I regularly ask my violin students to stretch far past their everyday boundaries.
Sometimes those lessons produce an unanticipated effect. A sense of overwhelm. An unanticipated jitter. Even an unexpected welling up of tears.
The results, even if less than perfect, are irrelevant. It is the resolve to pursue the path and the will to endure your inner resistance that is transformational.
That’s the whole point of undertaking the violin journey.
Stop fretting or whining about how difficult that song or passage is.
Instead, start by finding or creating ten distinctly different ways to improve it. Even the smallest improvement counts. Do that, and not only have you improved your song, you’ve also gained ten new problem solving skills which can be applied to future musical challenges. Your violin practice time was a high payoff activity that will save countless hours of work moving forward.
When all is said and done you are:
1. A more skilled and thus more desirable musician
2. A more effective human being who has trained her brain to do high quality, creative work in any situation.
Music is transformative. Violin is transformative.
How a violin practice transforms your life.
1. Learning how to truly master specific skills leads to a fulfilled life.
2. Motions and actions are how you shape your basic approach to the instrument. Using simplicity, ease and mastery moves you through life gracefully.
3. Practice is defining specific goals. Defining. Specific. Constant clarity.
4. Practice strategies are the pathway to your mastery. Thus choosing work that matters and doing that work mindfully, will produce a high quality result.
5. Performing is creating work that is important to other people. Like sales and marketing hinges on understanding others interests, problems and aspirations.
6. Performing is also facing up to your challenges. Life presents us with such challenges on a regular basis.
7. Choosing the violin (or any instrument) teaches you to define and implement large projects.
The violin or any instrument becomes transformational when (and only when) you approach it from this larger perspective.
If you’re in it just to learn a couple of songs, that’s OK too. Just don’t expect any more than a quick diversion.