related
The Secret to Gaining Practice Momentum
Guitar Essentials: Faith and Constancy
Guitar Yin and Yang
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Many of my guitar students want to know how much they should practice. The answer is that while infrequent, spotty practice doesn’t work well, too much practice is also ineffective, and often counter-productive.
Focus First
I learned this principle of practice and learning from the famous classical guitarist and teacher Alice Artzt during a summer of private lessons. She pointed out that learning and mastery on the instrument happens in very small increments, and it is only possible to make modest progress each day. So we should structure practice sessions to address each item of repertoire and technique that needs attention until a step or two forward is made, and repeat those steps several times in order to burn them in to both procedural and conceptual memory.
Walk Away
After practicing each item in this way, leave it and go on to the next item on your list. Walking away from practice at the right time is difficult, because we have a notion of how much we want or expect to achieve. But when we stay doggedly with a practice too long we experience diminishing returns. What we’ve learned has not been consolidated, so it’s impossible to build upon it. Trying anyway, we often see the gains we’ve made deteriorate. Frustrations arise, we push even harder, and the quality of our focus and the precision of our practice breaks down. At this point practice is not only a waste of time, it is doing harm.
Go to Sleep
The reason we need to move on after a small amount of progress is the crucial role of sleep in learning. During sleep our brain reviews the day’s events, both in real time and very rapidly. It filters those events, consolidating what is deemed important, but not what is trivial. This is why on the day following practice we often find that what we worked on comes more easily. We can build on our practice of the day before because what we learned has been consolidated and stabilized during sleep.
Come Back Daily
While the larger aspects of what we learned are consolidated during sleep, subtle discoveries that occur in practice are tossed out during the process of filtering. This is why it is so important to practice daily. Practice on Tuesday following practice on Monday reminds one of very subtle points which emerged Monday but receded during sleep. But after two nights of sleep with no practice between, these recollections recede beyond recovery.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
To achieve peak efficiency in your practice, practice daily, and work on each item that needs attention until you make a small amount of progress and repeat that progress several times. Move on from each item to the next, secure in the knowledge that you will return to each and reap the full benefit of your practice tomorrow. After a week of daily small, consolidated gains, your accumulated progress will be significant.
related
The Secret to Gaining Practice Momentum
Guitar Practice Essentials: Faith and Constancy
Guitar Yin and Yang
© 2012 Brenna Method