I posted a few weeks ago about the quantity of practice time needed to progress with learning an instrument, so today I’m going to talk about quality – why we need focused practice rather than mindless repitition, how to analyse what needs work and how to keep track of it.
One of my Pokéfriends has set his sights on securing an invite to the TCG World Championship in 2024 (to do this you have to acquire a set total number of Championship Points by placing well in various official tournaments over the course of the year), an ambitious but achievable goal. Performing at the highest levels in anything requires that you spend what most people would consider a completely unreasonable amount of time on it – the 2022 World Champion said in his post-finals interview that he was practising for 6 hours a day, which is especially difficult when you’re an adult with a job and responsibilities and a need for sleep. Does this mean your efforts are doomed to failure? No, but you need to embrace the concept of (forgive me) working smarter, not harder.
People who want to improve are frequently told to play more games, which is not exactly bad advice, but if you don’t make a conscious effort to analyse your mistakes you’ll probably just keep repeating them. Musicians often receive the same advice regarding practising, and the same caveat applies – the absolute worst thing you can do is bash through the piece from start to finish again and again, hoping that any errors will magically disappear in the process. In reality all you’re doing is practising the same mistakes over and over until they’re so ingrained it will take ten times as much effort to rectify them if you ever want to play it accurately.
We’ve all heard the term “practice makes perfect” but like most pithy quotes it’s incomplete, a more accurate version would be “perfect practice makes perfect”. I try to stay away from words like ‘perfect’ but focused practice is much more productive than mindless repetition. This doesn’t mean that we never play a piece in its entirety, or that playing a wide variety of pieces is not valuable, but we need to be aware that analytical practice (working slowly and carefully on small sections) and performance practice (always keep going, mistakes or no mistakes) are not the same thing and that most of the time the former should get a lot more attention than the latter. Optimising in this way also allows you to do more with the time you can spare – 2 hours of focused analytical practice easily beats 8 hours of bashing through pieces..
So how do we analyse our performances? To start you need to find the parts of the piece you’re having the most trouble with, because there’s no point in spending an equal amount of time on the easy sections. Play through the piece once and note down each time you make a mistake – in a notebook, on the page, on a sticky note, whatever works for you. Once we’ve found the tricky passages we start what I call the 3 Ws: What, Why, How?
The 3 Ws: What? → Why? → How?
What did I do wrong?
Example: I missed a jump in the left hand and landed on the wrong note.
You need to be specific for this step – just saying you played badly is not very descriptive, and you can’t tackle the issue unless you’ve already identified what it is.
Why did I do that?
Example: I started moving my hand too late so I rushed the movement and didn’t give myself enough time to find the correct place to land.
The reason a mistake happens is not that you’re lazy or stupid or unsuited to the instrument. If you set the negative self-talk aside and think logically about the problem you can find at least a possible reason for that mistake. It could be knowledge-based, such as not understanding a performance direction, or it may be a physical issue, such as pushing your hand in too far so you’re playing right at the back of the keys, or it could be a combination of different factors.
How can I avoid this in the future?
Example: take advantage of this rest in bar X to start moving earlier and make sure my hand is in the right place before playing the note.
Once you’ve established why you made that mistake you can come up with potential solutions. You need to find a specific thing you can improve, maybe by filling in gaps in your theory knowledge or by changing your hand/arm position to make physically playing the piece easier. Some issues like uneven trills cover both these domains.
It’s okay if the first solution you try doesn’t fix it, there are multiple ways to solve most problems and it’s a case of finding one that’s right for you. If you’re stuck on what to do then ask your teacher, that’s what we’re here for and we’re happy to answer questions even if you think it’s something easy that you “should” already know.
It can get frustrating at times to pick your pieces apart like this, especially when it feels like the problem areas of a piece are all of it. Finding things you did right is good for maintaining your sanity and can also give you some ideas about how you might use those successful techniques to improve the parts which are causing you trouble. The questions are very similar but focusing on what you should keep the same rather than change.
What went right?
My dynamic contrasts were very clear.
Why did I do that?
I highlighted where the dynamic changes were and visualised the music at the correct dynamic level.
How do I make sure to continue doing that?
Start the piece at a moderate dynamic level so I have room to move up or down without making the piece painfully loud or extremely quiet.
Write these down by hand if you can, since this is a good way to reinforce information, but using a notepad app on your phone/tablet will do – the important thing is to have a record that you can look back on later when the exact details may have become hazy with the passage of time. It can also be uplifting when you look back over old pieces and old notes from months or years ago and find things which seem so easy now, to reinforce that you are moving forward even if it doesn’t always feel like it.
While practice time does have a lower limit for quantity it’s ultimately the quality that makes it worthwhile and really gets you moving forward. Think about why something went wrong, come up with ideas for specific changes you can make which will stop it happening again, and make sure to also assess what you’re doing well and why. Each mistake is a learning opportunity, but only if you take the time to study it.
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