How to Practice: An Important Abstract Concept
Most of you know me as an ego-maniacal trumpet player. The hardest piece of music I have ever prepared is Chopin’s Op 10. No 3. I learned it in a month, and I did not totally embarrass myself. So really - I’m an ego-maniacal pianist.
In this next installment of How to Practice I want to share a critical insight on how to get the most out of every minute of practice so that you can learn top-tier Chopin etudes in a month :)
First, an abstract concept
I’ve learned this idea from so many different instructors in so many different ways, but I want to credit master-guitarist Stanley Jordan for finally articulating it in a way that sunk in. Difficulty and success can be represented as a perfectly inverse relationship.
Y = Difficulty, X = Success
We can take literally any task and make it too hard by adjusting the right variables. There is a speed at which Lang Lang cannot play Erlkonig - a height at which LeBron cannot dunk - an equation Isaac Newton couldn’t solve. And in any given practice session, we have no direct control over our success. You can’t say “I’ll do better!” and expect anything to change. What you actually have control over is the difficulty of what is in front of you. Slow down - do less - lower the hoop - derive the formula first. Break the problem down into digestible parts. Seems straight-forward enough, right?
The most common problem is that people intuitively balance the above graph in the dead center, where the task is medium difficult, and we are experiencing medium success. Even the majority of educational professionals I have queried make this fundamental error. You know - make it challenging! Right? Wrong. Dead wrong. There is greater success to be achieved by simply making the task even easier. Balance the graph so that the task is incredibly easy, and you are kicking butt!
I feel the need to add the disclaimer here that I am NOT saying “never do anything that is hard.” I am saying that hard tasks can only be accomplished by breaking them down into easy, solvable parts.
If you doubt the wisdom of this, please consider the following. When something is too hard, your inner voice often says something like “dang, this is HARD. Mom, teacher, help! I don’t get it!” There is no way to spell this out clearer - if you “don’t get it” you don’t get it! You aren’t learning anything, your practice is useless. When the task is at medium difficulty it’s more like “Eh, I think I got it. Maybe? Maybe not? I’m not sure. Mom, teacher, help!” You might be getting it, you might not, and you need an expert to verify. But when a task is easy the inner voice says “Aha! Eureka! I get it!
Did you catch it? You only “get it” when it’s easy. That is what learning feels like.
This is why we all need teachers, because you simply cannot be the little angel (or devil in my case) on your own shoulder better than a 3rd party professional can be. But since most of your time learning as a musician is spent by yourself, you have to get better and better at being the little devil on your own shoulder. And what does the little music devil always say? Slow down. No, really, slow down! That’s not slower! GET OUT YOUR METRONOME!!!
Which brings us to our first and simplest way to be in control of music difficulty, in order to experience greater success. Slow down. No, really, slow down. Get out your metronome. There really isn’t anything deeper on this one.
Second, do less. This one is also simple on the face of it, but devilishly hard in practice. Cut the piece into smaller sections - a few measures, a few notes, right hand/left hand, etc. And we all get tempted to keep going to the next passage - “oh, I love this part!” - and forgetful about focusing on a specific section - “crap, am I at the end?” You have to hold your own feet to the fire and truly practice one phrase at a time, or less. Get out a pencil and bracket off your stop and start points.
The best way to gauge whether or not you need to adjust the difficulty is by measuring your own success. If you still are not doing well at the passage, it is still too hard for you. Think of it in terms of the odds you’ll make a mistake. If your odds of making a mistake are above 15%, it is still too hard for you. Go slower, do less. Bring the odds of error down so low, that you are nearly ALWAYS performing well. This way you spend most of your practice sounding great, and very little of it sounding awful. Imagine that - spend most of your time sounding great, and you’ll sound great!
From instrument to instrument there are always clever ways and intermediates to make a passage easier. Say notes while doing fingerings, shadow bow, count-sing, write in accidentals, analyze chords, and all the other methods we have all learned. If this sounds banal, it’s because it is. Shameless shout-out to music teachers - musicians have long solved some of the biggest problems in education. Think about what we get our students to do in 30 mins a week. Gymnastics and dance and soccer and swim demand HOURS every single day. We produce badasses with 30 min a week, and some genuinely good advice about how to become an independent practicer. Way to go, music teachers!
What I hope this adds to the mix is a very straight-forward tool for self-assessing throughout any given practice session. As you attempt to be the devil on your own shoulder remember to ask these questions: Is this easy? Where am I balanced on the difficulty/success scale? What are the odds I am going to make a mistake this time? Go slower. Do less. Get out your metronome.
