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fiddlerdi |
Greetings fellow fiddlers from near and far!
What a great new place to connect with other players of all styles and levels. It is good to have a place for tunes, photo's and writings. It doesn't always matter how well you play, but it does matter THAT you play. If you keep playing you will get better. That's what I tell my students and I have people at every stage of playing imaginable. Young and old. People with lots of time to play and people who have to make the fiddle-playing fit into their lives where they are at right now. Some of my adult students come to a weekly lesson bemoaning the fact that they haven't had the fiddle in their hands since their last lesson. I just tell them that sometimes it doesn't work out to play that particular week but now they are here for 30 minutes and they do have time to play.
It is important to have a playing focus for your time (short or long) with the fiddle. If you do this then you will have prductive playing time, so that even if it's ten minutes you can accomplish something. Do you keep your fiddle out of the case and ready to play? It can be prohibitive to have to rig it up everytime you steal a moment to play. If it's got the shoulder rest on and the bow rosined up ,it is much more likely to be availible for you to play instantly. (Of course children and pets play into the sitruation of availibility, but you get the idea,, be creative). If you could just play for a few focused minutes everyday ,a couple of times, you will get better faster. I think a lot of us believe that we should wait until we find an hour of unplanned time. It rarely happens. I have looked for those hours and they somehow get used up before you can get the fiddle out. For kids it's a lot easier to get them to play for 10 minutes than an hour and they can really focus on that time. It's also easier on parents to pay attention to them for short periods of time. From a fiddlespohical point of view daily playing involves the process of creativity. Creativity is as much about the process as it is the finished product. Be careful though about playing for short periods of time. You might just find them stretching into longer and longer playing sessions. Hope this helps you fit Fiddling into your life. I will give you some practice focus ideas in my next blog!
Fiddlerdi
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