“Play from the heart!”

“Try it again - but this time with feeling!”

I think we’ve all had teachers say something like this to us - especially in the early days of learning a new instrument when everything feels so awkward and unnatural, and we’re consumed with trying to overcome all the basic technical challenges of the instrument.

However, even as we advance and become more skilled, it can be easy to continue to prioritize clean playing over expressive playing. After all, there is something very satisfying about practicing for accuracy and getting to use our tuner and metronome apps. And sure, accuracy absolutely does matter, but focusing too single-mindedly on technical precision sucks a lot of the fun out of the experience, both for us and for our audience.

But…how does one learn to play more expressively?

Is it a function of simply “feeling the music” or feeling internally the emotion that we’re trying to express in a passage? Where this feeling is then naturally expressed in our playing and comes across to the listener?

Or is there more to it than that?