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Want to know the two best times to practice? When you feel like, and when you don't feel like it.
This bit of wisdom came to mind yesterday as I was watching a video interview with bluegrass legend Jimmy Martin.
To be a successful musician, he said, you need to take your instrument out of your case and do some "pickin'" every day. No exceptions. No vacations.
This brought to mind something Luciano Pavarotti once mentioned in an interview.
Talking to a People magazine reporter in 1980, the great Italian tenor was asked how often he practices. His response:
"Every day. Once a famous tenor, Aureliano Petile, said, 'If I go one day without singing, I realize it; if I go two days, my friends realize it; if I go three days, the audience realizes it.'"
Two musicians of vastly different backgrounds and styles saying essentially the same thing.
Some days I don't feel like practicing at all. Usually I try to practice anyway, if only for a half an hour or even less. Often I surrender to laziness and just blow it off.
So I need to be reminded by people like Jimmy Martin and Luciano Pavarotti that practicing needs to be like brushing your teeth. You just do it, even when it's a pain and it's the last thing you want to do.
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