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Mini-Blocking and Breaks

Here is a post I shared on in the Piano With Rebecca (PWR) group. I am making important practicing discoveries these days!

Retrieving Maintenance Pieces: Lessons Learned

On Saturday, I posted that I was about to tackle my neglected maintenance pieces. I was afraid it would be a miserable weekend of stumbling through a dozen or so pieces that I'd worked so hard to learn and memorize in the past year. I started with an interleaved approach (7-minute intervals), alternating between with Mozart's Rondo alla Turca, Jonny May's "Bare Necessities" arrangement and Scott Joplin's "Solace." It was, as expected, quite frustrating as I struggled to re-learn measures I'd mastered just a few months before.

Switching to Block-Style Practice

In the afternoon, I switched to do a more block-style approach with three other pieces ("The Entertainer," a bluesy "Amazing Grace," and Chopin's Nocturne in F Minor) and accidentally discovered the effectiveness of "mini-blocks" with short breaks. I spent 25-30 minutes per piece as planned, but those intervals were broken into smaller chunks, separated by short breaks. I used this same approach on Sunday, and most of my pieces are nearly back to form, with only the most difficult ones (Chopin's F minor nocturne, "Bare Necessities," and Maple Leaf Rag) needing a little more work.

Smaller Chunks? I Can Do This!

I'm so excited about these results because the nature of my life is I often get 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, etc. I often get frustrated by the interruptions (as you'll see in this video), but now I can make them work for me. Normally I would just postpone practice if I didn't think I could devote at least a full, uninterrupted 30 minutes to it. Last night I played in mini-sessions between cooking, exercise, and cleaning the kitchen, and managed to get a whopping 90 minutes in, even though it felt like much less. Every little bit helps!

Question for Other Pianists

I'm wondering when it's better to do interleaved practice (going straight from one section/piece to another after short, focused intervals of 5-7 minutes) and when it's better to follow a short, focused interval of practice with a break when you're away from the piano and focused on something else.

Now for the Cheesy Video!

Anyway, the video walks through how I stumbled upon this approach in practice, and I also talk about an analogy for memory retrieval that I learned in an undergrad psych class that I thought was interesting. Like my previous one, it features lots of cheesy clip art and GIFs!

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