--- In horn@yahoogroups.com, "dalt_guin" <dalt_guin@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all!
>
> The post has been helpful before, so here goes!
>
> I'm a junior in high school, and I plan on double majoring in high
> school ed. and music performance. I've played horn for five years,
> double for four.
>
> We had our local district auditions today, and I got to thinking. I
> wasn't really nervous, just ready to do it. But when I got in the
> room (blind auditions) my knees shook a little, and by the end of
my
> prepared solo I had a very interesting vibrato happening, that I
> tried to make use of for the simple fact that I couldn't get rid of
> it.
>
> Any tips on how to mentally prepare for things like this? Concerts
> standing at the front of the stage in front of a couple hundred
> people are fine, but this gets edgy.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Dalt
>

Oddly enough, I had an audition last sunday, and I had a very similar
problem. My knees shook as well, but not due to nervousness. They
gave me a piano bench to sit on, which was way too low. Because of
this, the horn sat very low on my body, and I had to raise my foot to
tiptoe to raise the horn to the proper level. As many of you may
know, if you try to contract a muscle half way (as opposed to being
fully relaxed or contracted), it ends up just shaking. this is what
happened to my knee, shaking the horn and creating pretty strong
vibrato in my sound. I remember thinking to myself, "great. I sound
like I'm playing on an active washing machine. This audition isn't
going to go well. How can I fix this?"

what I ended up doing was jacking my foot up much higher, locking it
in place. The vibrato went away and I continued playing completely
fine. I didn't get the job though :(

Maybe your knee vibration was caused by something similar. In
retrospect, I probably should have auditioned standing after seeing
that the bench was too short. Anyway, you should check to make sure
you can position yourself in a way that won't cause trouble before
you start playing. It's a good check to get into, as I have just
learned the hard way.