Someone said to a professional classical musician “you’re so lucky to have been born with all of that talent” to which the musician replied “It’s actually 5% talent, 95% practice”.

A pedant’s note: Practice is a solitary activity aimed at learning a particular technique or part, rehearsal is a group activity aimed a preparing the material for live performance.

I’m a bit rubbish at this bit which is why I remain forever in the realms of adequacy. I have this crazy idea I’m unable to shake that professional guitarists like David Gilmour and Robert Fripp just show up unpracticed at gig and are immediately note perfect. This is nonsense but part of my brain (the stupid lobe) insists that it’s true.

In fact, Fripp has said that to prepare for a King Crimson tour he would need to practice 4 hours a day for 6 months. This is a crumb of comfort for the earthbound.

Unfortunately, for most of us life gets in the way. For me, 1 hour’s practice per day is enough to sustain adequacy, 1.5 hours/day allows me to improve, albeit slowly. 2 hours/day is what I’d like to be doing but who can find 14 hours/week when we have to work, eat and watch television? I doubt I manage 5 hours per week which while not being useless, means I’m barely marking time.

Of course, it’s not just the time, it’s how we use it and what we practice.