My very nice teacher made me up a set of exercises to do at home. I love playing them and I was beginning to get confident with them. In my opinion they were beginning to sound good. Then I went and had a lesson and played them like I had never played a violin in my life

I DO hope this is a temporary thing.

Oh I do KNOW how you feel!!!

Sometimes I play like I'm using garden tools.. not a beautiful meticulously crafted instrument!

But Sandy the good news is that some days you will sound fabulous!!!

Sandy - You are not alone.

I (attempt to) play Classical Guitar - passed Grade 8 last year.

I had my weekly lesson on Tuesday and had an absolute STINKER. We have a Guitar Festival coming up and one of the visiting musicians will be giving master classes - I was told that I wasn't good enough to participate.

We then moved onto a new piece - I couldn't even play the 1st bar correctly. I felt terrible - still do!!!!

All I can suggest is that we keep plodding on.

All the best,

Nigel

I agree.

It's so easy to have a bad day with a violin.

Some days I can beleive I can play anything, the next day I'm wondering if I'd ever pass a grade 1 exam.

It does help though if you beleive you are going to have a good day, confidence helps a lot with playing most instruments. My teacher reckons she can easily tell if I'll play something well just by looking at how I'm standing to start with.

The phrase stand up straight and imagine you're Nigel Kennedy/Vanessa Mae whatever is beginning to be used in lessons.

I'm sure all your lows will be matched by the highs!

What's even worse than playing badly in a lesson is when you think you've played something well only to be given a long list of things which need working on.

Happened to me in my lesson yesterday - I knew my pieces weren't perfect but I had worked really hard and thought I at least sounded better than my previous lesson.

Cried all the way home

Going to throw my viola in the dustbin.

I mostly take that as a positive.
A good teacher will only ask of you what they are pretty sure you can handle.
Having something really taken apart can mean that you played well enough for your teacher to think that you are capable of taking it to new levels.
I can be more concerned when they have little to say....... except when it's a really good run through of something you've been working on improving for some time.

Thanks for that encouragement.

I do keep telling myself that I pay a teacher to spot all the wrong stuff and show me how to put it right.

It's just that there is so much wrong stuff!

I do also feel for those who have posted above who find it all goes wrong in the lesson. Sometimes that happens to me when I've invested a lot of time into a piece and am excited at demonstrating how well it is going. It's probably one of the most frustrating things about learning.

Can I have it? Once I master the violin (I know it might years and years away) I'd love a viola.

Been there as well. Bowing is still a major nightmare with me - some days I've cracked it (and in lessons when my bow arm is constantly corrected) but often it's completely rubbish and I'm back at square one.

It's so frustrating to know what sort of sound you wish to produce and not being able to create it due to poor technique.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

OK, the viola is not going in the dustbin - if only because I can't work out which of the many dustbins we have it should go in.

I do love it really, so took a deep breath and tried again. I will not be beaten!

Next lesson in 2 weeks minus one day, and am determined to get my bow at least partly under control.

How are the rest of you doing?

I almost always play much worse in lessons than I do at home. It is beyond frustrating but very early on my teacher said that she thought it was a common phenomenon and I should not let it worry me. I sometimes (rarely) play as well as at home, but try not to be too frustrated because my teacher is my supporter not judge. And I know what it is like to think 'cracked it' only to be given a lot of recommendations for improvement, but then my teacher has said that there are few professional/advanced musicians who won't have experienced feedback and suggestions for improvement regularly in their career - there is always something where most people can improve. So, hang in there and I hope we can all resist the temptation to throw instruments in the bin!

It is so good to hear that I am not the only one that "suffers" from this...

I did my excercises last night and they sounded great, even if I say so myself. I am wondering if I should record me at home and e-mailing the teacher saying this is how I can play.

Hopefully Mondays lesson will be 100 times better than the last one.

After 18 months I often turn up and totally muck things up. There's just so much to concentrate on.

