I’m having a problem right now where, as I try to migrate to a new tone, I’m developing crappy habits with my normal playing. I’m finding that I can’t hit notes accurately, when that NEVER used to be an issue I had.

The way I’m fixing it lately has been by purposefully switching back to my old bad habits, and then trying to let the new habits come in to make me feel better when I remember that clenching my throat feels just as crappy as hitting bad notes.

I’m just wrapping up largo fundamentals, and I’m really hoping there will be some exercises or advice for navigating this switch. It hasn’t been an issue at shows yet (in fact, at a recent live show, some folks who had seen me play a couple years ago told me they were amazed at how well my tone has progressed)… YET… but this new open-but-crap playing is kind of scaring me.

Any thoughts on this are appreciated; I’m also just commenting here to process what I’ve learned and skimmed through on the forum so far, as well as to set an email notice reminder to myself to come back to this thread and read more bits of it. It’s long and it looks like y’all have put a lot of thought into these subjects; sorry if I repeated anything that was already discussed!