Violin lesson #117

It has been a fair while since the last lesson, and that is mostly due to school holidays, the new Sage kitchen (it has taken waaay longer than expected) and Laura moving house. Today itself was very busy and the Sage was running around right up until the lesson.

Part of the driving around was to get to Animato to meet Laura to try out violas. Yes. Violas. For a while now, a long while actually, it has been suggested I make a move from the violin to the viola. My build and my fingers are more suited to the larger instrument - I tried out the 16" size model - than to the violin. It doesn't mean I can't play the violin. Rather it means it will be easier to play than the violin. And it has a different sound which, now that I have heard it, I quite rather like. It is a half-octave lower and has a richer more mellow tone. So, having said all that, I am open to the idea of switching to the viola if I can find an instrument I like.

As far as the lesson went, I admitted I had little time for practice since the last one. We went over the B-flat major scale and followed that up with The Honeysuckle. It was short and sweet and I was happy to have had my lesson.

Just a little on time. If you subscribe to the principle that 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” are needed to become world-class in any field, it would take over 27 years at an hour a day to achieve this mastery. An hour? An hour a day? I don't get an hour a day. I am lucky to get a half hour a day, and there will be many days with no practice at all. Does that mean I will never master the violin (or viola)? Perhaps. But then, I know I don't have the ten thousand hours to dedicate to learning to play those stringed instruments. So for me, mastery is not the goal. My goal is to be the best that I can be, to play music for my own enjoyment, and where possible, for the enjoyment of others. I have come to accept that sometimes I can practice for a half hour and sometimes I can go three days with no practice at all. It is what it is, especially for a man with a wife and two kids and a full-time job.

The journey continues, and as always, I wonder what's going to happen next.