postr/StutterFebruary 21, 2025

Does anyone else stutter when playing a musical instrument?

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Content

Does anyone else stutter when playing a musical instrument? This might just be me not being very good at it, but I just can't play either the piano or the guitar fluently. I often find myself repeating notes at the start of a phrase, almost involuntarily, like my hands are stuttering. My music teachers in the past have often been frustrated by this, telling me to just keep playing when I make a mistake instead of starting over, and then attributed this to repeating the same oops-start-over (even when the notes played were correct) until that gets encoded into muscle memory. I'm not saying that's untrue, but to me it feels similar to stuttering, like my hands are hesitating in the same way my vocal cords do when I talk.

Themes

Causes & VariabilitySpeech & Stuttering

Subthemes

Situational VariabilityRepetitions & ProlongationsPhysical Tension