Rediscoverng the Joy of Music

By Anne Haclyffe and Edwina Hayes

You may be a music teacher, a professional musician, a student, or an amateur musician; a member of a jazz band, an orchestra, or a chamber music trio or quartet. And you used to love playing music... but recently, the energy and enthusiasm seems to have disappeared.

 

This book is for you. I wrote it because I went through the "dark night of the soul" and came out the other side. I had good teachers who understood that I was struggling and gave me the right help at the right time. Without them I might not still be playing; I wouldn't be playing well, and I wouldn't be enjoying myself.

 

Consider this a recipe book. Some recipes you'll love. Some you'll eat every so often. Others may not be for you. But if you find five or six recipes that work for you, they'll sustain your musicality and help you enjoy playing again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Practical Press
• Release date: Feb 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393788072

Anne Haclyffe

Anne Haclyffe lives in France and runs a small business restoring old furniture and helping clients decorate their homes in both older and contemporary styles. She's also a keen baker, gardener and cat owner.

Book preview

Music should be a joy

Many musicians come to a point at which suddenly they don't enjoy making music any more. It can be physical pain, discouragement, boredom, a feeling that you're not getting anywhere, being overwhelmed by the musicality of someone you've played with, it could be failing an audition or getting 'blue screen of death' in the middle of a set. One friend just froze on stage; he said not only could I not remember the chords, I couldn't remember what song we were playing or where we were. It had all gone. After that he lost his confidence for ages.

Sometimes, we're surrounded by people who make fun of us. Because we're learning, and while you're learning you make some odd noises - or mistakes. Because we play a style of music they don't understand or like. Because it makes them feel better if they make us feel worse. Because they're just negative people. And that again can take the joy out of making music.

Music becomes a torment, not a joy. Practice is boring, you get stage fright before a concert, and afterwards you can't stop thinking about that c sharp you played when it should have been a natural, or an A minor chord that should have been A7.

But it doesn't have to be like that.

Look at babies or toddlers singing. They just love making that noise. A toddler will find a melodic fragent or a simple rhythm and play with it all day. That's happiness. And at some point it gets squeezed out of us.

Let's find the joy. Let's reclaim it, let's get it back, let's keep it for ever.

Let's get started.

A bit about me

I play keyboards and cello and wind instruments. I've played in orchestras, folk groups, very occasionally jazz. I used to adore music. But thing were getting difficult.

My joints had been getting stiffer for years and in 2014 I suddenly ground to a halt. Inflamed joints and extreme muscle pain made even walking difficult, let alone jogging or dancing, and my hands and wrists were often so swollen I could hardly type or play keyboards. Added to this, I'd fallen off a motorbike in Malawi and broken a good number of teeth and probably my jaw (the local hospital didn't seem to have an x-ray machine), and playing any wind instrument had suddenly become an invitation to lose more teeth.

Music was broken for me too. I went to sessions and my instruments stayed in the bag. I hardly wanted to listen. I couldn't dance.

I've had some really inspirational teachers in my musical life. One little old lady who just adored making music, and you couldn't help catching the joy from her. One fantastic sax player who helped me learn how to improvise. A wonderful flute teacher who helps me get more and more out of every piece of music.

But I've had some terrible ones. The piano teacher who smacked my hands with a ruler if I made a mistake. A high school teacher who sniggered when I missed a high note. Amazingly, some teachers think they are doing their students a favour by telling them how terrible they are.

When you live with a another musician you may get kibitzing too. You played that too fast or you're using too much vibrato. You need to have a non-aggression pact in your house. Unsolicited negative feedback is not allowed!

So part of getting the joy of music back is freeing yourself from all those negative voices and remembering the encouraging ones. If it takes an image of your first ever teacher - she was five foot nothing tall, she had a pudding-basin haircut and wore a tweed skirt, and she always had a smile on her face - then make that image, make it as colourful and as specific as