The Physical Challenge of Fiddling

In this lesson, I’ll show you how to practice well and overcome the physical challenges of fiddling. It’s a long article so I’ll give you the take-home message up front:

The best way to overcome physical challenges is to break down complex problems into simpler practice tasks.

There are three main challenges you’ll face on your fiddle journey:

• Practice Challenge
• Physical Challenge
• Emotional Challenge

So far I’ve talked about the Practice Challenge and how that can be overcome by removing resistance to daily practice. I know you can do this if you create a good practice environment and commit to at least two minutes a day. Establishing a consistent practice habit is the first and most important step to learning fiddling (or any skill).

Once you’ve made practice a regular part of your life, the next step is to learn how to practice well so that you can overcome the physical challenges of fiddling.

After 25 years of giving in-person lessons, answering emails, comments and forum posts, I’ve identified common physical challenges that my students have dealt with:

• Getting the form right for bowing and fingering
• Getting a nice sound with the bow
• Playing in tune
• Overcoming fatigue and muscle pain
• Playing at a steady tempo
• Remembering to do all these things
• Once you’ve remembered all the things, doing them all at the same time 🤯

It can be overwhelming! Here are five actionable strategies that will help you to learn any tune on any instrument.

I’ll now go into more detail, giving you an action step for each strategy.

1. Micro-practice

Micro-practice is the process of breaking larger, complicated tasks (like a whole tune) into smaller pieces that are the perfect level of challenge. You learn to master each little piece of a tune. Or you break a complex skill (like adding double stops to scales) into sub-skills that can be easily practiced.

OK. Let me pause. If you learn nothing else from me but micro-practice, if you don’t read any more of these emails or watch any more FiddleHed videos, then your time will have not been wasted. Seriously. After you establish a daily practice habit, you need to do micro-practice in order to really learn (anything).

Say you’re learning Arkansas Traveller. If you always charge through the whole thing, it will be a struggle. You’ll be practicing the easy parts as much as the difficult parts. In this way, your progress will be slow, because you never give those difficult parts the extra attention they need.

The power of micro-practice (also known as “Deliberate Practice”) is that you learn to isolate each challenge of a tune. That way, you’ll see an improvement in those parts.

Ask yourself, what’s the hardest part of a tune? Then ask yourself, “What’s the hardest part of that hardest part?” Once you’ve mastered these small bits, then assemble them into bigger pieces. And before you know it, you can play the whole tune.

2. Separate the hands

When you learn an instrument, you have to do some serious multi-tasking.

A simple way to work on hard parts in music is to separate your hands. I mean, keep them attached to your arms and everything…😛 If you find that you’re struggling, simply focus on one hand at a time.

Break down problems according to what each hand is doing. This is actually a form of micro-practice (your new super-power). You’re breaking down complex problems into simpler practice tasks. (Wait, did I already mention that this was important? 🤓)

Action Step: Right, Left, Synchronize

D3-1-1-A1-D1-1

1. Focus on the right hand by just bowing the part on the open strings: A0-D0-0-A0-D0-0. Rest your left hand in beginner’s position on the fiddle.
2. Next, focus on the left hand. Set down the bow and just pluck out the left-hand fingering: D3-1-1-A1-D1-1. Plucking is easier than bowing. So you can devote more mental resources to learning the left-hand fingering.
3. Integrating step: Slowly play the first three notes with bowing and fingering. This combines the left and right hands in a manageable step. Once you can do that, you’re well on your way to doing it with larger and larger pieces.

3. Looping

A lot of students ask, “How do I make my fiddling sound more like fiddling?” Looping is the answer.

The basic idea of looping: instead of playing a tune all the way through, loop on a small piece until it starts to sound like music.

It’s hard to achieve musical flow for an entire piece. You find that you constantly stop and start as you hit difficult spots. But if you learn one little piece and then loop on it, you’ll start to feel the deep satisfaction of making music.

5. Fiddle yoga

Often when I practice, I find that I’m not breathing evenly or that certain muscles are tense (like my stomach or shoulders). When I become aware of this, I try to pause what I’m doing and connect to the body using a process I call fiddle yoga.

Bring awareness to the body, breath and mind as you play. This will help you to overcome tough practice challenges and make your session more enjoyable.

This relaxes me and connects me to the joy of playing. After I make this connection, I often find that whatever “impossible” thing I was practicing isn’t that big of a deal anymore.

Let’s sum up…

Here’s what FiddleHed Neil has to say about micro-practice: