Active vs. Passive playing

There are two ways to play the instrument. The correct way starts in your heart or mind as a sound idea or association. This idea is then transformed into nerve and muscle activity producing the sound on the instrument. It is general principle no matter if you play from sheet music or from memory. On the other hand there is an unhealthy/passive approach to instrument playing, that can emerge when formal interpretation training of the adept overtakes his/her inner musicianship development. It manifests itself in such a way that when playing from sheets, input visual information from the score is being directly transformed into playing activity and inner musicianhip is not participating on this process adequately, it just passively modulates the overall quality of the interpretation. This incorrect approach is then analogously applied when playing from memory so that it is predominantly or even exclusively driven by muscle memory. As already mentioned in the article Learning schemes, this way of memory interpretation manifests it's fragility when interrupted or distrubed unexpectedly at any moment.

What to do when you are in such a situation? Playing more sheet music won't solve it. When you are caught in this trap, continuing will just deepen it. There is a simple diagnostics. When your playing seems mechanical, boring and dry to you, it is it. The practicing is rather an automatism than a creative activity. Your inner musician is not participating adequately, the practicing is not effective, wrong learning model is being applied. You need to position your inner musician in between the source of the music (regardless of whether it is in sheets or in your memory) and the instrument and consolidate it there.