I came across this video where the delightful Ray Chen challenges some Colburn students to do crazy things for a small cash reward or a free student level instrument. Now, what these kids—who are playing on extraordinary violins purchased for or loaned to them—would do with an instrument that costs less than their BAM case, I will never know. But in the end, who cares?

I’ll add that when I was younger and had recurring nightmares about performance situations gone awry, some of these “modifications” were absolutely featured in my more vivid imaginings. I also used to have this dream that my strings were at different lengths, so on one, a half step would be like, a millimeter and then the next string, it would be a foot. Yes, I have gone to therapy. 😂

I’d like you to consider the skillset required to be successful at this kind of thing- and how it might be more than useful to try a little bit of purposeful confusion in your own practice. So many students construct a sort of brittle framework about their instrument, especially how the notes are mapped on the fingerboard, where they can be played, how they relate to each other. If you’re curious as to whether your own concept has some of this tenuous quality, play a phrase that you’re familiar with but start on a different finger on a different string. Does the whole thing fall apart? Or can you knit it back together? Press forward? Another test: play a passage on one finger. My favorite? Reverse your hands! It will sound like TRASH but it’s cool to see how much more comfortable the regular setup feels after that switcheroo. I sometimes do this with students who are learning vibrato, just to show them that a crummy sound is not a referendum on where they are in their progress.

In the end, it’s not helpful to practice in the hopes that you will be able to create the conditions under which a pristine, repeatable, perfect rendition of whatever you’re working on can exist. Practice instead in the hopes of encountering every possible adversity: so you have a chance to keep your bearings when your brain explodes, or nerves make your fingers feel like someone else’s, or you accidentally fall into some weird fingering that never once in your wild life even pondered, but here you are.

Happy adversity finding!