Mindless
Exercises
To Practice or not to
practice? – That is not the question


By Tom Hess

 

Below is an email exchange between a young guitar
player and myself:

“Tom…I have been practicing boring
mindless exercises for almost a year now, yet it does nothing
for me. I can do little with what I’ve practiced. The
same thing over and over again, my skills are not strong enough
to rely on it when it really matters. I mean, I can’t
justify my spent time, energy and sanity if I’m only to
spin my wheels – I am not getting anywhere. I hoped to
experience something more from my labor. My fingers bleed but
the playing does not flow. Out of boredom and desire, my fingers
practice relentlessly as I only think about how desperately
I wish to become a great guitar player. Please allow me to ask
you something – Did you have to practice such mindless exercises
to reach the level of musicianship you have achieved? And if
your answer is yes, did you also experience something similar
as I?…”

The following is an edited excerpt of my reply
to him:

“Mike, ….Concerning both your mindset
and the term “mindless exercises”, there is no such
thing as a mindless exercise, only mindless mindsets exist.
Even if you are concentrating on making a single movement or
playing a single note, there is nothing “mindless”
about that unless you choose to allow it to be mindless. Exercises
of any kind should never be mindless, if they are, it only means
that you are not mentally focused on while practicing. Often
times we can become bored while repeating tedious tasks. It
can be quite difficult to sustain concentration on that which
is simple. Think about exactly what you are trying to achieve
while practicing anything. Is it your intention to merely exercise
the physical muscles in your hands? If that’s all we care about
while practicing, the result will not be very good. What we
need to do is train our hands to perform whatever tasks we command
them to do. The important part of that phrase is: “whatever
tasks we COMMAND them to do”. Your mind and your hands
must work together. Exercises are never for the hands alone.

You wrote to me that your skills are not strong
enough to rely upon. The key word here is “rely”.
After all the time you have invested, your hands are probably
in pretty good shape. Your skills are not reliable because you
have not practiced the most important part, the synchronization
between mind and body. Reliable consistency in your ability
to play well depends heavily upon this synchronization. Your
brain and fingers won’t learn to work together by accident,
you must train them. This only happens under the right conditions
of sustained concentration while practicing. It is simply not
enough to allow your fingers to go through the motions on autopilot.

Let me give you a quick analogy. If you only
practiced with your left hand (and neglected to develop your
right hand), what would happen? You would be out of balance.
Your left hand’s skills would be held hostage by the weaknesses
of the right hand. What must you do to solve this problem? Develop
the right-hand skills AND develop the synchronization between
both hands. Skills in isolation are virtually useless in most
playing situations. Only when skills are synchronized do they
become both effective and reliable.

I believe this issue is the primary reason why
you feel you have been simply “spinning your wheels”
despite your hard (physical) work. My advice to you Mike is
to continue practicing what you have been doing, but do so with
consistent mental concentration, even while practicing the most
simple of things. This is very simple advice, but I think it
is the key to this common problem. As with so many other things,
simple advice is not always easily implemented. You may find
it challenging to remain highly focused for extended periods
of time (this is normal for most people), but over time, it
will become easier with some self awareness, self discipline
and a continuous faith in yourself.
Remember, nothing is mindless….there exist only choices
of possible mindsets.”

For more on musicianship mindsets visit the
official website: http://tomhess.net/

Copyright
2007 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All rights reserved. Used by
permission.