Perfect Practice Part 3: Interleaved Practice

What is interleaved practice?

Interleaving is the process of structuring practice so that students move frequently from one topic to another. As opposed to blocked practice, which repeats the same skill with little interruption, interleaved practice rotates concepts frequently, even if they’re not yet mastered. While this practice model seems counterintuitive, it increases long-term learning and retention. We call this the contextual interference effect. Contextual interference has been studied in a variety of fields—most notably in sports—and, more recently, in music. In addition to enhanced learning, interleaved practice has been shown to boost executive functions like goal-setting, planning, and focus. (Carter and Grahn 2016).

How do we implement interleaved practice?

While it’s clear that interleaved practice is beneficial, implementing it in real life comes with some challenges. Some students don’t feel immediately comfortable changing tasks quickly; they may have anxiety about perceived incompleteness of a concept. Blocking is also still a predominant practice strategy among musicians—it’s likely that repetition is how many music teachers learned to practice when they were students. To deviate from what we’ve known for the majority of our musical study can feel unnatural and intimidating.

As with any practice strategy, I’ve found that the most practical way to encourage interleaved practice among students is to model it within the lesson so that it becomes familiar. Because highlighting practice strategies in every lesson is already a major part of my own teaching philosophy, creating context interference through faster lesson pacing has been relatively easy to do. My personal challenge with interleaving the lesson structure is trusting that learning is happening despite a student’s in-the-moment performance occasionally decreasing. According to the literature on context interference, this is to be expected!

A Basic Interleaved Structure

I like to have clear-cut topics for interleaved practice (or any practice session). These could include learning a brand new piece, reviewing an old piece, doing technical work (via exercises, etudes, or in specific passages of a piece), doing memory work, improvising, practicing performance etiquette, or working to make a piece more expressive. Each topic warrants different practice strategies, so rotating among them provides the context interference we need for long-term learning and retention. The names of practice topics don’t necessarily need to be explained; by using and modeling them frequently in everyday teaching language, students seem to catch onto the idea quickly.

Student-Led practice plans

This student noticed that the pattern of repeated notes ends in the last two measures, so he put a practice square around them.

I have found that marking specific practice points is conducive to successful interleaved home practice. Having students mark challenging passages with squares or highlighting tape has been useful in my teaching practice. I always have students find and mark the passages themselves and explain why a particular section is more challenging. However, the word “difficult” is something that I’ve removed from my vocabulary in this context. Rather, we call difficult passages “the fun part,” “the impressive part,” or, as one of my students puts it, “the spicy part.” This reframes challenges in a fun way that fosters a positive attitude toward practice. Students can cycle through the practice squares from all their pieces, creating context interference. The key is to practice each section only until it begins to feel easier—not until it is note-for-note perfect. This allows the brain to stay engaged.

“With blocking, once you know what solution to use, or movement to execute, the hard part is over. With interleaving, each practice attempt is different from the last, so rote responses don’t work. Instead, your brain must continuously focus on searching for different solutions. That process can improve your ability to learn critical features of skills and concepts, which then better enables you to select and execute the correct response.”

— Steven C. Pan

Real-life Results

Since actively encouraging interleaved practice, I’ve made some general observations. Students seem to be:

• less frustrated by making mistakes and more self-compassionate

• more reflective on their work, verbalizing what they missed and why they think they missed it before moving onto the next repetition of a passage

• more thoughtful before playing rather than diving headfirst into a piece

Although a great number of factors can engender these positive behaviors, I believe that the de-emphasis on perfection inherent to interleaved practice might play a role.

Further Reading

A Short Read: The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning

A Deeper Dive: Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance

Carter CE and Grahn JA (2016) Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance. Front. Psychol. 7:1251. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01251

Creative Ways to "Do it again!"

Repetition is a fundamental part of piano practice, but it’s not always a favorite part of practicing. These are ways that I ask students to “do it again” with flair. Each item is designed to be musically meaningful so that repetition doesn't become mindless. A specific musical goal underlies each activity. For example, playing parts of a piece “oppositely” draws attention to the intended character of the piece, and playing a piece in a different octave helps us to hear something familiar in a new way.

1. Play while singing the melody.

2. Play the right hand one octave higher and the left hand one octave lower.

3. Play small sections with your eyes closed.

4. Play the piece at different tempos (e.g. largo, adagio, andante, allegro, presto).

5. For primer-level pieces written for one hand, play the right and left hands together in parallel motion.

6. Make the piece sound like different animals (e.g. play it high like a bird, or low like a whale).

7. Play all dynamics oppositely (e.g. loud becomes soft, etc.).

8. Play all articulations oppositely (e.g. legato becomes staccato).*

9. Play and sing the accompaniment.

10. Play and say each downbeat (beat 1) out loud.

11. If the piece has multiple voices, play while singing or humming the soprano, alto, tenor, or bass line—alternate which voice you sing with each repetition.*

12. Transpose the piece to another key.

*these activities are for more advanced students or for pieces that are well into the learning process

An easy way to incorporate strategic repetition is to gamify it. I write down ways to repeat a passage on popsicle sticks and have students draw a stick, pre-selecting the sticks that are appropriate for a student’s level and stage of learning. The mystery of which stick they’ll pull keeps students eager to practice repetition in their lesson! The best part is that this game is easily replicated at home—I keep batches of sticks for varying levels handy and send them home with students. Students may even get creative and brainstorm their own ways to repeat a section!

