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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.

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