When to Stop Playing the Fiddle (Chinquapin Hunting)

Today we'll be talking about why you might not want to play the fiddle . This has got to be one of the weirder topics I've done . If you're looking for strange topics , definitely look up my podcast on instrument horror stories , as I sometimes do . I posted this question when should someone stop playing the fiddle ?

On Facebook in the Facebook Fiddlers Association group and everyone got very upset . I like to think through questions and I like to play devil's advocate , but , as we all know , people on the internet take things very literally .

There were a lot of strong feelings and I will say the overwhelming one was probably it's not up to you what anyone else does and you should never , ever , ever tell someone they should stop playing music . Oh , my goodness .

Well , that's definitely not my intent and I completely agree , having talked to a lot of adults who we talk about music and I tell them I'm a music teacher oh , I hear these terrible horror stories about people being told they should stop singing or stop playing music , that they don't have talent , that they're tone deaf .

Ugh , I don't know what these teachers are thinking . So please don't interpret this podcast as me telling anyone to stop playing fiddle . But I'm going to talk about it , I'm going ahead . There are two occasions in my teaching career where I have talked to people about stopping the fiddle and they were not adults , uh , kids .

I'll say two kinds of occasions , because it happened more than once for both types . One is , of course , the classic kid who is being forced to play by their parents . I will , in that kind of case , talk to the parents and try to convince them to let the kids stop .

As a teacher , there's a relationship that I'm interested in preserving primarily , and it's not actually between the kid and the fiddle , it's not between the kid and me , it's not even between the kid and their parents . I am primarily concerned with preserving and improving the relationship between the kid and music .

So in a case where the kid is being forced to play the violin and take lessons , I will make the pitch to the parents . I think it would be better to preserve this kid's relationship with music and learning overall , to let them stop , wait and see .

You know you can check in with them in a year , see if they ask about a different instrument , see if they miss it and want to come back to it , but don't force them .

The other situation where I've brought up uh , not not playing , stopping , quitting , if you will there is a talk that I have had with several of my teenage students who've gotten really serious about the violin .

You know , in the last few years of my full-time teaching career and this may have contributed to me needing to to cut back on teaching my studio got very intense . I'd been teaching a long time and a lot of my students got very , very advanced .

They were doing concerto competitions regionally , they were auditioning for competitive , you know , music programs in high school and in colleges and youth orchestras and there was a lot of pressure on them and there was a lot of pressure on me and I found myself more than once saying to a kid who was putting a ton of pressure on themselves maybe it was under

pressure that from their parents or or even that they felt was from me and I really wanted to let them know . You know you don't have to do this If you don't want to play violin and you stop playing the violin , you'll be okay . And just let them know .

Especially with a kid who I've been teaching five or even 10 years and we have a long relationship and they really as much as I don't want to make their journey about me , it's hard for them not to really want to make me proud and do a good job .

I thought it was important to say to them I really care about you and I'm going to be proud of you , even if you don't play the violin , even if you don't win this competition , even if you don't go to music school , no matter what you do , I like you , I care about you , I'm proud of you .

Sometimes someone just needs to hear that when they are thinking , if I don't win this competition or get into school , like my life is over , that's it , I'm a failure . So you know , you got to tell them . You know you don't . You don't have to play , it's not a requirement . Get , have a whole life where you don't play , it's fine .

Okay , let's talk about adults . Let's talk about this is a little less me telling someone to quit . I'll tell you what I've noticed about hobbies and sticking with hobbies and hobby angst . It's been a little while since I made a Muay Thai comparison on the podcast . But I do practice a martial art called Muay Thai Thai kickboxing .

So I'm always interested to see the similarities , you know , between people coming in and starting kickboxing and people getting started with fiddling . A lot of hobby enthusiasm is similar across genres , if you will . You know there's stuff that people like and then sometimes it's something they want to like .

You know it could be a hobby they like , a hobby that they're fascinated by , that they really want to figure out . Some people really like to learn new things and some people find it very frustrating to learn new things . You can really get in your own head about it , about whether you're good at learning new things or not .

I think learning new things is a pretty natural process , just looking at children and humans in general , but it can be easy to overthink , maybe in the modern world . In my gym , in my Muay Thai gym , sometimes we would get people who came in who are very athletic .

So I think that's something that makes you hero though sport in my gym , and you think first , couple of times it happens . I think , wow , they're going to stick around , they're going to do great .

