Practicing is difficult if you think that you need learn everything in one night. Practicing is difficult if you think it doesn’t do anything. Practicing is difficult if you think that you’re going to die the next day when you get to school/your lesson/rehearsal or whatever. Practicing is difficult if you hate your progress, and practice is difficult if you think that 1% progress is not enough.
You have to do a few things before you start practicing:
1. Forgive yourself for not getting it all done at once.
2. Forgive yourself for your mistakes.
3. Stop comparing yourself to others.
4. Stop playing something that makes you want to scream.
5. Be willing to take less time to do more.
This may sound like therapy, but you need to remember that you are not a bad person or a bad player because you mess up when you practice. Everybody screws up a lot. There are some people who learn more the more they screw up. Teachers often as you to practice, but they never tell you what a practice session looks like. They never tell you that professional musicians have “preferred pieces” that they play more often than anything else. So, if you are listening to a recording to someone shredding a piece you are playing, you re listening to someone who has played that piece literally a thousand times. That’s probably their thing…they are great players all of them…but you might be listening to someone’s wheelhouse. What if you are not in your wheelhouse? You are going to think you’re fucked. You have to step back and think…“Oh, that’s not my bag.” You’ll work hard, but you can wash away the comparisons.
YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO MAKE MISTAKES AND BAD NOISES
Mistakes are often more informative than right notes. Right notes just sound good, but mistakes tell you all the things you don’t know. You can learn about your own playing by listening to what you mess up. You may discover small problems with your playing that are not obvious until you actually listen to your mistakes. You have to love your mistakes because they point to things that will change your perspective.
NO ONE PLAYS PERFECTLY ALL THE TIME
If you want to spend all your time hating your playing, feel free to think other people are perfect. Here’s a secret…they aren’t. Mess up a lot so you can get it out of your system.
STOP RUNNING THROUGH THINGS
Yeah, you need to run through things…sometimes. You need to practice things daily. Runthroughs are going to drain you, and you are going to notice that you need multiple takes to get it right. You may counter by saying that you have to be able to drop bombs cold in an orchestral audition, but I’m not stupid…I know the majority of the audience here is not taking orchestral auditions. You have a concert coming up, and you will surrounded by other people who are playing. Momentum is a real thing, and the band pulls you along. It just does.
Everybody needs a thing. Your tone, tonguing, range, something. You need a thing that makes you say…yeah, I’m REALLY good at that. You can be proud of that everytime you do it, and you will be able to fall back on that when you don’t feel so good about a practice session.
You can practice for hours and hours, but that does not mean the practice is working. You will hit the point of diminishing returns somewhere around three hours. Some people hit that point WAY sooner. You could get more done in ten minutes than some people can do in two hours if you are focused. That’s just reality. Stop judging your practice by duration and start judging it by efficiency.
Did you make 1% progress today? Then you did something. Awesome! You should not be discouraged because you fixed a tiny thing today or did a tiny thing today. You need to be proud of what you did so you will want to practice again tomorrow. People who hate practicing are dreading it the next day…that’s a fact. People who are ready to practice the next day at happy with at least one thing they did the day before.
If you hate your practice sessions it is like running a marathon, cutting off one leg and then running the marathon the next day. I imagine you won’t be too excited about it the next day.
It’s only hard if you make it hard on yourself. There is so much shame and BS going around the music world that you can hate your playing without even realizing how much you hate it. Stop hating it and start loving it…practicing might get a little easier.
