The Perfection of Practice

“Perfect practice makes perfect” was once said by a famous baseball instructor.   The whole point of practicing is to do something perfectly.   The Olympic swimmer strives to make each stroke perfect, the basketball player strives to shoot the ball with perfect form.  Likewise, the guitar player strives to play each note perfectly.

We value perfection because it is so hard to achieve, because we are prone to make mistakes.   That’s the challenge.  If we become too self conscious of our playing, we tend to make more mistakes.  In other words, being self conscious means that we are thinking about what our hands are doing, or something other than just playing.  The key to perfection is to lose our self consciousness by practicing.

The time to be self conscious is when we practice; think about how your fingers are moving, and how the note sounds, and how everything flows.  Move your fingers slowly, and deliberately.  Then slowly build your speed to where you play the piece without thinking.  When we practice slowly with deliberation we are teaching our fingers to develop their own intelligence (muscle memory)…to the point when thought becomes action without any interference.  Our skill becomes a natural part of ourselves.

If you practice you will improve, and you will begin to play perfectly.  With practice, our fingers no longer rely on our conscious thought; they just know where to go.  I used to be amazed when I would see a guitarist play amazing pieces without looking at the guitar neck…I now know all of that comes from many hours of practice, and superb muscle memory.

When you are playing something and it just isn’t right, slow down and focus only on the difficult part.  Practice the difficult part very slowly, and deliberately for 10 min, then take it from the top.  It’s amazing to feel your fingers move to exactly where they need to go when they need to …and when your fingers fail, slow down and let them learn.