Don’t practice until you can play it right, practice until you can’t play it wrong.
Practice makes perfect. No! No! No! Only perfect practice makes perfect.
You can repeat 5X5=26 over and over and over, it will not make you good at maths, because 5X5=25. Similarly if you practice music using the wrong fingers you will not end up making the piece perfect. Only by using the right fingers/notes/timing will you make it perfect. Therefore only perfect practice makes perfect.

“I haven’t yet learnt to play it right.” This is quite often heard from students. In other words, they can play the piece, but they will probably make some mistakes. If we look at a brand new piece of music, where are the mistakes? You’re right. There are none. Unless there has been a printing error, the piece is perfect. So where do the mistakes come from?

We, the students, put them there. Through careless practice, often played too fast, we’ve put mistakes into the music, where there were none to start with, only to have to get rid of them later. If we give this some thought, it’s a bit like planting weeds into our garden one-week and the ripping them out a week later. If we practice slowly and carefully, (like we do when we learn to drive) then we can avoid putting the mistakes into the music. We then won’t have to get rid of them later. Returning to our opening statement, we can then say, “I haven’t yet learnt to play it wrongly”

Work versus Enjoyment:
After a child has had a few music lessons and becomes somewhat acquainted with the keyboard of his instrument, he begins to ask for music which he deems pleasing to his ear. The tiresome work of repeating scales and finger practice does not appeal to him. He would much rather please himself and his ear by playing songs and pleasing melodies. Finger practice is actual WORK. The
playing of easy harmony is amusement. With a little reasoning, we realize that the initial lessons, during which the student became acquainted with the instrument of his choice, consisted almost entirely of WORK (finger practice). Therefore in order to derive enjoyment (amusement) from our music, we must first WORK.

And isn’t it so with all things? Show me a child who enjoys mathematics, and I’ll show you a child who is good at it. How did the child become good at math’s? He WORKED at it. With the WORK came understanding and having gained the understanding, enjoyment automatically followed. How much enjoyment was there in our first successful bike ride? Oh sure, there was exhilaration; we finally managed to stay upright, even just for a short time. But it was mixed with a little fear. A little, because that’s all the fear we had time for, before we fell off and probably hurt ourselves. No, the enjoyment came after we learnt (understood) how to stay upright, for as long as we choose.

A famous person once said: “There is no excellence without labor; and the
time to work is NOW”.

My child better take this seriously. There’s no way I’m going to spend this sort of money on a seven day wonder.
This comment usually comes from a parent buying a $99.00 beginners guitar. This same family has a $6000.00 speedboat sitting in the driveway that gets used twice a year. Priorities sometimes get a little confused. I’ve noticed that when a student no longer wishes to continue with music, it is considered a total waste. For some reason that $99.00 guitar is all of a sudden a total write off, whereas the $299.00 roller blades lying in the bottom of the wardrobe don’t get a mention.

Remember that music is never a waste. Show me a child who practices music 15mins a day and I’ll show you a child that is developing some self discipline. Now, I don’t care whether your child learns discipline in the classroom, on the sports field, at music lessons, or they have to join the army for 9 months, once they’ve got it, they are better people for it. My younger daughter learnt about discipline through music. When the interest in music waned and her interest in horses took over, she dedicated that discipline to her horse often being in the horse paddock at 6am in
order to get ready for a show. When she left school she used that discipline during her apprenticeship. She is now a fully qualified hairdresser, and I’m extremely proud of her. She doesn’t play music anymore. So what?
Heinz Dabernig
Parent.