Recently, I’ve had some fantastic musical experiences, and, though I say it myself, have played some of the best music I’ve played in my life. Seriously, some of it has been some of the best music I’ve heard in my life.
Now, after a summer season of hard festivalling and some extremely arduous, challenging, but ultimately intensely satisfying gigs, I expected to have to slow things down a bit and regroup as it were, in terms of my playing. I started my usual process of getting back to basics.
… and I can’t play. Not for toffee. On any instrument, flute, whistle, fiddle, whatever.
This has happened to me before. I should learn to expect it. But it’s hard. I’m seriously interested in whether this happens to anybody else. Do you find that, suddenly, you just can’t play your instrument? Not just on one day, but for a week at a time, say? ‘Cos I struggle with this. It’s depressing.
Yeah, it happens to me, at least. Can’t say as there’s a regular cyclic rhythm to it, but when it happens it sucks, because I can’t point to anything that makes sense of it.
That’s it. Exactly. Can’t point to anything. If I could, I could rectify it, yes? Yes.
Interesting. I can’t draw for toffee either. (Perhaps I should stop thinking about toffee.) I wonder what else I could do as an alternative? At the moment, I’m trying to sort of ‘work through it’, ie keep practising and hope that it gradually gets better.
Now … flick flick … recipes for toffee … flick … fudge (no, not that one, I didn’t wake up for three days) … sticky toffee pudding … toffee crisp … aha! toffee!!! … hmmm … unsalted butter … cream of tartar … hmmm … I’ll get back to you …
Yes, though not with an instrument (yet), but with other things that are mentally “extremely arduous, challenging, but ultimately intensely satisfying”. After whatever it is has been ‘completed’ or perhaps if I have been forced to set it aside for a while. Typically I find that one morning I don’t even want to think about it much.
What Inoccent Bystander said. I just give it a break. It passes and the energy/enthusiasm/ability comes back. I wonder if it is a way of ‘pacing ourselves’, giving time for recovery.
Hasn’t happened for a while though. Maybe I am getting lazy.
I get something similar now and again. I usually end up reading a book. I’ve had my ‘reading head’ on for a day or two now. I’m sure my ‘whistling head’ will return soon.
I share your pain. If it helps, I’ve also observed that after playing some of the best music in one’s life with some of the best players one’s played with in one’s life, one’s personal bar is raised. Often quite a bit.
So maybe you’re also expecting more out of yourself than you were in May. Just something to take into account.
Yeah, I’ve considered that one, Cathy. On the one hand, when I thought of it, it cheered me up. And then, almost immediately after, I got depressed, thinking how much more work, on top of what I’m having to do anyway, will be needed to attain and maintain standards at that new level. I think that will probably be a long, hard slog … once I get back to something like normal. 'Cos I’m also convinced that I truly am a bit crap at the moment (to use the technical term).
I wonder if anyone but me gets to thinking every now and then “Ya know, I hate this music stuff!” It’s like breathing though. There ain’t no choice in the matter.
I think we really only hate the climb because there’s no end to it if we’re committed, and fatigue - hatred close on its heels - can set in. So the argument that a little time off, or probably better yet momentary redirection, makes a lot of sense. There’s an old samurai saying: “A change is as good as a rest.” It can’t be totally off-base; at least a couple here have said basically the same thing citing personal experience.
One thing I’ve come to see about the learning process in skills like this is that there is the ascent, and then a plateau. Repeat. And repeat. Et cetera. At the beginner level one’s gains are comparatively easily won, more rapid, and manifold; a time of joy and discovery. But once one gets to advanced levels the plateaus last a lot longer than at the beginner level, and the ascents are not only less frequent, they are mostly not very high because of their focus on finer, often single details, and they can be a lot more work to nail down.
The ascent is where I learn, and the plateau is where I get comfortable with and polish what I’ve learned (a sort of rest period in itself, in a way), and with luck I don’t get too complacent with where I am. And often as not the next ascent is not really so much about gaining more “stuff”, but about throwing away things that were okay up to the point they got me to but will hold me back if I intend to advance beyond. That can be very hard, especially if you have an emotional value investment in the time and effort you’ve put in to get such skills that got you to where you are. For me learning has actually become a process of recognising what I need to throw away, almost more than it is one of accruing more technical bling. Sometimes it’s a matter of throwing away not necessarily technical approaches, but how I think about things.
Another thought, echoing Cathy: Painful as they are, I’ve come to take the “God. I’m totally crap” revelations to be a sign not that I’ve necessarily regressed, but that I am more probably poised to be able to climb up from the plateau, because my perception is now raised but the skillset is still yet “down there”. So it only looks like a regression. But that’s actually the good news, because how can I make changes without perspective?
But while all that relativity is quite real, OTOH some days I’m pretty certain my playing just stinks. Period.
Well, I realise I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Ben either, for that matter. But, who knows. Might be of some help to those who are struggling with this sort of thing…
Oh yes … it’s really good to be told the things you know. I positively need it every now and then. So thanks everyone. If there’s anything else, known or otherwise, that anyone would care to add to drag me through this particular slump, I’m all ears. (That one’s for Jem.)
And yes, also, all of us lesser mortals can bask in the bloated screed of wisdom too.
It’s coming. It’s coming. I’ve only just bought the ingredients. (Well, OK, I’ve only just had the SO go out and buy the ingredients. Well, you wouldn’t expect me to do everything myself, would you? )
From what I can tell – and again only through observation and asking them, certainly not through my own internal experience! – the great ones are continually working on things. That’s what makes them great. Me, I have to accept that I started at a late age, I average about 2 hours’ QUALITY (as in alone, not in a gig or session) playing/practice time a week, my fingers are arthritic and my brain’s hardwired into that classically trained “If at first you don’t succeed – you’re a blight on humanity!” mode some of us seem to get schooled into by the time we reach adulthood.
Conal O’ Grada said something really interesting in a class this summer (I think it was before I tried and failed to play a so-called “party piece” from somewhere under my chair, so it obviously didn’t take right away) about that great tune he plays, “Lesbia Doth Hath A Beaming Eye” – he said " you can’t let up on this tune, not for one minute. You have to be confident, all the way through. You have to be totally bold. You can let the tune think you have any doubt."
It got me thinking. Not that anything’s changed yet, but it has got me thinking – especially about how thinking is what i need to QUIT doing! (shutting up the incessant internal critic seems absolutely impossible to me)
I have discovered in the past (I’ve spent my life with horses and riding is so much like music!) that feeling beaten is sometimes a good doorway to a breakthrough. When you don’t feel like anything’s wrong with your playing, you’ve got all the answers (:lol: yeah, right). So how on earth are how are you going to be in a place to hear, see, or discover what you need to do to improve?
Finally, I totally agree with N’s screed (gad, I love that word) – especially about the part that a rest being a good thing. Fresh perspective, yadayada. Paddy Keenan quit for a good while and it didn’t hurt him in the long run. In fact, he told me he doesn’t play at home. The pipes are under the bed until he’s got a gig. Now of course, he’s probably got at least 100,000 hours … and perhaps just a wee amount of baggage of his own … but sometimes it is good to talk a little walk away. Have you got another instrument you could fuss with for a while? A nice concertina, maybe? Learning a tune on another instrument gives you a whole new perspective on it when you tackle it with your primary instrument.
(That one’s for Jem.)
