The Payoff for Practice

Play the New Songs God Has for You

By Sandra Byrd

My New Year’s resolution: to coax music from the mahogany piano that sits, pretty but mute, in our living room. In fact, the only time the strings sound is in a reverberating response to my husband’s infamously loud sneezes.

Beethoven would not approve.

As a girl, I never liked practicing, and in many ways, that hasn’t changed. Tackling a new piece, note by note, over and over, seems tiring and somewhat repetitive—unfulfilling, as it is often done alone. But that measure-by-measure practice is foundational to all the seamless, beautiful, and rewarding music that follows. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says, “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

Why Practice Pays Off

I long to hear the songs coming from my piano, not just from my streaming account. I loved the song “Fur Elise” as a girl, and now it reminds me of my daughter, Elizabeth. I want to play “Moonlight Sonat” for family and friends. I want to close my eyes and enjoy my fingers sliding over the keys, knowing that it’s not someone else creating that beauty, but mine, in conjunction with the composer.

The word compose means to put something together of various individual parts and make it into something whole, and wholly new, working together in harmony. A composer and the player. The Creator and His child. The low notes and the high notes, quiet and grand.