More on "Practicing"

 Arnie Lawrence, my musical guru, in a way, said he never practiced. He only played. What he meant was that practicing was a way of playing that didn't count. "I know it sounds bad, but I'm only practicing." Arnie insisted that playing must always count, even (and perhaps especially) mistakes.

My teacher had to cancel the flute lesson I was preparing for today, so I decided not to work on the pieces I'm learning for my lessons - an arrangement of the Bach Two Part inventions as a duet for two treble instruments and one of the Handel flute sonatas - and simply play whatever decided to come out of the flute, to find out what was on my musical mind, such as it is.

That was enlightening, another way of hearing myself playing, which, after all, is of prime importance. Hearing yourself is a step toward knowing yourself. Arnie used to tell his students about a musician who would say, "Don't ask my how I am until I've played my drums." That's how he knew how he was.

Practicing Regularly/Obsessively

I was in my sixties when I started taking flute lessons, after I realized I wasn't going to be able to master the instrument without instruction. When I was a high school student, playing the clarinet, I didn't practice every day by a long shot. I got to be pretty good anyway, and I was (stupidly) satisfied with my playing. But I realized I'd never come close to playing the flute decently unless I practiced a lot. I didn't have many pressing demands on my time, so it was easy to spend an hour or so every day to work toward getting a decent sound on the flute, and I enjoyed making progress, despite the frustration of not progressing fast enough.

Aspiring young musicians practice for hours upon hours, and professionals keep it up, but I'm neither young nor professional, and it's not clear to me what I'm actually aspiring to. Still, I practice almost every day. In part I'm afraid that if I don't practice, I'll lose whatever ability I've acquired and fall backward in my quest for a convincing, beautiful sound. Certainly I won't improve if I don't keep practicing, and improvement is important, because the better one is at it, the more one enjoys music. Pieces that were beyond one's ability are now merely challenging.

The main point of practicing, of course, it to keep learning: about your instrument, about the music you play, and about yourself.