# Do you take your violin (etc) on holiday with you?



## Ingélou

Just out of interest. Since taking up the fiddle again two years ago, I have a superstitious dread of letting a day go by without practice. Of course, I’ve had to, when family weddings etc beckoned & I was at a hotel. But if we’d got a self catering cottage somewhere, I’ve taken my fiddle Bonnie with me & tried to do about 45 minutes every day. It’s partly because I can’t bear to be parted from her, and partly because I dread going downhill even from the lowly stage I’ve reached, & don’t want to be too obviously rusty at my next lesson.

But I have read threads on a violin forum that suggest that people taking an enforced break have sometimes seemed miraculously better players when they return. Would it be better, in fact, if I just decided to have a break & get a bit of rest and refreshment? Would I return to playing filled with new va-va-voom?

What would you do? What *do* you do? Thanks to any ready to share their advice.


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## Ingélou

The question can be widened to - do you think it's best to have a break in practice every so often? Either an extended one, like a holiday, or just don't practise one or two days a week, allowing the brain and muscles to 'catch up' on an unconscious level, and because your motivation may be better with such a windbreak built into your practice regime?


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## PetrB

Ingélou said:


> The question can be widened to - do you think it's best to have a break in practice every so often? Either an extended one, like a holiday, or just don't practise one or two days a week, allowing the brain and muscles to 'catch up' on an unconscious level, and because your motivation may be better with such a windbreak built into your practice regime?


two days is not enough. When I was 'relatively advanced' -- conservatory level and working at it eight hours a day -- more than one teacher advocated a once a year _one month off and away._

Since you are a beginner of what, two years, I'd say a week's break would be telling, at least a bit, when you went back to playing.

The principle is that even though you return "with a bit of rust" that both ear and mind really take what you are doing and the sound of it in anew. at least for a day or two -- and that is enough to notice any bad habits you have accumulated and now have as habit, as well as how you hear the sound you make somewhat anew.

The benefit is then a quick realization of some things done wrong, then more quickly addressed, and ditto the approach to the music itself, your timbre, touch, etc.

A week or two is not going to have you forgetting what you've learned or practiced. Whatever rust you 'show' when you pick it up again usually falls away in a matter of a couple of days.


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## senza sordino

I do not take my violin on holiday with me. Sometimes it can be more than two months between playing. I don't even play at home everyday. 

It's going to take me a very long time to reach 10 000 hours, that supposed milestone needed to reach mastery. 

I don't think you need to play every day, but don't take my advice, I don't play enough.


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## DavidA

I can assure you that if I took a violin on holiday with me it would have the effect of rapidly emptying the holiday resort!


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## PetrB

senza sordino said:


> I do not take my violin on holiday with me. Sometimes it can be more than two months between playing. I don't even play at home everyday.
> 
> It's going to take me a very long time to reach 10 000 hours, that supposed milestone needed to reach mastery.
> 
> I don't think you need to play every day, but don't take my advice, I don't play enough.


That 10,000 hours business is truly a load of crrrrrap.


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## PetrB

ADD P.s.

Part of the reason for time off is when practice and playing are the predominant part of your life, playing is no longer the rhapsodic feel-good love affair with music and the instrument that many think, regardless that it is a glorious feeling to be able to play really well. Time off, one month, then for someone going at it this way runs like this:
Week One: blissfully happy, not one thought about playing, few about music altogether

Week Two: still pretty damned happy, but beginning to think about music and playing it fairly often.

Week Three: Getting a little itchy, but ya know, it _is still so good to have time off_, but I'm actually feeling like I'm now edgy in a not so nice way, that way which makes others around you a little intolerable and also makes them uncomfortable with you.

Week Four: Get me back to my instrument, NOW. (knowing that if you went _now,_ you would wish you'd gone a little more crazy in that last week.) But you don't cave in during week four for the best of all reasons: _You do not yet feel the full absence enough to really really miss playing the instrument._ Really really missing it after eleven months a year as a full-time gig is the most important part for those who will, the next eleven months for the remaining years of their lives, be living with that instrument and making music.

