Escaping insanity

October 20, 2007 at 6:43 AM

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.

This is how I frequently practice:

Play until I get to a hard spot. Grumble. Play it three more times. Curse. Play it again. Play it again and accidentally get it right. Cheer.

Play until I get to the next hard spot. Make a face. Play it again and again and again and again. Grumble or curse. Play it again and again until I accidentally get it right. Cheer.

Play until I get to the next hard spot. You get the picture....

My violin teacher has a wonderful way of showing me exactly what I'm doing and exactly how it's not helping. Sometimes it's painful to watch, such as when he mimics my bow arm. Sometimes it's at once hilarious and embarrassing, when he tells me something completely obvious, such as

"Accidents and coincidences...these are not things we use to play the violin."

"You are repeating your mistake over and over again. Stop playing. Play it right. Stop. Do not let it be a coincidence." I do, in fact, have this crazy faith that if I simply play something enough times, I'll learn to get it right. In many things in life, rote repetition does work, but violin playing is not one of them. I shall endeavor to eliminate useless repetition from my practicing, and remember that three times correct is better than three hundred times incorrect.

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on October 21, 2007 at 5:17 AM

In such situations, Suzuki would say, "You are learning very well how to play badly." I hope that makes you smile.

From Linda L
Posted on October 21, 2007 at 5:45 PM

Cheer!

From Karin Lin
Posted on October 22, 2007 at 6:10 AM

Ha ha, Pauline. Thanks for the smile. :P

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on October 22, 2007 at 10:25 AM

It took me until I was an adult to recognize I was doing that too. I think it's really easy to fall into that. In church, our choir director sometimes did that with an entrance the sopranos blew. She would expect us to come in late, and then when we did, would stop us. She repeated that so many times that the late entrance, followed by the stop, was more natural to my ear than the correct sound. We'd rehearsed it wrong so many times that that's what we'd learned. I tried to counter the wrong thing in my ear at home alone with the piano myself: I'd play it and come in when I was supposed to. But I wasn't really sure what to tell the choir director, and said nothing. I don't think she realized what she was doing--and she's a professional musician.

With violin or viola, lately if I run into a passage like that I try to play it 5X in a row correctly before moving on. That often means I end up playing it 20-30 times at first because I'll get to 3X correct or 4X correct and then break the streak and have to start over. But I've been really pleased with how doing that has made my intonation more reliable, even on something that I had thought was not that technically challenging, like the Bach double.

From Karin Lin
Posted on October 22, 2007 at 5:17 PM

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one, Karen. I felt pretty stupid when I realized how counterproductive this "practicing" was. This is one reason I firmly believe that most people need a teacher to learn effectively; the violin is so difficult that one cannot simply figure out what one is doing wrong simply by repeating it. In fact, all it does is ingrain bad habits.

Linda...I didn't realize why you'd specifically said "Cheer!" rather than "yay" or "right on" until later. That's funny. :)

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on October 23, 2007 at 10:42 AM

What's funny is that I did that most often when I *had* a teacher.

I would think the teacher was being "too picky" during the lesson. For example, s/he would notice some little note that was off that went by in less than a second and comment on that, and then I'd feel annoyed. I'd think, "the rest of the phrase was just fine, why don't you say something good about what was *right* with my playing, rather than just picking at this little tiny issue of a note you didn't like?" I'd feel criticized and get defensive, and be like, "who cares about that stupid note anyway? Geez, get a life!" I wouldn't say that aloud, of course, but I got tripped up by that a lot, psychologically, having to contain my feelings of annoyance and defensiveness that would even carry through to my feelings about practicing during the week (oh crap, there's that stupid note again in that stupid piece of music. Let's do something else!). A different form of insanity, I guess.

Not having a teacher for a while has helped me get better in that way: to just focus on the music, stay in the present, and allow my own judgement about "little" wrong notes and bad shifts and such to come out. Now, more of the time, *I* notice the little wrong note that comes and goes by in less than a second, and I don't waste time getting mad about it, I just start trying to fix it.

But I agree that a teacher who can help you practice well during the week when the teacher is not there is worth a lot.

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Escaping insanity

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