Playing

[Nut]

So something occurred to me, and I wanted to get some other opinions.
Isn't most playing just practice? When I sit down to practice, I am playing. I say I am going to play my guitar, but what I am doing is practicing.
So unless you are playing for someone or recording or something,aren't you just practicing?

[Toby Walker]

I think there's a huge difference between practicing and playing. Here's how I see it:

If you're comfortable enough with your material to perform it for others then you're no longer practicing it. You're simply re-enforcing your muscle memory which you developed during practice. This is especially true when playing memorized pieces.

Practicing means that you're working on new material in order to perfect it... getting it 'performance ready' if you will.

When it comes to improvising in performance then you're not only bringing to the stage what you've learned but by 'playing' the material you're now constantly honing your skills as an improvisor. So in that sense 'playing' is like 'practice.'

If you want to improve as a guitarist then I feel it's essential to work on as much new material as you can... WHILE... maintaining and further honing what you've learned.

[rick-slo]

Yep, when you practice playing your songs you are practicing and refining your technique. It takes steady maintenance to keep to top form. IMO it is a much more desirable context to be playing pieces than practicing exercises. Of course if you are going to improve you have to practice your tunes until you can play them very well, and you have to add more challenging pieces as you are ready for them.

Exercises have a bigger or littler part of what you should be doing, depending in part on what type of music you want to play and what skills you already have. I used to play guitar exercises that were in the context of actual pieces of music, such as studies by Carulli and Sor.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Nut

So something occurred to me, and I wanted to get some other opinions.
Isn't most playing just practice? When I sit down to practice, I am playing. I say I am going to play my guitar, but what I am doing is practicing.
So unless you are playing for someone or recording or something,aren't you just practicing?

This could be all semantics!

I think of everything I do on guitar as "playing".

The important difference may be between public and private.
Both are "playing", but in private you may be just noodling around aimlessly, or you may be more focussed: maybe attempting to get a tricky passage right by constant repetition; or checking you can play a song the whole way through from memory without getting lost. I would definitely call that "practice".
But a lot of what I do in private is much less focussed. I might play things I already know well, just for pleasure. Even so, some element of that will count as "practice", because it's always helping me improve and remember; adding polish.
So in that sense you're right: any kind of playing you do in private is practising, to some degree. But I wouldn't say "just" practising! After all, "just playing" is what one might often be accused of, in private: "are you practising seriously now, or just playing around?" If anyone makes such a comment, you say "hey, all playing is practise". IOW, any kind of guitar playing helps you improve technically. It doesn't have to be boring exercises.

But what one does in public performance (or in recording) is never "practice" - although some improvisers often seem to be guilty of that .
If someone asks you to "play" for them, they don't want to hear a practice routine. They want to hear a piece of music. (The kind of "studies" rick-slo mentions are of course good examples of both.)

[Bingoccc]

For me they are two different things with some overlap. I have found though that the language we use to describe many thing related to guitars and playing does have different meanings to different people. There are somethings that some folks have said in posts that seemed at odds with my experiences. The more I thought about it, I realized I was assigning a slightly different meaning to the words than they were using. Different strokes for different folks.

[Pualee]

One of the best pieces of advice I ever read:

"If you sound good, you aren't practicing."

Practicing is about challenge, working on something new and difficult, and overcoming. After that, you are just rehearsing, playing, performing, etc. None of those are bad things, but you won't noticeably grow without the necessary 'practice' of new techniques, new chords, new scales, new theory, new arrangements, etc.

Never stop 'practicing' and you will never get bored or stagnant.

[GuitarDogs62]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

I think there's a huge difference between practicing and playing. Here's how I see it:

If you're comfortable enough with your material to perform it for others then you're no longer practicing it. You're simply re-enforcing your muscle memory which you developed during practice. This is especially true when playing memorized pieces.

Practicing means that you're working on new material in order to perfect it... getting it 'performance ready' if you will.

When it comes to improvising in performance then you're not only bringing to the stage what you've learned but by 'playing' the material you're now constantly honing your skills as an improvisor. So in that sense 'playing' is like 'practice.'

If you want to improve as a guitarist then I feel it's essential to work on as much new material as you can... WHILE... maintaining and further honing what you've learned.

+1 on what Toby said

[Bern]

Originally Posted by JonPR

This could be all semantics!

Right...it is.

[Howard Klepper]

Play when you practice.