Welcome to my second blog. Without wasting any time, let’s get directly into it.
The illusion of practice is something that all of us musicians get trapped in at some point in our lives. As the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect.” While there is some truth to it, we put too much meaning behind it. Many musicians spend hours in practice rooms believing that they are moving forward, when in reality they are just reinforcing habits without any actual growth. The routine of “putting in the time” might make us feel productive, but not all the practice time we put in leads to the progress we want to achieve.
Why isn’t doing more always doing better? In most cases, everything is a numbers game, there’s no doubt about that. However, if the goal is to play exceptionally well, spending your time for the whole year, six hours a day in a practice room, is probably the biggest waste of time in your life. I’m not saying that it’s bad, but today’s world requires much more than that. So, it’s all about saving your time and energy to get to your goal in the fastest and easiest way. Let me get into that more.
When you’re working on a piece, maybe a concerto, a sonata, or a full recital program, even if you manage to achieve the result you aimed for or play it “perfectly,” you can be almost certain that this won’t fully happen on stage. Expecting perfection leads to a huge waste of time, especially today, when we’re racing against the clock. Playing perfectly in the practice room is more of a personal satisfaction, an illusion, really. You need to go on stage before you feel fully ready, because doing so might actually make you 60% more effective in reaching your main goal.
Most of the world famous, successful musicians I’ve met perfected their playing on the stage, not in the practice room. I can never speak for everyone when it comes to “how to achieve the perfect playing,” because there are multiple ways of achieving good playing. Usually, the most efficient and effective ways are the ones that put you under strong pressure.
Once you realize that classical musicians are taking their craft way more seriously than what the world actually needs, or desires, it will make a revolutionary impact on how you think of classical music, and what it actually is in a world where people can only keep their focus for around three seconds. But let’s keep that topic for another blog.
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more articles in the future! :)