Bad Practice=Good Gig Good Practice=Bad Gig

I am a firm believer that you learn more from your mistakes than you do from your correct actions playing in a band I found Rule #3 to ring true. We would have practices that were awesome. After a few of these we would feel good and overly confident. We would then hit the gig, have a train wreck mid song and then we would stand there and look at each other and wonder what happened.

No one would have an answer.

When you play out, play live or do anything, you are going to make mistakes. Perfection is not meant for this world. The best we can do for ourselves and our kids is to prepare them for less than perfection. Prep for mistakes.

It is better to prepare for mistakes in practice, not at the gig. You make the mistakes, adjust, move on. If done properly no one but the band notices. In practice we could stop, laugh hysterically, analyze, learn and do over in privacy.

Later as we improved we would build in mistakes to keep us on our toes. We'd do a metal song as a ballad, a country song as a reggae song or punk. We'd switch instruments. Anything to cause a mistake would make us stronger.

Being a family band (everyone had or is having kids) our practices were constantly interrupted with phones ringing, juice box requests, diaper changes and video failures. We could finish any song with babes on hips. At the gig, nothing threw us. Rowdy or inattentive crowd were nothing like what we faced at practice.

At school many expect perfection from the get go. We believe our lesson was so great, students will perform perfectly from the start. How many of us picked up an instrument, golf club, tennis racquet and played like Clapton, Woods, or McEnroe?? None. The learning curve in Math, Science, Social Studies and English is just as steep.

The class needs to mimic the practice session. Students need to play, make errors, get instruction and assess and do it again and again to get close to perfection. Classrooms need to be a place to try and fail. We must get kids prepared for the test, and life like a band practice.