Course › Chapter 6: Science of Practicing › 6.1 Practicing Basics

6.1 Practicing Basics

How to Practice Effectively?

1. Make time!
2. Have a clear goal or goals for each session (not “I will practice for x minutes”)
   • Keep a practice journal with your goals for each session and a progress report at the end of each session.
   • Get a practice buddy—check in to make sure each other practice; set reminders; share practice successes, rant about frustrations, trade ideas.
3. Engage in specific, deliberate practice techniques throughout the session, including an appropriate amount of rest time within and between sessions.
4. Divide your practice into shorter sessions with ample rest in between. You WILL LEARN THE MUSIC FASTER IF YOU TAKE MORE BREAKS!
5. Get a good night’s sleep!

Some Useful Techniques

The following methods have been collected from my own experience, conversations with fellow educators, and books. I am indebted to and highly recommend the books and research in Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing by Molly Gebrian and “Make it Stick” by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel.

Chunking:

Jump right into the hard spots (after you are warmed up). Don’t waste your face running through pieces or even lines at a time, with the exception of the first time you are looking at a piece, when it’s reasonable to run through it to get a sense of the music and your current abilities.

1. Pick your practice spots—anywhere from a beat to a couple lines—and focus on them. Ask yourself why this is challenging? Take the time to clearly articulate to yourself what isn’t going right.
2. Break it down: Try starting from the end, playing only the last bit and then slowly adding in more and more until you are back to the beginning. You can also use the same technique starting from the beginning, working your way to the end.
3. Record yourself often, not just when you think you’ve got it! Listen critically but with love. Your hard work is worth feeling proud no matter the current status of the music.

Use Repetition to Improve Muscle Memory:

For each of these spots, consider how many tries it took you to play it correctly. If it was correct on your 4th try, then you have to play it at least 4 times perfectly IN A ROW before you can add anymore to your practice chunk. If you aren’t sure how many to do, researchers who study the science of learning have found that 6 perfect repetitions is a strong, evidence-based benchmark for building reliable, long-term retention.

When you are using “perfect repetition” to ingrain a skill or passage, consider taking a microbreak half way through (15–30 seconds). This will greatly improve the lasting impact of your repetitions. For example if your goal is to play the last two measures of your practice spot perfectly 6 times, take a microbreak (15-20 seconds)after 3 perfect repetitions. After the break, you will be on your 4th attempt. If you miss during any time, before or after the microbreak, you have to start back at 0.

Red, Yellow, Green:

Create a list of practice passages (or excerpts). Label each depending on how well you can currently play it. Red for the ones that need the most work. Green for the ones that are basically ready to go. Yellow for the ones in the middle. If you are not sure what needs work, record yourself and listen back critically. What do you wish sounded better? What feedback would you give someone else if they played like that for you? Prioritize the red ones!

Amplification:

If you are struggling with a technical skill, try exaggerating the problem. For example, if your notes tend to “twah twah”, play the passage with purposeful twah-twahs, as if you are parodying yourself. Ask yourself what you are doing to make that happen? Record it on voice-memo and watch the note shapes.

Now see if you can correct it. Watch the note shapes on voice-memo as you play notes until you see a nice square shape (or natural decay). Now describe in as much detail as possible what you are doing differently.

Or if your issue is that a high note sounds pinched, try to purposely play it that way. Record it and then watch and listen back, and then describe what it looks like, feels like and sounds like. If you are unable to perform the skill correctly, try watching and listening to someone who can do it well. Can you mirror their exact sound and expression and body language? Use imitation to help you find the better way. Once you are successful, describe as precisely as possible what it feels like. Focus on capturing a kinesthetic “picture” of how the good technique feels.

Good Way/Bad Way:

Use the exaggeration described in the amplification method to identify the bad habit and and a better way. Now purposefully alternate between the two ways. Play it the old way on purpose. Then play it the new way. Go back and forth, stopping to notice and describe (at least in your head) the difference between the two ways. Consider recording and watching back a few of these good way/bad way vacillations.

Then play only the new way several times IN A ROW perfectly (see repetition practice above)

Interleaved Practice:

Create a list of sections or excerpts you want to work on during a practice session. Choose 3–6 separate passages. Now set a timer for 5 minutes. Practice the first one. As soon as the timer goes off, move onto passage #2. Start the timer and then switch to passage #3 after another 5 minutes. Continue cycling through them (with some scheduled breaks) until your practice session is up. This may feel chaotic, but research has shown that practicing this way will make your effort stick better than working on each excerpt for a longer block of time before moving to another.

In other words, doing a 20 minute blocked-practice of Till Eulenspiegel would result in a poorer performance the next day than practicing Till in 5 minute intervals cycled through four times interspersed with other music. Either way, you spent 20 minutes on Till, but tomorrow, the person who practiced with the interleaved method will sound better! 5 minutes is not a magic number, but just an example.

Mental Practice:

Just do it! Incorporating mental practice will improve your playing, speed up your learning, and save your chops. You can do mental-practice by itself or interleave it into your practice session. For example, if you were doing an interleaved practice with 5-minute timers, you could do “mental practice” occasionally as one of those intervals. Research has shown that focused mental practice lights up the same parts of your brain as physical practice!

Spaced Practice:

When you are practicing something new, you will learn it faster if you practice it briefly and then take a break and come back later. Your brain can only build the neuron pathways when you aren’t currently using those neurons. This means, you’ll actually do much of your “learning” during the break (and most especially, when you are sleeping). In order to build muscle memory, your brain needs to move data from the “working memory” into “stored memory”. This happens most efficiently if your brain has to recall a skill/fact just as it’s beginning to forget it, rather than just going over it over and over without any time between.

So, in practical terms, try this:

1. Practice a new section of music for 15 minutes.
2. Then move on to something else—either practicing other music* or take a break from practicing.
3. Then come back to that section later in the day.
4. Take a break, and come back for a third session in the same day. Three spaced sessions has been shown to lead to the best learning. More than three times in a day doesn’t further improve your recall the next day.
5. The newer the skill, the shorter the break. As your skill or performance of a piece gets better, you’ll get better results from longer breaks between practice sessions of that skill/piece.

*When practicing other music in between your sessions on the “new passage”, make sure to choose music that is significantly different. Practicing music too similar can interfere with your learning of the new music.

Get a Good Night’s Sleep:

The sleep you get the first night after learning a new skill or new music is critical to preserving it. If you don’t get a good sleep, you may well be starting at ground zero again the next day. Naps can be helpful in a similar way and have been shown to boost performance.