Three Strikes
Yesterday in studio class we had three students play who have auditions coming up. With them I brought up the topic of three strikes. This topic came up with my daughter actually over the weekend. She is preparing for a contest that requires memorization of phrases. As a part of the preparation her teachers will accept two slips but three strikes and you are out, you don’t get credit for learning the phrase.
Thinking about this it makes a lot of sense in relation to learning horn music and also auditions. On a high level you would like to be able to play the whole audition with less than three strikes. At the least though every excerpt needs to have less than three strikes or you will be out for sure. The committee will stop listening.
What is a strike? For our purposes today a strike was a chipped note. Because while a committee can argue about what is the best tone and style they can’t argue about you missing or not missing notes. A “small chip” I would call a ½ strike and a full scale chip is a strike.
(Rhythm is another very black and white issue, it must be perfect—they may not give you any strikes for rhythm, one strike and you are out).
Part of why the three strikes thing is real is conditioning. Growing up in the United States virtually every child has played at least a little baseball. The concept is firmly entrenched; three strikes and you are out. Beyond three misses it does not really matter; too many notes were missed.
Figure out in your final preparation what excerpts you are most likely to strike out on and focus in on those. Figure out why you are getting strikes. Face the problem square on, reduce your strikes to as low a number as possible. This is a key to success on the horn.
Be a 
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