"The joy of playing is liberation, the joy of practicing is concentration"

Kenny Werner

Practicing is one of the great joys in my life. Only however when practicing is done with the right mindset. It needs to be calm and focused instead of frantic and jittery. In this context, it can be useful to separate practicing music and playing music.

When we practice the goal is different than from playing. Playing is about giving and surrendering. Practicing is about achieving and problem-solving. We solve problems so that we are free to relax into our solutions. Practicing is oriented toward self-improvement, and playing is oriented toward selflessness. Mixing up these objectives can turn playing into practicing and practicing into playing. Let's explore these in turn

Playing as practicing

The essential character of this is evaluating our playing as it is happening. This turns our attention to what can be improved and takes us away from the present moment. From the audience's perspective, this looks like a performer who is worried. Who tries too hard to perform so that the magic disappears. Like an actor who stops being the role and starts acting it. It can happen in an instant, instead of Hamlet on stage now it is some crazy guy on stage saying the lines of Hamlet.

From the performer’s perspective, they feel self-conscious. Physical tension starts building up. Once a performer starts evaluating their playing, the playing gets worse. Which begins a downward spiral of thinking and playing even worse.

Instead playing should be about surrender and generosity. Surrendering to the moment and trusting that the work done in the practicing room is enough. Even if it isn't enough, there is nothing to be done about it now. The generosity is aimed at the audience. We give them our work saying, “Here I made this”.

Practicing as playing

Here the mistakes become the opposite. Our performance level is subconscious, it is what we can do without thinking. If we practice what comes naturally to us, we are not learning new things. Practicing is meant to achieve what we cannot do yet. That means we need to slow down and focus. Practicing is about doing something we have to consciously control so that we can eventually do it unconsciously. If we feel liberated doing the thing we were supposed to be practicing, we have instead started playing.

How to practice.

There is a lot to say about this, but we can say something about the general framework. The basic principle consists of breaking down the difficult thing into small easy pieces. No matter how difficult some piece of music is, it is always possible to play the first note, at least on piano. The famous jazz pianist Bill Evans was asked about what he practices to which he answered "the minimum". I think this is what he was referring to. Breaking the problem down into the smallest piece possible. . Let's take an example. Here is the tune "Anthropology":

The first 8 bars have 4 phrases. The first phrase is from the upbeat of the first bar to the end of the second bar. Here is a brief guide to how to practice that.

1. Make sure you can sing it, and hear the phrase internally.
2. Figure out the fingering if not obvious.
3. Try playing it, if the whole phrase is too difficult, meaning you can’t play it immediately, break it up even smaller.

At each step imagine that the present step is the only thing in the universe. Don’t worry about the whole song, don’t worry about the next phrase. Revel and enjoy the feeling of really zooming in on one musical thought.

When you lose focus, treat it as a signal. Did you feel anxious? That means it was too difficult. Did you get bored? It was too easy, take on a bit more, play the phrase a bit faster, or similarly raise the difficulty level.

Deep focus is inherently pleasurable. It's fun in the Deutschian sense. It has very little to do with discipline. Focus is not like a force we need to coerce ourselves into exerting. It's more like a state we achieve when the activity is just right.

We can use practicing an instrument as a way of spiritual growth. It teaches us (rather reminds us) of the feeling of flow and deep focus. As soon as the feeling of anxiety comes from the fact of taking on too much at the same time. Slow down, take a smaller step, and focus on just one thing.