Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is: Is playing practicing? Many of you who have watched my videos know that I have drawn a red line that should not be crossed. You have to know whether you are playing or practicing. And yet here I have this question: Is playing practicing? There’s actually a nuanced answer to this question. While it is absolutely essential that you know whether you’re playing through your music or practicing your music, there are times when you want to practice performing, whether it’s a public performance that you’re preparing for or you just want to run through things for friends to see how they go. But what we’re going to talk about today is something entirely different.
Playing can be practicing!
For example, when you play a performance, whether it’s a formal recital or just playing for friends, particularly if you record the event, going back and listening to what you did while taking note of what went well, what things maybe you need to work on, and insights you may have gained during the performance that you’d like to explore further, can be an invaluable experience. In that case, playing is practicing.
What is practicing?
Aside from the physiological aspect of strengthening your hands and learning how to negotiate passages, finger work, and chords, practicing is really a mental activity. Anything that involves a thought process about playing is practicing. So that’s an example where playing is practicing. How could you use this to your advantage? There are actually many ways. I talked about practicing performing. How do you do this? In your practice, there are two complete extremes. During a performance, no matter what, the show must go on. You have to keep going! Nobody wants to hear you stop and correct something when you’re playing for them. In a live performance, this could be a disaster. But even when you’re playing informally for family or friends, it ruins the whole experience for them. But in practice, you want to stop whenever there is an error to correct it and solidify it.
When is playing practicing? How do you achieve this?
It’s just as I described before. You do a practice run-through of a piece, and you don’t stop. Make it like a performance. You can even record it. It doesn’t need to be a great recording. You just want to have something you can listen back to with the score. Maybe circle trouble spots in the score. Take notes as you listen. This can be an incredible experience for strengthening your performance. And indeed, this is an aspect where playing can be practicing. But normally, remember that red line. Practicing is on one side, and playing is on the other. And they are diametrically opposed. In playing, you want to keep going no matter what to maintain the continuity of the performance. In practice, you generally want to stop to make corrections and solidify. Double check the score, work through the passage, connecting it with the previous passage, getting that secure, then going back to the beginning and seeing if you can pass all of the trouble spots. So that’s the lesson for today! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
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