I have been playing wrong all my life

[Explorer]

Whoa! Whiplash!

That changed direction so suddenly and unexpectedly that I think I hurt my neck following it!

I thought you only had to worry about the exams, and not the initial assessments, in most colleges. Initial assessments are to figure out how best to train one up.

[Bertram Henze]

I was ranked a 2, so I guess I really AM NOT talented.

You are not talented in judging judgement systems, this much is certain. Is it a casting show you're supposed to win? I think not - you are supposed to start at 2 and end up at 10, and it is their job to get you there, whatever these numbers mean. After a few years, when you've become a honorary professor at that institution, you'll tell this story to your students and have a good laugh together.

Pluck up courage. Turning back now would be like driving to a supermarket and not going inside for fear they might not have your favourite breakfast cereal. Slay your demons, leave none of them alive.

[Jordan Ramsey]

To echo what's been said... it's just a number. If you truly want to be a mandolin player, you're in one of the best spots in the country to learn how to do so. Take advantage. Don't let an arbitrary number determine your future. Let go of your ego and accept that you've got a lot to learn. Deal with your musical and technical shortcomings, make connections, practice obsessively, learn as much as you can and figure out how to make it work. Joe Walsh is an absolute sweetheart and one of the best players on the globe, I can assure you that he will help you get to the next level(s) as gracefully and painlessly as possible. So what if you need to change some things, it's worth it in the long haul to be a great player, isn't it?

I truly hope you change your mind and take advantage of that program.

Good luck and all the best,

[August Watters]

Students often think that instructors are trying to catch them not knowing something, but they really, really want you to succeed, and will work with you to make that happen.

Yes, yes, yes. Give your teachers a chance! Don't panic.

I was ranked a 2, so I guess I really AM NOT talented.

The rating system from 1 to 8 does not, and is not intended, to measure talent. You've already passed the closest thing the College has to an aptitude test -- that is, the admissions process. Last I checked, the College's acceptance rate was around 25%, so you've already passed a big test. Find out specifically what the rating system DOES measure and what you need to do to improve that number. And don't take it personally!

[Beanzy]

I know someone who is just finished at the Guildhall and is about to do a year at the Julliard before another year in Vienna, hopefully launching her professional career in the process. From others I know I was glad to be able to warn her while she was still about to embark on her training that this is a journey and one where everyone invests their reputation in the outcome, so the pressure will always be there, but you need to view the pressures for what they represent and consign them to a very well defined part of your psychology.

Once you are accepted by the school (and given your obvious concern for excelling in your journey you should be accepted) they have made an investment of their reputation and they feel the pressure that goes with that. They are saying we can make this person become someone we are prepared to represent our abilities as teachers and formers of artistic excellence. So there will be a tendency for mentors to ensure you know how much they want it to work out, how important it is for you to grasp the techniques and ideas they are trying to impart to you. This is you picking up on their stresses, but seeing this does not mean you need to carry it, just incorporate it into your box of pressures which you can analyse any time you want, but it would be wasteful and tiring to carry that around with you all the time.

For all they have invested in your success, no one will want your success more than you do. So just make a little box for your own pressures and issues and analyse that too, especially before exams or assessment. Each area has a corresponding solution and those mentors will be there to provide just that for each of the pressures and issues you find in your own box. Make sure you analyse the content of the little box of your own issues, go to the mentors often to check whether you're on the right track with each of these areas. If you do you'll probably find that the big box of external pressures will just have a few old marbles rattling around inside after a while.

In your current position you only need to show them the raw material they will work with, they know they can resolve technical issues, that's just what they do. Show them the music, the hunger to learn, to be the best you can be and to be someone they will be proud to say they taught and you'll be their choice for sure. Remember you're just the raw tree for the moment, they're the sculptors. At this point they have identified you as potential material to work with, next they want to see what's inside. Show them the music and the aptitude to learn, express the desire to be made into the best musician you can become. Show them yo are good material to work with and they will want to work with you.

Your grade of assessment was gained while carrying a box of worries about what people thought of you rather than a desire to share your undoubted musical abilities. This coming term (stick with it there's a low point in every good script!) spend your efforts in releasing the music and sharing what you hear inside. If you clutter yourself up with the noises of internal worries and angst you leave no room for the music to build inside. Music, good music, depends on emotional content as well as technical adroitness. All that seems to be happening is you are allowing the other emotional noise to crowd out the musical expression. Regroup, analyse the issues and step forward again on the path of progress. But let the music out; and for hecks sakes involve your mentors in your needs, if only because they're musicians too and will know exactly what you're dealing with. (they tend to make allowances when grading if they know the internal story too, after all they're only human)

[Michael Neverisky]

What an interesting thread! Technique is an answer which is relevant only in the context of a question. How do I get that tone? For example.

