RE: Playing is not practicing! Which one do you do most of the time?

It may be hard for you to believe that you can improve your playing just by focusing on the power of the mind and analyzing the playing of great musicians.

I love this post so much. As a student of music from the age of 9, I had a practice regimen kinda drilled into my brain from a young age (sign-off sheets for my parents that certified I’d spent X amount of time working scales, playing with a metronome, running various sections of pieces of music, etc.)

Practice was a way of life. During that time, however, I found that I didn’t spend a lot of time playing, because it felt like it was just all about practice.

Then I took on a few instruments (including guitar) that I insisted that I did not want lessons for. This was the exclusive reason why. The Practice. I knew if my parents were paying for it, that it would suck the fun out of it for me because of their constant nagging about practice.

So, in turn, I fell in love with playing guitar, but never got as good as I could have because I never really wanted to practice to become better. I wanted to use my set of acquired chops and just roll with it. I’ve had success, too, (I’m in my 5th year as a full-time musician) but I know I’m not nearly as good as I could have been with more actual practice and less playing.

Anyway—balance is hard. This post is a great reminder that to be a well-rounded musician, one needs balance.

Thanks for the post. Thanks for being here.