Discussing Molly Gebrian (Splinter Discussion of "Molly Gebrian 7 Months Later")

Nightowl Thank you for your moderate moderation, I appreciate your way of handling things.

Thanks for the nice compliment. But it's not just me--the moderators (Navindra, ShiroKuro, BartK) work as a team. All of this is based on group decisions.

I haven't read the book and I've read only some of the posts on this thread. From what I can understand the book is about ways to practice pieces. I can certainly see value in that especially for some of the basic ideas like practicing small sections. On the other hand I think this kind of approach can omit what I would call the most important idea.

The most important part in solving problems at the piano is I think figuring out what's causing the problem and what one should do about that. Playing small sections, playing some fixed number of repetitions, taking breaks during practice or for days on which a piece is not practiced, and some of the other things I've read on this thread that are in the book can all help. But I think they are often insufficient.
For example, to take a purely technical exercise, one can practice scales endlessly And use all of the Gebrian suggestions but with improper technique they will usually not improve or reach some limit or improve much more slowly than if one made technical corrections. If one has problems with some passage or piece, practicing something over and over may not be very helpful unless one figures out why there is a technical difficulty and figures out some solution.

For me, fingering turns out to be very important. So if a passage is causing difficulty for me I quite often end up trying a different fingering. Just an example.

pianoloverus The most important part in solving problems at the piano is I think figuring out what's causing the problem and what one should do about that. Playing small sections, playing some fixed number of repetitions, taking breaks during practice or for days on which a piece is not practiced, and some of the other things I've read on this thread that are in the book can all help. But I think they are often insufficient.

I have not read the book, either, but from biographical information and some of the videos, I understand her to be an advanced viola player. Her methods for practice are general and aren't limited to particular instruments. But I do get the impression that she is addressing practice by intermediate to advanced students, in which case the student should already be demonstrating some skill at problem solving. Her practice method is more about scheduling of practice sessions to match neurocognitive states than for problem solving per se. How to practice rather than how to gain skills.

twocats Of course you need to have the correct technical approach. But for example, I think she said this during the video chat we had with her: the human brain cannot absorb more after 5 hours (I think it's 5 but don't remember for sure). So she was saying that if you practice 8 hours, you literally can't make extra progress after the 5 hours and it's wasted time and effort.

No one is arguing that the correct technical approach isn't important for playing well. If you aren't practicing your skills correctly, you're not going to play well whether or not you try her efficiency suggestions. But if you are, you can save quite a lot of practice time.

I do get the impression, especially since I'm basically the only one bringing up the importance of trying to figure out what's causing some problem and what the solution is, that many of those trying her techniques do you think it's some magic cure for all their problems both technical and musical. For example, one poster in the thread where people discuss their experiences using Molly's approach, Said she was getting very frustrated because she couldn't repeat a passage correctly enough times to satisfy Molly's suggested number of correct executions in a row. But the poster never said anything about trying to figure out why she couldn't get enough correct executions in a row. Her approach seemed basically to play the passage over and over hoping at one point she could get the desired number of correct executions.

Regarding how many hours one can practice and still make progress, this of course varies from person to person. Most amateurs are never going to practice even 5 hours and most professionals understand that one has to take breaks if one is planning a marathon 8 hour practice session In one day.

twocats pianoloverus Most amateurs are never going to practice even 5 hours and most professionals understand that one has to take breaks if one is planning a marathon 8 hour practice session In one day.

It's not about taking breaks, it's about the physical limitation of the brain. If the human brain can only learn for 5 hours a day before it tops out, it doesn't matter if you're taking breaks or not, that extra 3 hours of practice is wasted time.

That was just one example of information about practice efficiency that has nothing to do with learning proper technique.

I think different people have different capacities for how long their brain can work effectively. I think many conservatory and professional pianists practice more than 5 hours per day and feel they are getting benefit from the time beyond 5 hours. So I think that contradicts what Molly says. How could one possibly even show that After a given amount of time any additional practice in was of no use? A much more reasonable statement would be something like after X hours of practice a lot of people don't get much benefit from any additional practice which is, of course, just common sense. I think for most amateur pianists the amount would be far less than 5 hours per day and they probably wouldn't need Molly's book for them to realize that.

pianoloverus How could one possibly even show that After a given amount of time any additional practice in was of no use?

