a promise of commitment to yourself. The obvious issues of location and socioeconomic level will be contributing factors to the outcome, but if you push yourself and be patient, you will be surprised at what is possible. The Essentials First and foremost, buy a planner. There are countless studies that have proven you remember more when you write things down. Plus, making lists and marking items off is more satisfying than deleting a note on your phone when you take a look back at what you have accomplished. Find a planner with plenty of space for you to jot things down q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unaccompanied Works

Unaccompanied Works For my lecture recital at UMKC, I decided to do a survey of unaccompanied works for horn. Each work includes a brief bio of the composer and a video clip of the piece being performed. My focus was on the extended techniques required throughout each work. I wanted to highlight the different influences composers draw from in their lives and how they come out through their writing for unaccompanied horn. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qSeJJstnVYhYk7x6ks6vFE5x-oPju0HA8K2Ezyj7fqE
Post a Comment
Read more

Women Writing Chamber Music

Women Writing Chamber Music For my Chamber Music Literature class, I created a presentation on chamber music works that have been written by women that include the horn. I wanted to write about works by women because they are so seldom heard. My goal was to find a video performance of each work so that the audience would have an audio and visual representation of the piece. This project was more difficult than expected in some ways. While there are a few resources that highlight chamber music by female composers, they are typically outdated and include pieces that I was not able to find any information on the composer, let alone the piece itself. The project was enjoyable to work on and I hope to be adding more pieces in the future. The current list highlights selections from 1849 to 2018. If you have any suggestions on pieces to add, please comment below! https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MMmnOz8YykQakaPRcjYDzzHg0uwH97ch5ClT6KJjK8U
Post a Comment
Read more