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

A Long, Slow Look

Using the practice of slow looking to tell musical stories

What is slow looking?

The phrase “slow looking” simply means taking intentional time to look closely at something. In her book Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation, Shari Tishman elaborates: “The term slow looking uses the vernacular of the visual, but it is important to emphasize that learning through prolonged observation can occur through all the senses” (Tishman 2). Unlike mindfulness, a state of being that also draws our focus to the present moment, we slow look with the intent to gain knowledge. Tishman’s book, bolstered by findings from her educational research, walks us through slow looking strategies and the positive impact slow looking makes in educational settings. Slow looking goes hand-in-hand with discovery learning, the process of learning through exploration and inquiry. Discovery learning is more engaging than a teacher explaining new concepts, and students better remember content when they construct an individualized understanding of the material.

Slow Looking in Action

Art is a natural setting for slow looking. Practice on the artwork below. You might ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I see? What do I think about what I see? How do I feel about what I see?

• What did I notice first? What did I notice after looking for a while?

• What words come to mind as I look?

• What more would I like to know about the artwork?

• Do small parts create the big picture?

• Does this remind me of something else?

• How do I think this artwork was created? Were elements added in a certain order?

Ruth Asawa, Desert Plant, 1965

Using Slow Looking as a Springboard for musical Improvisation

In a musical context, slow looking helps us understand the elements of music, their functions, and their purposes. Students train their brains to notice the layers and details that comprise a tapestry of sound. Slow looking lends itself well to two activities that have been met with enthusiasm in my studio: telling a story through music and improvising or composing new music using ideas from an existing piece. I’ve found that combining these two activities is an effective way to encourage students not only to listen slowly but also to improvise with less inhibition. By placing parameters—like improvising using rhythmic or tonal patterns we discovered through slow looking—students can improvise with clarity and confidence.

Part One: Introduction to a new piece

To encourage students to think about character and mood, perform a piece with the title hidden and have them guess what it might be about. Students use the practice of slow looking to find patterns and identify how the elements of music (e.g. melody, harmony, form, texture, dynamics) are at play in a given piece.

Next, we compare the title they brainstormed with the original title. It’s amazing how well students capture the essence of a piece! For example, “Floating,” “Dreaming,” “Soaring,” “Kite Flying,” and “Skating” are all common titles students give to “Gliding” by Elvina Truman Pearce. After thinking about the title, we learn the piece as the composer intended. Learning by rote is a natural opportunity for slow looking because listening is a crucial part of the learning process.

Part Two: Use the Title to Create a New Story

These are real-life examples from a recent lesson in which we studied “Gliding” by Elvina Truman Pearce. We slow listened to the piece to identify patterns and other characteristics, then learned to play it. In the following lesson, we did a creative activity.

I started by asking the following questions:

• Who or what is gliding?

• Where are they going? Why?

My student decided that Link from the Legend of Zelda was using his glider to travel to Kakariko Village to see Impa (another game character).

Then, I elaborated with these questions:

• Are they close, or in the distance?

• Does anything happen along the way?

• When in the music do they arrive at their destination?

The observations the student made through slow looking appeared in many of his answers. For example, he decided that Link was far in the distance because the piece started softly and that the dotted half-notes in measures 5-6 (see below) sounded like the giant footsteps of monsters.

Finally, we thought about what musical aspects we might change to fit the story. This is what the student added:

• he played mm. 5-6 loudly to signify the monsters

• he added a ritardando in the last measure to show that Link was slowing down and landing gracefully

Part Three: Use Patterns to Improvise and Compose

These are the patterns this particular student identified:

• The melody alternates between the CDE group on the white keys and a group of three black keys.

• C’s, D’s, and E’s (white keys) are played as single notes while the black keys are struck together.

• The melody always goes up.

• Each phrase sounds like one upward line.

• The hands work together to create the melody. Each hand is equally important.

