Polyphony: practicing revisited.

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Naming or labeling what we are doing in routine practice--that is the subject of this column. It seems simple. By naming the activity or practicing technique, we are giving it credence as something to be applied in different music practice situations. The name gives the student a label to use to apply and then apply again. It allows the student to transfer the skill from one piece to another piece and, thus, produces a higher level of comprehension and practice skills.

Q Where did this come from, and why is it important to look at?

A During a course I recently taught titled Readings and Writing for Piano Pedagogy, the class read and discussed a book chapter on psychomotor skill learning. This particular chapter provided light on the sequencing and ordering of learning (practicing) skills for a psychomotor skill. For me, the chance to look at naming common activities was fascinating--practice skills musicians commonly use, but to which non-musicians gave a name.

We do it all the time--teach students to practice. What we often do not do is name the skills or facets of practice that are part of an effective session. We hope students will remember these skills on their own without giving them a label or a name, and will remember to use them in future pieces as appropriate. Sometimes they do transfer the skill, and often they do not.

A problem with writing about practicing is that a refined level of discrimination as to what should happen in practice at a certain stage comes only through hearing an individual student in person. The level of discrimination and refinement about what should come next and in what order for a student is extremely important, and also extremely subjective. In this article, however, only certain basic techniques of practice and psychomotor learning that can be applied in various basic learning stages are discussed.

Q What are some of the skills the authors on instructional design suggest?

Whole Versus Part Practice

A Authors Patricia Smith and Tillman Ragan, writing in Instructional Design, discuss the concepts of whole versus part practice. (1) In other words, a skill or piece may be practiced as a whole or it may be practiced in pieces. In the case of music, usually separate sections of a piece of music are learned before assembling the parts into a whole. While this seems to be an obvious element in music practice, more students may succumb to practice of the whole than teachers realize, especially students at the beginning and elementary levels, and those who are practicing short pieces. Of course, part practice in beginning to mid-late stages of learning a piece often is the most effective. Later, toward the end of mastering a piece, whole practice situations come into play more often. One analogy that can be used with students to convince them of the necessity of part practice is this: if one is to memorize a new sixteen-line poem, would he learn it more quickly if he read the poem through over and over until he knew it (whole practice)? Or, would he learn with more ease if he practiced it in parts, perhaps one line at a time, then combining groups of two, then four lines and so on? Admittedly, the whole and part practice concept is basic. Yet, one wonders if we take too much for granted in the practice schemas of some students.

Chunking 

Stemming from whole versus part practicing, chunking practice is essentially "part practice"--taking chunks of a piece and working them out individually. Students might be asked to "chunk"--to determine the chunks or parts to practice before combining chunks into a whole. And, using the term "chunking," almost any student would understand what it meant to take chunks of a piece of music and work them out methodically.

Progressive Part Practicing (2)

Here we run into a "name" for another technique used in basic practice. In this skill, according to Smith and Ragan, students practice the first step of a skill, and then practice the second part and put it with Part 1. Then, they practice Part 3 and put it with Parts 1 and 2 and so on. A name here makes it possible to identify the specific skill for the student to use when practicing.

Backwards Chaining (3)

Some music teachers suggest that students practice from the end to the beginning, in other words from the last step to the first in a progressive manner but in reverse order. Thus, a student would learn the last "chunk" or part of a piece first, and then learn the next to last "chunk" followed by combining those two parts. The student then learns the third to the last section, and then combines the three sections. And so on. The philosophy is that as the music progresses, the student becomes stronger and stronger in the performance since the later sections of the piece have been practiced much more than the beginning sections.

Q What are additional learning techniques to be applied to music practice?

A It is true that techniques expressed above came from an instructional design methodology text. In addition, any music teacher probably could add his own list of "named" practice techniques. Several basic techniques follow.

Sandwich Practice

This practice technique is used when one wants to definitely master a certain difficult section in a piece. The student might practice it (chunk it) many times in a single practice session, sandwiching it between other compositions or practice segments. The chunk to be learned is reinforced over and over within a single day of practice.

Should-sound Practice

The name connotes what this technique is about, for the student plays the piece, usually at three-quarter tempo performing exactly the way she wants the piece to sound up to tempo. The work is performed with musical finesse, as well as complete accuracy. The student feels comfortable in the performance and works here to gain the physical coordination and mental acumen to later perform with equal ease up to tempo. The premise is this: if one could play accurately up to tempo right at that point, she would not need to practice so much. The point is not to practice up to tempo, but to practice the sound, and the tempo will come in due time if the practice tempo requires relatively the same practice motions as the up-to-tempo version.

