PianoMonk But let’s face it, making sense of music, and the piano in particular, is a lot easier than becoming a neuroscientist.
I disagree, actually. Playing the piano at a concert level is harder than becoming a neuroscientist imo. You can start at 16 and if you show enough interest and commitment, do your PhD and become a neuroscientist in 10 years. A concert pianist, not so much.
This reminds me of something... hmmmmm....
I agree with Ranjit that playing the piano at a concert level is harder than becoming a neuroscientist.
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...
How about that contest? No one wants to play?
PianoMonk How about that contest? No one wants to play?
No, I don't think think anyone wants to play, because your suggestion of the contest has an undertone of mean-spiritedness to it. And frankly, your labeling (Mollyites, Mollyism) not only feels dismissive and derogatory, it detracts from having a more productive conversation about the pros and cons of what she recommends.
I have an idea… Let’s have a contest!
I’ll pick a song and post the sheet music. Contestants will have one week to learn it. You may register as a “Mollyite” or a “NonDen”, (Nondenominational). And at the end of the week, the contestants will post their audio or video recording and we’ll see if there’s a difference. Judging should be by popular opinion, not me. What d’ya say?
I like the idea, but sadly it would be hard to carry out. For one thing, to give an accurate picture would require multiple sets of identical twins, who had been bought up in identical environments and played piano for identical periods of time - then the twins could be split into the Mollyite and NonDen groups for the contest. That would give a pretty accurate picture of the Molly effect! 
PS: I'm chuckling at your phrase "devoutness to Mollyism" - you nailed it! 
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
The level of sarcasm being doled out here is really baffling. I'm having a hard time understanding why some of you are so spun up about this. There's a small group of us who are interested in utilizing some practice methods and discussing it here. Is that really so intolerable or offensive? If you're just tired of seeing "Molly Gebrian" pop up on the screen, you have the option of putting any thread on ignore.
Her book is getting great reviews on Amazon so far and it's also been mentioned very positively several times in the piano Facebook group I'm a member of...it doesn't seem like we are discussing something that should be so controversial or polarizing.
This forum is going to start feeling like a very unfriendly/unwelcoming/uncomfortable place if this trend continues.
JB_PT This forum is going to start feeling like a very unfriendly/unwelcoming/uncomfortable place if this trend continues.
Yes, this is my concern as well.
This is a little bit awkward for me, because I am a moderator on this forum and I’m also a general participant in this thread. I may call in the other mods if I think (or anyone else thinks) I can’t be both here…
But first I would like to ask @PianoMonk and @Nightowl to please refrain from calling me or anyone else here a “Molly-ite” or whatever other labels you might be tempted to apply.
We are just your fellow forumites, as interested in playing the piano as you are, so other labels aren’t needed.
I don't mind posters disagreeing on the forum or arguing opposite sides. Often each side will bring up points that are worth pondering. Resorting to sarcasm to 'win' an argument, however, is usually the result of the poster being unable to construct a valid and logical line of reasoning.
I haven't read the MG book or even viewed all of her videos, but from the discussions I've read here it's my opinion that much of what she has written about practice is not original with her, but she has gathered a lot of disparate information and practices (and some relevant controlled studies) and synthesized it into an actionable set of instructions. Not too many people have done that. Like everything you read/hear about learning to play the piano, you take what works for you and are thankful for it. What doesn't work for you may very well work for someone else.
Stub the other thing is that she is in the unique position of being a neuroscientist as well as a professional musician. Part of the video series that I originally posted was about her experimenting on a "spaced practice" schedule on herself during the pandemic. She knew the science justified long breaks but was afraid to test it on herself until the pandemic happened and her performances were cancelled!
To address earlier points in the thread: she doesn't have to have coached the best or to be a world-class musician. Her teachings are about how to be more efficient and spend less time to achieve the same or better results.
PianoMonk I have an idea… Let’s have a contest!
I’ll pick a song and post the sheet music. Contestants will have one week to learn it. You may register as a “Mollyite” or a “NonDen”, (Nondenominational). And at the end of the week, the contestants will post their audio or video recording and we’ll see if there’s a difference. Judging should be by popular opinion, not me. What d’ya say?
Your idea makes no sense, and I'll explain why.
The point of anyone following her ideas is to improve how they are practising and learning. They were wherever they were when they first learned about this, and if following the ideas, they should be have improvements in some of what they themselves do. But they are each in their own spot of their own journey which is varied. We are all learners with our own histories. Having a group of people with different skills, who are different levels, different amounts of experience play a same piece of music - then comparing how well they perform - says NOTHING about whether any methodology has helped them improve over where they were.