The student then began improvising music by experimenting with note groups. I find that students are naturally inclined to create an “opposite” version of the piece they deconstruct. For example, this student began by playing the same melodic and rhythmic patterns but in a descending motion. From there, he more freely improvised using those patterns as inspiration.

The benefits of taking a slow look

Through her research on slow looking, Tishman identified four themes that appeared in students’ slow looking practices. Seeing with fresh eyes (interacting with the familiar as if newly discovered), exploring perspective (looking at things from multiple viewpoints), noticing detail (allowing observations to unfold from broad to specific) are three themes that deal with how students observed their surroundings. A fourth theme was philosophical well-being—students reported that slow looking reminded them of the important things in life. Students also noted that experiencing nature at a slow pace promoted a sense of well-being.

““When you look for a while, you become aware of how a thing might look to somebody else; you also become aware of your own lens...students come to an understanding of the multi-perspectival nature of knowing things in our world.” ”

— Shari Tishman

Perhaps most importantly, slow looking intensifies the extramusical qualities that music lessons instill: an appreciation of beauty, an awareness of oneself and others, the ability to problem-solve thoughtfully and deliberately, and a willingness to slow down and see the goodness that surrounds us.

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More Resources

Tishman, S. (2018). Slow looking: The art and practice of learning through observation. Routledge. 

Thinking Strategies that Support Slow Looking

The Art of Slow Looking in the Classroom

Out of Eden

Project Zero

In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore

Slow Looking by Peter Clothier

Slow Looking How-Tos by the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Perfect Practice: Part 2

Five More Strategies for Successful Practicing

Positivity is Contagious

Approaching practice with excitement and positivity is crucial. There will be days that you don’t feel like helping your child practice. There will be days where your child doesn’t feel like practicing. These days might even overlap! Nonetheless, as adults, we are tasked with creating and controlling the practice atmosphere. Announcing that it’s time to practice with a friendly—not demanding or nagging—tone is a good place to start.

Although part of piano practice is identifying and correcting mistakes, it’s also important to focus on what the student is doing well. While I don’t recommend undue praise as a way to motivate or lift spirits, it’s a good idea to keep a healthy positivity/negativity ratio: for every constructive criticism, try to mention two areas in which the student is excelling in a given practice session.

Avoid Mirroring Tension

Sometimes, tension will build in at-home practice sessions. Perhaps your child is reluctant to practice altogether, or is frustrated with challenging parts of their assignment. It’s important to not greet your child’s tension with more tension. Adults are responsible for identifying and diffusing tension; young children do not always have the emotional regulation skills to do this themselves. Diffusing tension may including pausing for a moment to tell joke and have a laugh, offering praise for effort if the student is working diligently on something challenging, or keeping communication open by having the student evaluate their own work. What do they feel is the hardest part of a particular practice session? In what areas do they feel like they are excelling?

Be Fair and Follow Through

To feel safe, communicate openly, and be freely creative, students need to trust that their teachers will not give them more than they can handle, hold them to unrealistic standards, or be inappropriately picky. The same is true for at-home practice, where the parent temporarily becomes the teacher. Avoid asking the student to do more than is listed on the weekly assignment, and be consistent with requests—it isn’t fair to have a student play a passage ten times if five times was the agreement. When children feel like they are being treated fairly, they will be more likely to put in more effort.

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Deep Dive: Give Rewards—But Know How to Use Them

Although I do not use studio-wide incentives that reward practicing on a regular basis, it’s fine if parents choose to reward practice. Using rewards without considering how they impact motivation, however, has the potential to be problematic. In the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink discusses the psychology of rewards, including their potential pitfalls. Two main categories of rewards are discussed: If-Then rewards, and Now-That rewards.

• If-Then rewards are given upon completion of a task (e.g., if you do this task, then you will get XYZ Reward). They are usually anticipated by recipients.

