Molly Gebrian - seven months later

Animisha

In May this year, twocats shared videos of Molly Gebrian. We were many who joined that thread, and even some of us had a group lecture with her.
Now that seven months have gone, how are you all doing with the new insights? Still on track? Or maybe not, and if not, how come?

Nightowl

Animisha If people were to add up the time they had spent reading MG's book, watching her online tutorials and/or attending the group lecture, devising practice schedules and/or spreadsheets to track progress, maybe they'd find that they've invested quite a large number of hours studying MG's method. Maybe those hours would have been better spent actually playing the piano? <Runs off before MG's apostles form a lynch mob>

Sophia

Animisha I purchased her book "way back when", because I am interested in the inner workings of the brain, and of course I'm interested in music. So buying her book was a "no-brainer", ok, "music-brainer", haha. This was well before it even started to get discussed in this forum - in fact I bought it because of a post in PW.

So I read her book. To me most of it sounded like a lot of common sense, wrapped in some "this is what scientific research says". I think that if someone were expecting a magic pill that would make learning music miraculously super easy or streamlined, then they would probably be disappointed. There simply is no such thing - because in the end, getting our fingers on the keys is what really counts. I have a feeling that's what you were getting at in your post, Nightowl?

Speaking just for myself, I haven't actually tried her suggestions. I'm just not into all this micromanaging etc and I continued to do what I did before: just sit down at the piano whenever I feel like it, play whatever I feel like and how long I'm in the mood for. That way I can enjoy my hobby without stress. I don't really care if my progress is slower than it could be... as long as I'm having a good time 😃 Because not having a good time leads to quitting pretty quickly - so I'd rather go a little slower than I might potentially be capable of, IF it means I'll be continuing 😁

Sophia

JB_PT Personally..........if there's a discussion going on here that I'm not interested in, I just don't participate. That is an option! I don't understand the need to jump in simply to criticize.

There's a group of us that are clearly interested in this. If you're not drinking the KoolAid, that's totally fine...you do you. But why try to convince others that what they are invested in and enjoy discussing is silly/wrong/etc? And honestly I find it a bit insulting to suggest that we are simpletons who assume this is a "magic pill" or that we can't determine for ourselves what is a productive use of our time.

I beg your pardon? I'm not sure if you are referring to my post, since I used the phrase "magic pill", but I wasn't talking about you (or anyone here), let alone resort to such childish name calling and innuendos towards anyone here. Surely you know me better than that by now, I should hope....

Clearly I'm interested in this topic, I bought the book. I read the book. Which would probably be an indication that I participated in this thread with a very interested mind. I didn't criticize anyone, but I did express my opinion on the book... which is my good right.

After all, the original question was

Animisha Now that seven months have gone, how are you all doing with the new insights?

And that is what I addressed. You are very welcome to disagree with me, but please don't tell me to stop posting when my opinion differs from yours, even going as far as implying that I (or anyone here) implied all kinds of nasty things about you or the lovely group of people in this forum.

It should be obvious that I was either speaking hypothetically (hence the word if in "if someone were expecting a magic pill") or referring to my own experience (as indicated by the phrase "Speaking just for myself").

BartK

Yes, I'm still going strong and using those methods, although to be honest my practice has already been mostly like that for years. MG helped clarify and organize some ideas better but for the most part I was already doing what she teaches.

I think it comes down to a couple of things:

Discipline - I know it's hard sometimes but you have to force yourself to stay focused, at least until it becomes a habit. You can use a practice checklist if it helps you stay on track.
Habit - Initially, you might have to force yourself to do something that takes work but after some time of doing it every day it becomes a habit and you just do it. It's like brushing your teeth or making your bed. Maybe not the most enjoyable thing in the world but you do it out of habit and because it needs to be done. After some time practicing like that it becomes normal and you don't think about it.
Planning - It's good to have a plan of what you want to achieve before you start. I used to write down everything in detail but now I just make a mental note. You have to prioritize - e.g. if I don't have that much time on a given day I focus on the most important things, or if I skipped something yesterday then I start with that. Besides planning what you want to achieve you also think about the best ways to achieve that. Then, you sit down and execute your plan. 😉
Reflection - You have to find time to reflect on how you practice and make adjustments. Maybe you don't have to do it every day but at least once a week you should ask yourself: How did you do in your practice? Were you effective? What went well? What didn't go so well? What can you do it to address that? No method works for everyone so think about what you can do personally to improve your effectiveness. It might be something very simple like changing the order in which you practice things or a checklist like I mentioned above but it might also require some deeper rethinking of how you practice.

