What perfectionism does to the joy of music
Why the student who tries the hardest sometimes enjoys it the least.
Miriam had played the intro of the piece seven times already. Not because she did not know it, but because in the fourth bar one note did not feel quite right. She stopped at exactly the same spot, took a breath, started again. When I told her it sounded good, she looked at me as if I had said something uncomfortable. “But it wasn’t right,” she said.
She had been playing guitar for three years. Her technique was solid. She knew the piece. But as far as I could tell, she had never played it from start to finish without interrupting herself.
That was the moment I realized we were not making music. We were avoiding mistakes. That sounds the same, but it is the opposite.
Perfectionism in lessons looks like diligence at first glance. The student practices, wants to do it well, sets the bar high. Teachers — and parents — often read that as positive. But there is a subtle difference between a student who wants to play accurately and a student who cannot allow herself to be inaccurate.
The first one learns. The second one monitors herself.
What I recognized in Miriam, and later in others: the enjoyment of playing itself had gone. Or rather, it was there, but only when everything was exactly right. And because everything was never quite exactly right, the enjoyment was essentially never there. Every lesson ended with a feeling of falling short, however well she had played.
There is something paradoxical about perfectionism in music. Music needs mistakes. Not as a goal, but as part of learning, as part of performing, as part of what makes it human. A recording without a single imperfection sounds sterilized. A live performance without tension does not exist. Mistakes are not the opposite of playing well — they are baked in.
But for a perfectionist student, every mistake is evidence of something. Evidence that it was not good enough, that the preparation failed, that she let herself down. The mistake has been given a meaning it does not deserve.
That meaning-making system does not come loose just by playing through. It lives in how the student judges herself, not in how technically accomplished she is.
I asked Miriam one day: when was the last time you just played, without thinking about whether it was good?
She had to think for a while. “A long time ago,” she finally said. “When I was just starting.”
That stayed with me. Because that is exactly when music sits deepest — at the beginning, when it is still called playing rather than practicing. Somewhere in the years after, a shift had happened. Practicing had become something that had to be done, that got evaluated, that had to produce results. And in that pressure, the enjoyment had quietly drained away.
I hear teachers say sometimes: I will get them through it. But through what? If the student comes out the other side having unlearned how to feel music, that is not a success.
What I try to do with students who lock themselves up: change their relationship with the piece. Not make them play it better, but make them hear it differently. A loose improvisation on the same chords. Playing the piece intentionally badly once, as sloppily as possible, and seeing what that feels like. Listening back to a recording without commentary, just to hear what is there, not what is missing.
That is not therapy. It is just making music in a way that briefly takes the control reflex out of play.
It does not always work. Some students are so used to judging themselves that they start judging the exercise too. They find the bad version not quite bad enough. They find the improvisation not creative enough. I hear them criticize the recording while listening back to it.
But sometimes — occasionally — something clicks. And then you see a student just play, for the first time in weeks.
Miriam and I once had a lesson where I said: today mistakes do not count. Play the piece from start to finish, whatever happens. She did it. She hesitated briefly at the same bar, but played through. At the end she looked up.
“That felt strange,” she said.
“Did it sound okay?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes.”
“Then it was enough.”
I do not know whether it changed anything in the long run. But there was something in her face at that moment — something I had not seen in the weeks before. Not relief at a perfect performance. Just a moment of ease.
I sometimes think about what would happen to students like Miriam if no one had stepped in. Not dramatically — they would probably just stop at some point. Too much pressure, too little satisfaction, another hobby that hurt less.
And nobody would have known that it was not the music that wore them out. It was the image they had built of themselves as a musician.
How do you recognize the difference, in your own lessons, between a student who is reaching for quality and one who is punishing themselves for lacking it?
Perfectionism is not a high standard — it is fear that looks like ambition.