On "Practice Makes Perfect" and "Perfect Practice Makes Perfect"
This is a topic which truly needs no introduction, but please forgive the following, small preamble:
Many of the banal phrases that get repeated endlessly pertaining to music aren’t all bad if the terms are defined correctly. The problem is that they are almost never defined correctly, and that the lack of definitions often leads unsuspecting musicians to believe in antihuman and nihilistic philosophies which only serve to make them miserable. Miserable musicians seldom make good music, and this inadequacy leads musicians to get even more down on themselves than they were originally. So! In the hopes of ending this cycle of misery and abuse for musicians, here is an examination of “practice makes perfect” and “perfect practice makes perfect.”
Practice Makes Perfect
There are two two salient words in this quote: “practice” and “perfect.” Let’s talk about the former word first.
“Practice”
This statement’s veracity and usefulness is determined entirely by what the speaker means by the word “practice.” If by practice you actually mean learning, I agree wholeheartedly. But if by practice you mean repetition or something equally heinous, I would refer you to some of my other work for a firm refutation of that nonsense. As a side note, if you did actually mean “learning” when you said practice makes perfect, then why didn’t you say that? Musicians’ lives would be infinitely improved if they were given advice that was specific and meaningful instead of advice that merely appeals to the rhyme-as-reason effect.
I suspect most of the protestations against replacing the word “practice” with “learning” in the common vernacular come from the faulty idea that practice constitutes something beyond mere “learning”—and perhaps it does, but none of these other things it means are useful. For instance, here is a short list of things some musicians think are practice but are not actually useful:
Repeating things
Guessing at what your teacher meant when they said something and trying to solve the problem they mentioned without being able to actually define what it is.
Sitting on a chair staring at music
Playing your instrument aimlessly
Doing run throughs over and over again.
All of these things might be “practice” but aren’t actually useful. By replacing our vocabulary surrounding practice with words that actually mean something, we might start to get somewhere. There might be some benefit in mindlessly playing your instrument if you’re already extremely unfamiliar with your instrument to begin with; but the longer you’ve been playing your instrument the more this benefit diminishes, and after playing for a month or two it’s almost negligible. Continued learning is the only way to ensure progress, and progress is the only way to ensure eventual excellence.
“Perfect”
The second word in the statement “perfect” is also troublesome depending on what is meant by it. Typically, one of three things is meant by this word when someone says this phrase: nothing at all, a nebulous and incorporeal definition of perfection, or excellence.
With regards to the first of these categories, many people feel the need to give advice or commentary to musicians either before or after they’ve been practicing as if they themselves were living vicariously through you, and in order for them to be truly happy, they must make sure that you are practicing in accordance with what they deem to be the appropriate parameters. This is called manipulation and codependency. These people will often say clichéd things like the phrase that is our current topic and congratulate themselves on their cleverness when they’ve finished speaking, even though the only reason they said those words in the first place was to draw attention to themselves, and they didn’t actually mean anything by what they said. This is hardly a qualifying reason for congratulations. To these people I say: please, shut up. Musicians aren’t playthings for you to exploit when you want to satisfy your repressed creative impulses. Go learn an instrument yourself if you want this control so badly.
Secondly, to those who really do mean something by “perfection,” I ask you to define precisely what you mean. Obviously, perfection can be defined as without error, but so much of music is subjective and can’t be sorted into the dichotomous “error” or “not an error” that this definition insists upon, so it doesn’t clarify anything. Too often the phrase “perfection” is tossed around without a bother to denote what exactly is meant by this phrase. This lack of specificity shifts the burden of definition to the other person in the conversation which is 1) rude, 2) confusing, and 3) often leads to gaslighting. One person’s definition of perfection is almost certainly different from the next person’s, so if a conversation continues without caring to distinguish between the two, someone must acquiesce their understanding in order for the conversation to continue. This acquiescence is almost invariably done by the musician who then suffers the corresponding degradation that misunderstanding always yields.
Thirdly, those who do actually take the time to define “perfection” in its requisite detail will discover that what they mean by “perfection” isn’t perfection at all. What they mean is excellence. Excellence is by far a much better word than “perfection” in this context because it releases one from the confines of an amorphous box insistent on rigid adherence to an ill-defined set of rules into a world where the only standard is goodness. After all, did God confine himself to only releasing creations when they were perfect? No, only when “[they] were good1.”2
So the next time someone says “practice makes perfect” to you, translate it to “learning achieves excellence:” a much more useful and much more accurate phrase.
Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
This phrase usually means one of the following:
Once your mind has been sullied by imperfect repetitions it can no longer be changed, so the only way to learn something is to play it as perfectly as you can the first time and get the piece perfect real quick, because once you’ve played it a certain number of times your abilities become immutable.
