Competitions, festivals and music college entrance auditions are just around the corner. This is a time where dedicated students are spending more hours on practice in preparation for these major events. When I was a student, I seldom practice more than 5 hours a day despite eminent deadlines, though many of my fellow classmates claimed that they practiced more than 8 hours a day.
It has been documented in educational and psychological research as in Sloboda et al's (1998) study on musical giftedness that there is positive correlation between hours spent on practice and overall achievement. For instance, to attain international levels of performance requires approximately an accumulation of about 10000 hours of practice.
My question remains - Is it really true that the more hours the better? When does one reach the point of diminishing return - where more practice hours does not equate better results. In fact, over practice may lead to fatigue, loss of perspective towards the music, or even injury.
Practice is an essential part of musical development, and it is important that healthy and efficient practice habits are cultivated from the onset. In my teaching, I help my students develop a keen sense of awareness towards practice from a very young age. I believe that it is very important to have a clear understanding about what is involved in meaningful practice from the very beginning. In practice, efficiency is important as time is a commodity for most students. Skills for practice need to be developed so that the most can be achieved within a limited time frame.
I often stress the difference between "Quality versus Quantity" in practice. By that, I am referring to two modes of working - working hard and working smart. Working hard is a given, but that in itself does not guarantee positive results. On the contrary, working smart will ensure that one paves the way for optimal results. Coupled with dedication, clarity of mind and self control, students are likely to achieve their goals much more effectively without having to suffer the consequences of inefficient practice. It takes much more time and effort in back tracking and rectifying mistakes that were incorporated into practice. Time misspent is in essence time wasted.
I give my students very clear goals for their practice, and I specify to young students the goals they need to achieve from one lesson to the next. Ultimately, it is the results that count.
Musical practice is both a cognitive and physical process. It involves troubleshooting and problem solving. Once a problem has been identified, one needs to strategize for a course of action to rectify the problem. This is a reflective and introspective process that requires active listening, sensitivity and awareness of the physical body. Repetition will only be fruitful when a solution has been found for a specific technical or musical problem. The danger in many instances is that students repeat passages before they have found any solutions to their problems. In which case, repetition is done haphazardly, and as a consequence, becomes counterproductive.
I have identified three stages of practice for my students:
(1) Problem identification - This is a phase where problems and difficulties are identified. It is only after isolating the specific problems and difficulties can one effectively strategize for a solution - whether it is technical or musical.
(2) Problem solving - This involves a level of experimentation, cognitive judgment, active listening and making adaptive physical adjustments. In this process, one has to be mindful, as one needs to continuously make dynamic auditory, visual, physical and aesthetic judgments as to whether certain choices or approaches are appropriate and effective.
(3) Reinforcement- The actual process of physical reinforcement of motor co-ordination through repetition in order to reach a level of physical automatization. This will only be useful when a proper solution has been identified.
Musical practice is a re-iterative process. Once a level of automatization has been achieved, the student may wish re-evaluate their performance goals for the next level. In so doing, steps 1 to 3 will be re-iterated multiple times for further refinement.
Cultivation of healthy and effective habits needs to start from a very young age. Many teachers find it effective to write down practice goals for elementary students, so that they will be reminded of the content covered in the lesson. This also provides a clearly pre-defined structure for students to adhere to during their practice. While this prescriptive approach may be effective in the short term, it does not necessarily cultivate introspection and nor help students make dynamic judgments during practice. Once students have developed a certain level of musical awareness, it is important to teach them to learn on their own. They should develop the ability to critique their own performances, seek their own musical voice and to find solutions in achieving their goals.
During lessons, I ask my students a lot of questions with regard to their playing. The purpose is to encourage them to evaluate their own performances, identify problematic areas and propose suggestions towards artistic refinement. This training also sensitizes students towards becoming an objective and critical listener, so that they become better able to evaluate weaknesses in their playing. In this process, they also learn to become more resourceful in devising solutions to rectify problems. This engages students fully into an active and self-motivated learning process. They also become less reliant upon external feedback. Rather, they develop a level of astute musical awareness from within, which accelerates the learning process.
I like to use this analogy with my students. The painter uses paint as his medium, and artistic expression is recorded on canvas. In photography, light is the medium and film is the canvas. For musicians, sound is our medium, and time is our canvas. Musicians are sculptors of sound in time - creating the intangible while shaping the invisible. As Michelangelo said, his artistic process involves chiseling away the excess in order to reveal the statue hidden within the marble block. In the process of musical practice, likewise, we are continuously crafting out the excess in order to unleash the true image of sound from within ourselves. Practice remains a life-long process of discovery...
Reference:
Howe, M. J. A., Davidson, J. W., and Sloboda, J. A. "Innate talents: Reality or myth?" Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 399-442 (1998).
By Angela Po Yiu Chan
Website to contact author: http://lambdaarts.ca/
Email to contact author: angelachan@LambdaArts.ca
Author: Angela Po Yiu Chan
Biographical Information:
Dr. Chan has given solo and duo piano performances in Canada, Europe, the USA and Asia, and has been featured on the Discovery Channel (Canada), Global TV, PBS, CJNT, Australian Television Network, Maclean's magazine, the Gazette as well as various radio stations.
She has adjudicated a number of competitions including the Concours de Jeunesses Quebec- Ontario, the Young Music Explorers Videotape Piano Competition and the Young Music Explorers Piano Scholarship Competition. Dr. Chan has led numerous workshops and masterclasses in Quebec and Ontario and hosts a column on piano pedagogy in Musifax, a publication of the Quebec Registered Music Teachers' Association.
Dr. Chan is founder and director of Lambda School of Music and Fine Arts in Montreal, where she also heads the Lambda Piano Teacher Accreditation Program. Since 2008, Chan has formed a joint piano studio with renowned Montreal-Korean concert pianist Wonny Song with whom she is also co-authoring a new piano method book series. Dr. Chan also belongs to many music associations such as the Quebec Registered Music Teachers' Association, the National Music Teachers' Association and the American Liszt Society.
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