Practice makes perfect?

[shortyshort]

If you're practicing a piece that you know complete, how often do you play it 100% right?
Being a pefectionist myself I can honestly say NEVER.

Also, this may sound sad, but when I go to bed, I shut my eyes and all the pieces that I'm learning come into my head, and I practice myself to sleep. Does anyone else do this?

Cheers,

Shorty

[leucippus]

I have never played anything yet that I was 100% happy with.  Of course, I'm basically only a raw beginner for all intents and purposes.  I started almost 2 years ago, but it would be an utter lie to say that I've been 'playing' for that long.   I haven't maintained a regular practice schedule nor have had I so much as a single lesson.  So technically I haven't even started to take lessons yet.  In that sense I haven't even begun.

In any case, my problem is that I simply can't make my fingers move the way I want them to move.  Even the most simplest of exercises like Hanon at slow speed. I just can't make my fingers play it "perfectly" no matter  what I try.  I can't imagine a teacher helping me with this because I already know what I'm 'supposed' to be doing.  What's a teacher going to do?  Tell, me, "No, not like that, like this!", and then show me.  Well, that's not going to help much because I already know what to do, I just can't make my fingers do it.  Practice doesn't seem to be helping much either.

So I think there needs to be some fundamental talent there before practice can help.

[kempff1234]

The artistic progression demands that you constantly critisize and judge yourself. That is one of the only ways to move up. I can never say that I am happy with my interpretation 100%. Even on days that I can play with minimum number of wrong notes, good phrasing and reasonable tempi, I still feel that there is room for improvement. This sometimes drives my teacher mad, because she says I am playing perfectly yet for me, "perfect" is something else.

[leucippus]

The idea of perfect is somewhat subjective.

Some people say that perfection is impossible to achieve.  However, I think that all depends on how you are viewing perfection.

I once had a small bed of tomato plants in my garden.  And I decided to weed the bed.  It wasn't very larger so I was able to weed it "perfectly".  In other words, I had removed every weed in the bed.  There simply weren't any more weeds to remove.  I had achieved "perfection" with respect to weeding.  Does that mean that the entire bed of tomatoes was "perfect", or course, not.  But I had still achieved "perfection" in weeding the bed.  So perfection of weeding was achievable.

You may be measuring perfection on how you are perceiving a piece.  You may claim that perfection requires that every single note be played perfectly in time and well as with perfect articulation.  However, that kind of perfection can never be achieved.  Moreover, even if you ever did achieve that kind of perfection someone else may say that it's not perfect as far as they are concerned because they didn't care for the precise timing you chose.

Your teacher may view "perfection" as simple a performance that most people would deem to be very pleasing.  That doesn’t require the kind of technical perfection that you are thinking about at all.  Most people who are listening have don't have the expectations that the performer has.  They are simply accepting what they hear.  The performers, on the other, hand are attempting to play something that they have preconceived in their minds.  If they fail to match that preconception, then they have played less than perfectly.  Yet the audience doesn't have that preconception to compare what they are hearing to.  So as far as they are concerned, it was perfect with respect to itself.   It was, what it was, and they enjoyed it.  That's "perfection" in their minds.

So perfection is really subjective.  Even with my tomato garden.  Maybe every tomato plant wasn't "perfect" and every tomato wasn't "perfect".   But if the garden yielded all the tomatoes that I could possibly want to eat.  Then it had achieved perfection in that it had produced the perfect amount of edible tomatoes.  What more could you ask for?   

[thaicheow]

Nice explanation.

I did once obsess with practice, so to achieve that kind of perfection. As my exam date approaching, I have now come to learn how to relax.

A perfect performance is somewhat impossible. I once demo to my grade 2 student on the exam pieces, which I myself also couldn't play perfectly well. But the most important thing is the idea, the musical idea, that I convey to the listener. After all, music is about communication.

To learn the notes is the very first step, I consider, in learning the songs. Then there are other aspect to look into, the dynamics, the expression, articulation, the idea of the composers, etc. There are simply endless search.

I like to learn a worthwhile pieces, and let the pieces grow with me. I have been learning my exam pieces for years to come to todays' maturity, but yet, there isn't one playing that I am sastify with. Obseesing with practice, even bring them into your sleep, is somewhat gruelsome to oneself.

Relax, and sit back, so that you can see a bigger picture. Anyway, like someone has said, perfection is very subjective. Even top notch performers get criticised.

[shortyshort]

Thanks for all your replies.

I don't feel that I practice obsessively, (although I think my wife has a different point of view on that), and I don't go to bed thinking, "oh, I must practice in my sleep", that just happens.

On the odd occaision that I play a piece out loud to my family, just to give it an airing, they always say, "yes, that was great", and i'll say, "only 6 or 7 mistakes".
Are they just being nice to me or did they not notice them? Sometimes I wonder if I just hit a bunch of keys at the same time, whether they would still say the same thing?
I think that if they were watching my face, they would even know where the mistakes were.

Once i've learned a piece, (not perfected), I move it from my imaginary learning list, to my imaginary learned list. then it only gets played perhaps once or twice a day instead of maybe 10 or 20 times for something i'm learning. This way i'm learning new stuff and "perfecting" old stuff at the same time.

Thanks again for all your replies.

Cheers,

Shorty

[asyncopated]

I was actually discussing something along these lines with my teacher yesterday.  She said briefly that being able to perform a piece consistently really comes down to when you first start learning to play the piece.

By the time the piece has some shape, and if there are bits that you are still not quite sure about, this may cause some long term problems.  I too have problems with this.  In theory, I know all the notes, technically it's acceptable, but mentally cannot pull 3/4 min long piece off consistently yet  -- let alone a three movement sonata.

So, I'm going to try this... I'm starting to learn a Haydn sonata -- quite a nice one.  I'm going to learn the notes by trying to understand what they mean in the context of the piece.  As I play, be very aware of my hand moments while learning the notes, and try not just to play on, guessing the position of the next note.  I'm going to make sure that I'm more or less happy with the movement and hand position of each phrase before moving on to the next.  This is whilst starting from scratch.

I'll tell you if it works when I'm done.