"beginner on my primary instrument "

I get that... and have been there twice in my life. The young, flat pick gripping electric guitar player whose first lessons in classical guitar at the conservatory were about relaxing my right hand. Then as an adult clawhammer banjo player. I felt like a complete beginner when I took lessons in right hand technique from young Adam Hurt.

My advice: embrace being a beginner. It's a wonderful thing to have so much learning ahead of you. I seek out opportunities to experience "beginner's mind" myself.

[JeffD]

For most of my first year of college, I was convinced I had been accepted by mistake. Absolutely sure. I was great in my high school and here everyone was great in their high school. (Not music, but math/science/engineering.)

I ended up doing ok. I was no longer a star, much less a superstar, but I acquitted myself admirably among some major world class brainiacs.


Another point I think is important - what ever it is that they measure to give that number is not the sum total of what you can do or will be able to do. It is not an absolute predictor of your success, or a predictor of how folks will enjoy your music, or a predictor of your ability to work with others on big projects, or.... well you know what I mean.

Good luck to you.

[Mandomax]

To play devil's advocate, I was in a similar situation as the OP. I was accepted to Berklee and all set to start. After realizing that I was not the next coming of Jim Hall, I looked at how I was paying for school. Berklee tuition is not cheap, and neither is living in Boston. The return on investment for becoming a guitar player with six figure student loan debt just wasn't there. I chose a different path and pursued my music through a combination of autodidacticism and private lessons with Charlie Banacos. Maybe there are some other factors at play we are not privy to. I am all about following your dreams, but sometimes it can torpedo your future when you decide on a dream at 15.

[DavidKOS]

David,
I studied with Marilynn at AMGuSS and respect and admire her technique. I have studied all volumes of Bickford. I am very familiar with "correct" classical technique. I just didn't cotton to the tone. For the majority of music I play, that type of technique is not the tool I want to use. It is a deliberate, informed decision.
Thanks,
Max

Thanks for being clear. And yes, that is a valid personal choice, and like you in reverse, the rounded pick thing, well, I don't "cotton" to the tone either!

That's why there are so many pick designs - there's one for everyone.

[cstviz]

Some extra context for you guys. I am one of about 5 students from my highschool to be going to this college, and the only one not to receive a full scholarship (I did not receive any scholarship money at all). Throughout highschool, I was mocked by those other 4 for being a poor musician, and I always believed that there was more to my musical persona than my inability to play lightning-fast bebop solos. When my dad attended the college, he was ranked an 8. So my ranking was disheartening not only because it implied I was just BARELY good enough to get in, but also because it reaffirmed what I had been tormented about in highschool, as well as reminded me I will never live up to my father's expectations.

Hope this added some insight.

[Bertram Henze]

...also because it reaffirmed what I had been tormented about in highschool, as well as reminded me I will never live up to my father's expectations.

It sounds like you really lived your life to meet other people's expectations (good ones or bad ones), and that would mean you haven't lived at all. Unless you can somehow disconnect music from this mindset, it will always be a jail warden to you.
As a child of two professional classical musicians and having stopped to play any music at all for 8 years after school, I know exactly what it feels like. I was lucky that music found me again. And I am still not going back to classical. And, most important, I am never competing against either other musician's playing or other people's views of music. It takes a good measure of bloodymindedness to happily walk under the bars others have set high, but it makes me a happier person.

Start your own life, now. That's the most important hint I can give. Life is too short for competition.

[A 4]

Speed isn't musicality. And maybe your pick grip is slowing you down. You are scheduled to meet the people who will know next week, right?

Look, maybe this is not the right program for you, but none of us here can know that, and honestly, I don't think you are a fair judge, either. I could be wrong about that, I'm just reading between the lines of what you write. However, you are scheduled to meet the people who will know next week, right?

If you never try, then you know for certain you will fail. Hard to do, and I know starting a new school is a difficult time for lots of people, but try and find reasons to succeed. Don't search for reasons to quit. For example, I looked in the student manual for the Berkelee rating system:

The rating is not designed to be viewed as an indicator of a student’s potential to succeed at Berklee or in the music industry, rather it a tool specifically to be used for placement in the ensemble that best fits a student’s learning needs

There are reasons to think hard about a higher education path, and the debt that Mandomax talks about is an important one, especially for what I assume is a relatively low wage career path. But that's not what I'm talking about here - it's the anticipation of failure that bothers me. I've seen it before, and it is so often unjustified.

[objectsession]

Some extra context for you guys. I am one of about 5 students from my highschool to be going to this college, and the only one not to receive a full scholarship (I did not receive any scholarship money at all). Throughout highschool, I was mocked by those other 4 for being a poor musician, and I always believed that there was more to my musical persona than my inability to play lightning-fast bebop solos. When my dad attended the college, he was ranked an 8. So my ranking was disheartening not only because it implied I was just BARELY good enough to get in, but also because it reaffirmed what I had been tormented about in highschool, as well as reminded me I will never live up to my father's expectations.