If you watch her video about the neuroscience of learning, there are physical processes that happen in the brain. These take time so there is literally a physical limitation.

Here are her three videos that I first watched. It's either the first and/or second video that's about the science of it. They're super interesting and not long, like 15 min each. I don't think she mentioned the 5 hours there though, it was during the video chat with her that someone organized so that we could ask her specific questions.

twocats pianoloverus How could one possibly even show that After a given amount of time any additional practice in was of no use?

If you watch her video about the neuroscience of learning, there are physical processes that happen in the brain. These take time so there is literally a physical limitation.

I wonder how she could possibly explain the fact that many pros or conservatory students do practice more than five hours a day and feel those extra hours are productive this would seem to contradict what she says. People work at all kinds of demanding tasks more than five hours a day so that seems like another counter argument. And I find it hard to believe that if one practices three hours in the morning and then waits several hours or even until the evening to start practicing again, the brain would only function for two more hours before any further practice was useless. What seems far more reasonable is saying that for many or most people, practicing beyond X hours either in a row or on a given day starts having diminishing returns.

Just to discuss one point Molly mentions in the first video. She says we've all had the experience of playing a piece at some level and then coming back to it a significant amount of time, like a year or more later, and thinking it's much easier than before. Then she says the improvement seems like it's more than what would happen simply because our general skills improved over that year. I don't see how anyone could measure that with any kind of scientific accuracy because there's no way of knowing how much easier the piece seemed due to the break we took from it versus our general improvement in pianistic skill.

I think what Molly said later on in the video is certainly reasonable and not at all surprising. I'm talking about the part where she compared spaced practicing to doing all the practice in one day. It seems perfectly reasonable that the longer one practices, especially if one takes no breaks at all, The more difficult it is to concentrate. But this is not the same thing as saying that after a certain amount of time in a given day, especially if one takes a break of several hours, the practicing is of no benefit. A much more reasonable statement seems something like after a certain amount of hours on a given day, the practicing becomes less productive which is not the same thing as saying it has no benefit.

When I was a young teacher I was given advice I never forgot, "Don't give generalizations. Give concrete examples." So here are some actual experiences.

• As a violin student, I got stuck at the same measure for a month and had to abandon the piece. It was "very hard". I fell apart on the instrument and it was a bad experience. A decade later I discovered that I'd been taught to push the strings down way too hard - good for gut but not modern strings. I spent a week playing random notes, practising the sensation of pressing just hard enough to get a clean sound, with a relaxed hand. Then on impulse I pulled out he dreaded piece, heart pounding, daring to try playing it. I sailed right past the hard part, effortlessly!

This massive improvement was not due to 10 years having gone by. It is because I built good physical habits and reflexes, and they kicked in.

In that experiment, I applied the principles that MG has discovered, and others have told me about years ago. To retrain my hand, I had short sessions, sometimes half a minute or less, frequently. Any longer and your old reflexes will override, plus you won't be focusing anymore. I "slept on it". I pulled the old piece out after a week, because at least a week was needed for this to occur.

• I have some weak areas. Sense of pulse is one. Physical movement, because originally I learned piano self-taught as a child among other things. I've worked with more than one teacher, though mostly with a main one. In a recording of a beta stage, I may be asked, "Timing is off - is this physical or counting?" The answer will determine what the next practising will look like. It is not just "If this is wrong, try to get more rights than wrongs before moving on / try to get 10 rights in a row."

This can lead to tangents, and I'm told that even professional musicians may go on tangents. If some passage is hard, "skill X needs tweaking or a different approach" - then the focus might be skill X, and the piece might not be practised at all.

The thing with this is (afterthought), that while practising and observing, I want the flexibility of shaping that practice session and future ones according to what is going on. A predetermined schedule doesn't work for me. When I discovered poor physical habits in pedaling due to my old DP, I replanned practising so as to address this. Work on the physical act of pedal; put the piece aside or work on other aspects minus pedal; then add pedal; less measures so as to not lose the new skills.