Try this: Making Mistakes on Purpose to Access Creativity and Expression

Today my young student was really struggling with a song she has been working on for a few weeks.

When a student - of any age - is in the early stages of learning something new, I always allow creative interpretations of notes/rhythms/tempo. Instead of jumping in after a run-through to fix or correct, I simply ask the student, “How did that go for you?”

Invariably the student - especially adults - will be hard on herself, immediately going to all of the things that went wrong.

We do this. As musicians, many of us have been trained to zero in on errors. With this narrow focus, trying so hard to get it right, we can lose sight of the big picture: what went well, what felt good, what was different - not better or worse, just different - than last time.

When I asked this student how she thought it was going today, she said, “Good, but I still made lots of mistakes.”    (Note: One note was out of place.  One.  And maybe the tempo was slightly inconsistent. And maybe she was moving through it with some hesitancy - which makes perfect sense, given that she was being so darn careful not to make any mistakes! More on this in a bit.)

My student seemed unable to even consider dynamic range or musical expression until she could get Every. Note. Perfect.

We regularly build on sight reading skills in her lessons.  But I didn’t want to use this moment to work on those skills directly.  I sensed we needed to shake things up a bit and come at this selection from a different angle. I could sense that she was stuck, and not in the right headspace for direct skill acquisition.

“I have an idea,” I told her, smiling a bit impishly.  “Tell me what you think about this: what if this time through you make mistakes ON PURPOSE?  As many wrong notes and wrong rhythms as you dare, and as wildly incorrect as possible.”

Her smile got HUGE.  She enthusiastically agreed to give it a try.

And my goodness, if it wasn’t the most musical and expressive performance she’d ever given!

After she’d finished her new variation on this old song, I asked her, “What was your favourite mistake?”  And she excitedly listed at least seven spots where she had deliberately done the wrong rhythm, the wrong notes, sustained a pitch for way longer than was written.  Her FAVOURITE moment was when she deliberately played the “mistake” she often makes by accident.   (Normally she huffs and tenses up when she gets to this spot in the music - this time she lingered there, riffing on her usual “mistake” and creating a real musical moment.)

She seemed so empowered in that moment of describing her experience of making mistakes on purpose. Her eyes got very wide and her face was open, full of wonder and joy.  Her “mistakes” were no longer owning her.  She was owning her “mistakes,” and making them into purposeful, deliberate, expressive musical moments.

Learning is Target Practice - there are no mistakes

My student’s discovery about the empowerment of on-purpose mistake-making reminds me of my own early learning experiences. I used to be so held back by trying to be perfect. All the time. At everything, not just music-making.

Eventually, thanks to the support of many wonderful, compassionate teachers and mentors, I came to understand that learning happens in the miss-takes, in the off-target moments (I recently wrote a post about learning as target practice. You can read the full article here). These teachers understood the conditions necessary for humans to learn: namely that there needs to be an environment where off-target moments, experimentation, and surprises are welcomed, modelled, embodied, and encouraged.

So. Back to my young student and her discoveries about miss-takes.

This particular student isn’t even a teenager yet.  So I held back my exuberance about what her discovery means about how we learn, and how important “mistakes” are to the learning process.  (To be fair, I have had some version of this conversation with this particular student on several occasions as we examine “perfectionism” together in a light, playful way, creating our own experiments and games around “trying to be right” vs allowing all sounds to be welcome. But I’ll save that story for another time.)

For example, in order to make mistakes on purpose, this student had to actually think about the correct notes/rhythms in order to mess them up.  She was able to attend to her music-making and interpretation in a different way.  

By deliberately doing it the “wrong” way, she was actually teaching herself how to do it the “right” way!

Before, her goal had been: “don’t make any mistakes.”  (I think many of us can attest to how successful THAT goal usually is!)

Her new goal was: “make mistakes on purpose.”  Which, as it turns out, was a heck of a lot easier - and more enjoyable! - than trying to be perfect.  AND actually resulted in an expressive, musical, inventive, colourful, and FUN performance.

The part of her conscious attention that had been all tied up before in trying to be right, was now free to attend to much more nourishing aspects of music-making, like personal expression, interpretation, spontaneity, and creativity.

Would this student be happy presenting her on-purpose mistake-making rendition of this song in recital?  Likely not.  (I, however, would be thrilled to attend such a radically authentic performance … but maybe it’s a wee bit early in her musical career to be encouraging performances that challenge traditional music-making paradigms and music-consumption habits … hmm?)  

I can tell you, however, that when this student went back to performing the selection as written, those halting miss-take moments from before were nearly non-existent.  And her engagement with the music had really shifted since her first run-through. She was smiling at the end. Which is a huge win, and much more important (in my humble opinion) than being perfect.

Paradox: Learning happened

By deliberately messing around with her song, and owning her miss-takes, this student was able to actually WORK ON the spots that had been getting in her way before.  The difference was that this time she was going about it through a less direct, more creative approach that came from curiosity and experimentation, rather than perfection.

So.  Bloomin’.  Cool.

PS - I also 100% use this purposeful miss-takes game with my adult clients.  There is no age limit for being hobbled by so-called “mistakes,” nor for re-molding those miss-takes into satisfying, yummy artistic expression.