When my daughter was taking piano lessons, I would occasionally eavesdrop on her daily piano practice. And I noticed that one of her recurring practice habits was the tendency to repeat a tricky passage only as many times as it took to get it right just once.
Sometimes I’d poke my head out into the hall and suggest that she try it again. To see if she really did fix the problem, or just got lucky.
And sometimes she’d give it another go – but usually she’d just continue to play on and make her “I can’t hear you” face… 😂
Which brings up an interesting question.
Specifically, is it ok to move on after we’ve gotten a passage right once? And maybe come back to it later?
Like, what if I told my daughter to do 10 repetitions of a tricky sequence in measure 85, with the goal of playing that section at tempo without missing any notes, and she nails it on the third try. Should she do 7 more repetitions just because? Or should she move on?
Conversely, what if she gets to the 10th repetition, and she still hasn’t gotten it right? Should she stick with it for a while longer until she gets it correct at least once? Or move on and come back to it later?
Adaptive practicing?
One approach to practice that has gotten some research attention in recent years is the win-shift/lose-stay (WSLS) approach. This is more flexible than a traditional blocked or random schedule (more on this in a moment), because the number of repetitions you do is dependent on your performance. When you perform the skill successfully, you move on. When you don’t, you try it again.
Which means that on an easier skill, it might take you 3 repetitions to get it right. On a more difficult skill, you might need 10 (or 20 or 30) repetitions.
In theory, this makes some sense. Because you’d be adapting your practice to the skills that need the most work, and devoting your time accordingly. Instead of spending excess time and repetitions on passages that don’t need a lot of work.
So a group of researchers were curious to compare this to the effects of blocked and random practice.
Wait – what is blocked and random practice?
Blocked vs random practice
The gist, is that blocked practice involve practicing a single skill a bunch of times before moving onto the next skill. Like 6 repetitions of passage A, then 6 reps of passage B, and 6 reps of passage C (i.e. AAAAAA BBBBBB CCCCCC).
Random (or “interleaved”) practice, on the other hand, would involve alternating between several skills a little more frequently, like 2 repetitions of passage A, then 2 reps of passage B, and 2 reps of passage C, and then A again, B again, C again, and so on (i.e. AABBCC AABBCC AABBCC).
The benefit of blocked practice is that you generally achieve a higher level of performance during practice. But, there’s a tendency for those practice gains to fade away, so you don’t perform quite as well when you’re tested a day (or week) later.
With random practice, on the other hand, your gains during practice tend to be more modest. However, more of those practice gains stick, and you generally see higher levels of performance (compared to blocked practice) when tested some time later.
(If you’d like to get more into the nitty gritty details of this, you can read more about random or interleaved practice in a pair of guest posts by clarinetist Christine Carter right here and here.)
A study!
So going back to the study, a team of researchers recruited 36 volunteers with about a year of basketball experience (Porter, Greenwood, Panchuk, & Pepping, 2019).
They were randomly assigned to one of three training groups – a blocked group, a random group, and a learner-adapted group.
Everyone started out with a baseline test of 20 shots. This involved taking five shots from each of four different locations on the court (L1, L2, L3, L4 below), in random order. Each location was from a different distance, and a different angle to the basket, which added to the difficulty of each shot.
A few weeks of practice
Over the next few weeks, the participants had six practice sessions, where they practiced shooting from the same four locations. Everyone took the same number of practice shots over the six practice sessions – 60 per practice session.
But the structure of their practice sessions was quite different.
The blocked group, for instance, took 15 consecutive practice shots at a single location before moving on to the next spot.
The random group, on the other hand, switched locations after every shot, following a predetermined random order.
The learner-adapted group followed the same random order as the random group – but instead of moving to a new location after each shot, they switched locations only if they made the shot. If they missed, they stayed put and kept practicing until the shot went in.
Three tests
After their sixth and final practice session, they took another test, just like the first one, with 5 shots from each of the 4 locations.
And to see how stable their improvements were, everyone retook the shooting test a week later.
In addition, they were asked to take 10 shots from the free throw line – to see if their improved shooting skills would transfer to a shot that they hadn’t practiced.
So which of these three types of practice strategies worked best?
Results
Well, as a whole, the participants did improve over the course of training.
But there were some important differences between the groups.
Learner-adapted
The learner-adapted group, for instance, performed well on the “transfer” test – making a higher percentage of shots from the free throw line than they did on shots in their baseline test.
However, their shooting percentage on the shots that they actually practiced stayed mostly unchanged from the first test to the last.
Blocked
The blocked group, on the other hand, not only performed significantly better on the transfer test of free throws, but improved their performance on the other shots as well.
Random
Meanwhile, the random group improved their shooting percentage on the primary shooting test, but not on the free throw test.
Yeesh, that’s quite the range of results. So what are we to make of this?
Takeaways
Well, the study is a little tricky to interpret, because the participants weren’t skilled basketball players, and shooting a basketball is a pretty complex skill.
So it’s very possible that the results would have been a little different if the study looked at more advanced players, who were honing or refining already well-developed skills, instead of practicing relatively new and undeveloped skills.
Nevertheless, I think there are still a few key things we could take away from the findings.
Takeaway #1
The learner-adapted WSLS approach may not be the best strategy for learning new skills.
Why?
Well, for one, having to move on just as you finally perform a skill correctly may make it difficult for the little adjustments you made to really sink in. It’d be like struggling to get a shift in tune, and as soon as you do, having to move on to the next item on your to-do list instead of taking a few more repetitions to reflect on what just happened, and verify what you might have done right.
This approach could also lead you to accumulate a greater percentage of “incorrect” repetitions relative to “correct” repetitions. Which may ultimately reinforce those incorrect habits more strongly into muscle memory than the correct habits.