But sometimes they would be so strong that they could hurt themselves and get frustrated , not come back or be very hard on themselves for being kind of behind , even though they were very strong or very powerful and had done other training .

And musically I have taught lessons to people with a really musical background or they played a lot when they were a kid and they're expecting to get fiddling right away and they can get frustrated . To me it might look like they're picking things up really fast but they might feel like , oh , this is going way too slow for me .

Sometimes having a background can make you think that you should be doing better than you are Having a really strong interest .

Yeah , we get people come into the Muay Thai gym who have watched Muay Thai fights for 10 years and they're so into it they know the name of every single move , they know all the names of the fighters and it's very different doing it from being kind of a fan of it . And with kickboxing and just to some degree with fiddle , it's hard and it's painful .

And when you really know what you want , when you're very familiar with people who do it at a high level and you're kind of a fan , it can be really frustrating to try it and find it hard and in some ways uncomfortable or painful and just realize how far you have to go .

Sometimes I'll teach someone who has had a lifelong appreciation for fiddling and really knows what amazing fiddling is and what it sounds like , and they can get down about their progress . So the folks who come in who seem to do well and you can learn from this , even if you see shades of yourself and the other types .

There's a lot said about beginner's mind .

Beginner's mind is really not minding being bad , not minding not being able to get something the first time , being fascinated by little puzzles as they come up , trying to figure out little things , not being focused on the end goal of what you want to be at the very peak of your , of what you can learn , seeking out a lot of information , not being afraid to

look like they don't know how I mean asking questions and taking notes . Is that's a flag , a green flag , if you will ? For me , when I'm teaching , someone has a lot of questions , is very concerned with with how they're going to remember and study the information . I know they're . They're doing okay . Same thing in the gym .

I'll say , if you think about stopping the fiddle because you're finding it painful to play .

I really think that seeking out some help from a physical therapist or a violin teacher with some background in helping people with their bodies can be a help If it's painful emotionally for you to play because you have a lot of practice guilt from your childhood or just sort of service in general around practicing or music .

Or some people even just have a little bit of a defiant personality and they know they want to get into it but they Also really , really don't want to do it . Or if you're constantly comparing yourself to other people and it's making you feel bad about it . I mean , just keep in mind you don't have to play . You can play or you cannot play .

You can keep it around and not play it . You can go to your lesson and not practice . I mean that's between you and your teacher . I would never tell someone to quit music . Listening to music , making music , enjoying music there's a lot of different ways to do it . It doesn't have to be on the fiddle .

This podcast was officially the worst advertisement ever for my business . You don't have to play the fiddle . Maybe you should stop . It's so bad . I will counteract it briefly . If you don't know I have these three fiddle books . They're called Fiddles Studio , just like the podcast .

Most of the tunes from the books at least the first two with the easier tunes are also up on my YouTube channel , which is also called Fiddles Studio . So , trying to make it easy to practice the tunes from the books you can watch the video on YouTube . You could study the tune in the book .

I am working my way through giving a little upgrade to those tunes , trying to make the videos not just me playing through the tune once , but giving a little more teaching content to those videos , playing it through at a slower tempo .

So yeah , if you're interested in playing the fiddle instead of stopping , you can check out my books , my Fiddles Studio books they're on Amazon and the videos that go with them on YouTube . We played this tune , our tune for today is Chinquapin Hunting . Chinquapin is a chestnut . We played it up in Massachusetts .

We play it all the time down here in Baltimore . So this is a popular old-time tune everywhere . It's in A major , usually played in A cross tuning , so strings tuned to A-E-A-E and it's got three parts . The version of this people usually play is by Norman Edmonds and that's the version that we play in Baltimore .

It's pretty close to what we played up in Massachusetts . If you're looking to really dive into this tune , I think it's one of the tunes that Bruce Mulsky does . He has courses on Peghead nation and I saw this tune covered there . It looked pretty cool .

There's another version of this tune , which is not similar at all , from the Kentucky Fiddler , Hiram Stamper , and he said that the tune was at least as old as the American Civil War . Those are basically the two that I could find on the internet , but most people play the Edmonds version and that's what we're going to play for you here Chinquapin Hunting .

Thank you for listening . You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudio . com , along with my books , courses and membership for learning to fiddle . I'll be back next week with another tune for you . Have a wonderful day .