• Now-That rewards are also given upon completion of a task, but they are usually a surprise and do not incentivize completion itself; instead, Now-That rewards recognize less-concrete qualities like good effort, divergent thinking, and focus.

If-Then rewards ultimately stifle creativity and inhibit deep thinking. This is because the focus is on the short term and the reward itself—it’s like chasing a carrot on a stick. Pink also explains how If-Then rewards can deflate motivation: “If-Then rewards require people for forfeit some of their autonomy…And that can spring a hole in the bottom of their motivation bucket, draining an activity of its enjoyment” (36). When an enjoyable task becomes a job, our motivation to perform the task out of genuine excitement interest declines.

If-Then rewards are also hard to maintain because they are anticipated by recipients, who come to then expect rewards upon completion of similar tasks. Pink notes, “…before long, the existing reward may no longer suffice. It will quickly feel less like a bonus and more like the status quo—which then forces [the use] of larger rewards to achieve the same effect” (53).

Now-That rewards, on the other hand, foster intrinsic motivation because they allow students to see the relationship between their behavior and rewards. What do Now-That rewards look like in the context of piano lessons and practice? Here are a few examples:

• When the student accomplishes their practice goals before their practice session is finished, reward their focus and effort by allowing some time for games via music apps. Explain that the surprise app time is a result of their focus.

• When the student successfully uses visual aids included in their take-home pouch (e.g., fuzzies, picture cards), reward them with some fun, affordable manipulatives like Iwako erasers or finger puppets. Mention that since they know how to use those aids so well, you got them some new, cool ones!

• When the student uses practice strategies independently, reward their ownership with a treat.

Because they are a surprise, Now-That rewards should always be followed up by explaining why the reward was given—this will get the student eager to show off their good attitude and effort in the future!

What I Don’t Use as Rewards

I personally avoid using creative and improvisatory tasks as rewards in any context. I believe that these activities are inherent parts of music-learning, not fun embellishments to be added as a treat or taken away as negative reinforcement.

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Thank you for reading this long-overdue addition to my Perfect Practice series! For more a in-depth look at rewards and motivation, I recommend reading Daniel Pink’s book or giving this episode of Ashley Danyew’s podcast, Field Notes on Music Teaching & Learning, a listen.

Untitled Goose Game and the Magic of Reactive Soundtracks

It’s a lovely morning in the village, and you’re a horrible goose.

That is, in a nutshell, the premise of Untitled Goose Game, a “slapstick-stealth-sandbox” puzzle game released by House House in 2019. The player assumes the role of a goose, who uses its limited physical abilities and the manipulation of objects within its world to unlock achievements—all of which involve pestering unsuspecting townspeople.

Le honk.

While the gameplay is relatively straightforward, Untitled Goose Game’s dynamic soundtrack offers an interesting take on music and mood. Rather than composing an original soundtrack, the game developers borrowed selections from Claude Debussy’s Préludes (which are now in the public domain). Elements of urgency, surprise, movement, and mischief are infused into the existing music by altering its tempo, pulse, volume, and register. Composer Dan Golding describes the creative process in an interview with Paul Dougherty of Zoneout:

There are two performances of every Prélude on the soundtrack – one version that is similar to how you’d typically hear the music performed, and another which is slower and has lower energy. Both of these performances are chopped up into about 300 to 400 short fragments, each between one and three seconds long, that are queued to trigger in order.

The game then chooses which of the two versions to trigger depending on what the player is doing. And if the player is doing nothing, the soundtrack remains silent.

The game is comprised of five settings within an English village, each featuring a Prélude: The Garden (Minstrels*), High Street (Les Collines de Anacapri), the Back Gardens (Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq. P. P. M. P. C.), The Pub (Le serenade interrompue), and the Model Village (Feux d’Artifice).

