Does anyone else have days when you can’t play for, uh ,let me rephrase..can’t seem to play anything. When your fingers have a mind of their own and go where they want. Please tell me it’s not just me. How do you deal with it? Me, I just put it down and try tomorrow…
Hey, today during church, the last song, a new song, after playing everything just about flawlessly, I didn’t know where I was and started playing the wrong chords. But experience came through. I kept the tempo, played the wrong chords without mistakes, if you know what I mean, and was relaxed and didn’t panic. It took only a few moments to find out where everyone else was. I found my place, and the song went on. Finally, at the end of the song, I laughed it off, because there was nothing esle I could do about it, so I might as well enjoy it. Anyone who plays in public on a regular basis is going to experience this. It rarely happens. So what when it does. On the way home I asked my wife if she noticed, and she hadn’t, and she is a trained vocalist. (Which just goes to show you that vocalists don’t listen! They also can’t keep a beat!) I wonder if she’ll read this. But think about all the mistakes that happen on radio. We listeners don’t mind. It happens, then it’s over. We can’t make a big deal about it. Mistakkes happen. Get over it and move on. JP
[ This Message was edited by: JohnPalmer on 2002-04-22 11:24 ]
I thought I was the only one! I’m only a beginner, but I try to practice every day in the hopes of getting better. Some days, it seems like I’m getting it, and things are clicking and I have hope that I may be able to play halfway decent someday. Then there are other days when I can’t even hit a note in the second octave. Usually what I do is stop for a minute and stomp around and pound my fist. Then, I go play something easy to delude myself into thinking, hey, man, it’s not so bad. Look, you can still play “Oranges and Lemons.” Then, I go back and try again at whatever was frustrating me. Usually I repeat this process until I either a) improve or b) get hungry. I don’t know if this method works. Only time will tell, I suppose. Of course, it doesn’t make me happy to know that you have bad days, but is nice to know that I’m not alone in my suffering!
I get that quite often.
I just say “The Muse are not with me today” and try again later.
Definitely!! ON those days, just put away the whistle and try again another time.
Actually, sometimes taking time away from playing seems to improve things. I think my brain becomes overloaded, especially when learning a lot of new things, and needs time to assimilate the new material. Don’t worry, you’re normal!
Yes, that happens to me when I play guitar at church as well. It is more noticable when you are a singer as well and (ah it must be a sign of aging) when the eyes skip a line and I am singing the wrong words.
Friends who know me well in the congregation, know that if they see me smiling and shaking my head, she has made a mistake!!!
I also recall my first attempt of public whistle playing. It was an open stage concert at a very informal local festival.
I was trying to attempt playing Cooley’s Reel by memory. By the third time around my mind went blank the fingers went crazy and I found myself ducking behind the hammer dulcimer player. All in good fun! And for a good laugh after ward. Lesson learned… pick an easier tune!!!
Laura
Session music belongs to the session, not to player. It is a social thing. Once the fun starts, the music starts. If four prople are ina session, and they share 10 tunes you have 40 tunes to play. problem solved.
Damien
What’s all this “I can’t play today, so I’m putting my horn away” stuff? When you can’t manage to get anything to go right, that’s when you need to keep going. It might be as simple as not being fully warmed up, mentally. Basketball players go through periods where they can’t make a basket. Their coaches tell them to play through it and to keep shooting. It will come back. The same goes for musicians. What happens when you have to play in public and you are experiencing a mental block? You can’t quit. Keep pushing through it. Now get out there and give it 110%!
Coach Palmer
On 2002-04-22 11:34, JohnPalmer wrote:
When you can’t manage to get anything to go right, that’s when you need to keep going. Coach Palmer
I respectfully disagree. If it isn’t going right you can do more damage by frustrating yourself, and developing bad habits or wrong muscle memory by “playing through it.”
I play lap dulcimer in addition to whistle and I often experience what DaveG describes. When I do, I put it up for a while and come back to it. It invariably does the trick. Sometimes you just don’t realize that your instrument is out of tune and retuning can make things much better.
Whitey
~. . . . . .
[ This Message was edited by: mgwhitehead on 2002-04-22 12:29 ]
I don’t just have some DAYS it doesn’t go right, I get the same day! For some reason, I play better and my whistle sounds nicer early in the morning; most afternoons nothing goes right and my whistle sounds “sick.” I practice anyway because I figure that at least my fingers are learning, and I learn most of my breath control in the afternoon trying to make my whistle sound better. I sure wish I knew what the problem was, tho.
I’m with Coach. Where does frustration come from? Only your own expectations of yourself. Lighten up. Don’t worry so much about screwing up. I screw up a lot, but I listen to how pretty I sound in between the screw-ups. Also, I play with people close enough to my level that they screw up as much as I do, so I don’t feel like I’m dragging them down. See the humor in totally spazzing on the first tune you ever learned, the one you’ve practiced the most. See the humor in the squawk that comes out when you don’t break into the upper octave like you thought you would. Keep with the rhythm. Sometimes you will find a more beautiful note totally by accident.
Lisa
My grandfather says “When something you love begins to become a chore, it may be time to quit for a while.”
