This blog post about teaching music practice strategies was written by Carmen Carpenter. Carmen has taught music in a school setting as well as in her home studio for more than 30 years. Teaching combines two of her favourite things: music and kids! Besides teaching music, Carmen loves spending time with family playing games, working puzzles and watching movies. She’s also an avid reader and loves taking long walks on her local, woodsy trails.
When you read non-fiction, do you read to remember or to learn something new?
Now, that may seem like a silly question since reading is so often looked upon as the foundation for learning anything – be it maths or science or playing the banjo. But the idea of “reading to learn” is a fairly modern concept.
Socrates and his ilk looked upon reading as something you did when you forgot something you’d already learnt. It was more of a way to check in to see if you were correct. In fact, Socrates was quoted as saying, “It would be singularly simple-minded to believe that written words can do anything more than remind one of what one already knows.”
This quote is one of the thought-provoking things I learnt by reading the book ‘Moonwalking With Einstein’ by Joshua Foer. As its subtitle explains, the book is all about the “art and science of remembering everything”, and it’s chock-full of fun little bits of knowledge like the one above.
But I didn’t just learn nifty tidbits that I can use someday at Pub Trivia Night. I also learnt a great deal that has impacted the way I teach, especially when it comes to music practice strategies.
Read Intensively
In ‘Moonwalking With Einstein’, the author tells us that with the invention of the printing press, people moved from reading intensively to reading extensively. That seems to jive with today’s world, full of lists like “Read 50 Books in a Year” or “100 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read”.
It made me wonder about the value of reading tons of books if you don’t remember or act upon what you’ve read. (No judgement here; I’m the worst offender on this. I just devour books!)
Quality vs. Quantity
If you had to read the same 2 or 3 books intensively for several months or even years, I imagine you’d find that:
- You’d be much more concerned about the quality of the books you choose.
- Books with a lot of meat and food for thought would be the order of the day.
- You’d look for books that inspired your creativity, satisfied your desire to learn and helped you grow as a human.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually read the same 2 or 3 books over and over again over a long stretch of time, or read them so slowly as to savour them. But, inspired by Moonwalking, I did embark on a stint of reading books related to 1 topic: teaching.
The Value of Focus
During my season of intensive reading, I focussed on books related to teaching, learning and how the brain works. (If you want to know more about the books I read during this season, pop the question in the comments and I’ll give you a run-down.)
What I learnt through this laser focus has impacted my day-to-day teaching. Through this effort, I began to feel like something of an expert on music practice strategies like deliberate practice, creating “desirable difficulties”, interleaved teaching, the importance that prior knowledge has when learning new material and, of course, the learning concepts I’m about to share with you now. 👇
Keep Practice Out of Autopilot
Like many books related to the brain and learning, the author spends a fair bit of time describing the stages we go through when learning something new.
Even if you’ve never learnt about “the science of learning”, you’ve likely observed these 3 stages in your students. They are:
- Cognitive stage: Learning the skill and finding new ways to get better.
- Associative stage: Making fewer errors and getting more efficient.
- Autonomous stage: Going on autopilot because you feel you’re “good enough” at this skill, consciously or unconsciously.
Although many of us believe it’s ideal when we get into the “flow” and don’t have to think so much, that autonomous stage can actually be a road hazard: It’s the part of learning where your brain begins to check out and you begin to plateau.
Experts don’t allow themselves to stay in this autopilot zone. Instead, they deliberately practise what needs work.
Because of this helpful advice, I work hard to ensure that my students don’t do much “flowing”.
Instead, we keep our brains engaged using some of the nifty practice games and activities in the VMT Printable Library. The interleaved practice mode in the Vivid Practice app is another great way to keep your students’ home practice sessions effective and efficient.
Practice Step Stickers are a great way to keep students out of that dangerous “autonomous stage” of learning. Enter your info below and Nicola’s team will send a free copy of the stickers straight to your inbox.
Subscribe to the newsletter and get the practice step stickers.
Enter your details to subscribe to the newsletter for piano teachers with information, tips and offers.
I hate spam as much as you do! I will only send you emails related directly to piano teaching and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Members of VMT can download the stickers directly from the VMT Library. Not a member? You’re missing out on so much! Take a video tour at vibrantmusicteaching.com and join today.
Memorise for Creation
For a lot of educators, memorising is seen as a mindless, mechanical activity which gets in the way of higher-level thinking. But according to the author of Moonwalking, “[The art of memory is] not merely a tool for recording, but also a tool of invention and composition.”
In other words, memorisation is one of the pillars of creation.
Just imagine if Beethoven hadn’t memorised his theory concepts, or the way notes sound relative to each other. Would he have been able to compose after he lost his hearing?
Memorisation is freedom. Having certain foundational knowledge memorised liberates you to enjoy and do more with what you know.
If you have something memorised, you aren’t using brain power on basic facts. You can use that brain space for innovation and creation.
When our students memorise musical information – be it finger numbers, note values, patterns from a rote piece or a full-on classical concerto – they’re free to be expressive and inventive in their playing.
What book has impacted your teaching the most?
Tell us about it in the comments. We may want to read it, too 🙂
If you liked this post, you’ll love the resources and strategies in the Colourful Keys hub page devoted to Teaching Music Practice.