Dear Greg and Guillaume,
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, and sorry it’s taken me so long to acknowledge them. I have actually been away for a few weeks. (I see you’ve finished the Ultimate level in the meantime, Greg; you must be thrilled!!)

I always think that being able to identify a problem clearly gets you a long way towards solving it, so I’m not sure that too much analysis is a problem, but too much thinking and trying too hard? Yes, absolutely! The thing is: how do you stop it??

Greg, your point about needing to have a “clear understanding of what we are working and why” is an extremely valid one, and one that I am definitely failing on at the moment. A few months ago, my playing really improved thanks to your course. The “E”, which had always stumped me, was suddenly there and my tone was improving, so all seemed well. Then I think I made one change too many and everything fell apart. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out what that change was. The best way I can describe it is that it’s like being in a maze. You can’t remember how you got to where you are, so you end up turning left and right randomly in the hope of evetually popping out somewhere. (I’ve tried the trick with turning right at every junction. It didn’t work for me.)

That’s where I am; changing things randomly without any clear system, becasue there just seem to be too many things wrong and I can’t separate them out. So: Back to the beginning of the Largo videos once more and start from there. Park the tongue, get the embouchure right to produce a note, then play with aperture corners to change the note. One variable at a time. Hopefully, this will lead to some success; and I do think I need some success to avoid extreme frustration. Or maybe I just need to redefine what I call a “success”?

Thans for your help once more. I’m off to square 1 now!! 😉

Jutta