Musical challenge
May. 1st, 2026 07:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gs_silvaOkay, let's make things get serious! I'm focusing on musical instruments this month. Maybe I'll call it May Music Play. The goal is to make progress teaching myself to play all three of my instruments: uke, gusheng, and djembe, without being too rigid about it or injuring myself. I lost all progress on developing calluses on my fingers and have to start over, and the usual advice is to launch right into it, but I also have to use writing/drawing implements for a good chunk of each day so that's not feasible.
My two categories of progress are lessons and practice. That wouldn't be an unreasonable structure for visual arts too, but for some reason, people can be weirdly rigid about their process. Like: NEVER TRACE. That restriction puzzles me. I don't see a lot of purpose in tracing anyway, but the people who vilify it do.
And some artists or aspiring artists NEVER PRACTICE. Everything they draw or create has to be for something. Frankly, I find that attitude unhinged, but who am I really? Hopefully it's clearer that playing a musical instrument onstage without rehearsing is unfeasible. I don't ever intend to perform for an audience, but if I change my mind later, my willingness will rely on how well I feel I've stuck to May Music Play.
(The weird opening line of this post is a reference to my Discord workspace where I originally posted this. Out of context, it sounds clunky and awkward, but I don't want to remove it, so instead, I'm adding the context here. The workspace is called "Alien Romance Draft 3 - where things get serious.")
My two categories of progress are lessons and practice. That wouldn't be an unreasonable structure for visual arts too, but for some reason, people can be weirdly rigid about their process. Like: NEVER TRACE. That restriction puzzles me. I don't see a lot of purpose in tracing anyway, but the people who vilify it do.
And some artists or aspiring artists NEVER PRACTICE. Everything they draw or create has to be for something. Frankly, I find that attitude unhinged, but who am I really? Hopefully it's clearer that playing a musical instrument onstage without rehearsing is unfeasible. I don't ever intend to perform for an audience, but if I change my mind later, my willingness will rely on how well I feel I've stuck to May Music Play.
(The weird opening line of this post is a reference to my Discord workspace where I originally posted this. Out of context, it sounds clunky and awkward, but I don't want to remove it, so instead, I'm adding the context here. The workspace is called "Alien Romance Draft 3 - where things get serious.")