practicing

Artists and writers are, in general, very supportive of lots of practicing. In other words, mileage is the best way to see progress. Pure practice. Uncomfortable, the creator of Drawabox, even says to not worry about if you're enforcing bad habits when practicing -- the benefits of regular practice outweigh this. 

This is also an integral principle to distance running. Mileage above all. 

I do not see this attitude in music, at least not in the formal or classical realms. 

In general, even the nicest instructors and directors tend to get impatient when the music is bad. An amazing piece of music can give you a feeling of peace, chills, or some other pleasant emotion. I think when we sort of get that but then screw it up, this frustrates them. This is the problem of always being in the mediocre bands. The non-audition ones; the "secondary" bands; the "symphonic/concert band" instead of the "wind ensemble" or the "philharmonic orchestra". 

(At BYU, everyone wanted to hear the Tuesday night University Band, if they cared about the non-audition bands at all. The Tuesday night band always played fun stuff, like music from movies and video games. Thursday night just played whatever, mostly your standard sort-of-challenging string-less band pieces. They always said there was no difference between the Tuesday and Thursday night bands; this is false. Tuesday nights were filled primarily with McInnis' favorite marching band members, and they were generally better than us Thursday night players. Their repertoire was also completely different than that of the Thursday night band. Indeed, I took University Band about 5 or 6 times, always playing either clarinet or bass clarinet, and I was always in the Thursday night band. And you'd better believe I never broke out of Clarinet 3 or 4 as my part. I don't think the statistics are in favor of there being "no difference" between the two ensembles; I think that's one big crock-o-crap.)

This correlates to something I've heard from music people, both in concert band and church choir contexts, which is basically "practice doesn't make perfect; it makes permanent". 

I'm super sketched out by that. I don't think that's a good way to approach things. People with an inherently perfectionistic nature (read: me) will be paralyzed by this, thinking that if they can't get it right, then they shouldn't practice at all, because they might be reinforcing bad habits. 

So I disagree. I think you should certainly try to practice good techniques. But even so: mileage above all. 

I rest my case. 

Anyway, I will try and actually get into a wind ensemble or orchestra at some point. I will need an aggressive skills overhaul. But right now, my non-audition community bands must suffice.