JB_PT

I'm still applying some of her tips. Her excellent recommendations are frequently at the back of my mind but it's hard for me to adjust my routines (in any context...). Plus I can't follow the typical schedule because I don't practice every day.

I've already been thinking of ways to make random practice more of a habit though - that is my plan for the next month or two.

Animisha

Answering my own question. 😊

Unfortunately, I find that I fall back into old practice habits, and practise mistakes...
I am working on one of my pieces and I felt I was making so little progress, and of course, I started to push. I could barely play the piece at mm 36 so I thought I would play the whole piece at 40. Guess how that worked out?

But yesterday I realised I was on a road to nowhere. So I restarted, chose random passages of four measures that I could play however slowly as I needed, as long as I played them correctly. In case I made a mistake anyway, I practised the correct note five times.

This was such a relief! Gradually, I increased to passages of five and then six measures, I took my metronome again and played the passage at 30, then 35, then 40, and then once again at 30, then 35, then 40 again. Today, I felt I could even add mm 45 to that sequence. Tomorrow I'll continue working with the random passages, and the day after tomorrow, I'll take a day off.

However, another piece I am learning is not suitable for Molly's schedule, at least not now. The first long phrase of the piece shows the main theme of the piece, without any embellishments, and I need to learn how to play that phrase before I can start learning the other phrases.

BartK

Pallas I start each piece with great organization. But as the issues become more subtle, and mistakes get baked-in from non-optimal rushing of playing through, I just have a hard time backing up, slowing down, isolating issues, making a checklist, and approaching the piece on the rotating schedule again. For me, this is the actual hardest part of the practice: doing the work to identify what to repeat and how, staying organized, prioritized, and focused!

I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all formula to help you stay disciplined. Like I mentioned, I think you need to regularly reflect back and find improvements and tricks that work for you.

Stub

Pallas The main reason I stopped diligently Mollying is because I haven't figured out how to manage my workload that way and still meet my teacher's expectations that I work on every piece every day.

This is pretty much how it's worked out for me. Over the summer, when I didn't have lessons, I could (in a very non-rigid manner) follow the MG schedule. But once lessons started up again, the schedule went out the window. Though my teacher has not explicitly stated the expectation that I work on each piece every day, there would be the expectation that they had received some practice time during the week.

In effect, what I was doing before the MG videos is what I do now: a chunk of a brand new piece gets worked on every day for at least the first three or four days; after that I can let it rest for a day or so while I work on other things. In my reading, that's the essence of the MG schedule. What MG has given me is permission to not work on everything every day. Before I felt guilty, but now I feel justified! 😇

JB_PT

Stub What MG has given me is permission to not work on everything every day. Before I felt guilty, but now I feel justified! 😇

Me too. 🙂 I still get a bad case of the "shoulds" sometimes but then I talk myself out of it because I know there can be benefits to letting something marinate in the background if I get excited about working on a new shiny piece (a near weekly occurrence...).

Pallas So what, sometimes I just want to play through and enjoy my pieces. It's not a crime!

Indeed...this may be the only piece of advice she offered that I have flat-out rejected. I am totally on board with focusing on trouble spots, and I've had good results recently with zeroing in on those exclusively for the first several weeks before I spend much time on the rest of the piece. But I'm not going to avoid playing through if I feel like it. I enjoy it too much, and my teacher expects it at every lesson anyway. I'm not walking into that unprepared.

Animisha

Pallas The main reason I stopped diligently Mollying is because I haven't figured out how to manage my workload that way and still meet my teacher's expectations that I work on every piece every day.

I understand, because this is not possible. Proper Mollying means taking breaks!

I keep on writing to you and deleting, because unwarranted advice is not very nice, but I also worry that the piano starts to become a source of stress for you. It is perfectly fine for an adult student to say, - I felt overwhelmed by the work load of three new pieces, or, - I have practised but the results are not very good, because I need more time.

As I understand, it is not unusual at all for piano teachers to hear that the student did not practise, sometimes for valid reasons, sometimes for less valid reasons. So a student who does practise but who needs more time to learn a piece than the teacher had expected is something they just need to accept.

Good Mollying is also taking care of yourself. Wasn't that the first of her September challenges?
(I just checked. It was.)

twocats

I'm very bad at taking breaks during practice as I've always been, but am good about spaced practice (because it happens mutually in my life when I get busy) and sometimes there are many breaks of days when I don't practice at all. I try to keep it in my head to loosely follow her optimized schedule.

