Practice Makes Perfect

As much as I love the piano, there are still days when I don't feel like practicing. Comparing it to a long term relationship again, there are certainly days and times in any relationship when you do not feel like doing things for the other person whether it is doing household tasks, spending time with them, or being nice to them! Well, it is the same way with piano, there are days and times when I do not feel like doing what I know I need to do. But, just like in a relationship, love and committment is a choice, and when you don't feel like doing things for someone you love, you make a choice to do them anyway because you love that person. So, same for piano.

My teacher says that playing the piano is the hardest thing anyone can do because it is so complicated and demands so much on such a myriad of levels. And she also says that it is easy to put off practicing because it is so difficult and demands so much. Recently, I read a book called Note by Note by Tricia Tunstall. In the book, Ms. Tunstall explains why practicing is so challenging.

"...To strive for mastery at the piano, or any instrument for that matter, is really to redefine one's definition of 'hard.' Difficult passages must be broken down into their smallest parts and played - well, you know: over and over and over. When you think you cannot bear to play a passage one more time, you play it ten more times. Or twenty. If you have not maintained a meticulous, painstaking precisioon throughout those twenty times, you repeat it twenty times more. When you are tempted to give up and go make yourself a sandwich, there is no coach to stop you; you must be trainer and athlete, good cop and bad, all at once. It's a tall order for a disciplined grownup, much less for a [child]."

But practicing is necessary -

"An instrumentalist is an athlete. There is no way around the need for intense physical training; without it, the ability to play a Beethoven sonata is about as unlikely as the ability to pole-vault. But while pole-vaulters and soccer players and gymnasts usually practice together, a piano student practices his technical exercises alone, and it can feel like drudgery."

Nevertheless, practicing can be both intensely fulfilling and rewarding. I love a challenge and the piano constantly presents great challenges to overcome. I feel a great sense of accomplishment as I am able to play the pieces the way I hear them inside and as I am feel my technique getting better and stronger. Because there is no denying it - to be suberb at anything, you have to practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect!