The difference between practising and playing....

by Minim Pro @ 2010-07-12
They say that practice makes perfect and the most common question jazz students ask is 'what should I practise?'. However, many of these same students tend not to consider what practice really means and define all time spent alone with their instrument as 'practising'.

However, practising is quite different from playing and I've found that students can speed up their development and monitor their progress more effectively if they are aware of the difference between the two and make time to do both.
•Practice is the gradual process of turning something you can't do into something you can do easily.
•Playing involves making music using skills, tools and techniques that you have already mastered.

The problem with practising is that it's no fun at all. We tend not to like doing things that we can't do and usually avoid them wherever possible. From an early age, our education systems encourage us to become more and more specialised in our knowledge and abilities as we continue to focus on what we're best at and stop working in areas where we struggle.

For most people, especially adults, being placed in any situation where we have to do something we're not good at can be unpleasant, intimidating and belittling. In consequence, the older we are, the less time we are forced to spend doing anything that we can't already do. Unfortunately, that is exactly what practice is - and why it sucks!

By contrast, playing is fantastic! When we're playing we're using skills we've put a lot of time and effort into developing and getting to show off what we've learnt and make great-sounding music into the bargain. Given that playing is highly pleasurable and practising is pretty unpleasant, it's not surprising that many students pick up their instruments to practise and very quickly end up playing.

For example, if you eavesdrop on somebody practising a new piece, you will often hear them start to play from the beginning until they make a mistake. They then go back to beginning and do the same thing - often making the same mistake. Why?

The answer is that it's more pleasurable to play the beginning bars that they can play, rather than fix the tricky bit that they can't. This means that fifteen minutes spent working is this way is not really fifteen minutes spent practising, it's fifteen minutes spent playing.
Complete on  >>  http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/2010/07/12/the-difference-between-practising-and-playing-8956923/