Skip to main content

Taking Breaks

 I stumbled across a series of videos by a Dr. Molly Gebrian yesterday. In them, she talks about the importance of taking breaks when you're learning something. The mind needs time to put structures in place to accommodate the new learning, so we need to take breaks to allow it to do that.

She compares it to road work: You have to shut down the road in order to repair it. I also think of it as being like pouring concrete. Once you've poured the concrete, you absolutely need to stay off of it for a while so it can harden and thus become useful. If you pour it and then you keep walking on it, trying to even it out here and there, you'll end up with a mess. Similarly, we need to let our brains "cement" the new information before we can build on it.

Forced Practice Breaks

I think there could be something to this idea. When I was in college (and even during COVID), I would practice several hours a day, sometimes several times a day, but I was often frustrated at how slow my progress seemed. Now? I'm lucky if I can get in a whole hour of practice each day (and even then, it's broken up into a few minutes before work, a few minutes after work, and a few minutes before I go to bed). But I'm learning, and even memorizing, more efficiently and effectively than I have in the past. The music I'm learning isn't any easier than what I was doing before. I just seem better able to learn and memorize.

Maybe those forced breaks between practice sessions have been good for me.

An Experiment

I'm going to do an experiment with contrary-motion minor scales. I can play them all, but I'm stumbling a bit with a few of them, particularly B minor, F# minor, and Eb minor. Currently, I'm playing the similar/contrary motion scales for majors and minors in all keys on alternating days. I'll keep doing that, but I'm only going to include the minors that are easy for me. But in addition to that, I'm going to spend a little extra time on one of those minor scales each week. I'll do three days of focused practice on, say B minor, and then take a day off. And then on the fourth day, I'll add B minor to my regular exercise and see if it's improved.

If it has, I'll do the same thing with F# minor. And since I know my two readers will be sitting on the edge of their seats, wondering if my experiement works. I'll report the results next week. Meanwhile, here is the first of the videos on taking breaks.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dance of the Digits

Note: I've expanded significantly on this post over at my other blog, A Sort of Notebook . I am loving Liszt. I love the way my hands have to "share" the melody. I have so much to write on that, but I'm borrowing a computer and don't have enough time to do it justice. Suffice it to say that I've practiced three and a half wonderful hours today, and about two hours on Liszt alone. What I find wonderful about Liszt is that it pushes one hand hard, but not too hard. Then the other hand gets a turn to be pushed. But it's never both at the same time, and never one hand for too long. It's hard to explain. When I have more time to write, I'll word things rather more eloquently, I'm sure. All I can say now is that my fingers feel like they're dancing a wonderful, graceful dance. I've been trying to "play with my body," as my piano teacher says to do, so all of me is dancing. And Standchen, though it still need a lot of work (like, um...
3 comments
Read more

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...
Post a Comment
Read more