Keep away from your instrument and playing long enough to really really miss it


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## Jaws

DavidA said:


> I can assure you that if I took a violin on holiday with me it would have the effect of rapidly emptying the holiday resort!


Perhaps we should both take our violins and play duets and then we would get the whole resort to ourselves for the whole holiday.


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## Jaws

Ingélou said:


> Just out of interest. Since taking up the fiddle again two years ago, I have a superstitious dread of letting a day go by without practice. Of course, I've had to, when family weddings etc beckoned & I was at a hotel. But if we'd got a self catering cottage somewhere, I've taken my fiddle Bonnie with me & tried to do about 45 minutes every day. It's partly because I can't bear to be parted from her, and partly because I dread going downhill even from the lowly stage I've reached, & don't want to be too obviously rusty at my next lesson.
> 
> But I have read threads on a violin forum that suggest that people taking an enforced break have sometimes seemed miraculously better players when they return. Would it be better, in fact, if I just decided to have a break & get a bit of rest and refreshment? Would I return to playing filled with new va-va-voom?
> 
> What would you do? What *do* you do? Thanks to any ready to share their advice.


I take my oboe with me but that is because with a wind instrument your are effectively training like an athlete. However I will say that I don't play every day. Muscles strengthen when they are not being used not when they are. So if you are trying to increase strength in your bow hand having the odd day off will actually mean that you will get on faster than if you do it every day. There is also no point at all in practicing on a day when you are tired as this just puts strain on your body and means that you can't concentrate as well as you need to be able to do to practice effectively.


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## Jaws

Ingélou said:


> The question can be widened to - do you think it's best to have a break in practice every so often? Either an extended one, like a holiday, or just don't practise one or two days a week, allowing the brain and muscles to 'catch up' on an unconscious level, and because your motivation may be better with such a windbreak built into your practice regime?


Many people never practice on a certain day every week. People who train as athletes take whole days off after so many days of training. The general rule is not to practice if you are tired or don't feel like it because there is no point in doing any practice if you can't fully concentrate. Mindless twiddling as one of my oboe teachers called it is a completely pointless exercise.


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## senza sordino

PetrB said:


> That 10,000 hours business is truly a load of crrrrrap.


Whatever the number, it's a lot of hours to master anything.

Different people require a different amount of time. 
No one is suggesting that at 9999 hours you are a novice and as the clock rolls over to 10000 you suddenly are a master at something.
There is no such thing as perfection and mastery, you can always improve.
Some things require a lot of time to master, some things do not

Whatever the number, it's a lot of time required to master something.

But don't let that out you off taking a few days rest.


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## heatedbonfire

I don't think it would hurt so much as long as like PetrB said you actually return AFTER your break.


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## PetrB

senza sordino said:


> I do not take my violin on holiday with me. Sometimes it can be more than two months between playing. I don't even play at home everyday.
> 
> It's going to take me a very long time to reach 10 000 hours, that supposed milestone needed to reach mastery.
> 
> I don't think you need to play every day, but don't take my advice, I don't play enough.


That 10,000 hours is a good bit of pop culture PR near propaganda. It may be a good rough rule of thumb for training and experience for a lot of jobs in various businesses, but it is near to a complete folly factoid when it comes to truly "mastering an instrument." in the realms of classical music performance.


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## hreichgott

PetrB said:


> even though you return "with a bit of rust" that both ear and mind really take what you are doing and the sound of it in anew. at least for a day or two -- and that is enough to notice any bad habits you have accumulated and now have as habit, as well as how you hear the sound you make somewhat anew.
> 
> The benefit is then a quick realization of some things done wrong, then more quickly addressed, and ditto the approach to the music itself, your timbre, touch, etc.


That's exactly what I've experienced too. On the first day back my technique is hopeless, but I notice all kinds of musical possibilities.


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