Being a Woodwind Student Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Last week, a middle-school-aged student signed up for lessons with me. He'd been a clarinet player, and now he wanted to switch it up to alto sax.

Needless to say, even though he was a relative newcomer to the saxophone, his clarinet chops carried him over the beginning hurdles.

But I noticed something in his classroom behavior that was not serving him well at all. Every time he made an error (and quite naturally, there were many of them) he stopped playing, took the horn out of his mouth, and said this:

"I'm sorry."

Which means we'd have to start over each time, re-set his embrochure, get his breathing back on track, and recall his fingerings. Not to mention that being ultra-critical of his playing defeated his forward momentum.

Negative self-talk is the single biggest enemy of progress in the practice room.

'Sorry' is not a word I ever want to hear from a student. The classroom is where you (and I) are supposed to make mistakes playing our respective instruments -- and lots of them.

Think about it -- none of the saxophone greats was born with any of the skills they displayed later in life. They, too, were not so very good when they were just starting out and learning the horn.

And the one common denominator of music is this -- we all start at the same place, at the beginning, right?

So blow your horn, try things out, make music, make noise, and please -- make lots of mistakes.

But never apologize to me or anyone for making them. It's part of the process of learning, mistake-making. And if you had a teacher in the past who created an environment where you felt intimidated, well, just put that behind you. Those days are over.

A man much smarter than me once expressed it best when he claimed that perfect is the enemy of good.

It truly is.