Scoring yourself

The more I practice violin, the more I can hear mistakes -- in myself, and in others.

To properly evaluate a skill you need to have some of that skill. Of course, there are external metrics possible; you don't have to know how to play a violin in order to be able to detect if one sounds bad. The thing you don't know is how much skill is involved.

Everyone commits a Dunning-Kruger somewhere. Here's my rule of thumb for avoiding that syndrome; assume a bell curve. If it seems really, really easy or simple to you, but other people are spending a lot of time and effort and otherwise complaining about how hard it is...it is probably you, not them.

As a corollary or maybe ancillary, humans are competitive and ingenious. They will always find a way to do it better, or otherwise raise the difficulty. So whatever activity you are thinking of, look at it in terms of how much time, effort, money it seems sensible for people to be investing it. That's the peak of the bell curve.

So, yes, there are tools by which you can evaluate yourself. It is easy to say you are your own worst critic. In one sense this may be true; you are critical of those things you notice. The wider audience may find other flaws more worthy of attention. Thing is, to say that someone is better than they think they are is the same as saying they don't know what "good" sounds like. And if they don't know that...they aren't very good. Either way, this well-meaning comment is, basically, insulting.




The flip side to the bell curve above is that if you know almost nothing about it but believe it is too hard for you...you are probably wrong. If violin was as hard as some people think then they wouldn't sell a lot of violins. (Well, they might sell them, at that...but there wouldn't be a lot of symphony orchestras, because those things need half a hundred players each).

A thing I hear a lot from people is, "I wouldn't know where to start."

Oops. Now you do. "Where do I start?" is a very, very good starting point. The first step is not to be thrown in the deep end with a violin and a concert score. It is by talking to people who play, watching videos, browsing stores, talking to teachers....basically, answering that question of, "Where do I start?"

Every project I have done has required planning. And more often than not the planning started with planning the planning; with trying to frame just what the project is, what skills or resources will be involved, what the overall goals are. I may be "creative" (whatever the hell that means) but I don't just sit down with a keyboard or paintbrush or CNC Router. I start with scraps of paper and conversations with friends...

...and long, rambling blog posts.