Practicing the Unknown

Once students establish an effective routine in practice, it is always fascinating to see what they do when they practicing.  Often we practice something for a long time only to feel that our progress doesn't match our efforts.  In my opinion, this is a choice to feel this way.  It is a choice in how we practice.  I only say that because I often fell into the pitfall of associating the amount of time to the success of my practice.

I used to be so impressed by the stories of people who practiced eight hours a day.  I did this for many years thinking this was the trick to improving a lot.  Then I realized that I wasn’t improving as much as I would like during the eight hours, so I became convinced by teachers and mentors that correct repetition during the practice sessions was the key.  This did help me considerably.  Lately through teaching and my own practice, I have found the element that was missing from the first two approaches was the “unknown.”

When I practiced something that I was already comfortable with for any amount of time, my focus dipped.  I could go on autopilot and waste valuable time.  Then my eight hours really turned into a diversion - not a practice.  

As a young student, it was stressed to me that I repeat something three times, five times or seven times in a row before speeding up the tempo or moving on to something else.  Neuroplasticians have proven that our brain does not benefit from this static repetition.  Mastery grows and our brains benefit from incremental practice.  Every time we do something, the stakes should get higher (or change).  The tempo should get a little faster.  We add another hand or part to the mix.  We change the key.  We force the issue into the unknown.

I can’t begin to count the times when I would dutifully put the metronome at the tempo recommended by my teacher and have it pound away all week as I repeated the assignment.  Not only was it boring, it wasn’t helping me very much because I could zone out.

The flaw with this type of practice is that it doesn’t encourage our connection and engagement with what we create.  This is very sad and frustrating.  I would even go one step further and say that we can’t possibly create when this is the method.

If we as music teachers get frustrated about sports, video games, dance and all the other activities competing with our time; we really only need to look in the mirror.  The thing that those activities have in common is that they emphasize incremental improvement.  Whereas we were often taught that the way to play music is to do the same thing over and over again.  When we play video games, we are excited for the next unknown challenge.  When we play sports we want to rise to new challenges and improve.  We get hooked on the unknown and the next adventure.

The culture of teaching music has become so repertoire driven, that teachers may confuse harder and/or “more fun” pieces as incremental progress.  Sadly, this only encourages students to perform moderately more difficult pieces in the same way they have played their previous pieces...  Good...  Average...  Poor...  All detached from the creative process of performing.  In sports they call it “going through the motions.”  It's not fun to do no matter what activity we apply it.

Since I use the motto in my teaching studio of “four or more,” let’s start with that.  We play each assignment four or more times each day.  Here are ways you could use the metronome (or MIDI/play-along tracks) to practice the same piece for a week.  Let’s say the piece has a suggested tempo or end-of-week goal of 105.

Day 1 (Traditional):

First Repetition - Metronome at 60

Second Repetition - Metronome at 67

Third Repetition - Metronome at 74   

Fourth Repetition - Metronome at 81

Day 2 (Traditional - Increase Tempo):

First Repetition - Metronome at 60

Second Repetition - Metronome at 70

Third Repetition - Metronome at 80   

Fourth Repetition - Metronome at 90

Day 3 (Traditional - Build Tempo Threshold):

First Repetition - Metronome at 75

Second Repetition - Metronome at 85

Third Repetition - Metronome at 95   

Fourth Repetition - Metronome at 105

Day 4 (Reverse Metronome):

First Repetition - Metronome at 60

Second Repetition - Metronome at 50

Third Repetition - Metronome at 40  

Fourth Repetition - Metronome at 30

Day 5 (Slow, Slower, Fast, Faster):

First Repetition - Metronome at 50

Second Repetition - Metronome at 40

Third Repetition - Metronome at 90   

Fourth Repetition - Metronome at 100

Day 6 (Extreme Tempos):

First Repetition - Metronome at 40

Second Repetition - Metronome at 30

Third Repetition - Metronome at 110  

Fourth Repetition - Metronome at 120

Try this out and let me know how it goes.  Be slightly uncomfortable and engaged the whole time.  Embrace the unknown and see if it doesn’t help your connection to the music.

Michael Stegner

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Creating Positive Musical Experiences Through Practice Routines

Several students have recently come out of musical ruts because we were able to get organized with their practice and they were willing to embrace a simple practice routine.  It is always frustrating when we as students or teachers think that something sounds better the previous lesson than it does at the beginning of the current lesson.  In group lessons, students get frustrated when they start to lag behind the others even when they are more than capable of keeping up.

When we go through these down phases it is often due to falling out of a practice routine.  It seems easy enough to just get back on the horse.  But it really isn’t.  We start to feel all the times we didn’t get our work done stacking up and creating an insurmountable “to do” list.  We make it bigger than it may be and therefore we put it off longer.

This is when you may hear your child or yourself say that it’s time to quit and move on from this whole music thing.  This age-old statement starts to pop up, “I just don’t like piano any more.”  In group lessons students going through these dips in practice can act out in classes with behavior issues because they feel they are slowing their peers down.

Lately I have found a simple and practical way to gently pull students out of these times and make them less traumatic.  I think there will still be these times but often practice routines are the root of the dissatisfaction in learning music.

Putting emphasis on one day of practice is most beneficial in regaining momentum for playing music.  A weighted practice chart of the days in the week is really helpful to students.  For example; if their lesson is on a Monday, Tuesday is the most important day of the practice week.  Then after Tuesday, Wednesday is the most important day of the practice week.  Then Thursday is the most important day of the week.  By emphasizing the days right after the lesson the students will retain the information and build momentum.  

Most of us get caught in a our ruts innocently enough when we decide we just had our lesson and can take a couple of days off before ramping things back up.  The problem with this is that the day you planned to practice coincides with soccer practice, birthday parties, weekend trips, etc.  Before you know it, it’s the day before the lesson and it’s panic time.  We don’t remember all the nuances of what was covered in the lesson, we cram our practice(s) in, show up to the lesson stressed and then the process repeats itself because the mountain seems more insurmountable the next time around.

This is an ideal practice routine for someone struggling to get in the groove (or any of us for that matter):

Tuesday - Lesson

Tuesday post lesson - very short review practice

Wednesday - Master one new concept on each assigned piece

Thursday - Master another new concept on each assigned piece and review Wednesday’s work

Friday - Master another new concept on each assigned piece - review Wednesday’s and Thursday’s concepts.

Saturday - Repeat the same thing.  Review previous concepts.

Sunday - Ideally repeat the same thing - but if you’re going to take a day off this may be the one.

Monday - Review everything so you feel good about Tuesday’s lesson.

I have found as a teacher, if I list out the days and have the students circle each day they follow the script then lessons go really well.  The students can see the cause and effect of doing the routine, having a great lesson and feeling really good about playing music.

High school and college students can make spreadsheets and email it to the teacher the night before.  This helps give them something very concrete to attach to their feelings about playing and practicing music.

It doesn’t take long for the youngest to the oldest students to see the correlation between spending productive time and enjoying the activity.

I’ll write a follow-up to this, but one essential component to this is that we work on new material when we practice.  Many of our ruts our self-induced because we stick with what we’re able to do.  No matter how great something is when we first learn it, it will get stale.  The energy of always working on something new will snowball into a sustained positive experience.  Constantly playing something we mastered a month, week or day before leads to a dip in the enjoyment and productivity of the creative/practice process.

Hopefully this is helpful.

Michael Stegner