Fiddlosophy

What do you practice?

Reading time: 3 minutes When you practice the fiddle, what do you practice? Scales, bowing, tunes. But you also practice something else, something more powerful. You practice practice itself. The practice of practice can carry over to all other parts of your life. You can apply the principles to any habit or skill: losing weight, … Continued

Write Your Own Fiddle Book

When I was learning violin as a kid, I was given books of scales and page-long exercises called etudes like the one above. Once in awhile I would fight my way through the whole thing. But my attention would drift to other things. It was hard to stay engaged; I almost gave it up. My … Continued

Learn it by heart with heart

Memorization is a dry-sounding word that conjures up memories of that seventh grade world history class that you always fell asleep in. I fell asleep in history classes until 11th grade when I had a teacher named Gordy who got us to talk about history and make connections. More importantly, he taught us to think. … Continued

Practice, even if it doesn’t sound good

It’s easy to get discouraged if it doesn’t sound good. But try to become curious about the process. Experiment, fiddle around. Change your approach somehow. Try to sing what you are playing. Practice with eyes closed. Slow down. Take a short break. Go between micro-practice (analyzing, learning) and macro-practice (making connections, playing with flow). Even if … Continued

The Hardest Part

You can learn an instrument (or anything) if you simply ask yourself, “What is the hardest part?” Once you identify that, practice it. Then once again ask, “What is the hardest part?” (of the hardest part). Keep going until you find you’re practicing something with the perfect level of challenge. You’re deeply engaged when you … Continued

You Gotta Want It

Do you really want to play music? If so, that’s a precious and valuable thing. If you’re feeling down because you’re not further along, just remember that there are lot of people who don’t even know what they want to do with their time. Just knowing what you want to do can create a powerful … Continued

Make Friends With Your Doubt

I recently took a musical field trip to India to learn more about Hindustani classical music. I took lessons, learned informally by playing with people, went to a lot of concerts and even did a recording session with some local musicians. About halfway through the trip, I started to feel anxious because, compared to a … Continued

Practice Like A Master

A lot of people have written saying that they struggle with playing in tune. Do you also struggle with this? I wrote an article called Repeat A Thousand Times. The hero of this story is Earl Scruggs, titan of the bluegrass banjo. He wrote an instructional book on how to play the banjo in which … Continued

Hey, Play Us A Tune!

As a beginning fiddler, it’s exciting to learn your first tune. Once, you learn a few, you start to see how the process works and then you  want to keep charging ahead, consuming one tune after another. It’s great to be excited about learning, and I would never want to dampen the inspiration and pleasure … Continued

Three Phases of Learning a Tune

Think of learning a tune as a relationship. Like an old friend, the relationship will change over time, revealing new things about you, your playing and the tune. Tunes are not something to check off a list before moving on to the next thing. They continue to teach and bring joy in new ways each … Continued