Only by practicing without making mistakes can we achieve perfection.
Practicing perfectly makes you perfect.
Let’s explore these one at a time.
1. Immutability after Imperfect Repetitions
To be fair, advocates of this position would probably phrase this interpretation in a different way. They’d probably say something like if you practice something imperfectly, then the imperfection is going to be locked into a habit. Habits are really hard to break, so it’s best if you learn how to do something correctly the first time or at least as quickly as possible.
While I agree that it’s best to learn to do something correctly the first time, this is only possible where experimentation isn’t a requisite part of learning to do any given thing. Imperfect “repetitions” (read: experiments) are required to learn to play an instrument correctly, and demonizing these doesn’t help anyone.
I also disagree with the premise that practicing something repetitiously creates unbreakable or difficult to break habits. This assumes that repetition creates habits, and while habits are, by definition, something that is done repetitively, it’s not clear that repetition is what causes habits to develop, nor is it clear that the more repetitions were used to create the habit the more difficult the habit is to break. In my experience, bad habits in playing music are easily broken when someone learns to do something the correct way. More often than not, doing something the correct way is easier, more rewarding, or more effective than doing something the wrong way, so most individuals will drop the bad habit quickly once they realize these advantages. So-called “bad habits” are usually just an indication that further experimentation needs to happen.
Furthermore, this seems to be the same kind of fallacious thinking that leads people to believe that babies are endowed with super-human powers that enable them to learn things at a rate that’s unattainable once they’re adults. If when you first start learning a piece of music you are a “baby,” and as you learn the piece you become an “adult,” we can make a comparison. Nothing changed. You’re still a human being. The abilities that innately come with being a human being didn’t change just because you’re older now, nor did your ability to learn this piece change just because you’ve learned a greater portion of it.
2. Only by practicing without making mistakes can we achieve perfection.
Answer me this: if you’re able to play something perfectly—making no technical mistakes, no intonation imperfections, at the correct tempo, with all of the expression of a virtuoso—do you need to practice?
Now before you accuse me of misinterpreting “perfect practice makes perfect,” read it again. Is this not exactly what it means? That playing perfectly makes you perfect? Is this phrase not also, then, a non sequitur? If you’re playing perfectly, why would you need to practice at all? Put another way, this interpretation is saying that the only way to become perfect is to be perfect, and this is obviously asinine.
If, by practice, we mean merely playing our instruments, then we inevitably lead ourselves into logical fallacies. If, by practice, we don’t mean merely playing our instruments, and we mean actually practicing, then we are led to the final point:
3. Practicing perfectly makes you perfect
This interpretation does not mean that you mustn’t make mistakes while practicing, nor does it mean that your playing should be perfect while practicing, only that your practice should be perfect. Thus, the more effort you put into perfecting the practice of practicing, the more perfect your playing will be.
I can hardly disagree with this interpretation. I’ve dedicated writings to advocating for this approach, myself. If musicians were to analyze their methods of practice as often as they criticized themselves as people or berated themselves for not being good enough, they would certainly be much better off and maybe even not be miserable anymore.
Final Thoughts
Practicing is hard. It should be a lot of work. This does not mean that it must take hours and hours. Honing your skills at your instrument will certainly be a long term commitment, and it will certainly take many hours over the course of many years, but the more effective you make your practice and the more energy you put into each moment you’re in the practice room, the less time you’re going to have to spend in there to get the results you want. Then you’ll have so much more time for doing joyous things like taking walks, talking with friends, eating delicious food, in short: living life.
Just in case any of you are confused, none of this is to say that there isn’t merit in playing your instrument without learning. Indeed, playing your instrument without learning can be a fun or cathartic experience. What I am saying is that this playing is not practice. I know it sounds crazy, but if you’re not learning things, then you’re not learning things.
Let’s make a firm distinction in our minds between playing and practicing, learning and repetition. Maybe then we’ll have more success in becoming the musicians we aspire to be.
From Strong’s Concordance: good (as an adjective) in the widest sense; used likewise as a noun, both in the masculine and the feminine, the singular and the plural (good, a good or good thing, a good man or woman; the good, goods or good things, good men or women), also as an adverb (well):--beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, × fair (word), (be in) favour, fine, glad, good (deed, -lier, -liest, -ly, -ness, -s), graciously, joyful, kindly, kindness, liketh (best), loving, merry, × most, pleasant, + pleaseth, pleasure, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, (be) well ((-favoured)). http://strongsconcordance.org/results.html?k=02896
Genesis 1:4