Something better than repetition?

[Bob]

I have a piece now that is well within my technique.  No problem there.

But I notice the most efficient way of practice seems to be to just repeat the thing a few times each day.  It's not something I want to spend much time on.  Not worth it.

And there aren't really any problem spots.  No sections that repeat in the piece, or if there are, I'm not doing the repeats during my practicing.

But I'm noticing... I'm just repeating the thing over and over.  And it works.  It's gets the job done.  I wonder if there's something better though.

And I thought back... Most of my practicing in past has been basically repetition.  If it's a hard spot, it's just gets repetition at a slower tempo and in smaller pieces.  But it's still repetition.

Is there anything better than repetition?  

Or are there any other ways?  I can still analyze the piece and study it, but when I need to be able to play it, it's still just repetition to get that done.

[ramseytheii]

Richter said, in the book published by Bruno Monsaingeon, that the way he learned a piece was to play it over and over.  Then he said, that that was stupid, but it was what he did anyways.

Walter Ramsey

[jgallag]

Search the board for posts by bernhard. You're right, though, repetition, since you appear to be playing the piece the correct way (after all, there are no errors) will work just fine. Maybe, though, you might be repeating more than you need to. I'm not saying you're repeating too much, but you're probably at the stage where you could free up more time to learn new material.

Repetition is a big part of how the brain works (There are faster things, too, but all methods include repetition). See, the way nerves work you could view it like pouring water down a sandy bank. At first, you must guide it to make sure that it goes the way you want. But after, the canal gets deep enough to the point where the water doesn't stray, and all you need to do is pour it in the basin at the beginning to get it to trickle down your path. So it seems to be with nerves. It appears as though, provided something has been repeated enough times, all you have to do is stimulate the nerves at the beginning of the chain, and the rest will fire as desired.

The only true problem with repetition is when the student does not know the correct way to execute the action. After all, the brain is neutral, it won't stop working just because you did it the wrong way. So, if you ingrain the incorrect actions, you are shooting yourself in the foot, because it's very hard to reprogram these neural pathways. From what you say, though, you're happy with what you have. I'd say you don't even need to play it every day anymore, maybe just once a week or even once a month.

[Bob]

The situations I've found myself in....

Easy music, but I don't want to invest anything in it and I want my brainpower available for other things during the day.  So I play through the easy piece three times each day.  Little effort, little attention.  Gets the job done.

For more difficult music, I notice it's still repetition.  It's just breaking things into pieces or going slower for awhile.


The only way to speed things up more is to put more mental energy into it.  Focus more during practice, anaylze the piece more (and hopefully have that analysis instantly available so I can 'read' the analaysis while playing), or put energy into developing skills to be able to take in more of what's in the music.  I'm wondering what to focus more attention on though.  Each element of the music I suppose.  If it's some crude raw attention being thrown at the piece, then focus on any element is more effective than just playing mindlessly.

[jgallag]

If it's some crude raw attention being thrown at the piece, then focus on any element is more effective than just playing mindlessly.

True, so what are you looking for? Do you want to know what to think about during a performance?

I'm assuming from the way you talk about your practice on difficult pieces that you have a sound technique. Are there any passages specifically that aren't working for you, no matter how much repetition you do? Is everything you're playing up to performance speed?

You didn't ask one question in your last post. It might be easier for us to understand and help if you asked specific questions about what you are or would like to be doing.

[iroveashe]

With better, do you mean less boring or more efficient?

[Bob]

More efficient. 

Just thinking out loud, wondering if there's a faster way to learn a piece.  Instead of investing x-amount of time doing three repetitions a day, maybe I could just knock it out faster, get to the same level, by investing a little more mental energy. 

I just don't want to wear my mind out too much with something that isn't that important.  These pieces aren't.  And I have other things that do need my brainpower. 


I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this situation when I started this thread.  I think it's part of other issues in my practicing.  With these less important pieces, I was thinking I didn't want to waste time on them, just do some reps and that's that.  Then I started thinking... That's pretty much what I'm doing with "important" music, although there can be technical difficulties or more analysis, it's still a lot of repetition.

[lostinidlewonder]

Having good sight reading skills which allow you to be able to play phrases with 100% correct notes and fingering is probably one of the more important skills to avoid many repetitions.

Secondly one should find out the parts of a phrase in which they have to pause/slow down otherwise risk the chance of a fingering or note error. You should identify what causes this risk of error, demonstrate to yourself that you can do it without a pause, then move on.

Also I find it helpful to mark observations on your sheet music that allow you to understand portions of the piece at a time (eg: repetitive note patterns, transpositions, small changes). Most people section out their music into their parts, labeling them as A,B,C, (Ai, Aii etc if similar to part A). This allows us to immediately notice different sections of a piece when we look at the piece in its entirety. One can even go further by coloring in the music in a way which represents things that are important to you (whether it is mood, fingering, difficult passages, climaxes, etc). You certainly should highlight fingering which is at most risk of failure when sight reading the piece.

When practicing do not labor on expression too much. The expression sould be natural  and come from our ear, we must labour to master the technical and memory side of the piece. Once that is mastered the expression can be learnt much faster. To mix IMPROVEMENT to expression with note/memory learning in my opinion is inefficient. If you naturally have the expression that is good, but don't aim to shape and form it if your technical and memory issues are not completely dealt with.

At high levels of practice all you have to do is sight read your music over and over again and things automatically are learnt. However I think that we all can benefit from taking note of which tools allowed us to master passages faster. It also benefits yourself if you want to restudy a piece in the future if all your comments and solutions to problems are laid out for you to see. Some people keep it in their heads, but what gets written is much more longer lasting and can act as a catalyst to your progress if reworking pieces.

[quasimodo]

Except for a happy few highly skilled professionals, repetition is unavoidable; the real question is “What amount of repetition?”

I think mindless repetition, albeit a great tool for technique; is to avoid as far as mastering pieces is concerned. You may want to submit yourself to a test: pick one piece you think you know perfectly well and don’t play it for several weeks, months even. Then, one day go to the piano, and play it, no warm-up, just play the piece. Expectedly there will be glitches. If it’s just a few glitches on critical spots, that’s quite fine; but if you really play utter crap, you have a problem: the way you were repeating didn’t allow you to ingrain a sufficient amount of the piece. Then you need to develop something different in your approach of practice.

Namely, you need to exercise your brain so it can absorb more and more material within a limited amount of practice-time. You may want, then, to work on big works, not involving big technical challenges but long stuff: a 20+ mins sonata, something like that, so you actually won’t be able to repeat 3 times a day and that’ll force you to figure out “Something better than repetition”.