As a kid, I learnt to play the violin. Each week I went to the music school – an hour’s tram ride through Amsterdam – and came home with a lot of homework, after having played last week’s work and suffered the criticisms of my teacher. Later, during my years at the conservatorium, this practice continued. But I had found some freedom! For as a teenager I had mastered the guitar, on my own, and I had already started my first rock band. After these music schools I worked as a professional folk and rock player, and as a violin teacher, during 30 years.
Decades later I took up the viola d’amore, followed by the nyckelharpa. Though I attended a number of harpa-workshops this was largely self-study: I had to be a student ánd that student's teacher at the same time. Luckily this time I could choose music and method myself.
Many nyckelharpaplayers will recognize this. Like me, most harpa-players are autodidacts, self-taughts, especially outside Sweden. Many may have played the violin before they started on the nyckelharpa. For them the start of the self-study is not that complicated; they have quite some experience using bow and fingers.
(It took time until I noticed the vast technical differences between playing the violin and playing the harpa. Being a fiddler can in some respects even become a handicap.)
But then? Possible teachers maybe live hundreds of miles away. Workshops can inspire, bring ideas, present tunes, yet quite often their main focus is not on developing technique. Online lessons can be more specific, yet even these have their limitations. And of course, tunes can even be picked up online, by ear or from scores (but scores never tell the whole truth, lacking the “feel”, of rhythm, pulse, emphasis. Just think of the various types of polska….). And in fact one does not learn to play an instrument during lessons! It takes studying time, at home mostly. In that respect, even the violin student with weekly lessons has to do the work hiomself.
The autodidact has one advantage, certainly. He/she can choose what music to play. But then: how to develop technique, creativity, expression?
· First, it seems a good idea to balance musical joy and purely technical study when practicing. As a violin student in the 60s and 70s I had to work with the bowing and fingering exercises of Sevcik – which are sufficient to kill all musical joy. Sevcik isolates specific technical issues and forces the student to practice these without a real musical context. This maybe helps some diehards to become skillfull craftsmen – but at the cost of musical creativity and pleasure.
An example of a Sevcik exercise. The position-shifting ones are even worse....
· Listen to your playing, but don’t be super-critical! Grant your playing some tolerance. Only when a defect keeps popping up and bothers you, the time has come to tackle it in detail. To help yourself in this process, occasionally make some recordings of your playing and listen. Listen like a benevolent audience would do. But don’t record yourself every day.
· A constant 100% concentration can be counterproductive. Playing an instrument is not just your brain steering your muscles. Allow your mind to wander a little while practicing and playing. Some 80% concentration probably will do. Rely on the unconscious powers within your body and brain. Of course, full concentration is needed when you really very consciously want to tackle a specific difficulty.
la Really important for me: playing by heart if possible, and whenever posible. Maybe not when playing a Bach concerto, but certainly folk tunes. Whether you learn a tune by ear or from a score, put that guide away as quickly as you dare. Start playing “too soon” together with the audible quide while allowing yourself to ruin some bars. Your first by ear-rendering does not have to be complete or perfect at all. You can fill in incomplete or inaccurate parts on the flight, while keeping on playing. Of course some bars will keep on escaping, and will need more detailed study. Playing by heart allows for expression and, if that’s your aim, for variation and improvisation. Some tunes come in as many variants as there are players, just through this playing by heart. Especially in folk music there are no “correct” versions: the music is alive. And music is free for all, without obligations to adhere to a certain fossilized version. Bach died a long time ago, and so did Sven Donat. You’re the boss of your own playing. Playing by heart makes the music your own music.
· And when you have mastered a tune to some degree, play it ten times over, keep repeating. You may experience that your thoughts start wandering away - maybe to last night's meeting, to the shopping you have to do, or whatever. Meanwhile, your body (and soul) keeps playing the tune! It is exactly by doing this that your organism will find a bowing pattern, a flow, or an ornamentation that just suits you and the tune. And when your consciousness returns to your actual playing: listen. Is this what you want to hear? Does the result suit you and the tune? Otherwise: repair.
(A small warning should be made here: when having practiced all the time only in this way, with self-tolerance, 80% concentration and a wandering mind, a confrontation with an audience may be a shock! In the stress of performing for an audience, my concentration would suddenly become like 150 procent: I was overconcentrated. In panic I had the feeling that I had not studied enough, that I hadn’t really mastered the tune, the instrument or the bow. I think even performing for an audience has to be practiced. When studying for a performance, imagine that you have an audience before you, maybe a very critical audience. Maybe make recordings of your playing, in audio or video, maybe with an aim to uploado these to social media when really satisfied with the results. Play the program for friends. And when actually performing the concert: take a deep breath, and grant the audience the delight of “playing from your heart”)
Every now and then, open up the expression channel while studying. Play the tune sweetly, or comfortingly, dramatically, mysteriously. Play around with the tune, with ornamentations, variations. Tunes take no harm, and you can always start from the beginning again. You can destroy a painting, but you can’t destroy music. There is always another time. Music is fair game.
And of course: listen to fine players! Watch them. There is an enormous amount of fantastic YouTube-videos, provided by many excellent harpa teachers and players. No obligation to copy them (though copying some versions can accelerate your selflearning process immensely), but like workshops they can be a real source of inspiration.
So: be your own boss, be selftolerant – but not continuously. Decide again and again: this time I choose musical joy – this time I pick the technical difficulties that I have always tripped over, and work on them. And nobody can turn a person into a musician but that person herself!
Where the English language just has the word musician, in Dutch we have two words. A violinist in a large orchestra would call himself a musicus, a player in a rock or folk band would call herself a muzikant, meaning a person who plays the music of his or her own choice, playing it the way he wants to play it. For him or her, the word musicus might be associated with “being an employee, no freedom, no space for creativity”, and possibly with filling out tax forms. I wish every musician to be a muzikant!
