“I learn every time I play” is something I have heard so many times during my career. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it is impossible to learn when you play, and I certainly don’t disagree with the sentiment of this statement. Imagine how great it would be to make progress every time you picked up the instrument. Unfortunately, for me, this simply isn’t so.
Several years ago I was fortunate enough to perform in a six week theatre show. We rehearsed for a week, doing band rehearsals, cast rehearsals and technical rehearsals; then we went straight into five weeks of shows which finished at 8pm everyday. This early finish was great because I could either go to bed early (a rare occasion for a working musician) or I could go on to do another gig. The theatre show was a run of fifty five shows, but I also did another six shows after in the evenings, two days of teaching which I did on off days from the show and two recording sessions. So sixty five engagements in six weeks. This is a lot, even for someone who does this for a living. The first day back home after this finished I felt like my playing was in good shape. I had been playing several hours a day for six weeks and I wanted to take advantage of this and keep the momentum going. I sat down at home to start practicing and began by doing a short warm up. Usually I play through some simple songs that I know just to get the blood in my hands moving. I had been going for ten minutes before my flat mate knocked and the door and asked if I wanted to go to the cinema. I hadn’t had a day off for six weeks so of course I said yes. I didn’t worry about not practicing and I certainly needed to do something other than music for a day or two.
But was it right for me to walk away from that ten minutes on the instrument saying that I had taken in some new information, that I had learnt something new? In my opinion the answer is a clear and resounding no. What could I have possibly learnt in that time? I played through a bunch of songs I had played many many times before; I wasn’t really paying attention whilst doing so and I wasn’t approaching this situation with any intention of learning. I have spoken to several of my peers about how they warm up and this routine is something we all do in a similar way. We find warm up exercises too boring so we find small, simple pieces of music to…
