Practice is one of those chores; one of those necessary tasks that we grow up learning to deal with, and, for the most part, not love. My aim with this short article is to perhaps give a new perspective on practice. From different forms of practice (a musical instrument or a sport), one gains insight into who he or she is, develops and shapes his or her passion and learns a discipline that is crucial to any form of mastery.
Through my own experience, it has come to my realization that practice is not definitively a chore: it is something that can shape your passions. I may have been forcefully prodded into playing the piano at age eight, but I still pursued my own passions. By practicing and pursuing music, I slowly learned that I loved the piano. This is exactly what made practice much less of a chore for me.
Funny enough, my idea of practice goes something like this: a sort of activity that you can very easily do wrong and, worst of all, will hurt you. Whether you are performing a post-move and are not positioning your hand correctly, or you are practicing a section of a Debussy Prelude and are pushing tempo, the errors you make carry. I remember back when I played hockey my coaches all would say, "Guys, it's OK to make mistakes in practice, that is what it is for." I certainly agreed with this, and I still do -- but not entirely. I don't think any coach should go around sincerely saying that it is OK you made a mistake; hopefully, they would seek to have you solve the problem and perform the action without making the mistake. The body works to remember things as quickly as possible, through muscle memory. This can be quite a detriment to an athlete or a musician if all they assume that it is just OK to make mistakes during practice. Mastery comes from intention, from playing your scales at 50 BPM and working you way up to 200 BPM with absolute care for correctness. This is much harder than it sounds. It is grueling to do something so tedious as the basics but completely necessary in developing technique.
But why can't you also love it? It is certainly true for me that if I enter a practice session unfocused or unwilling, then bad things are bound to happen. I'll either forget to diversify my warm up, which is recommended on all fronts of practice, or just sloppily play scales and half-ass my way to the "important part": working on my pieces or, for athletes, doing drills. I try never to approach the bench without some kind of plan in mind. This is a sort of intention that is ignored too often.
People have written books on how to practice correctly, people have lived their lives trying to perfect their practice sessions and that is what it takes to master practice. I am going to leave it there, so as not to end up writing a book. However, I feel, even if I do write a book on practice, then that the most important part of practice is not to have fun, but to carry out everything with intention. Work slowly, work efficiently and remember that practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. So if you practice incorrectly, then you'll have to face that music the next day.