However, there are times where if you just try and keep trying, all of a sudden, it’ll just HAPPEN. Everything will just fall into place and it will be perfect.
So, if you’re really getting tired of playing on a particular day, take a break of it for a day or two and then take it up again. Or if you’re just bored, find something new to play (sheet music) and work on that for a while instead.
I’m of the opinion that it won’t do to sour yourself on it to such a point that the instrument makes you sick. Besides, everyone needs a break once in a while.
Heather
Whenever there’s a live performance of anything, the human element is involved and that means mistakes are not only possible, but likely. People who are accustomed to performing in public have to learn how to play through the mistakes and not be derailed by them.
My wife and I attended a Chieftans concert that featured a couple of local dancers. The second time they came out, the lady did a wonderful high kick followed by the most thorough pratfall you can imagine. The poor woman had hit a slick spot on the stage and went flat on her back. The audience gasped, but she was back on her feet in a flash. In only a few seconds she was on the beat and to look at her you couldn’t tell anything untoward had happened. Now, that lady was a pro.
The coach is right: Soldier on.
Strategies during practice are different, though, and it can be worthwhile to lay a tune down for a while if it’s giving trouble and pick it up again later. Practice is necessary, but it doesn’t do to practice bad habits. One bad habit I know of, by the way, is trying to play too fast too soon.
Be sure and remember all this, because I may need you to remind me of it sometime later. 
Sometimes it’s just fatigue. Habitually playing after an exhausting days’ work can be discouraging. Give it a blast after a good nights’ sleep and you may find you are a better player than you thought the night before.
I agree with StevieJ, fatigue level can have a lot to do with it. I find that sometimes, I can play through frustration, and other times, I have to just give it a rest and come back later. The trick is figuring out which strategy is best before I feel like whistle-tossing! 
Of course you can’t take a break during a performance… You do have to keep going.
I am self-taught on the whistle and learning bagpipes from a teacher. Gives me a perspective on the differences. I’m still a beginner on both instruments, so don’t take this as gospel.
When the whistle just won’t play right, I will set it down and play my practice chanter. If I can’t coax a tune out of it, I practice scales and ornaments. Seriously. That’s how I warm up, anyway. On the pipes, at least. I don’t practice scales on the whistle, even though I know I should.
If I am making a hash of my basic scales and ornaments, I will just practice them very slowly. (Pipers generally learn the ornaments before they learn tunes. We learn tunes with full ornamentation.) On days when I can’t play the ornaments at speed (or as close as I get to speed), I just play them slow and concentrate on precision. The idea is to build muscle memory.
After one practice session of this, I lay the instrument down and do something else. Then, by the next day, I may get it right. Otherwise, asking my teacher to go over the problem spots with me usually helps. Not because she can make my fingers work right or because I am actually doing something wrong. Really just because I hate screwing up in front of her. So, I manage to get through it okay. And then a different problem comes up later…
So, my advice is to either concentrate on scales and ornaments when you can’t carry a tune or else to play every note in the tune very slowly and deliberately. Build memory before speed. And remember what Lee Marsh tells us: the point is to “enjoy your music.”
-Patrick
I was at an impromtu school assembly which I performed with the local dulcimer club.
The lady who played hammer dulcimer told me this old saying that her father use to say.
“You are not practicing enough if you don’t make a mistake or two.”
Laura
Don’t feel too bad. I had some screaming fits of frustration over spring break and just had to put down my whistles before I broke them all in half. (though the frustration wasn’t just from the whistles or the terrible music I was producing, but that’s a long personal story that I’m sure nobody else cares about)
To be honest, I haven’t touched them much since, I think I’ve played maybe two tunes in the past couple of weeks. It’s almost like I’m afraid to, that I’ll really hate them if I fool with it again right now.
shrugs
I have been listening a lot more to Irish music in the past couple of weeks than I usually do.
I will pick up my whistles again and play them and love them again, I’m quite sure of that, just not right now. Graduation is a month away and things are crazy right now, and I’m completely burned out on everything more or less. The first real passion I had was art, it’s been in my blood since I was born. I used to spend hours drawing whatever image popped into my head. I haven’t produced a single real picture in months either. It’s rather irritating.
Oh well. It’ll come back. It always does.
I seriously cannot spell
[ This Message was edited by: TelegramSam on 2002-04-22 20:00 ]
I usually know by the first tune, no matter what instrument, whether it’s going to go well or not. It’s just a feeling.Changing to another instrument does not make any difference to me. If I find I’m just making a mess of practice and frustrating myself I stop for a while , go do something else and go back to practice later. The best practices are usually when I’m in the mood , but not always. Sometimes, when I’m tired, I can relax by playing.
And anyone who plays in public is also going to have those times when it all seems to really come together smoothly, times when it’s work and you are really having to pay attention, and times when it’s rough.And, sometimes,horror, like in another post, you are suprised to find you have a brain lapse, and are at a loss for a measure or two. Fortunately these don’t occur too often.
The times when the music just takes you over with a life all it’s own makes the practice and the othertimes worth it.