Pros practice until they cannot get it wrong - bullshit!

Lately I have been seeing a lot of memes on Facebook and Twitter about practice. You know the sort of elite forces nonsense "An amateur practices until they get it right, a pro practices until they cannot get it wrong." Well excuse me but BOLLOCKS!  I know it's supposed to be inspiring but really it's making life harder by a)setting an impossibly high standard which few can ever hope to achieve and b) it's missing the point.

Firstly, you cannot eliminate all mistakes by practicing. Sometimes the mistake arises because of something that doesn't happen when you are practicing - the light blinds you, somebody whistles, the PA feeds back. Believe or not sometimes its not about your skills. You cannot control the environment. 

In fact, the more practiced and accomplished you are as a musician the more you are likely to make 'mistakes' because the more detailed your awareness becomes. What??! 

Adam Rafferty is an astonishingly gifted and hard-working fingerstyle guitarist, and he stayed with me a while back when he was gigging in the UK. He is the embodiment of dedication to his craft and takes practice to a whole new level. Now for him, a 'mistake' might be a tiny variation in the volume of the voicing of a single phrase, or the amount of flesh he puts on a note. He is the only person who has an ideal for how it is supposed to sound and to everyone else it sounds great. For him it is a mistake. Whereas for me a mistake is more fundamental - the wrong chord, a bum note. So let's get serious.

We've all been there.... you practice practice practice to polish a new piece, a solo or even a lick until you can play it faultlessly over and over. So you decide to unleash it on the world but the first time you play it in front of an audience it's a disaster. So you go home to your practice room and the drill sergeant in you decides to whip the crappiest guitarist in town into shape. Pretty quickly you start playing 'it' perfectly and you've mastered it again.  But next gig it happens again. .. W. T. F. ?!

Now before the drill sergeant gets started again, stop and think. You've proved you can technically play whatever it is, so doing more of the same is not going to work. Expecting more practice to fix what's going on is an exercise in futility, an Einstein definition of insanity. Why? Because you can play the damn thing. It's not your playing that's the issue. It's your performance and you cannot practice that in the same way.

Justin Gatling is the fastest sprinter in the world this year. But, despite a back injury and a lack of racing, Usain Bolt won the gold medal at the World Championships in a time slower than Gatlin's best this year. Gatlin is faster, but Bolt performed. 

So assuming everything else is working , that mistake you made is probably about performance not technical ability. Ask yourself:

1. Is it really a mistake or a minor flaw that only you notice? If it is the latter, it still  matters but perspective is important.  Practice it but don't get hung up on it. You'll get tight and then you'll teach yourself to tense.

2. If it is about performance then was it to do with concentration or nerves? Listen to your inner voice and learn how to manage how you are feeling in the moment. Don't take it out on your fingers, they don't make you nervous or stop you from concentrating.

Now, dealing with nerves and concentration is a whole set of articles in its own right but for now don't fall for the alpha-male practice messages. That way injury and madness lie.

The next time you gig, notice your nerves and how your concentration ebbs and flows. Practice managing that.