"Yo wanna get dinner?"
".....nah I'd better go practice."
Why on earth do musicians spend so much time being alone in a tiny (or not) practice room and how hard it is to draw a sound from that bloody instrument?
A clip from my lecture recital "To be or not to be" back in Taipei a couple of months ago. After sharing with the audience the "role" of performing artists (a combination of interpreter, athlete and actor) , I went on and talked about what musicians do in their practice room all day long.
As you can see in the photo, as a musician I spend shocking amount of time away from my violin (aka not playing) on a daily basis. Before I lay my fingers on my four-string-babe, I find it necessary to study the score and do a so-called "background check" of the composition (composer, date, what sound he's probably imagining...etc.,) finding the right character has always been one of the top priority in the process of learning a piece of music.
Of course one also has to deposit hours and hours of practicing to make sure that our ears, eyes, brain, heart and our hands talk to each other and hopefully in sync to one another... Sometimes I jokingly point out to my colleagues the resemblance between musician and firefighter: when facing obstacle, instead of walking away from it we charge into the problem. However, one of the biggest lesson I learned during my undergraduate studies at NEC is that one does not get better by trying harder (sad, I know): The importance of practicing efficiently later became my motto, and that we all learn to know ourselves (and our instruments) better in our practice rooms.
Did I not mention this is where we get our confidence on stage?