Read the whole vlog on the Traditional Music Forum website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the humble age of 9, I didn\u2019t once bat an eyelid at the thought of taking to the stage in Banchory Town Hall to play two (relatively simple) tunes in the \u201912 and Under\u2019 section at the Banchory Accordion and Fiddle Festival. I did this year in and year out, gradually venturing to more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"category-newsletter","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"simon","author_link":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/author\/simon\/"},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcv15g-3HA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14235,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14234\/revisions\/14235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/handsupfortrad\/files\/2020\/02\/image.jpg\")
At the humble age of 9, I didn\u2019t once bat an eyelid at the thought of taking to the stage in Banchory Town Hall to play two (relatively simple) tunes in the \u201912 and Under\u2019 section at the Banchory Accordion and Fiddle Festival. I did this year in and year out, gradually venturing to more festivals and competitions as the years went on. However, this also became less like water off a duck\u2019s back, as they say. With more travelling up and down the country, more practising and more successes, came more prestigious festivals. Naturally, these bigger competitions brought more and more nerves and it got to the point that I was no longer enjoying taking part. This is when I decided to pack in the competitions and festivals, solo categories at least.<\/p>\n