Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?
Monica Ellis: The day you think you've arrived - it's time to get out of the game.
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Stewart Rose: "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent." Set on the right path, a player can expand techniques using repetitive practice that is technically correct and brings improvement just by doing it properly.
Find the entire quote at the bottom of the page.
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Jascha Heifetz: "There is no such thing as perfection. There are only standards. And, after you set a standard, you learn that it was not high enough. You want to surpass it."
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Pablo Casals: When Pablo Casals was asked why he continues to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered: “Because I think I am making progress.”
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Sir James Galway: "I don't have a (practice) routine. My practice is investigative and I see how I can make things better; how I can make this top note sweeter. This is what I do when I practice and when I practice scales - oh I love it. I can't imagine a day without practicing. Although I do have these days - yesterday was one of them."
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"The first year after my baby was born, I was lucky to get a 20-minute break in the morning and a 20-minute break in the afternoon. And this was my dilemma:
Should I take a nap? Should I take a shower? Should I practice?
When I chose “practice,” I knew I only had 20 minutes, so I was focused, deliberate and as efficient as I had ever been in a practice space. I had no choice. Interestingly, I did not lose any skills or my touch, and I never took a step backward. In fact, quite the opposite happened to me.
(Collected from interviews with 2 pianists, a cellist and a singer who all said the same thing.)
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“If you've been doing a certain type of work for 35 years, and you've done it the say way all that time, you only have one year of experience.” (Anon)
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(Yo-Yo Ma) "I think staying alive means keeping your learning curve high, and the thing that distinguishes cultural work from other types of work is that it's never over. It keeps evolving, it keeps developing; it's not a business plan, but it's constantly evolving something from the past to the future. And the most important thing about the work is that you don't give up."
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Complete Stewart Rose quote: The basic idea (and this is by no means my original idea), is that rather than "practice makes perfect", the reality is more like "practice makes permanent". Especially repetitive practice, which makes up a large part of any performers practice routine.
With good and intuitive instruction, a player can be steered out of bad technical habits, or made aware of unhelpful idiosyncrasies that are a natural part of figuring out how to play.
Set on the right path, a player can expand techniques using repetitive practice that is technically correct and brings improvement just by doing it properly. (Think athletic training here.) http://www.stewartrosenyc.com/
