PERFECT PRACTICE

(c)1988, David Humes

I'm sure you've heard the old cliché, "Practice makes perfect." But did you know that nothing could be further from the truth?

Practice doesn't make perfect: PERFECT PRACTICE makes perfect! What's the difference? The difference between "just practicing" and "perfect practice" will make the difference between being a mediocre or a great musician.

Simply practicing for the sake of logging a bunch of hours, or to build strength and endurance is not enough. To be sure, we need to invest many hours practicing. And strength and endurance are vitally important. But, what good are these things if it just allows us to perform as a "mediocre" musician for longer periods of time? How we practice is much more important than how long we practice.

We are slaves to our habits. Realizing this, we must make a conscious choice to focus on and develop good habits. That's not only essential for becoming a successful musician, but it's also the best way to get rid of an old self-defeating bad habit. Our practice habits determine our performance.

We all have to use actual physical practice until we achieve the minimum level of physical competency that will enable us to perform at the level of difficulty we desire. But, to insure our mind is finely tuned, we have to give our self a "checkup from the neck up."

One of the greatest tools for checking yourself out as a musician, is the tape recorder. You may think you're awesome when you're playing, but play back the tape: "the tape don't lie." This technique had a tremendous impact on my life. I realized my playing wasn't as good as I thought it was, so I vowed to do something about it.

In addition to critiquing a tape recording of yourself, practicing very slowly with a perfect reference is an indispensable technique that will perfect your groove. I encourage all musicians to practice with a metronome or drum machine, whenever practical, unless intentionally practicing varying tempo changes within a song or exercise.

Most teachers tell you to gradually speed the tempo up, always working on speed building. Not enough time is spent emphasizing the importance of perfecting groove. Although I believe in speed, I feel groove is just as, if not more, important.

The best way I know how to improve your groove, is to practice as slow as practical for long periods of time, and then slow the metronome down even further until you're practicing painfully slow. You have to be able to see the problem, before you can correct it. The slower the tempo you practice at, the more aware you will be of the slightest imperfections or inconsistencies in your groove.

The reason is that if you played something extremely fast and you were off by 10%, you would hardly hear the imperfection. But, slowed down, that 10% becomes quite apparent because of the increased amount of time between each note.

An example would be to practice a scale or rudiment at a quarter note equals 60 BPM (beats per minute) for ten minutes. When you've mastered that, slow it down to 55; then 50; and finally 40 BPM, practicing each tempo change for ten minutes. It's boring, but extremely helpful if you want to perfect your groove. You will find that when you play something fast that you've previously perfected at the "painfully slow" tempos, your playing sounds much cleaner and more relaxed.

If you aren't performing as well as you could be, check out your practice habits. Is it the amount of time you're investing in your practice? Or do you need to start practicing "perfect practice?"