Hope this added some insight.

Again, tell this to your academic advisor or whoever fulfills that role. You can at least do that much before making such a big decision. And you have to at least admit that your advisor (or professors or department chair) knows more than a few high schoolers (your old classmates and you).

And you're never going to live up to your father's expectations no matter what you do. Sorry, that's just what most parents are like. So, it's better just to not consider that factor.

[Bertram Henze]

Sorry, that's just what most parents are like.

True, and an incentive for the younger of us to not look back, but to be different regarding their own kids.

[bobby bill]

Sleep on it. Several nights. Do you really want to be thinking twenty years from now that maybe you should have given it a shot after all? Because whatever you might be doing otherwise, you can probably do a couple years down the road. But the opportunity you have now might be more difficult to come by.

And what if you realized twenty years later, like I did, that living up to your father's expectations was actually in your head and not his? Wouldn't that be silly?

[UlsterMando]

Regarding your original question about changing your grip, I have read your description carefully and I recently made exactly the same adjustment. I can say that in my case it has been a very positive step. The new grip is just so much more efficient. Yes initially accuracy, speed and tone all suffered but over a few months these quickly came back into focus with practice. Yes it was just time and practice - the same old answer to so many mandolin issues. Initially I found it very useful to transition back and forth between the grips while practicing thereby allowing the muscles to become accustomised to the new approach.
As to your concern about whether or not to take your place on the course I can only say that for a mandolin fanatic, the chance to study the instrument with nurturing expert guidance really sounds like a fantastic opportunity !
I regard personal musical and artistic fulfilment as paramount and if I were you I would think long and hard before I'd allow anything (or anyone) to get in the way of that. It is much too important .
I am great admirer of the cafe and I know that you can rely on the wealth of experience generously shared by the members here. Best of luck with whatever you decide
This is my first post - it took something to draw me out of the woodwork

[Bertram Henze]

And what if you realized twenty years later, like I did, that living up to your father's expectations was actually in your head and not his? Wouldn't that be silly?

It happens. Kids have a natural disposition to please their parents, which normally disappears when they're no longer kids. What is it that makes it stick and hamper their progress? Were they unsuccessful, unrequited? Parents behaving indifferently?

Or did they grow up in the shadow of a giant and are now afraid to come out into the sun?

[J Walsh]

Some extra context for you guys. I am one of about 5 students from my highschool to be going to this college, and the only one not to receive a full scholarship (I did not receive any scholarship money at all). Throughout highschool, I was mocked by those other 4 for being a poor musician, and I always believed that there was more to my musical persona than my inability to play lightning-fast bebop solos. When my dad attended the college, he was ranked an 8. So my ranking was disheartening not only because it implied I was just BARELY good enough to get in, but also because it reaffirmed what I had been tormented about in highschool, as well as reminded me I will never live up to my father's expectations.

Hope this added some insight.

Hey CSTVIZ- Sorry to see what a roller coaster this has been, I wish i'd seen the thread sooner. That said, I'd love to echo what August said: the ratings system is not for evaluating whether you have talent, but is a way of quantifying progress and work to be done on a number of musical skills. When I started at Berklee, I'm sure that some of my rating numbers (like my reading, which was awful) were 2's. I knew i had to work on that, and you can bet that i did.

Two thing that i've always benefited from reminding myself of is that there's no single gatekeeper in music who will be letting you in or keeping you out of the musical scene, and there are many many paths to the same goal. That there's no gatekeeper is a good thing: I didn't always get the signs of approval from some of the players I looked up to, but it was liberating to realize that I didn't need any one person (or one venue/festival/band/school/etc)'s approval to keep on growing my musicianship and career. There is no one school that is the only place to learn an instrument, or music theory, or whatever else. Whether you're at a school or working for hours in your bedroom, with a lot of patience, determination and honest self-evaluation, you will grow a lot.

The initial right-hand issue: I changed my pick grip the day before a lesson i had with Chris Thile. I knew he'd tell me to, and I too went through the really frustrating period of having to "get worse to get better". I'm glad I did change my pick grip and right arm mechanics, but once again, it was not the only way to progress: see the right hands/arms of Sam Bush, Tim O'Brien, Adam Steffey, John Reischman, etc... You may end up wanting to change your right hand, or you may not, but try not to feel like there's only one "right" way.

If you want to get really good at the mandolin, don't let this episode slow you down, and don't walk away concluding you don't have talent. We've all got varying strengths and weaknesses, and you may find as I did that your idiosyncrasies are what gives you a musical voice and identity.

