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Practice tips!

Blocked and Random Practice

How much practice is enough? 

     Progress in piano often comes down to —how one practices and how much one practices. The mistake of most piano students is not practicing enough. This is dangerous for the ultimate success of the student—because when students don’t practice enough, they struggle, are not having fun, and of course,  will  then practice less. They can develop the attitude that they don’t like playing piano simply because they aren’t practicing enough to get good at it. And who can blame them—no kid likes doing something they’re not good at. There are many ways to work with this and help your student make progress at home.  Remember this:

Practice Is Cumulative

The more you practice, the better you will become.

The better you become, the more you will enjoy playing.

The more you enjoy playing, the more you will practice.

And the more you practice, the better you will become…

(the opposite is also true)

     Be sure practice is productive. Practice does not make perfect! Careful practice makes improvement, and sloppy practice makes you sloppy. How well your child is practicing is easily determined : If your child cannot play through their pieces at least slowly,  or if they struggle to find where to put their  hands for the piece, they have not practiced enough and are not setting themselves up to succeed.  If they can play through, but stop and start constantly or play lots of wrong notes, they may not be practicing carefully enough, even though they have made some progress.  Try to check on your student’s practice or ask to hear their pieces during the week, it may give them a little incentive, and help to keep them on track. 

Blocked and Random Practice

     We all have practice moments where the stars align, everything falls into place, and we sound great! But often our greatness doesn’t last; it doesn’t become long term ability. Here are three areas to consider when practicing to keep your mind working and your practice from being boring!  It’s all about context and how you approach your task. 

I.  Attacking a piece -discussing Blocked and Random practicing

            It is very frustrating to take a difficult skill, a hard piece, work on it, get it pretty much under control and the next day to discover that nothing has really improved, no matter what you did yesterday.   When it comes to practice we frequently focus on: How many hours are necessary to achieve the best progress? This is a valid point, improvement takes time.  Even more important, how we can make each minute count? What is the most effective way to work? No one wants to work hard and not see results.

     The importance of repetition has been stressed for us from the beginning.   “Play each passage ten times perfectly"  However, we are hardwired to pay attention to change, not repetition.  Dr. Noa Kageyama points out in his blog that if you show a baby the same object over and over they will stop paying attention.  Change the object, and the attention returns . The same goes for adults. MRI’s show there is progressively less brain activation when stimuli are repeated. Repeated information does not receive the same amount of processing.  We all know repetition is boring, our brains are not engaged. 

     In sport psychology, continuous repetition is called blocked practice. In blocked practice, all repetitions of one activity are completed before moving on. A baseball player who must hit fifteen fastballs, fifteen curve balls, and fifteen change-up pitches would complete all the fastballs before moving on.  Most musicians practice this way, especially with difficult sections. We work on one excerpt for a certain amount of time and then move on.  It seems logical.  Muscle memory requires repetition, and it feels a lot better 10 minutes into practice than at the beginning. This helps us believe that blocked practice is the best. It gives us an immediate feeling of improvement.  While this is a good form of practice for learning fundamental skills, like basketball lay-ups, at a more advanced level, this kind of practice does not lead to the best long-term learning over time.

     In the example above, if the players hit the three types of pitches in an alternating fashion, or a random order instead of doing all of a single pitch, the end result will still be 15 practice hits of each of the three types of pitches, exactly the same as the blocked practice. The only change is the order in which the pitches are practiced. This is called a random practice schedule.

     In a random practice schedule, the performer must keep restarting different tasks. Since you cannot develop that temporary “groove”, it will not feel as comfortable as practicing the same thing over and over again. When we change skills, our brain must reset. More mental activity leads to greater learning. In the blocked schedule, the baseball players must only plan for each type of pitch once, at the beginning of each 15 pitch set. In the random schedule, they must reset for each pitch. Although a blocked schedule may produce superior performance during practice, studies have shown that a random practice schedule produces superior improvement a day or more later -- the amount actually learned and recalled. Essentially, it promotes the superior recall of the skill on the spot.