Generally I'm not randomizing my practice although I have my "trouble pages" (there are a lot of them, feels like every page is bookmarked!) flagged in forScore and sometimes I am doing random practice by jumping to those pages. I am also not doing repetitions the way she advises.

Old habits die hard 😭

twocats

Can someone remind me of how long a chunk of practice she recommends before taking a micro break (and how long that is, too?). Maybe I should start relying on timers.

Edit: just found this article. She does 3 clean repetitions followed by a 10 second break. Tries to do 9 clean repetitions total. @Animisha thanks for reminding me about all the things I should be doing to make my practice much more efficient!

https://www.violinist.com/blog/violabrain/20228/29335/

ShiroKuro

Pallas I don't like how it feels not to practice the way she's expecting.

This makes a lot of sense to me. As long one is paying a teacher, they ought to be largely following or aligning with their teacher. That doesn't mean not incorporating other teaching techniques, but I would want to prioritize the teacher's approach over other's.

Pallas Where I get really lost is when the notes are pretty solid across the piece and I start incorporating increasingly complex lesson notes (e.g., play through while vocally singing the treble line), but then mistakes pop up all over the place.

Yep, some how this is where I think Dr. G's approach falls short...

Pallas once you've learned the notes and the rhythm, the "real" work starts.

Exactly. I feel like her approach is really geared toward learning the notes and the rhythm, but I haven't figured out what her approach is for the next steps, for example when you're working on the whole piece.

Having said that, I haven't finished her whole book yet.

I do incorporate some of her practice techniques, and some are things I used to do and had gotten away from.

But I also want to re-read the Inner Game of Music, which I read so long ago that my memory is faint, but I'm wondering if that will round out the parts I feel are missing from Dr. G....

We'll see, I still need to finish Dr. G's book! 😅

lilypad

Pallas The main reason I stopped diligently Mollying is because I haven't figured out how to manage my workload that way and still meet my teacher's expectations that I work on every piece every day. I don't like how it feels not to practice the way she's expecting.

Unless your teacher wants you to practice the whole piece everyday, the Molly method means you can work on just a section of a piece. On rest days for that section, you can work on another section of the same piece, satisfying the expectation to work on that piece every day. If your piece is close to performance ready Molly even has the concept of interleaved performance practice.

As far as my own experience, even though I've been pleasantly surprised at how well I remember a recently learned section of a piece after her one or even two week rest period, for pieces at my lower intermediate level, a 2 week break just means it will take me that much longer to play the piece at an acceptable standard. I'm experimenting with 2-4 days in a row for a new section and combining it with the older section every other day.

I was most excited about using the method as a means of maintaining a repertoire of my favorite non-classical pieces. I'm happy to report that her schedule of 2-week rests followed by 3 days in a row of practice has worked really well for that. I still have a lot of my old repertoire to relearn, but for maintenance, the rest period employs the power of active recall and the 3-days of practice are good for fixing fractures.

ShiroKuro

lilypad Unless your teacher wants you to practice the whole piece everyday, the Molly method means you can work on just a section of a piece. On rest days for that section, you can work on another section of the same piece, satisfying the expectation to work on that piece every day.

I interpret her approach to be that the idea is that one works on one section of the piece at a time, but it would certainly be fine to work on more of the piece. Just not together. So maybe you're working on four measures from the A theme. So that's one part of your practice focus. Then you might switch to 6 measures from the B theme. I think that would be fine, but the point is to avoid mindless "playing through," and avoid playing the whole piece before ready.

At least that's my understanding... As I said somewhere (I think I said...) I'm about halfway through the book, but I also started reading the Inner Game again. Maybe I'm mixing things up...

ShiroKuro

I generally do this kind of reading at night, after piano practice, when my spouse and I are lounging are the living room. As you might imagine, I often find myself nodding off, so progress is slow 😅

But anyway, I have both the Inner Game book and Gebrian’s book m, so I’ll get through them eventually. 😊

@Pallas if you start reading the Inner Game of Music, be sure to share your thoughts!

JB_PT

I vaguely recall that I read The Inner Game of Music after the Inner Game of Tennis and I might have been vaguely disappointed with the music book. I think The Inner Game of Tennis is excellent, and pertinent...I try to re-read it once a year or so. It's basically right brain vs. left brain stuff, although I don't recall if that is explicitly stated. I am SO interested in that topic. I just waded through a monster book called The Master and His Emissary...there was so much info that I felt a little overwhelmed and I know a lot of it didn't stick, but I had to plow through on a schedule because of the library due date!

