Playing vs Practicing

[zeeway]

Okay, I realize this may be picky, but when I play guitar for myself, I am "playing." My wife sometimes comes in and says...are you practicing...and I say, no, I am playing. To me, practicing is the time I spend preparing for a specific performance. If I am simply playing for enjoyment or even when trying to figure out something new, I am "playing."

How about you?

[raysachs]

I'm the same with one big exception. When I'm playing songs, even learning new ones, I'm just playing. When I'm jamming with my looper on electric, I'm just playing. When I'm recording songs, which I do a lot because it calls up everything I do toward a goal or project, I'm playing. I may run through a song a few times before I start to record, but I'm still playing, not really practicing. More like warming up, getting in the groove. ALL of that is just playing.

The only time I spend time "practicing" is when I'm working on a new finger style piece. So much of that is muscle memory that I just have to play it over and over and over, staring with small bites, and then gradually playing more and more of it until I've stitched the whole thing together. I'm only a few years into fingerpicking and none of it comes easily to me, so for THAT, I have to "practice". A lot. As a result, I'm second guessing whether I really even want to stay with it. it ends up being pretty much a rote exercise until I get a piece down, and then I can sort of add a little bit of my own feel to it, but I'm not anywhere close to improvising with it. So it doesn't feel creative - it just mostly feels like work. It's satisfying once I have a piece pretty well down. But it's slow going and I only seem to be able to commit 4 or 5 of them to memory at a time, so now for each one I take on, I have to let one out the back door and stop playing it. It's frankly more work than fun and I do enough other things well enough that it's more fun doing them and so I tend to play finger style less and less and may stop altogether. I've done enough of it to convince myself I'm capable of it, but maybe not cut out for it...

-Ray

[Riverwolf]

And the beat goes on...

I disagree.

My practice consists mostly of a list of 55 songs.
Sometimes one gets added or one drops out.
Varying levels of style, technique and difficulty.

I consider this practice when I am alone.
It is playing when played for another...

[Andyrondack]

Playing is when I enjoy listening to the music I'm making, when I don't I'm practising.

[rule18]

For my 45 years of guitaring (20 of them performing), practicing has always been about technique (i.e. scales, perfecting a tricky chord/fingering change and working on my flat & finger picking) and polishing sections of songs that I play. All of that leads up to better playing IMO.

That said, sometimes playing is just playing.

[Gordon Currie]

As a guitarist for 5 decades, often professionally, I no longer differentiate.

Whenever I 'practice' I am also focused on making every sound musical.

Whenever I am making music I also am aware that it is an opportunity to further polish my operational skills.

Playing vs. practice is a helpful (but somewhat arbitrary) distinction that is useful in the early stages of the journey, to help you allocate your time intelligently.

At some point you may realize that you need to do both to be a well-rounded guitarist.

[rllink]

I subscribe to the notion that playing is practicing and practicing is playing. And I am always working on songs in a set list as well, trying to do it better, learning to add something to them. But something else, I also work on my singing and presence. I think that often times the guitar playing becomes the sole focus when it is just one part of the equation. I've seen many a performance where the stage presence carried the show. I've also seen some very talented guitar players give their audience a very technical but lifeless performance that lost their audience five minutes in. There's a lot to it if one's goal is to play for an audience.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by zeeway

Okay, I realize this may be picky, but when I play guitar for myself, I am "playing." My wife sometimes comes in and says...are you practicing...and I say, no, I am playing. To me, practicing is the time I spend preparing for a specific performance. If I am simply playing for enjoyment or even when trying to figure out something new, I am "playing."

How about you?

Me too.

I work on learning songs. I play for fun, even though that is practice.

When I am really practicing it's because I am preparing for a gig or a recording session.

- Glenn

[Mr. Jelly]

To me practicing is when I am working on something. Playing is when I play a tune. I consider it practicing when I play tunes in preparation for a show. When doing the show I am playing.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by zeeway

Okay, I realize this may be picky, but when I play guitar for myself, I am "playing." My wife sometimes comes in and says...are you practicing...and I say, no, I am playing. To me, practicing is the time I spend preparing for a specific performance. If I am simply playing for enjoyment or even when trying to figure out something new, I am "playing."

How about you?

Play the same thing more than about five times in a row and it's practicing (at least from the listener's perspective).

[Doug Young]

I recall reading someone who said if listening to you practice was enjoyable to others, you're not doing it right :-)

I certainly play through entire tunes before gigs, to be sure I remember them, so I might call that "practicing". But for me, real practice involves stopping to fix mistakes, going over and maybe reworking rough spots, working on optimizing fingering, playing slow with a metronome, working to improve technique, etc. When "playing" (i.e. performing), I'm not working on those things, and if I even think about them, I'll probably mess up.

[raysachs]

I can see much more of a distinction for those who perform and play gigs than those of us who play mostly at home or occasionally with a friend or two. That's become apparent from the different answers.

When I was young, I played out a lot and with a band or duo, we'd definitely "practice" to make sure we knew what we were doing when performing. At this point in my life, I'm a home player, I play for my own enjoyment, and occasionally some friends or family may hear me play, but that's about it anymore. So, in that situation, it's almost all playing, except, as noted above, when I'm trying to learn some new finger style piece... Which just takes me a ton of rote repetition to get the muscle memory.

-Ray

[Rudy4]

Playing IS practicing.

Practice can also include working on particular passages or phrases that might be difficult to otherwise play.

The first one is the other, but the other isn't necessarily the first one.

The ultimate goal is to convert "practice time" to "play time". At a certain point most of us don't need much "practice".

[westview]

I"ve enjoyed reading all the responses. I can relate to many.
Practice for me means being focused on a particular improvement.
Guitar technique, memorizing lyrics, vocals, new chords, and on.
It's when I'm concentrating and repeating.

Playing: I think the enjoyment of just playing/singing songs. (though songs for a gig or performance is practice). No agenda, playing whatever I feel at the moment.
An example of playing is enjoying a reasonable beverage, and singing songs between innings of the baseball game.

[hatamoto]

Originally Posted by zeeway

Okay, I realize this may be picky, but when I play guitar for myself, I am "playing." My wife sometimes comes in and says...are you practicing...and I say, no, I am playing. To me, practicing is the time I spend preparing for a specific performance. If I am simply playing for enjoyment or even when trying to figure out something new, I am "playing."

How about you?

Lately, I'm dividing my playing/practice time. I dedicate a time specifically for each attributes: repertoire, technique, theory, improvisation.