All musicians experience the paranoia that their instrument is secretly plotting against them at some point in their life. You try to be the best musician you can be, but your instrument has other plans.

1. The squeak. The frack. That awful attack.

Imagine this. You’re having an awesome practice session and you aren’t missing a single note. Your instrument is singing and your tone quality is beaming with pride! You want to share this wonderful moment with a close friend; so you invite them into your practice room and play your piece for them. You bring the instrument to your face, take a deep breath and -- BAM! The most awful squawk comes out of your instrument. What. The. Heck. Really? You were doing so well a second ago and now that someone else is in the room you miss almost every note. You get a little too cocky and your instrument tries to keep you humble while making you look like a fool.

I have noticed that this often occurs when I have a lesson with my horn professor. I could be working on a technique for weeks upon weeks, but when it comes time to finally show my professor how much I’ve improved; my horn won’t even duplicate it. Until I’m no longer in my lesson. Needless to say, my horn’s favorite pastime is embarrassing me in front of others.

2. "Let me hear this section."

You’re in the middle of your ensemble class and the conductor calls on your section to play an excerpt. You’re pumped up and you’re ready to show the rest of the band how it’s done. Once again, you take your breath and the worst sound you have produced on your instrument since beginning band comes out. Your colleagues look at you in despair, your conductor is smiling faintly with the baton still in mid air. They calmly say, “That’s okay. Let’s try this again” and once again, you guessed it, the war flashbacks to sixth grade band begin. You can hear your instrument laughing at you through every missed note and rhythm. The whole band and the conductor think you can’t play your instrument. Nothing else can go wrong now, right?

3. It's not condensation.

Oh. My. God. The spit. The never ending spit. Some musicians try to tell you it’s all just condensation from the hot air blowing into cold metal. As a brass player, emptying out my slides is something I do every five minutes of playing. French horns are notorious for their collection of spit. You think you’re finished getting everything emptied so you go back to playing. Queue the gurgles and the bubble sounds. You're kidding me, right? You just spent 5 minutes emptying it out and something is still in there? Unbelievable. I'm sure the gurgling sound is actually your instrument laughing at you. The most effective way to get spit out of your instrument completely is to go into playing position and Niagara Falls just empties out from your bell onto your pant leg! It's just that easy!

Well, at least your instrument doesn't have spit in it anymore. Thanks, gravity, you’re the best!

4. A(wkward) 440.

When it comes to playing, tuning is one of the most important parts. If you’re playing alone or with an ensemble, you should always be in tune. Nothing is worse than playing with an ensemble and everyone can hear the different speeds of the wavelengths because someone is not in tune. Sometimes when you’re in an ensemble and your conductor will go down section and have each individual person tune. It’s embarrassing when you’re the last person to tune and you’re the only person in the whole section out of tune. No matter how much you push or pull your tuning slide or the minor adjustments you make to your face, you’re still out of tune. You work so hard to fit into the sound of your section and you can hear the laugh of your instrument between the sounds of the different wavelengths. Another time your instrument publicly embarrasses you. Awesome. Another point added to the instrument team.

At the end of the day, you love your instrument. No matter what it puts you through you know it will always be there for you. It may just be an inanimate object, but you know it has personality. And a mind of its own.