Sleep, age and memory consolidation

So, for @Animisha re whether there’s improvement from one day to the next…

You say you’ve never experienced that improvement from one day to the next, I assume you mean that dramatic improvement where something you couldn’t play yesterday, now today you can play it?

Or do you mean, you worked on something yesterday and over the course of the practice session, it got better, and then the next day they improvement seems to be gone and you have to work to get it back again?

If the latter, there are a few other things you might add to your practice routine and see if they help. (For anyone curious, I got a lot of these ideas from Piano Street way back when everyone on PW’s ABF was going over to Piano Street and getting tips from the poster Bernhard, or was it Bernard? And then posting his tips over at PW)

Anyway, say you’re trying to get a 4- or 8- measure passage into your fingers and you have a goal of MM=120.

So you practice it for 20-30 minutes, breaking it down, confirming the fingering etc. and then you spend some time slowly cranking up the metronome. By the end of your practice session, you can play it about 120, you turn off the metronome and you play through that passage and it’s quite nice, feels solid, and pretty close to the tempo you want.

You end your practice session, but when you sit down to play the next day, suddenly you can’t play it close to that tempo that you got to yesterday and some of the problems you worked out yesterday, problems that you thought you got rid of, are back.

Here is a trick to counter this kind of problem. Go back to yesterday’s practice session, do everything mostly the same except for how you end the session. At the end of the session, after you’ve got the passage up to mm=120, slow it down again before ending your practice session. Practice it through once or twice more, but v e r y . s l o w l y. And make that slow practice the last thing you do with that piece for the day.

That’s it, that’s the trick.

There seems to be something about doing this that helps cement the learning of that passage in your head. And at the next practice session, it’s much more likely that the gains you made the day before are still there, and you can still play it up to that tempo.

I used to do this all the time, and especially before a performance or recital, I would make sure the last thing I did at the end of a practice session was a very slow practice of the tricky passages or trouble spots.

I have gotten away from this because my needs have changed as I’ve gotten better, but actually, maybe I’ll add this back to my practice routine again. Esp since I’m going to be playing with a cellist soon and I may actually have a performance opportunity in November (which would be the first time since the pandemic!)

Anyway, @Animisha if you haven’t tried something like this, try it and let me know what you think.

Animisha My full question was: "What happens the next day when you practise again a passage that you practised yesterday? Do you see an improvement? "

I will answer this. Again, I've worked with these concepts for quite a while, and it took time to "get" some of the aspects.

Two elements are (i) 'practice' (the goals you're practising toward and how), (ii) improvement - what that means.

The goal in the short, focused practice sessions are reachable goals. You're not practising to "not make mistakes", which is a negative, or to "play correctly" or "play well" which are too broad and undefined. It's specific - these few bars, and what you're aiming for in those bars. A lot of my own goals are physical because of how I started and the debris still being cleared away.

Recently I worked on a two-measure passage in a Chopin etude that goes to my weaknesses. These two measures are an anomaly in the piece. In a flurry of 16th notes, the top of each set of 4 notes has to be loud, the others soft. My RH middle finger kept being too loud - because I was leaning on it to jump to the pinky , it turned out. So I invented an alternate rhythm, found better ways to use the hand, and practised that. My concept of pedal was wrong, so that was an isolated practice in the mini-sessions.

The broader goal, then, was to aim for a final tempo that wouldn't be what professionals can do (that's for another time), and to be able to play those two measures acceptably at that tempo. The SMALLER goals were to
(1) get the pedal timing right
(2) get the emphasized notes above the quiet notes - within the alternate rhythm
(3) on another day, can I do this with a normal rhythm

There were subgoals under those goals.

So to answer the question with that in mind:

"What happens the next day when you practise again a passage that you practised yesterday? Do you see an improvement? "

Yes, from one day to the next, these smallish and concrete goals were there for me the next day, to build on. The package contains all of that.
Since I record results often I can actually show this literally.

September 30 - rhythm, so as to solve the problem of pounding out the wrong notes (the previous day, not recorded, those other notes were way too loud. - 2 measures - the pedal timing was wrong however (to fix next day)
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bfb32bn23xd8xwrtq37i7/24.09.30-oceansTrial.mp3?rlkey=ol6etk5w36zd4d2d5m13lbfw1&st=vbzz2hhq&dl=0
October 1 - change pedal choices; when I went to practise this, what I had done the day before was "there for me", and I could build on it. RH alone - then HT added. The LH starts lagging in the 2nd half.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1humky9rrnt6sjmqpjs0b/24.10.01-Oc-again.mp3?rlkey=x5yxuol2ghfh6t7pzkkc5go25&st=vt0kyvpx&dl=0
October 2 - trying to apply this to normal rhythm. I could not get it quite at the same tempo as the rhythm-practice, but a fair bit faster when first testing this, and without middle notes blasting out. Solved the LH lag in that practice session, by looking to why & addressing it.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/unu8hs9jeu44k9hz7cbcd/24.10.03-Oc-that-section.mp3?rlkey=tuvqep1d8gx9njdnyd8kbcsne&st=x0jbxab9&dl=0

So over the course of three days, each day the thing I aimed for the previous day was there for me the next day and had gelled. Each day I could build on those things. It involved only 2 measures, and a difficult (for me) spot. By pure chance I happen to have recordings three days in a row.

ShiroKuro Did you come into this approach on your own, organically, or did you learn about it?

