I have posted that recently I have been working pretty hard at restoring my playing to a level of proficiency and consistency that I am happy with. Last night in the practice room I got a reminder that getting my playing back together is a lot more difficult than just working on physical chops and coordination.
My mental chops really need some work. I scrounged around and came up with some of the things that I have performed in the past and started hitting those as a barometer to measure my playing.
This stuff is A LOT different than my party band book!
Maybe I was trying too hard and maybe I was making things a lot more complicated than necessary and I was thinking about it way too much. All I know is that I should have been able to breeze through some of that stuff but I kept making small mistakes, and this was even on some of the solo repertoire I played in High School!
Physically, my chops are mostly back (or at least I think they are) and that happened fairly quickly - just a few weeks of steady, regular practice of fundamentals. I figured that I would be able to play some of these things much better than I did. At times, I thought I sounded pretty good, but other times....well, lets focus on the positive.
Does anyone have any tips to help me get my mental act back together so that I can re-synch my physical ability on the horn with hightened concentration?