“Beyond personal fulfillment, the decisive aim of practice is to prepare performances because, as an art form, music centers on the interaction between performer and listener.”
–The Musician’s Way, p. 4
For vocalists and instrumentalists alike, music making cycles between practicing and performing.
And student musicians need to build an array of skills to practice and perform effectively.
But amid the demands of our creative work, let’s acknowledge the importance of playing or singing for fun.
Why is playing for fun important?
Besides being a pleasure, unbridled playing or singing can spur our artistic and technical growth. Even so, playing for fun is not practice. And it’s not performing either.
So let’s look at some distinctions between practicing, performing, and playing for fun.
Deep Practice
Deep practice, as I call it, involves setting specific goals, employing targeted learning strategies, resolving problematic passages, and so forth. It’s a deliberate, soulful activity, whether we carry it out in solitude or in an ensemble.
In fact, we musicians spend the vast majority of our creative time practicing. And we do all that practicing to achieve two aims: improve our abilities and prepare performances.
For that reason, in The Musician’s Way, I define practice as, “the deliberate, creative process of improving musical ability and of mastering music for performance.” (p. 4)
Here are selected articles on this blog that help rising musicians refine their practice skills:
The 3 Components of Deep Practice
7 Deep-Practice Strategies
The Benefits of Accessible Music
Habits of Excellence
Varied, Distributed, and Interleaved Practice
Fearless Performance
The quality of our performances is determined by the quality of our practice, yet performing is in a category all its own. “The difference between performing and other types of music making is that, in a performance situation, there are stakes involved in how well you play or sing.” (The Musician’s Way, p. 154)
Whether we’re in front of a large audience, an audition panel, or a studio microphone, performing demands that we be accurate, expressive, and in command of ourselves and the situation.
“The quality of our performances is determined by the quality of our practice.” -Gerald Klickstein
Expert performers practice in ways that enable them to perform confidently and artistically in any settings. Plus, they accrue comprehensive skills to handle pressure, deal with errors, and build mental toughness.
These articles equip aspiring musicians to achieve the on-stage know-how of pros:
Excelling Under Pressure
The Five Main Types of Performance Errors and How to Handle Them
Harnessing On-Stage Energy
Practicing Performance
Soulful Control
“The difference between performing and other types of music making is that, in a performance situation, there are stakes involved in how well you play or sing.” (The Musician’s Way, p. 154)
Joyful Experimentation
Unlike performing, when we play or sing for fun, there are no stakes. Nor are specific goals required. We just let go and enjoy the sound and feel of unstructured music making.
But we can nonetheless discover valuable things about ourselves and our music. We can even achieve breakthroughs, if we allow ourselves. We can release physical tension, for instance, experiment with interpretive ideas, and free our imaginations.
The key to transforming unstructured playing into artistic advancement lies in how we apply what we discover when playing for fun.
First, a note of caution: student performers should take care that they employ positive habits of thought and movement when they play or sing for fun. Otherwise, they risk ingraining unfavorable mental and technical quirks. It’s also crucial for us to separate fun time from practice time, detaching play from work.
Here are posts that empower musicians to fuel their artistry when playing for fun and then translate what they learn to the practice room and concert stage:
Awareness, Focus, Concentration
Countering Perfectionism
Dialing Down the Effort Meter
The Meaning in Mistakes
Playing with Ease
The Musician’s Way guides performers of all levels to achieve their artistic potential. Preview on Amazon.com. Read reviews.
© 2025 Gerald Klickstein
Photo via Pixabay