Pallas My inner game wants improving!

This is my biggest issue and I'm always reading or watching videos about the psychology aspect. Lots of work to do there...

ShiroKuro

JB_PT I vaguely recall that I read The Inner Game of Music after the Inner Game of Tennis and I might have been vaguely disappointed with the music book.

I never read the Inner Game of Tennis, but that was the original one and the Inner Game of Music was based on that, right??

Anyway, I read the Inner Game of Music years ago... probably around 2005 -- I only know that because I organized and performed a concert in 2006 where I played maybe 30 minutes of music, and I remember that I based my performance prep around the ideas in the Inner Game and the book A Soprano On Her Head. At the time, I remember thinking that the ideas in those two books completely changed my approach to practicing and performing.

But at this point, I can't really remember details 😅 so I thought it was a good idea to return to them....

Anyway, once I get more into my re-read of the Inner Game, and @Pallas starts reading it, we'll have to compare notes.

Kaydia

JB_PT It's basically right brain vs. left brain stuff, although I don't recall if that is explicitly stated. I am SO interested in that topic.

Pardon the interruption, but I was reading through this thread and came upon this comment, and would like to recommend a book I have called, "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. Mine is a 1999 version. I haven't looked to see if she's done another update since that one. In any case, this book was, hands-down, instrumental in taking me from wishing I had the talent for drawing, to believing drawing was a learnable skill. Going through the book step by step, my drawings progressed from child-like to more realistic looking. So much better than I'd ever imagined was possible for me. As for the right and left sides of the brain aspect, Chapter 3 is Your Brain: The Right and Left of It, and Chapter 4 is Crossing Over: Experiencing the Shift from Left to Right. The idea of left brain, right brain is also discussed in the various drawing topics within the book.

"The Inner Game of Music" sounds like it would be an interesting read. I've added it to my Amazon shopping cart to look at later.

JB_PT

ShiroKuro I never read the Inner Game of Tennis, but that was the original one and the Inner Game of Music was based on that, right??

I believe this is correct. The Tennis book was first and it may have spawned several others...

I also loved A Soprano on Her Head. Another one I need to re-read periodically and I'm overdue!

JB_PT

Pallas But it's been a while since I read the book, so if I've remembered wrong, please point out where I missed something.

Of course you can customize however you like! But if you are asking for what her recommendations are specifically, ermmmm.....it does seem like some of this is mixed up. I can't review my book for a couple days or I would help. I know she has a 3 videos specifically on blocked/random/serial practice too if that's easier.

ShiroKuro

Pallas starting with the most difficult, and staying with the same piece for larger blocks of time.

I used to always start with the hardest parts first. And certainly, it is ideal to spend more time overall on the harder parts.

But I don't know if it's because my pieces got harder, or for some other reason, but sometimes I find that I have more success if I start with an easier section of the piece. That works esp well when the hard parts seem just too hard. By working on the music in the context of easier passages, then, when I move on to the harder section, it often goes better.

Don't let this disrupt your planning though, @Pallas . I mainly mention it in case you sometimes feel it's easier to get into a piece through some other section. The trick is, as you say, to make sure that, over the course of multiple practice sessions, you're not spending more time on parts you can already play....

iternabe

ShiroKuro I used to always start with the hardest parts first. And certainly, it is ideal to spend more time overall on the harder parts.

This reminds me of a video by Dr. Shijun Wang on how to learn new pieces. He suggests one way to help relieve performance anxiety is to learn the end of a piece of music first, then work backwards. This way, the latter part of the pieces gets more practice. Then during a performance, you become more and more comfortable as the playing progresses.

Animisha

ShiroKuro I used to always start with the hardest parts first. And certainly, it is ideal to spend more time overall on the harder parts.

But I don't know if it's because my pieces got harder, or for some other reason, but sometimes I find that I have more success if I start with an easier section of the piece. That works esp well when the hard parts seem just too hard. By working on the music in the context of easier passages, then, when I move on to the harder section, it often goes better.

I also try to start with the most difficult sections, but in some pieces, there is a first and easiest phrase that is an introduction, and the other phrases are variations on that introduction. For instance, a tango that I am learning. In that case, it is much easier, and more natural, to learn the introduction first.