The Art of Lazy

Is it possible to start with a digression? Sure, whatever. Lets do this.

I always scratch my head when I hear people complain about scientists doing research and then concluding “the obvious.” It's like these people don't know what science is. You don't know something is obvious until it has been confirmed, yo. How many times have scientists made startling discoveries that upended what we thought was obvious? I don't know the actual number, but I'm pretty sure it is “lots.”

Digression over! Speaking of the obvious, I have been wondering over some received wisdom. It goes like this: “Practice everyday. Are you practicing? No. Is it a day? Yes. Then why aren't you practicing?”

Why aren't I practicing? Maybe because, possibly, practicing every day isn't the best way to do learn something. Do I know it isn't the best way to learn an instrument? No. Is mayonnaise an instrument? That depends on how much you practice with it. Horseradish, however, is most certainly not an instrument. Get that wanna be poser outta here.

Bear with me. I may not know that practicing everyday is not the best way to use your time, but I have a suspicion. And I would like it tested. Here is how my suspicion goes.

First! Let us say you are training for a marathon. What do? You start by running not a lot, you start by running a little. And then? And then you rest. And then you run a little again, and then you rest, and then you run a little more, and then you rest, and then... No 'and then!'

I mean, there's more 'and then.' You 'and then' until you've run a marathon. But the key here is, you regularly rest your muscles as part of the training. If you don't rest your muscles, you can do some serious harm. You rest or you run until you're forced to rest. Given a choice, I would rather just rest, thank you very much.

*two hours later*

SECOND! Have you ever been working on a problem and got stuck? The answer is yes. We all have come across problems we've got stuck on. You know what usually happens? You work on the problem until you get a nose bleed. Then you give up and go do something productive like play Farmville. Then you go to sleep. Then you wake up the next day and BAM! All of a sudden you wonder why you were having trouble with your problem. It's so obvious! How did I not see that before?!

Turns out, this happens a lot in music practice, too. A particular passage, for whatever reason, just seems intractable. Then you go to sleep, wake up the next morning refreshed, and you find the passage has become tracted. Good job brain! But I've noticed that giving yourself distance from even pieces you “know” helps.

Weird.

Third! This doesn't have to do with learning so much as balance. There's more to life than music. In fact, I wonder if our musicianing is in fact hampered if you don't have a life outside of it. I once read that Stravinsky, Poulenc, and some other musical cats got into a giant drunken pillow fight at a soiree. Arnold Schoenberg played tennis. Mendelssohn traveled. A lot. Mozart partied all the damn time. And yet, somehow, they all managed to produce masterpieces, this despite wasting their time doing so many non-musical things. How 'bout that.

In any case, I'm not making any definite conclusions. I'm just sayin'. There's a physical aspect to music, and we know that physical rest is important, especially for injury prevention (Leon Fleisher is out there somewhere, finding himself nodding in agreement, to what he does not know, but he knows it is important). There's also a mental aspect to music, and we know that rest is often a crucial part of problem solving (what, you think Newton was sciencing under the apple tree? No way. He was napping). And we know that having a social life is important for basically everything (this is more for those people who are in music school practicing 20 hours a day: seriously, go home and have a drink).

So it strikes me as not only possible, but very likely that we, as musicians, do not need to practice music everyday, and that we shouldn't feel guilty if we miss a day or two. In fact, if you do miss a day, you probably did yourself a favor. But I don't know that. I'm just pondering on something obvious that may not be as obvious as it's cracked up to be.