Practicing is important. I try to practice everyday even when I can only spend 5 minutes on a scale or a section of a new song. As an adult learner, I understand the frustration when teachers want us to practice slowly. While people have been telling us that we want to do deliberate practice; they never tell us benefits we can gain from it. Until recently I have read Daniel Coyle’s (2009) The Talent Code. Coyle has provided scientific explanation that I have been looking for.
There are many interesting insights in the book, one idea that I will talk about is the concept of deep practice.
Deep practice and myelin
When we practice deeply and slowly, our bodies start to build layers of myelin around neurons. From the above picture, the green layer will become thicker as we keep practicing. This is why we want to practice slowly and correctly. The repetition is key here. The slower you practice, the faster you can get better.
For adult learners, we usually do not spend enough time to build solid foundational skills when we start our learning journeys. While our teachers want us to spend time working on those skills, we want to quickly move to the next piece. Occasionally, we would run into difficult passages and we cannot play them. When that happens, instead of going back to solidify our foundational skills by slowly practicing, we give up or change the song.
If we want to get better at playing the violin, there are three factors to consider:
Practice in chunks
Chunking is something that we all do when we start learning a new piece. We break it down into small sections and practice. According to Coyle, we want to break it down to the smallest units, which could be two measures at a time. We want to make sure that we practice with accurate intonation or bow movements. In other words, we train our neurons to be accurate every time we play.
Repetition is key
After we have broken down the music into small chunks, we want to repeat those measures. For example, we can time ourselves to spend 10 minutes to learn those two measures or a section of a song. On the next day, we can repeat those section to see whether we could play it correctly. If we still make mistakes, then we repeat that same section again.
Develop your awareness
When we practice slowly, we can notice any errors we make or we know that our intonation is either flat or sharp. When mistakes are made, we want to correct them as soon as possible. For example, if I practice a G major scale and my third finger on the A string is flat. I will go back to start from the third finger on the D string and continue to see whether I will make that same mistake. I usually correct my intonation mistakes right away during my practice time.
As you can see, slow practice is extremely important for musicians. I hope that you spend some time slowing down your practice and apply some concepts from this post. Happy practicing.
You can get a copy of the Talent Code book here: https://amzn.to/3oO2Jj7