January 4, 2009 by John Ericson
Archived under: Accuracy
Stop Missing Notes
I have been thinking about many topics over break. One is that of missing notes on the horn. I see three primary reasons why horn players miss notes.
- Can’t hear what note you are aiming for. If you can’t hear inside your head what you are trying to play you can’t reliably hit it. Magic will not happen.
- Not buzzing the correct pitch. Anything you miss, try buzzing it right away on the mouthpiece alone. If you can hear the pitch but are missing it you are missing it either because you are not buzzing it accurately or on pitch (again, magic will not happen) or because you…
- Lack the underlying technique. There is a lot to train and practice. This includes the range of things from chop strength to finger coordination to tonguing to poor equipment and fingering choices to etc.
All of these can be worked on, especially with the help of a competent horn teacher. So get busy and stop missing notes in 2009.
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