This reminds me of a jazz trumpet player I heard on NPR once... Can't remember his name for the life of me, and it's annoying as hell because I really want to find some of his records. Well, anyway his specialty was "flubbed" notes- getting his trumpet to do the sort of things that beginners do as they learn, but to keep them in control. His strategy was that whenever he made a mistake, he'd figure out exactly how he did it and spend a while replicating that mistake until he had it in his pocket.

He also had many good points to offer- the big one would be that everything you learn applies to everything else in music. His main thing was always jazz, but he spent a lot of time working in all genres which led to one other peice of advice he offered: Make sure your instrument can feed you.