Recently I had stopped playing for a solid two months for the first time in a long time. I didn’t begin playing again until I really felt like it - about two weeks ago - and actually found the layoff helpful. I’m now slowing it up a bit, concentrating on getting phrases down so I don’t go out of rhythm to accommodate troublesome parts of tunes, applying things I’ve learned to other tunes, and am somehow just more aware of what I’m doing.
This was not planned, just a natural happenstance that I went with, and it seemed to work for me. I guess you just can’t force it.
I’ve had similar experiences. Back when I used to play classical guitar, I would often reach a point where I could just not get through certain points no matter how hard I worked… sometimes out of frustration, I wouldn’t touch the instrument for a couple of weeks and find that when I picked it up again, I could suddenly make it through that stuff that I was struggling on. My guess is that I was ready to play the parts but the stress of all the practicing got in the way. After a couple of weeks off, the muscle memory just seemed to kick in and I had much less trouble.
I always recommend that people just not play their instrument for a week if they are really badly stuck on something. I usually get crazy looks for that
This was when I started studying in the university and I did not have a piano of my own so there were long breaks, weeks, sometimes months between piano sessions. Somehow I felt that though it was bad for my technique, it somehow widened my vision (?) and I remember trying out many new expressive tricks that I haven’t tried before and many of them worked quite well! And the techical aspects can always be covered with some more practice: it’s like riding a bicycle, once you got it, you can fairly easily get it back!
This whistle thing is so new to me (1-2 years so far), that I’m still high on the first rush… so far I have concentrated on getting more whistles, building them, making sure there are whistles everywhere available (couple of them in both of our cars, in every room, you know, im sure!) so no laying it aside for me! Yet…
I’ve found that to be the case for many things in life, not just playing music. Sometimes, when you hit the wall, trying to plough through it again and again simply doesn’t work.
I’m glad this thread came along. I’m new to the whistle and have been practicing my head off, only to find that lately I seem to be getting worse instead of better.
My whistle is the only one of my instruments that I can grab up and play almost anywhere, which means I do. Because I can even play it lying down, a few times my husband has had to pry it from my poor swollen fingers when he saw I’d zonked out on the couch while tootling.
I think I may need to put my whistle in a hard-to-get-at place for a while, and allow myself to practice no more than an hour or so a day. A depressing thought, but I’m getting nowhere this way.
Ditto. I play guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle and whistle. While I play any and all whenever the mood hits, I’ve found over the years that I’ll go through “fiddle phases”, “banjo phases”, “whistle phases”, etc… I think this is a very good thing, as I always come back with a fresh perspective. It also helps to learn the same repertoire on multiple instruments. The downside, of course, is that you become a jack-of-several-trades, and (at least in my case) a master of none. But I play for my own amusement, so it’s all good.
Right now I’m taking a bit of a break from learning new ITM. Instead, I’m noodling around with Civil War tunes (like Battle Cry of Freedom), video game music (Tetris, FF7’s Cosmo Canyon), and a few cartoon theme songs (a couple of songs from David the Gnome). Fun stuff.
hmm maybe then the break that i’m taking from my clairnet because i’m too lazy to put it together and practise, will mean that i’ll be good for an audition i might have to do for university…lol