Perfect Practice: Part 1

Five Basic Habits for Stress-Free Practice

Most piano families know that practice is an important factor in successful piano lessons, but without clear communication between teachers, students, and parents, the specifics of at-home practice remain a mystery. Just like piano-playing, practicing is a skill to be learned and improved upon. In this inaugural entry in my Perfect Practice series (the title of which is a nod to piano pedagogue Elvina Truman Pearce), my goal is to begin demystifying at-home piano practice, working from broad to more specific ideas.

Practice Starts in the Lesson

My particular teaching style includes covering practice techniques within each lesson—when expectations are clear, and students are confident that they can meet them, they practice more readily. For each assignment, students use specific techniques for at-home practice, and I have students replicate those techniques for me so I can be sure they will be successful at home. By observing the lesson, parents of younger students can get a clear idea of what should happen in at-home practice. Some parents like to take notes while observing, and some even film part of the lesson on their smartphones! It all boils down to what parents feel will be most helpful for them at home. Even occasionally observing a lesson helps maintain communication between teachers, students, and parents.

Choose a Time and Stick with It

A tried-and-true rule for productive at-home practice is following a routine. When treated as a negotiable part of the daily routine, piano practice often lands at the end of the day when both parents and students are too tired to be productive. Elvina Truman Pearce outlines this topic in The Success Factor in Music Teaching: Making Practice Perfect. She makes two great suggestions:

• “trying out” different practice times (before or after school, before or after dinner, etc.) for at least five days each to see which one clicks best with everyone

• splitting up daily practice into two or three short sessions

I promise this won’t be the case. ;) Source

It’s important to note that, while practicing may happen at the same time each day, practice length may vary. I encourage students to use practice time wisely to ultimately spend less time practicing, and I don’t use studio incentives or rewards based on the number of minutes practiced each week. There are certainly broad practice time suggestions for different age groups that are helpful for new piano students, but these are starting points—not rigid guidelines.

Create a Favorable Environment

The ideal practice environment sets the student up for success; it doesn’t work against the student. Is the room quiet, or does noise make it difficult for the student to focus and hear themselves? Is the piano in a relatively low-traffic area, or do waves of activity create a distraction? Are the student’s lesson materials organized and easy to use, or is accessing those materials a task in itself?

“The point is that if practice is to become important to the student and a regular part of [their] daily routine, then a suitable environment for it must be created and respected by the entire family. This indicates to the student that all members of the family respectfully support its importance.”

— Elvina Pearce, The Success Factor in Piano Teaching: Making Practice Perfect (193)

Remember that Children are Children

Children are still learning to recognize and regulate their emotions and behaviors. They need patience and guidance as they learn the self-regulatory skills necessary to direct their behavior toward a goal. Self-regulation includes a complex set of abilities developed gradually from infancy through middle-childhood (up to around age 12) (Ziv et al. 2017). For piano students, self-regulating includes planning practice, changing the plan if something isn’t working, and thinking about what went well and what didn’t. That’s a lot of work for a developing brain!

It’s expected that younger students will need a parent’s help with planning and following through with practicing, and it’s normal for kids to need a reminder to practice—even if they really love piano and excel in lessons! It’s also not uncommon for there to be both good days and bad days regarding attitudes and behaviors regarding practicing, even for top-notch students. Parents who understand this can be better prepared to handle challenging days, form realistic expectations, and exercise more patience with their child.

Deep Dive: Be Organized—But Provide Choice within the framework

As students mature, independent, self-motivated at-home practice is an important goal. Experts agree that autonomy plays a significant role in motivation (Gandhimathi & Anitha Devi, 2016). The meaning of autonomy is twofold. In an educational sense, it refers to students’ ability to guide their learning; in general, it can refer to independence or freedom. Though the two definitions of autonomy are often conflated, we can think of them as two unique components that work together. For students to be interested in their learning process (autonomy), they need to feel in control of their goals (through freedom and choice).

Who makes most of the choices in the context of piano lessons? Parents of younger students usually decide when practice happens; the teacher decides which practice techniques to use (or how) to practice; method books, even when supplemented with outside music, can largely dictate what is practiced. While it’s essential to keep a steady and organized practice routine, it’s equally important to allow students to make their own decisions. Some strategies for providing choice and facilitating independence include:

• allowing the student to plan the order of tasks within their practice session

• incorporating improvisation into every practice session

• using tools that help students keep track of (meaningful, not mindless) repetition independently (see example below)

• providing opportunities for the student to reflect on their progress

• asking the student which practice assignment they feel needs the most focus

• encouraging the student to keep track of questions that arise during practice

Use Iwako erasers to track repetition—each time the student plays the target passage correctly, move an eraser to the other side of the music stand.

In the next Perfect Practice installment, we’ll talk more about practice attitudes, how to deal with difficult practice days, and the do’s and don’ts of reward systems—do you really need to make a sticker chart? You might be surprised!

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Sources

Gandhimathi, S., & Anitha Devi, V. (2016). Learner Autonomy and Motivation - A Literature Review. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 6(3). https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234674899.pdf

Pearce, E., Sale, C., & Blickenstaff, M. (2014). The success factor in piano teaching: Making practice perfect. Kingston, NJ: The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy.

Ziv, Yair & Benita, Moti & Sofri, Inbar. (2017). Self-Regulation in Childhood: A Developmental Perspective