In an interview, Amy Edmondson made an interesting observation about pilots and flight simulators: For pilots, mistakes are critical and catastrophic in real flights. In contrast, a flight simulator offers a much safer environment that’s more tolerant to mistakes. Yet, pilots often have only one goal in simulators: fly the “perfect flight.”

She wondered whether pilots could use the simulator’s lower-stakes environment to try things that may or may not work, to experiment different tactics and strategies - even if planes are crashed. It’s a setting where intentional, calculated risks are possible and can be encouraged without actual danger. And what is learned from the simulator trials can lead to further growth and innovation. 

Pilots actually don't want to always fly the perfect flight in a simulator.

It made me think that rehearsals are the musician’s equivalent of the flight simulator. And we, like pilots, often are only using rehearsals to “fly the perfect flight.” Our focus is to do things right, avoid errors, and replicate the same execution over and over. This is all valid and useful. It can also be limiting.

What if we also take advantage of the possibility for experimentation within the "safer" rehearsal setting. With intention, we can take calculated risks and make intelligent mistakes. 

Shifting our goal away from flying the perfect flight can look like:

Instead of doing things right, we can try to do things in at least 3 different ways. Obviously, we can’t do this for every single bar of music. But we can choose one particular passage that we are curious about for each rehearsal for this exercise.

Instead of avoiding errors, we can pay attention to understanding what that error is telling us. It may be simply that someone made a mistake that could have been prevented. It could also reveal an underlying problem that we need to address. Dissecting mistakes when they happen can be a fruitful activity.

Instead of replicating the same execution, we can find out where and when we can allow room for flexibility and spontaneity. The excitement of performance is also from uncertainty - we don’t know exactly what is going to happen. The anticipation of this unknown makes it highly stimulating and can be quite enjoyable. 

When we redefine our goals to be more multifaceted, what we get out of our efforts reflect that. The “perfect performance” can still be a product. It just wouldn't be the only product. Imagine what could come out of using our flight simulator in different ways.

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