Posted by Jay Bertolet on August 10, 2000 at 14:22:29:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Practicing posted by Tom C. on August 10, 2000 at 13:53:57:
If all you're doing is repeating bad music, you have ceased practicing. You have become a human copy machine, perhaps a bad one. Too often, players think that doing something repeatedly will somehow make it better. Practice, by definition, means "systematic exercise for proficiency". Practice involves taking steps to improve how and what you do. Improvement is at the heart of the process, not repetition. That is why instructors will speak of the efficiency of how you practice. A solid hour of skillfully directed work easily outweighs four hours of endless repetition with no direction of purpose and, perhaps, no tangible results. For me, everytime I go into the practice room I have something in mind that I want to work on and improve. When I'm finished, I demand of myself that I've made some progress to that goal. I rarely think of practice time in terms of minutes spent but, rather, what was accomplished. After all, what good does it do to practice and not improve? Practice is work and I'm not in the habit of doing work for nothing...