Know what one of the hardest video games on the planet was?
The original Super Mario Brothers.
It was a simple side scroller game. But, touch one bad guy or fall down a hole, and that's it. No second chances. It's back to the beginning of the level.
And if you lost all your lives, guess what?
You had to go all the way back to the beginning.
No save points. No loading a game and picking up halfway. If you spent forty minutes getting to the second-to-last level and died there, it was all the way back to level one for you.
Infuriating, right?
Yet, Super Mario Brothers is considered one of the most addicting video games of all time.
I think there are some things we can learn from this.
The first is what made the game challenging to begin with. Most video games have this, but it was much harder with this one.
If you die, you don't get to just pick up and keep going.
It's the same thing in practicing. One of the main reasons students don't progress with music as quickly as they can is that they keep playing through mistakes.
Treat a mistake like dying in a video game. Go back and into the problem areas successfully...and things get much more interesting. And fun.
What made Super Mario Brothers absolutely maddening, though, was having to start all over at the beginning after you die enough times.
We can leave that part out of practicing. The students who feel like have to go back to the very beginning every time they make a mistake also find themselves not having much fun.
I should mention that there are some video games where you don't have to go back at all when you die. A popular one was Lego Star Wars.
And you know what? The game ended up being no fun at all!
I mean, it was cute for a little while, parading around as a little lego Yoda. But, where's the challenge or interest if you just get to keep going when you die?
It's the same with practicing.
Keep plowing through mistakes and you're just playing another Lego Star Wars Game. Fun for a little while, but ultimately not very rewarding. And boring, to boot.