5 Sayings to Help You Practice

Here are 5 sayings for you that might just help you practice and play better!

1. The more you play, the better you get.

2. The more mindfully you play, the faster you get better.

3. It’s not the minutes that count, but the consistency.

4. It’s not how many minutes, but how much you care.

5. If you like it, play it again; if you don’t like it, don’t play it the first time.

If you’d like some brief commentary on each of these sayings (plus a special sixth saying), read on!

1. The more you play, the better you get.

I have seen some very fine players with terrible-looking technique, or at least technique I wouldn’t recommend. So how did they get to be so good? Because they love it, and they play a lot. They’ve figured out how to adapt to the way they play, and make it work for them.

On the other hand, someone who plays perfectly but doesn’t play very often isn’t going to get much better. Often, this includes people who are afraid of making mistakes or developing a bad habit. But focusing on mistakes is like waiting for a mosquito to bite you. Distracting, and an overblown scare when it actually bites. As to habits, if bad habits couldn’t be fixed there would be no such thing as a teacher.

2. The more mindfully you play, the faster you get better.

Playing a lot improves your playing, but the more mindful you are as you play, the more pathways you’ll have to getting the feel for it, and the faster you’ll get better at it. “Mindful” can mean many things. One is body awareness — efficient movement — as outlined in the Technique Video Groups 1 and 2. Another is bowing awareness in rhythm and feel, as developed in TechVid Group 3. It can also include having a sense of finger patterns, which you can build using TechVid Group 4.

Studies show that approaching a problem from many angles is endlessly entertaining and stimulating for your brain. Learning to play fiddle is like solving many puzzles — the more ways you look at a puzzle, the better you come to understand it, and the easier things fall into place.

3. It’s not the minutes that count, but the consistency.

If you find a time in your daily schedule to play, even if only a few minutes, this consistency will make your instrument a routine part of your day. It keeps your hand in. You get comfortable playing. You get curious about whether you can play something better than the previous day. And when you do have more time to spend, you’re ready to make the most of it.

Five minutes a day is all I suggest for beginners. In fact, the basic exercises I give them are easy and take only 3 minutes (Technique Video Group #1, videos 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7). There are things you do each day without question (like visit the bathroom!) — make fiddle one of them. Did you know that when the famous cellist Yo Yo Ma was a kid, his parents wouldn’t let him play more than 15 minutes a day?

4. It’s not how many minutes, but how much you care.

What really distinguishes a good learner and a good performer is how much they care about what they do.

We all respond to someone who honestly cares about what they’re doing. Caring leads to depth of expression and clarity of technique, because someone who cares tries to get things they way they want them. It’s a very different quality from someone who is good at what they do because they follow instructions, want a good grade, or are afraid of doing something wrong.

If you care, you’ll get there. (Hey, that would be a good saying too!)

5. If you like it, play it again; if you don’t like it, don’t play it the first time.

Most fiddlers play each part of a tune twice, and the whole tune at least twice. Check the tune out the first time, see how it goes, and then get into it the second time. Those who play a part and move on almost seem to want to get it over with — or maybe they’re hoping to quit while they’re ahead? Relax, enjoy the music, get into the rhythmic groove, the lilt of the tune, play mindfully, pay attention, and enjoy the scenery!

And if you don’t like the tune, why play it? There are so many out there for you to enjoy. It’s true that people often like a tune better once they know they’re able to play it, but sometimes you do get a gut feeling about whether you like the music or not. Still, keep an open mind. I once found about four tunes in a row that I thought were boring, in an old music book. A year later, I couldn’t find those tunes again, because that time I didn’t find them to be boring at all.

6. When you run out of sayings, stop writing, especially if you’re on the sixth one and you promised only five.

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©2017 Ed Pearlman