You can read a piano study which illustrates why this ratio matters so much right here. And check out a podcast episode which elaborates further on how to maximize your correct-to-incorrect repetition ratio here.
Takeaway #2
Blocked practice, on the other hand, might be the more effective strategy in the early stages of learning a skill.
Because whether it means allotting a certain amount of time, or a certain number of repetitions to a particular passage, blocked practice would give you time to get a “feel” for the section, and get the notes into your fingers. It also gives you an opportunity to experiment more freely. And you could potentially build a higher ratio of correct to incorrect repetitions, since you’re not forced to move on to a different section right when you start to get the hang of things.
Indeed, the research on “overlearning” suggests that there can be benefits to doing multiple repetitions past the point of achieving success.
And the researchers themselves wondered if it may have been more effective to have participants move on after two consecutive successful attempts, rather than just one successful attempt. Much like in music education professor James Byo’s “work place” practice method.
Takeaway #3
Once your new skills become more reliable, blocked practice, and practicing the same thing over and over may become less helpful.
And perhaps this is where random practice and even the win-shift/lose-stay approach could be most helpful. When you get to the point where you no longer need as many repetitions to reach the desired level of performance.
Because at that stage of learning, the goal of practice isn’t so much to develop new skills, but to practice retrieving those skills on demand. And interleaved (aka random) practice can help enhance your ability to play a passage exactly the way you want the first time, not the 2nd or 3rd time.
The final takeaway
So at the end of the day, there may not be a single one-size-fits all “best” way to practice. Or a universal “ideal” number of repetitions that we should do.
Instead, the messy reality is that there are a variety of different strategies and tools that we can choose from. And the art of effective practice is knowing when to apply to the right strategy to the right problem at the right time. 😅
A book – and how you could shape it
This is one of the posts I plan to draw on for a book I’m considering. One aimed at addressing those oh-so-frustrating “but it sounded better at home” moments, with research-based guidance on how we can shrink the gap between how we sound in the practice room and how we sound on stage. The idea is short, focused chapters, each addressing a specific frustration, with concrete action steps.
The community is central to this project, as each chapter will close with real-world examples from students, teachers, and professional musicians – showing how the principle plays out in actual practice, performance, or teaching.
If you’ve applied any concepts from this post to your own practicing, performing, or teaching, and found them helpful, I’d love to hear your story. Like, how do you know when it’s time to move on? How do you help your students learn how to select the right practice strategy at the right time? What are the little “pro tips” related to this that you’ve discovered over the years? 😁
A short note is totally fine! Because if your story seems like a good fit, I’d love to set up a short conversation to hear more.
👉 Click here to email me your story
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Reference
Porter, C., Greenwood, D., Panchuk, D., & Pepping, G. J. (2020). Learner-adapted practice promotes skill transfer in unskilled adults learning the basketball set shot. European Journal of Sport Science, 20(1), 61–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2019.1611931
It was a long-standing need to stretch a straight line between sport- and music psychology. However, not everything is completely consistent with one another; in particular, age groups. How many novice basketball players at the age of 65 do you know? And how many pianists? With the aging process, significant individual changes occur that do not fall under the routine of the methodology for the age of 6-13 years. However, retired novices who finally have free time to fulfill their musical dreams would also like to know something about the methods and statistics of progress at their age.
Actually , we are talking about direction of geronto -pianism .
People are not machines. Over and over our modern life seems to tell us that we are machines. We are, instead, complex biological individuals. Because of this reality, there can never be a “one size fits all” approach that is effective in making change. My theory is that the most successful musicians are listening closely not only to the music, but also processing the music through a highly refined sense of awareness of their body. When the music and body demand something different from the skills they have already acquired, these people are sensitive and agile to the necessary changes that are required. In other words, we must continually learned to focus and pay attention.
People are not machines. The GIGO computer adage (“garbage in, garbage out”) seems to apply, though, to practicing then performing. Sometimes I do find myself reading about music performance more than actually getting my hands on the instrument – weighing the pig, so to speak, more than feeding it. Dr. Kageyama’s articles are extremely informative; I have incorporated many takeaways to apply to the practice room and the stage. His weighing the pig gives it better nutrition!
Started playing double bass at 68.
There is a famous quote that has been attributed to various pedagogues over the past century: “The amateur practices until he gets it right. The professional practices until he can’t get it wrong.” That’s always been my goal. A critic once wrote that pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was no more capable of playing a wrong note than a bullet once fired could change its trajectory, so solidly in command was he.
Thanks for the reminders to not settle for mediocrity in our practice.
This set of methodologies are missing the point. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. If you continue to fail to play a passage correctly, you will have to unlearn the errors before you can play it correctly when it counts. Practicing a passage until you can play it correctly once is woefully inadequate when you have failed to play it correctly many times before succeeding. If you fail to play a passage correctly, either break it down into smaller groups of notes, or slow it down until you can play it without error, or both. Then gradually speed it up and/or string the elements together.
I find it’s all just about finding the time to practice!
If I had been in the learner adapted group, I would probably have spent the first 39 shots of 60 at the first location, and the other 11 at the second. I would have then done miserably on the test. I am short and old, and always was terrible at basketball. Having people like me in the study would have skewed it!
To me, the most important takeaway is this: if you are having trouble with a passage in music, try all three! One might have better results with one passage using one technique, and it is different the next time. (And of course one needs to be a fabulous listener to catch the spots! It usually is more complex that yes or no like basketball.)
For learning a specific technique such as spiccato, I don’t see how anything other than repetition will improve it.
Great article!
One key takeaway for me is that discipline plays a crucial role, no matter which method we choose.
Simply getting a passage right once isn’t enough; we need the discipline to reinforce it until it becomes second nature.