Stop Practice

In this technique, a student plays single measures (or two measures or other predetermined units) in succession, up to tempo and stopping for several beats of rest between the groups before beginning the downbeat of the next unit that is played up to tempo. The student has time to audiate the sound before he plays the next passage and to imagine what the phrase will sound like. Nevertheless, the technique is worked out up to tempo in small units at this point. Stopping before a bar line inhibits the central nervous system of the student who could otherwise tend to take over and encourage rushing over bar lines into downbeats.

Penny Practice

I heard an acquaintance talk about the effectiveness of this technique with students who are unable to focus on complete accuracy, regardless of the level of advancement. The premise was that the student play a certain passage correctly a specified number of times (perhaps six times) in a row, moving a penny from one side of the piano or music stand to the other side for each correct playing. Any performance that was not completely accurate within the framework specified required that all pennies from the right be returned to the left side, and the successive correct performances once again begun and counted down. A down side to this technique is that the level of discrimination for many students to work in this way could be less detailed than one might desire. It is up to the teacher to set the parameters for the penny practice techniques used at various stages of a student's practice.

Play, Hear, Play

This practice technique, used mainly in memory security practice, requires that a student play one measure, internally hear the second measure and then pick up, in tempo, and play the third measure, followed by aurally hearing or singing the fourth measure and so on. The student proceeds through the entire piece in this way from memory. This practice technique establishes the student's security in starting a work on downbeats of measures. Or, the technique might involve a student's playing of two measure units and then hearing of two measure units and so on. It is a practice skill that ensures the student knows a work aurally as well as physically. A key factor is that the musical tempo never wavers from the playing to the hearing/singing to the playing back to the hearing/singing stages.

Plan, Play, Evaluate

An important direction of mine is for students to "plan, play, evaluate" throughout a practice session. The step often missing is the accurate hearing or evaluation of what has just been played, so the student discriminates what and how to practice next. Many students plan what they will play and then execute the passage. The next evaluation stage is a major key in helping a student make progress. A student who imagines she is the teacher of herself, even while practicing, becomes actively engaged during the practice session and begins to evaluate and plan the next practice strategy for a musical passage.

Onion Skin Practice

A student plays a phrase and adds onion skins of sound as the phrase crescendos, and takes away onion skins as the phrase decrescendos. The analogy of an onion skin helps the student to see, hear and then achieve fine gradations in sound variance.

Add-a-group Practice

This technique was named by Nancy O'Neill Breth in The Piano Student's Guide to Effective Practicing. (4) To execute this, the student plays each beamed group of notes plus the first note of the following group. The student works on this and then continues to add groups individually until all groups are linked.

Record/Playback Practice

One of the best ways for a student to objectively hear where he is and what he needs to do next is to tape-record and play back the performance. He might record an entire piece of music or perhaps just a page or a short portion of a piece. He then listens to the music just played and practices from that tape recording. He discerns what needs to come next in the practice from objectively listening to his own playing. I find that this technique does much to bring a student into connection with how one sounds at that time. It can be used during a lesson with a student who is disconnected from his performance and the quality of work he wants to attain, or by a student at home.

Q How does a student know what skills to use at what time?

A Invariably, the techniques used depend on the musical passage and the student's level of performance at that point in the playing. This discrimination is an essential part of practice. The point is this: it is possible for a student to practice a certain technique in the wrong place of a piece and, thus, for the practicing to be totally ineffective. This is why it is important for a teacher to teach a student how to practice: to tell a student which techniques might be appropriate at which stages.

Most teachers have their own practice techniques they use with students. Many of us have heard other teachers with interesting or even catchy names for various practice techniques. These names seem to give some spice and energy to the practice, and they also convey clearly to a student what is meant. I suggest you try codifying your practice techniques: naming the technique and helping the student transfer the practice skill to other pieces.

NOTES

(1.) Smith, Patricia J. and Tillman J. Ragan, Instructional Design, Second Edition. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1999): 275.

(2.) Ibid., 276.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) Breth, Nancy O'Neill, The Piano Student's Guide to Effective Practicing. (Arlington, VA: Nancy O'Neill Breth, 2001): 4.

Jane Magrath, NCTM, is internationally known as a pianist, author, clinician and teacher. 5he is professor and director of piano pedagogy at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.