Staying Motivated

Wow! The first blog post of 2019! I can’t believe that there is only one semester left of school! Now, enough on the fact that it is a new school semester. Let’s dive right into this post!

If I have to be honest, I barely touched my violin over the break because I was too busy with a family wedding to practice. However, once the wedding ended during the last week of December, I started to practice again.

I have to admit, it was hard finding motivation to play after leaving my violin in the corner of my closet during most of the break. Luckily, my cousin constantly forced me to bring my violin over to her house to refresh my playing. I spent the rest of the break playing simple, fun songs as a warm-up to help strengthen core skills such as intonation and vibrato. For example, I played the all-American classic, “The Star Spangled Banner”.

Image by CMarino via musescore

Before I started playing, I would listen to a recording of the piece to make note of the changes in the dynamics in order to make my playing sound more lively and interactive. Additionally, I liked to play along with a piano app to help improve my intonation. The app allowed me to adjust the tempo of the piano piece to my liking, and it was extremely easy to go back to parts I had trouble on.

Although I did not progress much since my last blog post, it was important that I started off by playing easier songs to freshen up my skills. I discovered that it is better to play along with a recording of a piece being played by an instrument other than your own because it is easier to detect intonation through harmonization. I also learned that in order to build a skill, you need to practice on a weekly basis, as demonstrated in my difficulty to start playing complex pieces after not practicing for a long time. For myself, I learned that it is hard for me to become motivated to perform a task unless I see someone else performing the same task because it shows me that there is a purpose in working on that task and that my hard work will pay off.

Next week, I plan on focusing more on picking a piece to play for the final product since I will need a couple of weeks to learn the piece and perfect it for an audience. I have to say, I am extremely nervous to play in front of an audience since I rarely play full length pieces in front of people who I do not know that well. That being said, I have a feeling that my practice may not pay off in the end because the fact that I will be playing in front of an audience itself will probably result in a shaky tone coming from the violin. I guess we will see in a couple of months. Until next time!