Reading the title of this post, you can probably relate to it several areas of life. You may decide to pass up the pleasure of the rich dessert to achieve your weight and fitness goals, for instance. But how does it apply to learning to play the piano?
When someone is new to learning the piano -- or even if they have been at it for quite a while -- they are often surprised at how difficult it is just to play "all the right notes." It seems like every time you play you have some small -- or not so small -- slip-ups (I prefer to avoid the work "mistakes"). It can be very frustrating. The temptation is to try to practice in such as way as to "cure" those mishaps. You might decide to play the particular passage 50 times, and/or play it very slowly. Or, the one that many people think will work is to immediately "correct" the wrong note and then play the right one as you are playing. You'll find that rarely works. Instead, you'll develop a phobia about that particular passage in the piece, and every time you play you will be anxious about it, causing it to have more problems. Sound familiar?
Playing all the right notes all the time with no mishaps is a very high bar. In baseball, you are a star if you hit the ball even one out of three times. But pianists are expected to have a 100% success rate. And, sorry sports fans, but there is a LOT more complexity in piano than in baseball. Of course, even the very top tier pianists have the occasional slip, but you probably don't notice it because they are able to just go on without even a ripple.
For the beginning and intermediate student, making the demand of yourself to have "no mistakes" is likely to backfire and potentially cause you to dislike practicing. Trying the play the piece with zero wrong notes at any cost is not the best goal, in my opinion. It does give some immediate gratification. But if you had to practice that piece for hours and hours, to the exclusion of other music, you may be sacrificing long-term development. A student once told me that, as a child, his teacher had him practice the same piece for the entire year, so that it would be perfect for the recital. Of course he hated that, and quit piano as soon as the year was over. That teacher was not interested in the long-term development of the student; she was interested in how her students' performance would reflect upon her as a teacher. If they played well, people might assume she was a great teacher. But little did they know that the child learned nothing else all year and came to hate the piano. This is an extreme example of wanting immediate gratification over long-term success.
With my students, I emphasize just letting the small errors go. In some pieces we simply omit a few notes to make it a little less difficult. I'm sure the composer would forgive us! We continually work to build our technique to eventually master those tricky passages, but that takes time to acquire; so in the meantime, you need to learn to let the small things go. Choose your battles, so to speak. You'd think everyone would love this, but I find some people are reluctant to "let things go." Being a perfectionist in the early stages will work against you. Instead, try to keep the big picture in mind. I have my students play a wide range of different music so they are exposed to variety of technical and musical demands. As long as I see they are steadily acquiring new skills -- and enjoying it along the way -- I know that I am setting them up for long-term success. If I demanded -- or they demanded of themselves -- a perfect "performance," I know from long experience in teaching that they won't stay with it.
