Learning Properly

I've been going back to my music lessons recently. I had a long hiatus from the BBL Fine Arts program I was in while I was stuck in the hospital.When we want to learn a new skill or hone one we recently learned, most of our minds will conjure up the phrase "practice makes perfect." In most cases, the statement holds true. A piano player that practices for an hour a day will almost certainly play with more proficiency than a piano player who never touches a key of a piano until the night before a performance. The statement holds true for more than just piano players. Take your pick of some sort of skill and/or profession and the phrase still holds true. I'm sure we've all experienced the rare cases of beginner's luck that will sometimes triumph over practice and experience, of course. There's even a saying in Cantonese that roughly states that "A person's plan cannot beat the heaven's plan." Even though logic and experience will point to one outcome, you will never know if a different one will occur. Sometimes, pure dumb luck will beat the seasoned pros. But tying back to me going back to saxophone lessons, there was something a instructor said that stuck with me. This may be a phrase that everyone except for me has already heard, but it was new to me, so it made a lasting impression. I went to a a percussion session for anyone to try to see if they wanted to join the drumline we planned on forming. In my current state with a slow and partially dysfunctional left hand, I didn't feel like I really wanted t join (and ruin the sound of the drumline). 

Halfway through theThe percussion instructor told us to stop for a moment and asked us all a question. He asked "What does practice make?" A few of us (myself included) promptly answered "Perfect", since that's what we've heard all our lives. But then, a few of the percussion instructor's regular students shook their heads when we said "Perfect." The instructor then told us something along the lines of "No, practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanence." I contemplated this for a moment and arrived at the conclusion that the instructor was correct. If you practice something but you do that task incorrectly during practice, it'll become your default. When you're put on the spotlight and asked to perform that task, you'll default to the incorrect way since that's what you're familiar with. Old habits die hard, so we should all make sure the habits we build up are good ones.