I used to be a big basketball fan. Not really an Allen Iverson fan but you’ve gotta love that video.
In honour of the NBA announcing there will actually be a bit of a season this year I thought I’d use Mr. Iverson’s glowing example and talk about…practice.
Let’s be honest. Not a lot of us like to practice. We like to be good at what we do, but we don’t like to practice. I remember when I was taking piano lessons somewhere around the age of 8. I would do anything and everything to waste time when I was supposed to be practicing. When I actually would practice I’d get terribly frustrated and storm off vowing that I would never touch a piano ever again. Quick shout out to my parents for making me stick it out at least until grade 5.
But without practice you can never be good. So if we all want to be good, let’s face the facts.
We gotta practice
At this time I could point out why we should be practicing because as worship musicians we are doing this for God. I talked a little about that in this post if you’re interested.
I’d like to focus on the practical side.
Here’s what happens if you DO practice
- you come in confident of your parts
- you can easily deal with any last minute changes to the set or arrangements
- you make things sound better
- you don’t make a fool of yourself
- you make your worship leader/pastor/old lady in the front row really happy
- you get better
- you come in not really knowing how you’ll contribute
- you hope you’ve got enough basic skills to keep up, but you still get lost
- you let the rest of the band down and waste their time
- you play a lot of wrong notes and distract people
- you stress out your worship leader/pastor/old lady in the front row
- you don’t get better
The choice is up to you. We’ve got a lot of things on our plates these days. I know it’s hard to make time for practicing. I’m actually writing this because I’m the one who did a terrible job of making sure I was prepared this week.
I want to be better. I need to be better.
In the next couple weeks I’m going to have a few of our musicians from Saanich Baptist Church guest post about their practice techniques. We all do things differently. I hope we can find some things to latch on to that will make us better when we put them into practice.
what are some of your practice strategies?
So, like I said, last week I was not as prepared as I needed to be.
Well now I need to kick myself in the butt again.
Last night I got an email from one of our musicians asking where the set list was on planning center. I was 3 days late posting it. Worship leader fail on my part. A good reminder for me to not stand in the way of my musicians practicing.
I agree with everything in this post. I learned very early on in my church playing days about how silly not practicing can make you feel. (Especially when you’re playing with an orchestra. Ohhh First Alliance.) I found that when I don’t practice, I was scrambling to figure out my parts, and would hope that I’d have it figured out by the time the service rolled around. Not very productive.
I eventually started looking up the set list early in the week and dedicated to figuring out all my parts before I showed up at practice. This allowed me to try new and interesting things instead of just trying to get by. It also made playing more fun as less stress always leads to a better time. And finally, I think it allows me to worship God better through my playing; spending less time worrying and more time enjoying and focusing on Him.
The toughest part is getting the rest of your team to buy into this mentality. Hopefully they read this blog and see it as a gentle reminder that their pre-Sunday practicing is much appreciated (if not required).
Yup, that sounds just like what a lot of us have probably experienced. And you’re right, the toughest part is having everyone, all at once, buying in to that mentality. But it sure is awesome when they do!
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