My teacher did this to me the first lesson after Easter. In the three weeks between lessons (i.e. two missed lessons due to the holidays), I'd worked on some stuff on my own. And I played it for him and we worked on bits of it, and it wasn't until I was driving home afterwards that I even realised that he'd basically pulled what I'd done to pieces. He just did it so well I didn't notice it was unrelenting criticism at the time

On/off days are all in the head, and by this I mean that it is caused by mental state. Barring physical injury/exhaustion, it's all on the inside.

I highly recommend a book called 'Inner Game of Music'. I found 95% of it to be useless waffle, but the other 5% was the most important stuff I've ever learned. (I also reckon that most other people will find this, but it will be a different 5% - people are just wired differently!)

I play badly when I feel X, and well when I feel Y. Figuring out what X and Y are was step 1. Recognising which state I'm in at a given moment was step 2. Learning how to get from state Y to state X on demand is step 3, which I'm still not entirely on top of - but I'm getting there. I wouldn't be nearly as good (whatever 'good' means) if I hadn't started down this route.

There is more to becoming a good musician than practising the instrument.

Please could you share what the useful nugget was that you gained from "The Inner Game of Music". I gave up after about 10 pages - it was a typical self-help book - one useful idea spread across 200 pages. I didn't have the patience to find the one useful idea.

David.

I think you misunderstand me. What to me was a useful nugget may be irrelevant twaddle to you, and I may have dismissed as twaddle what is a nugget for you. The inner workings of people's minds are so complex and varied that expecting the same psychological key to work with everyone is optimistic in the extreme.

Off to my lesson lets hope that today I am in "top form"

Hi - how did it go? Were you happier with how you played today?

Much better thanks 2childmum .

I feel your pain! I've been told that my violin will never sound great as she's the cheapest model there is, but part of me thinks that it's just the poor worker who blames their tools. Sometimes, I'll play something and to my ear it sounds great, then I'll try and record it so I've got a record of my progress and I'll mess up the first note. Keep at it! I've given up the 'going it alone' thing and am joining a teaching orchestra next week.

Hi Bob

I do think there is some truth in the comment. When I started playing, about 9 months ago, I bought a new Gliga instrument and have already sold it on as I could not get on with it. I now have a Steiner from about 1950 and it is SO much better in feel, I was having real problems with the width of the neck, and I prefer the tone.

I turned up to my lesson yesterday after one of the busiest, most crazy, stressful Mondays I'd had in a long time. I was expecting to be completely useless as my head wasn't in the right place, but played all my scales, broken chords, exam pieces and stuff I'd been studying probably the best I've done so far. Aural was fine.

Sight reading wasn't as good as it had been at home but was still OK.

I don't get it? Why do I stuff things up when I'm supposedly relaxed? I think perhaps feeling a bit angry/stressed may have helped somehow!!!

Maybe it helped that you weren't expecting to play as well as normal and hence you put yourself under less pressure (and played better than you thought as a result!)

It wasn't just my perception, although I suppose at the start of the lesson I did let a disclaimer loose in that I was going to be useless due to a bad day etc etc.... started with scales to calm me down and my teacher actually said everything was much better yesterday... Hum, odd.

I had thoughts going through my head while playing: "Any second now I'm going to **** this up", but the errors never materialised

I think a lot of the mistakes we make in class is just nervousness, even though you may not feel that way. When i'm in class I make silly mistakes, cant get my scales right even though i know them by heart or my bow will bounce, things like that, but when at home nothing like that happens.

Rachel

It's all in the learning process. Practicing over and over helps I think. I tend to do two blocks a day userally around 1-2 hours. My first lesson was yesterday. I managed to play the scales which I played repededly and the songs that I'd practiced from the tutor book. But as soon as it came to playing the exam piece with the piano I got confused and it sounded really wrong to me. So I started squeeking.
We all have good days and bad days. Besides sometimes it is harder to play infront of someone then it is to play for yourself.