Hey subscribers, and a big hello to all who have recently joined us- welcome!
I keep a little file of random, short thoughts, on practice, and I think I’d like to get them out there.
Some of you will remember when I tried to do that last year and they turned into big public blog posts! There was too much to say.
I’ll do the blogs when it is something that involved. In the meantime I’ll send some random practice thoughts to you subscribers. They usually come to me, wait for it – while I’m practicing.
They may not be complete, and kind of random, but you can ask anything you want about it in the Practiclass.
I think all of it can be helpful for common practice problems. The little ones. The types of things I hope we will begin to flesh out as we watch the Practiclasses.
We can study the big stuff – deliberate practice, contextual interference, memorization, using what I’ve taught, but the little stuff is up the changing winds of our practicing life’s work.
Hopefully these things I share will take up some space in your memory, and you’ll be reminded of them when they are relevant in your practice and in the Practiclasses.
Here is the first one. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
If you make a mistake when doing retrieval because you totally forget something that comes next, or some fingering, etc., but it stands out to you and annoys you, then great just keep retrieving every 5-10 minutes. Eventually that annoyance will fix it.
The learning is in the annoyance, and that is your big flashing red light to do it right next time. If you forget again your friend, the annoyance, will be there to let you know in a way that will stick with you, and you’ll really not want to do it again. Eventually your brain will tire of being annoyed and just do it right to get that off its back! You may notice stages, and I’ve seen them happen quickly in a Practiclass sometimes. Each retrieval or three things progress…
- You begin to recognize the mistake right after you make it,
- Then as you make it,
- Then right before you make it (usually causes a stoppage in playing)
- Then early enough to correct in time then forgotten and correct.
Come to think of it I remember getting that to happen with someone. When was that? Oh yeah, Florida State University working with some pre-college students in Tallahassee in 2017. I found a short edited copy of that. Here, an unlisted link just for you. I’ll leave it up for a week.
Don’t worry about that feeling of failure – it is phony. The annoyance is your friend the reminder, and this is the foundation of a growth mindset as well.
Do you really think you’re going to be better off in a few days playing it 50 or 20 or 100 times in a row than doing five or six reps spaced by 5-10 minutes over the course of your practice?
If you are not sure why not compare the two? Do one trouble spot one way and another one the other. Check where you are at in 3-4 days. Spaced repetition takes less time, works better, faster, and is more reliable every single time you perform.
And don’t forget to join us in the Facebook practicing group and share your thoughts
TIME TRAVEL
See, here’s the thing about off days.
You know, those days when your playing just doesn’t seem to be at its best for some reason?
Could you play, perfectly, something very simple that you learned a long time ago?
You couldn’t play those things as well as you wanted then even on your best playing days, right? Now you can play it well…on an off day…like butter.
So, there’s plenty you can play well. At one time what is now easy was your peak level, ever think about that?
Keep learning the best practices for learning and that peak level will keep rising week by week.
And so will your ‘off day’ level.
If it doesn’t then find a solution. There is always a solution.
Do you know what is even funner? Time travel!
Keep an old piece of music or three ‘in your back pocket’ of your practice pants.
At the very least do spaced repetition with the whole pieces. Play ‘em once a day, or every other day or two. Even better mix up the sections of all the pieces and do random retrievals. (what I call ‘large section retrieval – LSR in my practice notes)
If that isn’t enough then spend 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there working on small tough sections, or just bringing old things to a new level of refinement. Talk about next level!
It will help with all of your development including pushing your peak level higher.
Plus, you can play any of those pieces for some nice moments on off days. Kind of cool to realize how well you can play some things even on an off day.
OH, and that means those pieces would be easy for you to perform for others because they sound good even when you are not ‘at your best’.
That will happen with the things that aren’t as good as you like right now in the not too distant future.
In this way we visit the past and the future whenever we want.
No DeLorean necessary.
Gregg
IN PRACTICE
Random thoughts from my practice journal for Practiclass subscribers
The Space Program
Did you know that I watched the live video feed of the first man walking on the moon? It was a historical moment, and I was a small part of it. A very small part. I was barely a toddler.
My parents made me stay awake to see it (apparently I was dozing off, I guess black and white TV was not that interesting to me). They said someday I would want to be able to tell people I saw it.
Too bad they were wrong 😀
Now for a completely different space program.
Spacing can be misunderstood. As with anything we should learn the basics first – learn something perfectly, and slowly, then space once, and only once, after an interval even if there are mistakes (see research on the testing effect). Increase the interval when a few in a row are correct then take a couple of days off.
If you have not tried it this way you must, it is kind of mind-blowing.
In the real world, as with all of the areas of the ecosystem of learning, it is subtle, varied and malleable. This can’t be understood with the basics, but a seeker of knowledge will, through experience over time, understand how and where to vary.
For instance – spacing gives us better control over whatever it is we’ve put into our long term memory. If we get something (deliberately) right a few times in a row it is in our long term memory, and it is time for spacing.
As we become more sophisticated in our understanding we may recognize, with this increased control, that there are subtle problems we couldn’t see before. Maybe it is a not-so-good fingering, or misunderstanding of something.
Stop spacing and start repping. Plan-Do-Reflect and figure out a solution as well as you can. Get that right a few times and back to spacing.
Another red flag for this is making the same error over and over. That is not an error, that is something that was learned wrongly in the first place that escaped your attention before you put it into spacing. It only becomes apparent with the greater control and understanding that comes with spacing. What a great gift spacing gives us to be able to see this!
Eventually, in many cases, you can do a few quick reps to experiment and find a solution and return to spacing. Sometimes it will take longer.
The examples I gave here are just a few, and don’t use them dogmatically. In fact, if you are new to spacing, don’t use them at all. Learning the basic process is of far greater value, and as you do, the little things will take care of themselves over time.
Remember that I thought the whole concept of spacing was a bunch of hooey when I first heard about it. I tested it in my practice so I could legitimately criticize the person who was teaching it. I cut no corners, and followed her directions to the letter and it worked. Then I tried again and it worked again.
That led to me reading books, many studies, and talking to others about it, on and on. It took me a good two years before I stopped all massed repetition, and that was mostly out of personal pride (I couldn’t have been this wrong, I’ve been teaching the opposite to my students, there must be some value in massed rep! What if I try it this way or that – nope). Don’t make the same mistakes I did.
As they say, before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you do, they’ll be a mile away and have no shoes.
Gregg