On Practicing

The following few entries were written by Ivan Galamian in his book "The Principals of Violin Playing & Teaching" 1962. Mr Galamian was one of the greatest violin pedagogues of not only our time but of all time. He revolutionized the teaching of violin and inspired some of the greatest violinist of the 20th and 21st century. Enjoy !

The road to violin mastery is long and arduous, and great application and perseverance are needed to reach the goal. Talent helps to ease the way, but in itself it cannot be a substitution for the hard work of practicing. Even hard work will be of little avail if it is of the kind that fails to bring results, for there are both good practicing and bad practicing, and unfortunately the bad is far more common than the good.

There is nothing more precious to an instrumentalist than the ability to work efficiently -- to know how to accomplish the maximum in beneficial results while using the minimum of time to do so. One of the most important things that a teacher ought to teach his students is, therefore, the technique of good prac­tice. He has to impress on his students that practice has to be a continuation of the lesson, that it is nothing but a process of self-instruction in which, in the absence of the teacher, the stu­dent has to act as the teacher's deputy, assigning himself definite tasks and supervising his own work. A teacher who limits him­ self to pointing out the mistakes and does not show the proper way to overcome them fails: in the important mission of teach­ing the student how to work for himself.