Reply To: Staying in the sweet spot vs. slow practice?

[Noa Kageyama]

Hi Luis,

So I think the full answer is probably a bit more complex. In the sense that, say, if you have a performance tomorrow, it’s probably not a great time to be wandering out of your comfort zone. And even if you’re a ways away from performance, but perhaps want to solidify things at a certain level, then you may want to practice performing things more within your comfort zone.

But when you’re learning and trying to practice for skill development, then yes, I think making sure you’re stretching yourself and not just doing the same thing over and over is probably most productive. Besides, it can get kind of stale and boring to just do the same old thing a bunch of times in a row without trying to add new nuances, or little technical or musical challenges to make things even better.

And yes, it might mean that you make errors at this stage of development – but also hopefully start making more “advanced” or subtle errors, because you are playing at higher and higher levels, where the errors and increasingly subtle. Does that make sense?

Noa