The differences between the original Préludes and their modified versions are most pronounced upon entering each world, when the goings on in the game are still relatively low-energy. Minstrels, for example, has a sense of ambiguity achieved by exaggerating Debussy’s instructions to hold back (cédez, which translates literally as “give up”) after each four-bar phrase. Golding expands upon this by hesitating between each 5-1 movement in the bass line (Example 1), momentarily denying our ears resolution.

Example 1 Minstrels

Similarly, when comparing the standard Les collines d’Anacapri to its in-game counterpart, the most obvious adaptation is the tempo, which Golding has dramatically reduced. The register has been altered, too. The opening figures have been raised an octave in some instances and lowered by an octave in others. The cumulative result is a contemplative mood reflective of a sleepy village yet to endure the goose’s undoing.

Example 2 Les collines d’Anacapri: changes made to register in Golding’s low-energy interpretation are marked in red.

The phrasing in Golding’s low-energy interpretation is, in places, nearly inverse of the original. The first climax (m. 21) is treated as more of an afterthought than a point of arrival, trailing away in both pulse and volume (not unlike a distracted goose). The dotted-sixteenth thirty-second motive (seen in m. 17 and throughout the piece), on the other hand, is voiced more emphatically than is typical, lending a sense of playful clumsiness (also not unlike a distracted goose).

Example 3 Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq. P. P. M. P. C.: m. 17 shows the dotted-sixteenth thirty-second note motive that recurs throughout the piece; Debussy’s instructions for the climax in m. 21.

Le serenade interrompue: A Deep Dive

Le serenade interrompue, aside from a relaxed tempo, remains relatively unchanged until measure 62, when a caesura is added before a syncopated melody begins. Meant to imitate a Spanish guitar—Debussy’s instructions state quasi guitarra, or “like a guitar”—the texture and articulation suggest strumming (mm. 21-23) and plucking (the ostinato beginning in m. 25). However, when performed under tempo with a heavier articulation, the ostinato becomes bumbling and pervasive (again, not unlike a distracted goose).

Example 4 Le serenade interrompue, with a strummed texture in the first system and a plucked texture in the next system.

This Prélude is perhaps the most overtly programmatic of those used in the game’s soundtrack. It tells the story of one lover serenading another—but with interruptions that come not only through abrupt, brief changes in harmony and dynamics (mm. 46-49), but also through prolonged changes in style (mm. 80-84, and again in mm. 87-89). The longer “interruption” passages sound like background music within the musical world: yet another thing with which the guitarist must compete. In the context of the game, another layer of storytelling is added through the interrupting goose. Even without modifications, Le serenade interrompue tells a story.

Example 5 Le serenade interrompue: The harmony changes abruptly from an acoustic collection (-3) to unrelated half-diminished chords, which might be interpreted a few different ways (that is beyond the scope of this blog post). Nonetheless, measures 46-47 are a clear interruption—not only through harmony, but also through volume and texture.

Example 6 Le serenade interrompue: Measures 80-84, clearly in D major, feature a march-like style not seen in any other section of the piece—the guitarist is competing with other music within his world. His sentiment toward this more prolonged interruption shows in mm. 85-86, marked Rageur (furious). Golding’s interpretation places this interruption two octaves higher.

While exploring the individual alterations to each piece is interesting, it’s the instantaneous change in affect enabled by the juxtaposition of the altered and original versions that make the magic of the soundtrack. The player never hears the same combination of versions twice during gameplay.

Though Debussy’s Préludes seem to have been chosen for the soundtrack by chance, the way Debussy handles titling the compositions makes them a striking fit for a reactive soundtrack. Although Debussy gives interpretive instructions on the score—sometimes using standard musical terminology, but sometimes using descriptive phrases unique to a particular Prélude—no title is revealed until the end of the piece. This allows the listener to subjectively submerse themselves in the melodic, harmonic, textural, and even timbral elements that Debussy combines to create a soundscape. What we ultimately find to be titled Le serenade interrompue (“The Interrupted Serenade”) may have evoked different images for different listeners.

