Building Competence

It's contagious!

I recently told my community college class in fiddle/violin that if they take out their fiddle every day, or aim for every day, for even only five or ten minutes, they will become increasingly competent at playing the instrument. The games/exercises I’ve described in other articles here, many of them dramatized in brief videos on fiddle-online.com, make you more competent as you give your muscles a way to learn their roles more efficiently. (You can find links to many of these earlier articles in “Learning fiddle/violin: a review”.)

And competence can be contagious. Once you experience teaching yourself (and a teacher can only teach you to teach yourself) to become a little more competent, even in one or another aspect of playing the instrument, you start to seek competence in other things.

Competence vs Incompetence

For college students, this seemed to be a poignant message, though it is really meaningful for all of us, especially now. People who are competent and who care about competence are the ones who are reliable, who gain solid trust, who get and retain customers, jobs, employers, employees, relationships. On the other hand, those who just get by, or give the appearance of getting by, or who use devices to fool others into temporarily trusting them — these are the unreliable sorts, who lose trust, customers, followers, relationships.

It is, to my mind, the biggest divide in society today — competence vs incompetence. We experience it every time we call customer service and get someone who understands our problem (and may even get our jokes!) and has a solution, vs the agent who reads from a script and hopes to get rid of you and move on to their next call. Or the website or software that communicates and confirms information vs the ones that function only if you think like the programmer, or the ones that don’t even function but manage to take your money and contact info anyway, for later sales pitches.

The issue is poignant right now, regardless of people’s political views, as we watch a band of comically (and dangerously) incompetent people wield power as if they are running our government. Everyone who is competent, especially those who have ever successfully organized a large event, group, organization, or company, is involuntarily appalled at the gleeful and mercurial spectacle of incompetence we see before us every day now. It’s clear that those who applaud it have either never run anything or are suppressing their natural reaction, and their reality-based experience, in hopes of some kind of political or financial benefit.

I gotta say, being force-fed a clown show gleefully destroying American values can sap one’s creative juices for a little while. Thank you for bearing with me during my little break.

Getting in touch with me and other readers

I look forward to any of your comments, requests, and questions regarding music or the violin. You can leave a comment at the end, reply by email, or engage in our Chat (available on the app or in the Chat tab in this publication’s online page). Paid subscribers are empowered to start a thread, and everyone can respond and discuss to a new thread, or to my standing invite to all who wish to add a comment or question.

How the right exercises build competence

The simple reason that good games or exercises on the fiddle, or mindful playing/practicing, can build competence is because they are reality-based. All competence is based on reality, on observation of facts, and on sincere attempts to adapt to them. We have to filter out gossip and judgments, or myths we may have heard about whether we can get any good at playing fiddle (we can’t, we just get better!), or those voices that say that if we miss a note or hit a wrong string, we should burn our fiddle and play something “easy” like ukelele or pennywhistle (note: these “easy” instruments are still hard to play well!).

The Practice Challenge

You’re invited to join this month’s practice challenge! On fiddle-online, I’ve installed a new feature that shows you how much time you’ve practiced. The three players who practice the most get to choose an item (workshop, videos, group of tunelearning pages, a group of technique videos) and access it free for the month of June.

If you’re a paid subscriber here, I’ll give you one free item on fiddle-online to work with this month — you’ll have to let me know what item you want. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you can always access items on fiddle-online for free (using the Credits Sharing Center, or using the free credits you can get for joining) or for $2 or $3, on up to $6 for a workshop, $12 for 10 technique videos or $15 for 12 tunelearning pages.

The items that are currently available for tracking your practice time are limited (for the moment) to the five Technique Video Groups (10 videos each, some of them described in earlier articles here), or Tunelearning Groups #1 and #4 (12 tunes each with interactive audio & sheet music; #1 includes both regular and tab sheet music; #4 features Shetland tunes). Other items could be added to this list, based on your requests.

So pick up your fiddle — aim for at least 5 minutes a day! — and become more competent in a week! Use earlier articles here on Substack, or check out the offerings on fiddle-online.com. Maybe you’ll even join our Practice Challenge!