Expectations of a Practice Session
Practicing, perhaps a little too seriously.
As another year begins anew, I have been noticing the normal spattering of recycled articles highlighting both the benefits and trappings of setting new year’s resolutions. While I am sympathetic to those who gain a post-holiday bout of energy to better their lives, I try to fight the urge to set new goals. Instead, I try take a moment to assess what I have been trying to accomplish over recent months and if I have been successful. One of the things I always seem to be coming back to and assessing is the quality and quantity of my practice.
This year, with the onboarding of a few new students, all of whom are excited to reignite their musical journeys with the 8-String, I have been thinking about how practice feels different than it did all those years ago, when I was younger and the world felt a little simpler. I wonder if it used to be easier to practice, before smart phones, laptops, and never ending adult responsibilities fought for my attention; when I didn’t have navigate infinite tone possibilities through DAWs and digital amp simulators that sound better than any real amp I owned; and when I was simply excited to pick up any old guitar, sit in my bedroom, and play.
It’s around that point that these thoughts are countered by the part of me that is wary about becoming an old codger who is overly-reminiscent about the “good ol’ days.” I have to make sure that I am not remembering life through rose-coloured glasses as in reality, there were a lot of inefficient hours spent with my guitar back then: not knowing how to practice, not knowing what was important to practice; having unclear goals I had not yet fleshed out; and even a lot of time when I didn’t want to practice at all because it was hard or boring (I’m looking at you Hal Leonard Method Books). But even with a tempered view of my past, I can’t help but feel something is still different between now and then. Something has changed over the years. Perhaps though, it isn’t any external changes we’ve witnessed happen in the world, but instead, it is my internal expectations of myself.
As a teacher, I recognize the non-linearity of the learning process and am regularly expressing it to my students: how it often takes three, four, or more times doing something to actually learn it. However, when it comes to my own learning, I expect that, armed with this knowledge, I can circumvent the messy learning process and ultimately, reach my goals quicker. I should be able to learn it the first time around, right?. As if somehow, teachers get to cheat the system. Of course, this is not the reality of learning for anyone, but it is such a large expectation on myself whose weight I have begun noticing more of, recently. It can sometimes feel heavy enough that it prevents me from practicing altogether out of fear of inevitable failure.
I’m sure there are many reasons as to why I have developed these expectations (going through a grade-based education system, going to a competitive music school, engrained parental expectations, etc.); but a communally experienced reason that I want to look at is the lack of exposure to mistakes and imperfections in the media we consume. Most of what we watch or listen to in 2025 is served to us through some form of social media (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, etc.), and usually, most it is highly edited and curated. This was something people were more aware of back in the early days, when of Facebook was new and exciting (~2008), as we were constantly warned by our parents to “remember that people’s real lives are not as glamorous as their online lives;” but after more than a decade, polished social media content has become the standard. It doesn’t really matter anymore whether we are aware of all the editing techniques and work that goes behind each post, as the content alters our subconscious expectations of what is real, regardless.
And it isn’t just social media content. Music production, for example, has reached such a high level of perfection that it has become difficult to detect the “humanness” in a lot of records that are being released (especially in popular music and pop-adjacent genres). The perfectly in-tune vocals, the metrically perfect drum beats, and the one perfect guitar take looped for the whole song are changing our perceptions of what music, or musicians, actually sound like. Musicians (sometimes known as humans), have quirks and idiosyncrasies in their abilities; foibles and particular mannerisms that make them sound unique. Why are we so afraid to bare witness to these imperfections? (As a side note, I’m aware that this doesn’t happen everywhere in artistic industries and that there are artists fighting very hard against this polished aesthetic. But for our purposes, I am considering what the majority of people are exposed to on a regular basis, through the majority of the media they consume.)
What has most impacted me over the years is watching videos of so many guitarists and musicians perform seemingly inhuman feats of artistry, without a single hint of error (or hint of how much practice it took). As a result, I have begun feeling that I have to achieve those same, or similar feats to be worth anything. And not only that, but I have to achieve it quickly, because the fact that somebody can already do that thing means that I am already behind and at best, will only ever be a rip-off of the original. The bar is being perpetually raised. With these circumstances, of course I feel like I am set up to fail, so I what is the point of picking up my guitar to practice anymore?
Now, I recognize that when this is all written out, it is not logical and has many faults, but our inner monologues are often not logical. Instead, they operate on vagaries and fears, finding most success when they are not questioned under a revealing light. My hope is that by writing it out, I can be more conscious of these external influences on my expectations of myself and over time, learn to soften and come back to a more grounded sense of reality. I can also say thank you to those parts of me who want to keep me from trying and failing , as they’ve probably helped keep me from embarrassing myself in the past. Lately though, they’ve just become a little misguided. So, I suppose I do have a new goal for the year 2025: pick up the guitar and have fun. Enjoy the messiness of the learning process and the fact that I get to do work on something as cool as this in my spare time. Nobody cares who is the best at anything, anyway. We’re all just faking it, afraid of failing and being found out for what we are: fallible and unique people.
(If you' like to hang out, this Saturday we are having our first monthly meetup of the year. Sign up here if you want to come and chat about music, the 8-string, and learning in general.)