Sticky fingers

Yesterday, when I was in the violin shop, the guy adjusting my instrument mentioned that violin was a ‘stressful’ instrument. 

I grew up finding most schoolwork fairly easy, and when confronted with violin, I found a huge challenge. This was not helped by my first teacher Norma (oh I remember her well) who I played with for roughly..3-4 years? They were group lessons, theory and practical. I loved the theory, found it easy and fun, so I’d have to stand up by myself and keep practising the playing while others got to sit down and do theory. This created a lot of pressure and performance anxiety in me, I think. 

When I went to music camps there were people there who were naturals, brilliant, half my age and twice (or more) the player I was. It’s always hard when you’re around people who are better than you, and it seems worse in music, worse again for violin. I could see people around me who were pressured by their parents, had money thrown at expensive instruments and lessons and it left kids filled with apathy or a competitive spirit most often exercised in how much they could boast about the quality of their instrument. People were /mean/ and haughty about getting to play first desk or first violin versus second violin in orchestras. I saw a lot of people not having fun. I was one of them. 

Violin you play standing in front of everyone, you are compared to brilliants that most people know (violin is a more common household name than viola, or cello, and things like trumpet generally don’t have the same connotations of ~musical genius~ as much as they are equally nuanced instruments). And violin is meant to be beautiful. Often, when starting out or practising, it’s far from beautiful. In order for your playing to be beautiful you have to love it, which causes this huge amount of stress in young players/players who are learning. 

I want to play beautifully, not because I’m running cringing and ashamed from discordance and sounds that disappoint me…but because I’m going to start chasing the music in my head. I want to sink into it relaxed, and find it. This is a change. I want to listen to how I play rather than focus on the technical mistakes I’m making. I think this is a good philosophy to have, or at least a less stressful one. Just my thoughts.