Probably one of the most common things I have discovered in students of all skill levels and playing styles are that the concepts of "playing" and "practicing" are often confused and do not have a clear definition in how they are thought of and approached. Time and time again, as a guitar teacher, and specifically in jazz education, when the focus of improvisation may lend a hand in the ambiguity within these two terms, a pupil may have a hard time separating them, resulting in their progress becoming stunted and their musical vocabulary getting stale.
Theres been many times in asking my students questions like "What things are you working on?" and "How have you been practicing that?" Resulting in an answer occasionally involving passive playing with a lack of specific concentration, or not defining what they are working on to begin with. In response to this, I will define specifically what practicing can be, and how this is a completely separate thing from actual playing and performing. This analogy can be used and applied to all types of music and with students from all ages and levels.
Practicing your instrument can be looked at just like batting in baseball, where being on deck and warming up with a weight on the bat, will make it easy to swing when you take it off. In doing this, you'll easily have far more power as well as control than you just had. If you look at this in terms of practicing your instrument, it can be looked at like limitation. One way of practicing like this could be seen as giving the student clear concepts, ideas and exercises to work on which are very outlined in detail, and that can benefit all areas of one's musicianship.
For example: teaching a scale pattern to work up to a certain tempo in specific keys is the "weight". Once the student has mastered this, it's time to "go up to bat" and use the pattern in real, musical examples. At this point I would have them improvise with the scale pattern, and by previously giving them the limitation in concrete terms, using that device will now feel much more natural and musical than before and they will have in essence: "taken the weight off the bat"
To clearly define what the "playing" element of this is, which the student will be doing in tandem with practicing, as well as performing live, to me is playing their instrument while taking away the concrete, analytical, conscious part of the musical mind; and just taking part of "living in the moment performing". This is where the student will leave everything they had been practicing at home. Ever so often, one's playing can get off while attempting to remember their practice material an what they had been working on, or even forcing what they had been working on into the music, immediately taking the student out of the moment, and causing barriers in-between the hand, the ear, and the mind resulting in their playing suffering.
The definition of playing versus practicing, can be seen as something simple in the terms of being conscious about it, though clarifying this in big picture, can provide leaps and bounds of growth for a student, and may offer exponential amounts of success inside the practice room along with on the stage.
Theres been many times in asking my students questions like "What things are you working on?" and "How have you been practicing that?" Resulting in an answer occasionally involving passive playing with a lack of specific concentration, or not defining what they are working on to begin with. In response to this, I will define specifically what practicing can be, and how this is a completely separate thing from actual playing and performing. This analogy can be used and applied to all types of music and with students from all ages and levels.
Practicing your instrument can be looked at just like batting in baseball, where being on deck and warming up with a weight on the bat, will make it easy to swing when you take it off. In doing this, you'll easily have far more power as well as control than you just had. If you look at this in terms of practicing your instrument, it can be looked at like limitation. One way of practicing like this could be seen as giving the student clear concepts, ideas and exercises to work on which are very outlined in detail, and that can benefit all areas of one's musicianship.
For example: teaching a scale pattern to work up to a certain tempo in specific keys is the "weight". Once the student has mastered this, it's time to "go up to bat" and use the pattern in real, musical examples. At this point I would have them improvise with the scale pattern, and by previously giving them the limitation in concrete terms, using that device will now feel much more natural and musical than before and they will have in essence: "taken the weight off the bat"
To clearly define what the "playing" element of this is, which the student will be doing in tandem with practicing, as well as performing live, to me is playing their instrument while taking away the concrete, analytical, conscious part of the musical mind; and just taking part of "living in the moment performing". This is where the student will leave everything they had been practicing at home. Ever so often, one's playing can get off while attempting to remember their practice material an what they had been working on, or even forcing what they had been working on into the music, immediately taking the student out of the moment, and causing barriers in-between the hand, the ear, and the mind resulting in their playing suffering.
The definition of playing versus practicing, can be seen as something simple in the terms of being conscious about it, though clarifying this in big picture, can provide leaps and bounds of growth for a student, and may offer exponential amounts of success inside the practice room along with on the stage.
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