Just play a perfect ‘A’

It was my second week of the Bachelor of Music. I had just moved from my tiny town of one hundred people to the “big smoke” to learn classical violin at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

I was so out of my depth.

I had been assigned a French violin teacher and was currently shocking him with my inepititude. He saw his job as tearing apart my technique to rebuild it strictly and precisely. I was in full-time questioning-my-identity-and-everything-about-the-world mode.

“What do you think of when you look at these notes” he flourished his hand across the first movement of the Bruch violin concerto.

“Ummmm…the colour orange?”

His eyes widened with alarm, eyebrows shot in a violently vertical direction.

But it got worse. We started with the note ‘A’. I would start playing it and he would shake his head. No. Wrong. Do it again. Angle your bow. Tap your first finger. Don’t hold your breath. Don’t land the bow that way. I was getting more and more frustrated, a tangled writhing mind of what I had read in the news, faces I had seen, facts and feelings.

“What’s the point of this!” I exlaimed, “What’s the point of playing a perfect A?!”

I was thinking about the homeless folks bunking in on Elizabeth Street, about the injustices the world of suffering and pain and the fights for social justice. I didn’t believe in this ‘A’. I couldn’t see the point of perfecting a sound. I wasn’t sure if I believed in perfection and certainly didn’t believe I was capable of it.

French teacher looked aghast.

Looking back I’m also slightly aghast at my brutal honest outburst but am still thinking about what the point of a perfect A is.

I have some thoughts for nineteen year old Erin, ten years later:

The point of perfecting that ‘A’ is so you can then play every other ‘A’ perfectly. And by perfect I mean completely controlled, a tool fashioned perfectly to your will. If you can shape this ‘A’, and every ‘A ‘after it, then you have developed the skill to shape every other note you every need to play. One perfect ‘A’ encapsulates the whole scope and range of musical expression.

The struggle with a private teacher is that you’re trying to fashion your ‘A’ to their ideas of perfection. It feels like guess work; trials and errors. It feels arbitary and a losing game. But through this process you learn control, and one day when you’re not controlled by exams and panels of critics judging your musical merits, you will be able to envision the music you want to play and pick up these tools of perfect ‘A’s to express the music in your heart and mind.

I start my practice every day finding my perfect ‘A’. Once I find it, I’m ready to create everything else from it.