What does a terrible goose have to do with piano pedagogy?

I have always found movie and video game soundtracks to be of pedagogical value, especially if they are already of particular interest to students. What can we learn from reactive soundtracks? These are some thoughts that came to mind as I compared the Untitled Goose Game soundtrack to standard performances of the Préludes:

• What effect does register, specifically, have on mood? Could students create a sense of atmosphere using only one pitch in different registers? This might be a great starting point for students who are overwhelmed by improvising.

• What elements do composers manipulate to create different moods?

• How would the mood of a piece change if we played certain elements—dynamics, articulations, tempo markings—oppositely? Taking a trip to what my young students and I call “Opposite Land” can also be a good way to make students more sensitive to a piece’s intended markings.

• How do we know what a piece could be about without using the title as an influence?

It’s worth noting that we can give any piece the “Debussy treatment” by covering its title and having students imagine what the piece might be about—then compare their title to the original one. We can also turn any piece into the soundtrack to a story we create ourselves. Sonata-Allegro form, with themes of contrasting affect in the exposition and harmonic exploration in the development, lends itself especially well to storytelling. In smaller-scale teaching pieces like sonatinas (or other forms that don’t typically have imaginative titles) we might:

• Associate dynamic levels or major/minor sonorities with a particular character.

• Imagine different characters for the right and left hands.

• Use formal sections to guide the story.

Storytelling through music is a topic of its own, but I found it impossible to discuss a reactive soundtrack (music to fit an ever-changing story) without at least touching upon the pedagogical tool of narrative (creating a story to fit music).

Although the soundtrack to Untitled Goose Game happens to be classical, I hope that this blog post provokes some thought about the value of video game music—in the Western classical tradition or otherwise—and its potential as a creative tool.

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* Debussy’s Minstrels alludes to minstrelsy (defined by Oxford Languages as the form of entertainment associated with minstrel shows, featuring songs, dances, and formulaic comic routines based on stereotyped depictions of black Americans and typically performed by white actors with blackened faces). This is no doubt problematic, and it’s necessary to discuss how to handle repertoire like this. An obvious option is to boil the piece down to its technical components and select a different piece with similar pedagogical concepts. Another option for Debussy’s music, specifically, is to give the student power over the piece by having them listen to it and create their own title. Since Debussy placed the title of each Prélude at the end, taking such liberty is not only appropriate, but encouraged.

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

The Art of Marking Music

Yes, it’s an actual skill!

Marking music with purpose and clarity makes for more efficient lessons and practicing. Perfecting this art has been an ongoing goal of mine.

The Issue

Piano teachers are in a constant race against time—there’s so much content to fit in during the 30-60 minutes per week that we see a given student. I am in never-ending pursuit of spending less time talking and writing down assignments and more time making music! My quest to find the most effective way to mark scores is motivated by two questions that I’ve found myself repeatedly asking over the course of my career: “I marked this mistake on my sheet music—why am I (or why is my student) still making it?” and “Are assignment sheets actually useful? How can they be made more practical?”

Why do we mark our music, anyways?

A marking is a call to action—there’s something we want our students to do, and marking their music is a way of getting them to do it. The marks my students and I make usually fall into distinct categories, and sometimes the categories overlap. These categories are not something I thought of before using them; they are borne from reflection on my teaching. Some examples include:

• To analyze

• To encourage phrasing

• To prevent mistakes

• To reinforce a new concept

• To give meaning to an abstract concept

• To guide practice

How Students Interact with Their Scores

I also think of markings as existing on two independent spectrums: passive vs. active and fixed vs. flexible. The former describes the way students interact with a marking when it’s made (usually during their lesson), and the latter describes how students interact with a marking over time (usually during independent practice).

Fixed markings aren’t necessarily better than flexible ones (or vice versa). However, I almost always consider active markings to be better teaching tools than passive ones. It is easy to pinpoint issues and mark them for students to save time, but this passive approach doesn’t provide students with much ownership of their music. It has been my experience that an active approach—when students engage with their scores and make their own marks—ultimately results in greater understanding and retention.

