Not All Practice Makes Perfect – Pt 16

Not All Practice Makes Perfect – Pt 16

Getting out of your comfort zone means trying to do something that you couldn’t do before. Sometimes you may find it relatively easy to accomplish that new thing, and then you keep pushing on. But sometimes you run into something that stops you cold and it seems like you’ll never be able to do it. Finding ways around these barriers is one of the hidden keys to purposeful flute practice.

Generally the solution is not “try harder” but rather “try differently.” It is a technique issue, in other words. In Steve’s case, one barrier came when he hit 22 digits. He was grouping them into four four-digit groups, which he used various mnemonic tricks to remember, plus a six-digit rehearsal group at the end that he would repeat over and over to himself until he could remember it by the sound of the numbers. But he couldn’t figure out how to get past 22 digits, because when he tried to hold five four-digit groups in his head, he became confused about their order. He eventually hit upon the idea of using both three-digit groups and four-digit groups, a breakthrough that eventually allowed him to work up to using four four-digit groups, four three-digit groups, and a six-digit rehearsal group, for a maximum of 34 digits. Then, once he reached that limit, he had to develop another technique. This was a regular pattern throughout the entire memory study: Steve would improve up to a point, get stuck, look around for a different approach that could help him get past the barrier, find it, and then improve steadily until another barrier arose.

The best way to get past any barrier is to come at it from a different direction, which is one reason it is useful to work with a flute teacher or coach. Someone who is already familiar with the sorts of obstacles you’re likely to encounter can suggest ways to overcome them.

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Not All Practice Makes Perfect – Pt 17

Not All Practice Makes Perfect – Pt 17

Purposeful flute practice involves feedback. You have to know whether you are doing something right and, if not, how you’re going wrong. In Oare’s example the flute student got belated feedback at school with a C on the performance test, but there seems to have been no feedback during practice—no one listening and pointing out mistakes, with the student seemingly clueless about whether there were errors in the flute practice. (“How many times did you play it correctly?” “Umm, I dunno … Once or twice …”)

In our memory study, Steve got simple, direct feedback after every attempt—correct or incorrect, success or failure. He always knew where he stood. But perhaps the more important feedback was something that he did himself. He paid close attention to which aspects of a string of digits caused him problems. If he’d gotten the string wrong, he usually knew exactly why and which digits he had messed up on. Even if he got the string correct, he could report to me afterward which digits had given him trouble and which had been no problem. By recognizing where his weaknesses were, he could switch his focus appropriately and come up with new memorization techniques that would address those weaknesses.

Generally speaking, no matter what you’re trying to do, you need feedback to identify exactly where and how you are falling short. Without feedback—either from yourself or from outside observers—you cannot figure out what you need to improve on or how close you are to achieving your goals.

Purposeful practice requires getting out of one’s comfort zone. This is perhaps the most important part of purposeful practice. Oare’s music student shows no sign of ever pushing himself beyond what was familiar and comfortable. Instead, the student’s words seem to imply a rather desultory attempt at practice, with no effort to do more than what was already easy for him. That approach just doesn’t work.

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Not All Practice Makes Perfect – Pt 16

Not All Practice Makes Perfect – Pt 16

Purposeful flute practice is focused. Unlike the flute student that Oare described, Steve Faloon was focused on his task from the very beginning, and his focus grew as the experiment went along and he was memorizing longer and longer strings of digits. You can get a sense of this focus by listening to the tape of session 115, which came about halfway through the study. Steve had regularly been remembering strings of close to 40 digits, but 40 itself was not something he could yet do with any consistency, and he really wanted to reach 40 regularly on this day. We began with 35 digits, which was easy for him, and he started pumping himself up as the strings increased in length. Before I read the 39-digit string, he gave himself an excited pep talk, seemingly conscious of nothing but the approaching task: “We have a big day here! … I haven’t missed one yet, have I? No! … This will be a banner day!” He was silent during the 40 seconds it took me to read out the numbers, but then, as he carefully went over the digits in his head, remembering various groups of them and the order in which they appeared, he could barely contain himself. He hit the table loudly a number of times, and he clapped a lot, apparently in celebration of remembering this or that group of digits or where they went in the string. Once he blurted out, “Absolutely right! I’m certain!” And when he finally spit the digits back at me, he was indeed right, so we moved on to 40. Again, the pep talk: “Now this is the big one! If I get past this one, it’s all over! I have to get past this one!” Again the silence as I read the digits, and then the excited noises and exclamations as he cogitated. “Wow! … Come on now! … All right! … Go!” He got that one right as well, and the session indeed became one in which he regularly hit 40 digits, although no more.

Now, not everyone will focus by hollering and pounding on a table, but Steve’s performance illustrates a key insight from the study of effective flute practice: You seldom improve much without giving the task your full attention.

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