8/7/2025 I Never Practice, and Neither Should You!

In fact, I hate the word practice. Probably because of the traumatizing effect of years of being told it was something I had to do when I wanted to do other things.

It represents work and feels like some kind of punishment for something, although I don’t know what for.

So, I decided to avoid that word at all costs. Instead, it’s really easy to just use the wonderful, creative word “play”.

Who doesn’t like to play?

So never practice your instrument! But play it as much as you can.

Everyday if you can. The more you play any game, the more likely you are to win at it.

And winning at music means being able to play what you really mean to play. If you want to sound like someone else, you have the ability to do that. If you want to do your own thing, you have the ability to do that, too.

Just like a sport, the more you play, the more in shape you are and the more fun it is to play.

So, play as much as you can. Work on trouble spots. Slow things down. Work out fingerings and bowings. Make up little etudes or whatever games you can make up as drills and practice for the real-life game day situations—the jam session, the gig, or whatever that “game” may be.

But always make it playful. When we play, usually there is some goal we are trying to win. So, make one up, whether that’s a number of repetitions, a tempo goal, a time spent on it goal, whatever it may be, don’t be afraid to make that into a game you can play.

That means that it’s not life or death if you don’t succeed or don’t even finish. It doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect to move on. It’s just a fun way to work for a while.

It’s important to keep things in perspective in order to keep them fun. Otherwise things can quickly become work and a chore.

Yes, we all want to get better at our instruments, but it’s just music, not nuclear engineering. At the end of the day, if it’s not fun on some level, you’re just doing it wrong.

Play as much as you can with whoever you can play with.

But never practice!