Some further, brief, thoughts on practice.
Practice makes perfect - so they say. Although I heard recently that only perfect practice makes perfect. Such a pity, all those years of hard work wasted!
What is the difference between rehearsal and practice? According to MD Andrew Jones rehearsal is what you do at band, practice is what you do at home. YOU practice your part at home, HE rehearses the band to make sure all that practice fits together to give a good performance.
Of course, so much depends on the individual player. Do you practice at home, or do you play through the music and then do your favourite solos? Do you do your exercises during your practice or do you run through your difficult passages and then get on to something more interesting?
All these questions! Who can honestly say that they practice the way that they should, with a plan and with attention to developing their skills and technique, widening their tone and making sure that the bits they got wrong in the last rehearsal don't go wrong in the same way they went wrong in the last one?
Probably very few of us. I would suspect that only those who have no life outside of bands, the fanatics, or those who have pretentions - or pretensions to becoming professionals. The rest of us, jobbing musicians all, with families, children, grandchildren, wives, husbands, jobs, holidays and so on just do what we feel we can get away with. After all, it's only a hobby, isn't it?