Molly Gebrian - seven months later

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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!

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!

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 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!

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.

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...

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....

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.