Fixed and flexible markings function exactly how they sound. Fixed marks go on the page and stay on the page—think of circling or highlighting accidentals, denoting formal sections, or marking harmonic events. Flexible marks live and breathe with the student, allowing them to track progress. They are moveable, removable, stackable—the list goes on. I like to use removable highlighter tape, but I have also used erasable colored pencils. The goal is that flexible markings be eye-catching, engaging, and fun.

Glenn Gould’s score to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. (Source)

More About Flexible Markings

I anticipate that most musicians are familiar with fixed markings. Flexible markings, however, probably warrant more explanation. They are great for denoting:

• sudden dynamic changes

• sudden position changes

• practice strategies for particular sections of music

• errors made in a run-through of a piece

• places where memory slips occurred if a student is working toward memorization

In these situations, I use flexible markings for a few reasons:

• The tape can be removed when the student solves a problem. Errors can also be highlighted again in another color to show that a concept still needs another week of practice. Asking students if they think the tape is ready to be removed also sets the tone for self-evaluation.

• Visual clutter doesn’t accumulate over the weeks. Students won’t likely practice the same way each week; practice techniques can be swapped in and out.

• I can spend less time writing down instructions in a practice notebook and more time teaching.

• Students love taking ownership of their scores by choosing colors and applying tape on their own. Even my high schoolers enjoy picking the week’s tape color.

• There is no way to “forget” practice suggestions when they are adhered to the score with fluorescent tape. ;)

How does this relate to practicing?

If we expect students to practice independently, these conditions must be met:

• The teacher has shown the student how to practice their material in the lesson.

• The student has successfully replicated the practice techniques more than once in the lesson, under teacher supervision.

• There is a clear, concise explanation of these techniques where the student can review them, like a practice notebook—or, better yet, right on the score where they can’t be ignored.

Therefore, thoughtful, intentional, and dynamic markings that extend the practice notebook onto the score in an engaging way can be considered a student motivator. When we know what to do and how to do it, we’re more likely to take action.

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Examples

Burgmüller Op. 100, No. 9: The Chase

Here, we have a few flexible markings that outline which practice technique to use in specific passages.

O.F. = on the fallboard

G.P. = ghost practicing

S/P = stop/prepare

I don’t always use abbreviations, especially with younger students. Practice technique shortcuts like these are only useful if the student knows what they mean and how to execute them, so I write more detailed instructions in an assignment book, if necessary. Many of the nicknames I use for practice techniques are from Piano Safari’s Practice Strategy Cards. Students can buy their own and print the cards on cardstock for under $8.

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Kabalevsky Op. 27 No. 13: A Little Joke

Since different practice techniques will be used to master the rapid position changes and left-hand speed and clarity, this passage is a great place to use flexible markings.

B.P. = blocked practice, with circled notes practiced together in a “block” to aid with the rapid position changes in the notorious B section of this piece.

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Rachmaninoff Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32 No. 12

I wanted to include an example using fixed markings to illustrate the potential for creativity; fixed markings don’t have to be passive circles on the score. Here, I’ve quantified the gradual crescendo (an otherwise abstract concept) that begins in the first measure of this page. This activity is a great opportunity for advanced students to listen to recordings of concert pianists, observe the artists’ varying interpretive decisions about the crescendo, and decide for themselves how and when the volume will increase in their personal interpretation of the piece.

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The Takeaway

• The marks we make on our scores can be active or passive, fixed or flexible.

• Categorizing markings allows us to be more specific, making practicing easier for our students because they know precisely what to do and how to do it.

• Students should mark scores themselves whenever possible. Older students may also write their assignments down in their assignment books.

• Flexible markings extend the assignment notebook onto the score in an interesting way. They also allow students to self-assess and see their progress.