By Laurie Niles: "Practice makes perfect."
The saying is meant to inspire us to practice more; unfortunately, it's a lie. A whopper!
"Practice makes permanent," a piano teacher once admonished my son, followed by: "...only 'perfect practice' makes perfect!"
One must practice, but one must practice with care. A mistake practiced many times over is a well-learned mistake, and un-learning it can be very difficult. But how can one avoid mistakes?
One cannot avoid all mistakes, but one can avoid practicing them.
The problem is that mistakes can be deceptive. One might think, "I'm correcting my mistakes as I practice."
I very often see a phenomenon in students that I call the "Built-in Boo-Boo." A student will be playing a piece, then he or she arrives at a certain difficult note, perhaps a note that requires a shift. The student misses the note, stops, plays it once or twice more until it is correct, and then moves on.
![Mozart mistakes]()
If the student were to play the entire passage again, the student would do the exact same thing the next time: play the wrong note, stop, play the right note, move on. It can happen in a flash. In the student's mind, the note has been corrected. In reality, the student has formed a strong habit of playing the note incorrectly, interrupting the music, noodling around a little, then playing the right note. It's a built-in mistake that will remain, unless the student's strategy changes.
Why? Because the strategy of "correcting mistakes" does not work. Certainly, one will make mistakes, and one will need to correct them. But you only need to make the mistake once to know you have a problem that needs solving. Here are a few effective steps to truly correct a mistake, instead of continuing to repeat it:
- Note the mistake: What exactly was it, and where did it happen?
- Identify the reason for the mistake. Why did it happen? There is almost always a reason: Possibilities include: a difficult fingering; missing a shift; a page turn or problem with reading the music; a key change; an unexpected change in the music; a break in the pattern; a bowing not executed correctly; etc.
- Solve the problem: plan what you need to do differently to succeed the very next time you play it. This could be as easy as acknowledging, "I need to shift earlier here," or "This is a low 2, not a high 2." Or, you may need to change a fingering, shift somewhere else, etc.
- Play it correctly, with no mistakes. You may need to slow it down or add stop signs into the music in order to do this, but find a way to play every note correctly, without backing up, repeating, or adding mistakes. Note: it is better to stop and organize yourself before a tricky note than it is to just play it wrong. If you stop and get organized, you will eventually spend less and less time "stopped" because you will learn how to be organized for that note. The "stop" will get shorter and short until it is no longer there.
- Once the mistake is worked out, try adding it back into a larger context. Play the entire phrase correctly, with no mistakes. Then the entire passage, the entire page...eventually, the entire piece!