     In 1994, elite baseball players were assigned to either the blocked or random practice schedules above. After 12 sessions, the “random” players hit 57% more of the pitches than when they started. The blocked group only hit 25% more of the pitches. The random practice schedule was more than twice as effective, even though the two groups hit the same number of practice pitches. Similar results have been found in  a variety of fields. Think about how many times you have been at a concert, heard a performer make a mistake, and in order to save themselves, they started the section over?  They didn’t know the segment independently, only with a lead-in.  They may have been unable to skip ahead , as they didnt know the next sections independently.  The drawbacks are obvious.

     Suggestion - Rather than spending long periods of time on a single section of a piece, pick a few passages you would like to work on and alternate between them.  You are keeping your brain engaged by varying the material but keeping the same amount of repetitions. More variety means — less boredom, more results. 

    II. Where you practice -Why it’s “better at home” Context-dependent memory

     There are many factors that affect recall and productivity.   One is known as context-dependent memory. We remember things better if we are tested in the same environment where we learned it. 

     In 1975, members of a scuba club were asked to memorize a list of words while sitting on the dock (dry), or submerged underwater in their scuba gear (wet). Participants recalled the words fine on land or underwater – as long as they did their recalling in the same place they studied. When tested in a different place, divers recalled fewer words.  Other studies have showed the same effect, even down to the state of your mind, like studying when rested, but testing when tired.    

     Pianists spend their time practicing on a familiar piano, yet perform on a strange piano in recitals and competitions.  All pianos have the same number of keys in the same places, but the feel and sound of the piano is different, not just the location.  You can see the issue.  A University of Houston study wanted to test if practicing on one piano, and performing on a different piano could increase the likelihood of memory slips. Thirty-two piano students memorized a short segment of music.  The students learned on either a grand or an upright, both in the same room. Then they were asked to perform from memory, some on the same piano, and some changing pianos.   Those who stayed on the same piano did well on their test, but it was different for the students who switched to a different piano. They had more memory errors, incorrect rhythms and notes. 

     Suggestion - Learning in multiple contexts can help to strengthen our ability to recall reliably.  Find  opportunities to practice and do run-throughs on pianos other than your own. Change your audience, time of day, practice tired, rested, hungry, with friends, bright light, dim light, change it up!

III. An accurate assessment - How prepared are you? Stop fooling yourself, use these skills!

      The way we practice can set up unpleasant surprises at lessons and recitals.  The different piano, lights, location, all can reduce our overall performance.  It isn’t as easy as it was at home.  

     Most of us practice like this:  Play something.  Play it again…slightly better.  Again and again…until we get it right a few times in a row. Move on to the next thing.   Many students will move on as soon as they get it right even once or twice.  If that took ten times, your success rate is only 10-20%!  With blocked practice we hear ourselves getting better as we work through a piece, getting it “into our fingers.” We are generally mistaken how solid our skills are, thus —“I played it better at home….” 

     At the end of a practice or a lesson, we may feel good about our piece. We might forget how rough it was on our first try.  But that first try is the most useful.    After all, we don’t necessarily get thirty minutes warning up before a lesson or recital, it isn’t always possible.  We need the absolute ability to do it “cold”.  After all, how well we can play something at the end of a practice (with warm-up, adjustments and repetitions), is very different than playing it cold the next day, which leads us to misjudge how well we are likely to play.  

     The goal of practice is to develop skills that are lasting and adaptable. Lasting means being capable of playing a tricky run accurately even if we haven’t played it recently (compared to playing it well after warming it up several times). Random practicing helps cement your knowledge. We need to adapt in wants that include being able to play that passage slightly faster, slower, louder, softer, with sweaty or cold hands, tired, nervous, or jet lagged. Changing your environment to simulate these conditions help prepare you for all that may arise. A group of students preparing for a test were divided into two groups.  One studied every day at 5pm  in the same room with a snack, using the same methods. The other group studied at different times of day, with and without snacks, using different methods, reading, flash cards etc.  Guess who did better on the test? 

     How we sound in the practice room when we’ve repeated something and gotten loose is just an illusion. We like the way we feel, and it has a definite purpose for our practice, but we should not use it to evaluate our readiness.  Think about ways to adjust your practice to use both block and random practice to keep your brain engaged and to maximize your practice time ~ better 20 productive minutes than 40 half- beneficial minutes any time!