[August Watters]

The initial right-hand issue: I changed my pick grip the day before a lesson i had with Chris Thile. I knew he'd tell me to, and I too went through the really frustrating period of having to "get worse to get better". I'm glad I did change my pick grip and right arm mechanics, but once again, it was not the only way to progress: see the right hands/arms of Sam Bush, Tim O'Brien, Adam Steffey, John Reischman, etc... You may end up wanting to change your right hand, or you may not, but try not to feel like there's only one "right" way.

Thanks, Joe — like you, I sometimes go through that process with private students, weighing the benefits of changing pick grip against the investment in time, and projected results based on their goals. For an ambitious bluegrass-based player, I push them pretty hard to consider adopting the "standard" side-of-index-finger pick grip, but as you point out there are exceptions to the rule.

As a teacher I've been a little concerned about the impact of that video where Thile says something to the effect of "there's pretty much just one way to hold the pick.” I think that's OK to say if you're Chris Thile, and the unspoken second half of that sentence is pretty much understood: "if you want to play like me or most great players in my part of the mando-world." But without that qualifier, when someone else says it, the statement is obviously false: there are zillions of players coming out of other traditions, and most of them don’t hold their pick the same way most of us do, coming from the bluegrass/roots world. And other pick grips are well-documented in various popular and historical method books, not to mention being predominant in other parts of the mando-world. Not everyone has the same musical goals, and comparing the various schools of thought can be very helpful.

[MysTiK PiKn]

I always believed that there was more to my musical persona than my inability to play lightning-fast bebop solos.

YOU said THAT.

I'm just some olde guy that might have to quit mandolin due to bad technique that has hurt me. And I don't have an instructor, or a constructor, to fix it for me. So, I might sell out and quit mandolin. I just bought a dobro - so I can be a crazy beginner on that, and it's fun.

I was offered piano lessons and clarinet lessons and saxophone lessons when I was much younger than both of us. Wanted nothing to do with it. When I was 15, I was given a really cool Silvertone archtop guitar - just in time for the folk era, and the Beatles era, and all the crazy that followed. I loved that. I owned a bunch of guitars; but today I just have an olde gibson j45, and a few mandos, and an olde violin, and now a dobro.

Being olde, I look back on my life. And I have done a lot of work on myself, my life, my parental issues, and a bunch of other issues I won't even mention. I remember barely, as a child, I spun records on the family turntable, I knew what record was which when I was like 3 years old. I was into classical music way too early in life. Then I was seduced by the power of rock n roll. It's always been the power in music.

I said to my Dad recently, that I should have taken the piano lessons offered - and then I told him I could have been the next Beethoven. I do believe that. I have a tremendous aptitude and capacity and ear for music.
= I always believed that there was more to my musical persona than my inability to play ..... =
And it was never fully developed. I made my choices; despite the demands of my parents and idiot teachers. And other things in my rebellious world.

You will find a confidant you can speak to privately and honestly. You will come to be honest with yourself through your feelings and your creativity. You will have a private book that you can write anything in, and you will guard your private book.

Welcome to the insane world. See it for what it is. Note the abuse, and move on. Walk your own path. You can only do this for yourself. And you are the only person you need to be completely honest with.

The others will be as they are. They are not your job. Your first job is to keep yourself safe.

There is no measure of you as you truly are.

Discover the joy of selfishness - and take it all for what it's worth.

The "pick" is symbolic of many things. Get a golden pick and carry it. When you perform, throw it on the floor. And play. This isn't about the pick or the grip. Play. Selfish. And have fun laughing at them all.

What do you do when you come to a fork in the road?
take it

[Pasha Alden]

Agree with some folks who posted here. I would not worry. I also find my own way of holding the pick easier, however, it may be that a music teacher can reveal to me that I am actually short changing myself. However, I play well enough that way. So I am not going to be phased by it all, yet I take note of the correct technique.

[Big Joe]

I know, have seen, and worked with many of the great mandolin players. They all do it differently. They chose what works for them. As you study and mature you may change, but it may not be a forced change as much as an evolution in your playing. Don't sweat the small stuff that will never likely matter to anyone else. I was talking with Earl Scruggs once about his technique. He said he never intended to start a new style, he just couldn't play like every one else did. His style came because he couldn't play any other way. I think it may have worked for him! Be you, but become the best you that you can and learn to explore and experiment just for the joy of it. The good stuff will stick, the rest will soon be forgotten.

[Explorer]

I'm gladdened by the OP having checked in at the Cafe a few times, even if he/she hasn't posted in a bit. I'm hopeful that some of the encouragement is sinking in....

[Hadji36]

cstviz,

How's the progress? You should be about 1 1/2 semesters in by now.

[DavidKOS]

Although I am an advocate of "correct" fretting hand and picking hand positions on guitar and mandolin, technique is just a means to an end.

The end is making music. Use whatever technique can make the music!....but also keep improving and being open to better ways of doing things.