A Journey Playing an instrument is not like doing Maths. When you see them on tv, musicians look cool and relaxed; calm and composed. And when they begin to play, the most amazing sound fills the room; a mix of soulful notes cascading over each other like a waterfall. You don’t realise how much skill, dedication and patience actually goes into being a musician until you try and play something yourself. After the first hurdle of learning how to read music, you’ll have to be taught how to find the notes on your instrument. Then there’s the initial stages of playing one-note rhythms (such as “faster than a caterpillar”) and of going over endless exercises to strengthen your fingers. You know how to play most of the notes by the end of your first year, and you muddle along happily until about Grade 4, adding in crescendos and dimuendos and staccato and legato phrases when needed. And then at Grade 5 it hits you. These examiners don’t just want to hear the right notes played at the correct time; they’re not content listening to you hesitantly squeezing notes out of your violin. They want a deep, rich sound full of emotion; a real performance. Your teacher says that you need to practise more, but you honestly can’t see it making any difference. If you haven’t mastered a simple scale by the end of a practice session, surely it’s all pointless? However, you persevere, painstakingly going over the troublesome bars, the awkward high notes and the tricky leaps from crotchet to semi-quaver. You have bad days - ones where you break down and cry in front of the music stand because a particular piece has chosen to elude you that day, ones where you hate your instrument and wonder whatever it was that made you want to take it up in the first place. But one day, there’ll be that “Eureka!” moment. The time when you discover a piece of music so beautiful that you throw your heart into it, gently swaying with the emotion and getting so lost in the song that everything around you becomes irrelevant. And then you’ll remove the violin from your shoulder, the flute from your lips, your fingers from the piano keys, and you’ll listen to the last notes softly dying away. You’ll recall those first few years - the halting renditions of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, the grimaces on people’s faces as you cranked out yet another flat scale - and you’ll marvel at how far you’ve come. You’ll smile a grin so wide it almost splits your face in two, and you’ll realise that this is what it’s all about.