An idea of a competition in this manner is also contrary to the spirit being fostered in this site of nurturing and supportive. Any adult learning to play piano late in life is already vulnerable and putting themselves out there. But that is a different matter.
JB_PT I would also like to interject here about the overall tenor of some of the posts/posters.
I have followed this thread because I’m interested in the experiences of people who’ve invested the time and effort into learning about Gebrian’s work, and how it has worked out for them. I haven’t done so myself, but I’m nonetheless interested in fellow forum members’ experience with it.
Some of the posts here feel extremely dismissive not just of Gebrian’s work but of fellow forum members — with language that sounds like they’ve been duped into joining a cult or some such. If you’re not interested in the work, that’s totally fine. But I think those that are skeptical have expressed their skepticism plenty, and it’s getting to the point that there are posts that feel gratuitously nasty and trollish toward forum members who are just trying to share their experiences. You don’t have to engage.
If you have tried to apply the methods and they haven’t worked for you and you want to share, do so. My take on this thread was that it was a place to share what has worked and what has not, what has been difficult to implement, etc. But some of the posts that seem quite dismissive don’t seem to have engaged seriously with the work — and if you haven’t at the very least read through her book with an open mind (let alone given a good faith effort to implementing it in your own practice), I don’t see how it is fair to disparage her work (and the efforts of forum members who are trying to do so) out of hand.
Here is a story of the first changes I ever made to my practising which started it all for me. (Nothing to do with Molly).
I was a 3rd year violin student; had worked on the same piece for a month without moving forward. One day in disgust I turned my back on the music stand, and worked on "string changes", where you move the bow from one string to another. I looked for etudes with string changes and borrowed bits: made my own exercises - found the best way to change strings. That's all I did the whole week because I wanted nothing more to do with that piece. The difficulties, however, had been largely due to string changes. At my next lessons, I had to play the piece that I had not touched for an entire week - had not practised. When I played, it was vastly improved: teacher was astonished.
That is the first time I had ever practised that way: not literally working on the assigned piece. Major improvements in the piece I had not worked on.
The next occasion was a piece where I constantly got stuck on "measure X" - and I mean literally stuck: my fingers wouldn't lift. Every week in lessons we'd get up to m. X, try to get me to play it properly, go back to the beginning and get stuck again on m. x (anyone who knows about good practising will know what's wrong with that picture. 
). One day I "went radical" - worked only on that one measure to find out note for note why my hand was getting stuck, how to unstick them, the optimal way of moving for those 8 notes. Once I had that motion, played the easy earlier notes, continue into m. X, and a bit past. ..... Then I made extra copies of the music; circled every passage that was similar (say transposed) - then the next difficult passage, etc. I worked on my coloured circles one by one. These chopped up small bits that barely seemed to be music, and felt guilty about the sacrilege. Except that this is what musicians who get somewhere do, and some teachers teach. Again, after going in circles for weeks, I got somewhere fast in a short time.
Those were my beginnings. Two incidents of working in an entirely different way, and getting improvements and successes that were greater, and over a shorter period of time. That's when I started seeking this out.
To me the "Molly story" is not necessarily about following everything that MG says. If anyone is in the rut of ways of working that are ineffective, then the idea of doings things differently is an idea beyond the specifics that she teaches. One might come up with something entirely different. For me it was the two incidents that I related, which happened out of sheer despair. "Hey, I did something radically different - didn't do what I believed I was supposed to do - and wow, that's interesting." It's a bit like Alice in the Looking Glass meeting the Queen of whatsit, and learning that she must walk away from the house in order to get to the house. (I was 8 when I read the book. That and the grin without a cat always got to my imagination.)
Pallas Before you posted that video, I didn’t know how to practice anything
Awwwww, so glad sharing the videos helped you so much!
I did know some good practice techniques from my lessons a long time ago (such as slow practice) but there's a lot of new knowledge about "how to best learn" since I was a kid. My projects are big and if I can shave off a bunch of practice time, I have time to work on other music or do other life things. And also I could reduce risk of injury from practicing too much, too!
ShiroKuro I suspect it's the antithesis of things she espouses these days.
I am not sure. They rather seem to address different aspects. Suzuki stresses the importance of listening to music and learning to play before learning to read. But yes, there is also every day repetition, so that part is not the same as Molly's present practice recommendations.
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...
