How Long Have You Been Playing?

I hear the question "how long have you been playing" asked a lot. It's asked at an Irish session and might be directed toward a fiddler, flautist, or accordion player. Quite often the answer is surprising. A fantastic fiddler (who is probably in her late 50's or early 60's) might say "about ten years", or the flautist or accordion player - who are very good mind you - might say "3 or 4 years". 

In each case the person has likely been playing music a lot longer than that. It might have been on a different instrument and/or might not have been Irish traditional session tunes, but it probably dates back to when they took piano lessons as a child, or played trumpet in a middle school band, or studied classical violin, or played some instrument in church growing up, or guitar in their teenage bedroom, or bass in a reggae band as a young adult.

What about an Australian actor playing a Chicago cop who learns a Chicago accent for the TV series but then speaks in their normal Australian voice while doing the press for that show? Both the Australian voice that comes to him naturally and the Chicago accent that he learned for the role are the products of mimicry, but in only one case is he speaking with his own voice.

All musicians are practicing some form of mimicry, and I guess it's possible to mimic a style and still speak in your own voice. That may be the answer to "how long have you been playing".

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