Practice Thoughts

Been really busy in school, helping with the move into the new building, and juggling that with practicing and helping another friend set up a business. But I find that such situations actually help you focus your mind, and you stop doing the unnecessary things, and instead concentrate your energies on what needs to be done, and how to accomplish it in the best way, so that you don't have to waste time back-tracking and cleaning up work.

Practicing is like that too. If you're pressed for time to practice, you're forced to practice what you really need to, and not indulge in pointless playing that feels like you're working very hard. You can still experiment and learn, but you quickly learn to not play things for the sake of playing them, but instead work on your fundamentals in the most efficient way possible, so that you ensure that you can play whatever you need to, and not have to work up to it each time.

And because playing an instrument is such a mental endeavour, one realises that you have to know and feel the music before you even touch your instrument. Otherwise, you'd always be at the mercy of your instrumental characteristics or technical limitations. By sometimes deliberately not allowing yourself to practice, or putting yourself in risky situations, you learn to accomplish a lot more without spending more time than you really need to on the instrument. It's not a matter of training your body to survive the music, but of not letting your body get in the way of it, and that, is more mental that anything else.