So I just got back from giving my first, small performance during a friend's musician share event. Now that I've got some wine and brandy in my blood, I thought I should share the experience with my fellow learning fiddlers!

For the event, I decided to present an original composition, about two minutes long, that I wrote back in December. At night when I'm no longer really practicing, I often randomly fiddle; every now and again, I come across a combination that I really like, and later write it down. I now have a handful of excerpts of melodies, but only this one that I consider to be in a rough state of completion.

The melody is a relatively simple medieval-ish, gypsy-ish piece that makes heavy use of vibrato, intermediate-level bowing, pizzicato and simple double stops, but sticks to first position.

The audience was about ten people, mostly strangers, all hobbyist musicians. We all shared one original piece.

My turn came up toward the end. I never get a chance to play in front of others, so I was super nervous and jittery. This definitely affected my performance. I played the piece faster than I usually would and at a quality that I know does not equate to when I practice alone. I also made one mistake, which an embarrassed and slightly inebriated me clumsily announced.

That being said, getting over nervousness is a necessary step in learning, and the only way to do it is to just throw yourself out there! So as a first performance, it actually went...

Extremely well. The audience loved it, said they would never have known the mistake had I not announced it, nor would they have guessed that I was a beginner at the instrument. A real violinist told me that for only a year and a half, my ability was amazing, that my bowing was exemplary and that he noticed no bad habits. I just needed to relax. Best of all, the composition's themes were successfully expressed. People described picturing a procession of castles, knights and gypsies.

So here's to the first of many more performances!