Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
Understanding the concept of perfect practice makes perfect. The brain is like a sponge, and the younger the brain, the spongier it is. It wants to soak up every bit of information it can. That’s why it’s vitally important for music students to not only practice, but practice “perfect.” Yes, the old saying “Practice makes perfect” is true, except it’s missing a very important element:
“Perfect practice makes perfect.” ~ Vince Lombardi.
It does your brain no good whatsoever if you rush through your practice, playing wrong notes, just for the sake of putting in practice time. Take your time, and make sure to the best of your ability that you play the right notes the first time. Believe me when I tell you, your brain will chomp onto any note you play ~ right or wrong ~ and it will be harder to get rid of those wrong notes than it would have been to put the right ones in the first time. Like a computer, the information you put into it affects what comes out of it, or as computer programmers will say, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Perfect practice makes perfect cannot be emphasized enough. One of my students learned this very lesson during a lesson with me. Unfortunately, we were each using different versions of a song pulled off the internet. Hers was wrong, mine was right. We played through it together three times before I realized why she’d been playing the wrong chord. Once I realized what had happened, it literally took nearly twenty times to correct what had only been done three times. Fortunately, she immediately understood the significance and importance of Perfect Practice.
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