I’m naturally awake relatively early; one reason I started writing this blog was a desire to be more productive in the mornings before I need to be working. I’ve always done my best writing in the mornings, and as a bonus it gives me something to do while I wait until a socially acceptable time to play my violin.

But my schedule actually varies quite a bit – If I make a blog post, I always write it first thing, but on my days off I tend to practice in the midday timeframe, after a lazy breakfast and lots of reading, and on two or so days a week I work early and find myself practicing in the evening.  I’m discovering an odd pattern – for whatever reason, my playing is a good deal worse in the evenings than it is in the morning or at noontime.

Morning sessions are all business – I have a fixed time to play, I get right to it, I finish, I’m off to work.  Noontime sessions are the most leisurely – I go longer, but I basically play at the same skill level.  Come evening I’m a mess.  I struggle to be in tune, I struggle with memory.  All that struggling naturally makes relaxing all the necessary muscles more difficult, making my tone terrible.  One conclusion I’m coming to is that I’m not yet to the point where I can use the violin to unwind.  You learn to roll over, crawl, walk, then run, in that order.  I’m still crawling, and order to relax with the violin you have to be walking at least.  I obviously love playing, but a primary reason I love it is that it’s a challenge!

Overall, I’m just not sure what the problem is, but there’s no getting around evening practice sessions, so I’m hoping this time of day disparity will diminish over time.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan