What constitutes "practice" in the context of learning to play an instrument? For my purposes, "practice" is using repetition with intention. Repetition in and of itself is not necessarily "practice." For repetition to be "practice," it ought to produce measurable results and noticeable progress towards a goal.
What is "anti-practice"? It’s a term I invented to express my dismay when students regress between lessons. "Anti-practice" is repetition without intention. "Anti-practice" directly causes regression or impedes progress. An example of "anti-practice" is fudging your way through a piece, scale, or exercise over and over again so that you internalise and memorise all of your errors. "Anti-practice" can also be done in ignorance, for example, forgetting to check the key signature, thereby learning the piece without the appropriate flats or sharps.
The thing about "anti-practice" is that it’s worse than zero practice because you get really good at the wrong thing. Bad habits are more time-consuming to reverse than simply building a good habit in the first place.
What causes "practice" to morph into "anti-practice"? In my opinion, the chief cause is usually boredom. When a student is cognitively checked out, bad habits sneak in and become entrenched through repetition.
"Anti-practice" often happens when a child is told to practise for a certain amount of time rather than practise until a certain objective is achieved. For this reason, when teachers send students home with notes from the lesson, task-oriented practice lists are often more effective than time-oriented practice lists. That is, it is better to compile a practice programme consisting of suggestions like “practise x in this way until y is achieved” than “practise x for 15 minutes.”
That said, there is an element of time involved in practising. All things being equal, it is probably better to practise for 60 minutes than for 5 minutes. However, all things are not equal. Attention wanes over time, as does physical stamina. The amount of time spent practising should not be the metric for assessing the quality of practice.
The formula for quality "practice" (and the cure for "anti-practice") is to maximise repetition while minimising boredom. To achieve this, we need to take a piece of material and experience or understand it in novel ways. This essentially tricks our brain into treating the material as if it’s new, even though we have played it many times before. There are many ways to achieve this. Some easy examples include:
- Playing the bars of a piece in a different order (with younger students, I have been known to make a photocopy and literally chop it into different segments, then shuffle the segments and ask them to play them in random orders… all of a sudden, it is interesting and they are very noticeably more engaged).
- Practising a long sequence of notes from partway through.
- Practising a right-hand excerpt in the left hand and vice versa.
- Slowing down or speeding something up significantly.
- Timing how many times you can play something correctly within a timeframe (for example, 2 minutes).
- Seeing how many times you can play something correctly in a row before making a mistake.
- Playing with eyes closed.
- Tapping fingers in the correct sequence on a surface that is not the instrument, removing the audible feedback of the instrument so that the student has to rely on other mechanisms such as tactile and visual memory.
Some more advanced examples include:
- Transposing an excerpt of a piece to a new key.
- Applying a new technical concept (for example, using rotary motions of the forearm) to a familiar passage.
- Playing a phrase backwards.
- Attempting to notate a passage from memory (this will really test how well the material has been learnt).
If reading a score:
- Beginning with one bar in the middle of the passage and adding a note or a bar on either side with each repetition.
- Beginning with the final bar of the passage and adding one note or bar in front with each repetition.
- Turning the page sideways or upside down and attempting to play that way.
Whatever the method, the important thing is to keep introducing a degree of novelty such that the repetition does not induce boredom and morph into "anti-practice".
CONTROVERSIAL OPINION BELOW:
The strategies above are aimed at minimising boredom through getting the mind involved through novelty and challenge. They are very mindful. The only time, in my opinion, that more ‘mindless repetition’ may actually be beneficial, is when the coordination of some passage or piece is learnt, and one is merely trying to achieve speed and fluency. At this stage, incrementally increasing the speed using a metronome is extremely effective, though it may not demand much of the student cognitively.
For this type of ‘mindless repetition’, which should only be indulged in once accuracy has been achieved, there may be benefit to utilising ‘boredom antidotes’ to get more time spent at the instrument. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with listening to a podcast or audiobook, or even (heaven forbid) watching some unchallenging TV show or movie while doing this type of repetition.
Notice that while this repetition is somewhat ‘mindless’, it is not without intention. It is being used for a very particular purpose (attaining speed and fluency). Therefore, it still constitutes practice. However, the moment that inaccuracy or physical discomfort starts to creep in, one should consider whether the saboteur of progress, "anti-practice", has snuck into their music room.