I ask because I'm reading Dr G's book, and what you described is exactly what she recommends in terms of goal setting for practice sessions.

I'm happy to answer that. The story starts 2006/7 - three years in from lessons on a new instrument, first time ever in lessons - I was in a mess. Things had gone way too fast (3 grades, one year), plus a poorish first instrument ruining technique, as much as I learned any. By then I needed major remediation and relearning just for physical playing. I'd started brilliantly: it had all collapsed. I started hunting for alternatives, first for this other instrument.

The first starts there: I got told by someone to practise first "like vanilla pudding" and add things like dynamics later. Another time I'd gone in circles with a piece for 2 months - one day turned my back on the piece: focused on "string crossings" (violin) for the whole week, and coming to the next lesson, the piece I'd not touched all week was suddenly much better. That impressed me. Then for a given piece I always got stuck on "bar 14" - literally stuck, my glued fingers couldn't raise. One day I decided to work only on "bar 14" - find out how to "unglue" my fingers - got smooth motion; practised bar 13 into 14 and on into 15. Then I made several copies of the score, and used coloured markers. Found all occasions that were like "bar 14" (modulations of the same thing), circled them -- found the 2nd-hardest thing - the 3rd-hardest thing. I practised these in isolation and felt guilty the whole time, that I had done a "sacrilege" to music by chopping it up. A few years later I discovered "that's what professionals do".

There was a stint for a period with a teacher informally back then and re: the physical remediation part, who vehemently hammered in the idea of short practice sessions - very opposed to the idea of long hours of repetition and similar; mindfulness, awareness of what you're doing. Also the fact that when we think we're still focusing, we might in fact have disengaged minds. Also, that true engagement, esp. for new things, can't be held on for long.

I also did research at the time. I learned that in CAT scans, if you do a thing that is totally unfamiliar (learning to read music will be unfamiliar - improving your music reading abilities along existing pathways won't be) then your entire brain lights up. Once familiar, there's a designated spot in the brain, only that part fires, so it's much less fatiguing.

Everything with that instrument and lessons stopped the end of 2007, and I also got a piano (DP) again after 3 decades. I had learned self-taught as a child so essentially was in the same situation of needing to remediate and relearn. My "reading music" from that time was weird and also needed redoing. I sought out the question of learning music, student-teacher work, practice etc. on PW which I joined. Met a teacher for whom 'how to practice' was a priority - some of what he was teaching beginners were quite like the "sacrilegious" things I had invented. It was a synergy of what I'd developed by then, and some new things, and explorations. I was also alert for these kinds of things once being aware of them. It's a fascination.

Jaak Sikk for example, when he started his program that was (still is?) available on-line. I'm working a fair bit with Woroniki's material these days - you have to know how to work with it or it might be overwhelming and confusing.

What Molly Gebrian presents is a) old hat to me so far, b) very much needed for anyone who is out of the loop about these things. Had I known about them back when I started those first lessons, some things would have been different. I would have also had to know to insist on going slower, rather than just 'feeling uneasy' at the speed but doing it anyway.

ShiroKuro @keystring thanks, very interesting!

So are you reading Dr. G’s book, or just learning about her approach from the YT videos?

I've been following through discussion here and there and a few private discussions. I read bits here and there, and watched some of the videos.

I commented on one of her videos, and she responded back - it was a good conversation. In that video she was looking at the idea of aiming for how the body moves, how the instrument works, or aiming for where you want to go. I think the example came from a snowboarder, surfer or skiier - focusing on the ground (water) you're traversing and where you're heading, versus what your feet and board were doing. The former were deemed the "best" approach. In music, this translated to focusing on the sound you want to produce, rather than your body or instrument.

I pushed back on that. I know that in strings, often there is a very heavy teaching of technique (body and instrument) and if that's been the only thing, a counterbalance on "sound" may be the best way. But when I had violin lessons, I barely had the technical side - my then-teacher relied on my instinct and what I heard internally. I literally could not produce what I heard because I did not have the means. For dynamics, it is "pressure", speed of the bow, but also sounding point and tilt of the bow. I had been taught to always stay at the same sounding point, never to tilt the bow - so I was handicapped. I also had a heavy, untrained hand that had been taught to grip tightly. It did not matter how much I "focused on the sound I wanted" - physically I could not produce it because two elements were outside my reach. She understood my point and responded positively.

My impression is that she is coming from a place where a person has been given decent technique, already plays, and is primarily focusing on preparing for performances. It gets nuanced differently if you're in other spaces. The principles generally are ones that I learned. I'm kind of dismayed, but not that surprised, that these are new ideas. There are major holes in how things are taught. Over time I discovered that my first experience may have been extreme, but not that unusual in general.

ShiroKuro I was asking because I wondered if you would find new things in her book, since it's much longer of course. I don't know yet because I generally read it after practicing (i.e. right before bed) and I don't get very far because I start to fall asleep. Not because of the book! But because it's 10pm and I need to go to sleep!

I almost missed that one and also risked tangling two responses together by different people. So far everything that I encountered is what I've learned, and less than what I've learned. I've obsessed about this for almost two decades and went to a lot of resources and some long interactions. Even the neurological things came in.

Time zones.

Yes, I have this impression too... Also, I think the issues are different when it's one line of music (i.e. for violin, or say flute) than when it's piano music. So I think a lot of what she recommends is applicable to any instrument, but there are piano-specific issues that I don't think are getting addressed in her approach.

I had not thought of that side of it. Are there some particular things in piano that you can think of?