- - Please visit: Legacy Horn Experience - -
The latest episode (120) of The Mellocast is on the topic of practice, and one of the main points made is that you can practice most effectively by not only practicing but also by listening to the works you are learning.
The starting point of the discussion was the article “How Much Should We Practice?” recently posted on Wired.com. There they offer this brief summary of a larger study on the topic.
A great deal of previous work has shown that simply presenting the stimuli to the participant is usually not enough. They actually have to do the task. This is where our group comes in. Basically, what we say is, yes you do have to do the task, just not for the whole time. The main result is that if you practice for 20 minutes, and then you are passively exposed to stimuli for 20 minutes, you learn as if you have been practicing for 40 minutes. You can cut the effort in half, and still yield the same benefit. This finding could be important for clinical training programs, such as the ones that attempt to treat language-based learning disorders.
What I pulled out of that quote is that the study really reinforces the need to listen to music, not only the works you are practicing (how many of you have tried to teach a Mozart concerto to someone who has never listened to a Mozart concerto?) but also just good music in general of any type really. Because you will pick up by osmosis phrasings, nuances, etc. that all relate to what a quality performance is. But back to Mozart specifically as an example, if you have in your ear a good idea of how the movement you are working on should sound it really will help your practice be much more effective.
Our discussion on The Mellocast also turned to the topic of warm-up and the playing day, with some expansion of topics related to these articles on how different players approach the warm-up and also how much playing/practice can really happen in one day. All things balance for effective practice; warm-up, pacing in the day, and listening to music.
Finally, I should note that there is also some discussion in this episode with Mark Taylor about Focal Dystonia. I plan to follow up further on this topic soon.
