Which type of practice do you do?

[JonZ]

An example of normal practice versus deliberate practice

Practice

• Start with a general idea of what the kid wants to do (play tennis)
• Find a tennis group or lessons, play with parents, siblings, friends
• Practice until kid reaches an acceptable level
• Get a coach
• Play more
• Continue improving

Deliberate practice

• Start with a general idea of what the kid wants to do (play tennis)
• Find a tennis group or lessons, play with parents, siblings, friends
• Practice until kid reaches an acceptable level
• Get a coach who can set specific targets and tailor practice to improve those areas (improve forehand, vary rallies)
• Develop a way to measure improvement, so if forehands are a weakness, the coach delivers lots of those strokes, progressively makes them harder to return, and demands that the player places strokes in a specific spot. Progress is tracked constantly
• Create positive channels for feedback so that modifications are continuous (like learning how not to reveal intentions to opponent)
• Develop a mental representation of excellent performance: what to do in various game situations; how to respond to certain shots; when to take risks and try new things
• Coach designs developmentally appropriate training sessions to achieve maximum effort and concentration. “It’s counter-productive for a parent or teacher to push them longer than they can,” Ericsson says. “That creates motivational problems and forces the child to do the best they can when they don’t have 100% concentration. That’s linked to developing bad habits”
• Kid learns to self-assess and come up with own mental representations, so they feel in charge and able to exploit opportunities on the court
• Kid develops own training sessions to elicit maximum effort and concentration, acknowledging physical and mental limits, and learns to use self-assessment to address weaknesses.

https://qz.com/915646/how-to-make-yo...000-hour-rule/

[BJ O'Day]

Applying this to learning an instrument?
Takes ALL of the fun out of it.
BJ

[foldedpath]

Applying this to learning an instrument?
Takes ALL of the fun out of it.
BJ

+1
I'm not a "method" person when it comes to learning an instrument and the tunes to play on it. There are probably more structured ways to get faster, get smoother, etc., but I've always just played the music I enjoy playing, and let the music carry me naturally into better playing over the years. I don't follow any structured method when I practice.

Maybe I would be an objectively "better" musician if I had followed something out of a book or web site. Or taken lessons all my life. But this way has been a heck of a lot of fun, and I don't regret it.

This doesn't mean I would advise everyone to follow the same path. It depends on your goals in music. If you want to be the next Chris Thile, you might want a wee bit more structure and method in your practice regime.

[Bertram Henze]

I just play until it sounds right.
This teacher/planned-practise thing is what I underwent as a kid, and it almost succeded in putting me off music forever. No Sir, never again.

[ManjoMan]

I practice pretty much all of the time inside my head. This is how I work out the different tunes that I want to play. Then, when I get time at home, I get my mandolin and try to get what is in my head to come out at my fingers. It sometimes takes a while to get them to coincide, but it works for me. The important part for me is to hear the tune in my head first. Then I practice after work to keep my fingers limber and my callouses up.

[Bertram Henze]

The important part for me is to hear the tune in my head first. Then I practice after work to keep my fingers limber and my callouses up.

Exactly. Come to think about it, you're not practising a tune. The tune implants itself inside you and grows until, with a burst, it hatches audibly.

[DavidKOS]

Interesting...

For me, in a musical context, practice is working on/learning to do something I cannot do ...yet.

I try to focus on the technical skill I'm not yet able to do, or the non-technical issue I am missing. Frankly, good practice for me begins with ID'ing what I need to work on.

That usually means new skills or new tunes.

[DavidKOS]

I practice pretty much all of the time inside my head. This is how I work out the different tunes that I want to play. Then, when I get time at home, I get my mandolin and try to get what is in my head to come out at my fingers. It sometimes takes a while to get them to coincide, but it works for me. The important part for me is to hear the tune in my head first. Then I practice after work to keep my fingers limber and my callouses up.

Well, my jazz guitar teacher - who wound up teaching for years at GIT - suggested much the same concept.

You need to have a guitar (or in our case mandolin) "in your head".

To Les Wise, that meant 2 things:

you can practice in your head without a physical instrument

you can learn tunes, licks, etc. by ear just by working them out on the instrument in your head. No real stringed instrument needed....just yet.

Thanks for reminding me.

[Sherry Cadenhead]

As for myself, I like structure, so I have a rather set routine. I generally play scales or scale exercises for 10 to 15 minutes. Since I'm trying to learn to play double stops well, I spend the next 15 minutes or so working through Pete Martin's materials. The rest of my hour or so is spent working on tunes for the weekly jam session and a recital duet coming up in January. I'm supposed to be practicing third position, so I'll need to add that into the mix before starting lessons again in January.

I would think any practice routine would depend on the musician's level of experience, as well as his or her personality. What works for me would be a total turnoff for many others, I suspect.

[jshane]

I play music to escape all that deliberate crap that the rest of the world seems to insist on piling up in front of me every single day.

I hear things in my head-- sometimes heard from others, sometimes not-- and I work on them until my fingers/head can make them come out of my mandolin.

I guess that is practice.... but man.... I couldn't face the day if I knew that I had to think about music in that deliberative way......

[Sherry Cadenhead]

I meant to add I think how you practice - and some might not even call practice what they do - depends on your ability and how you use your music. I have no natural ability and envy those of you who do. I hope to learn to play by ear, but feel I have to take this in steps. My approach, I believe, works best for me - at least at this stage. For others it would cause them to switch to basket weaving.

[Louise NM]

The description of deliberate practice sounds like something that would turn almost any kid into a tennis-hater. Adult driven, overly structured, and joyless.

There are a few hyper competitive children who might thrive under a program like this, but not many.

When extrapolated to music, it impresses me as highly destructive. Almost always, playing music is cooperative rather than competitive. Nothing in that approach talks about finding joy in playing, or using music (or tennis) as a way of spending quality time with other people.

With many friends in the classical music world, I know plenty of adults who were beaten down by the competitiveness of the field, and find it to be pretty joyless. Not the relationship to music---or tennis---I want for myself or my children.

[Mike Snyder]

There are folks who would thrive on the “deliberate” practice program. I suppose. Somewhere.

[Bertram Henze]

...basket weaving.

I bet basket weavers have some highly ambitious competition system of who weaves the most complicated patterns in the shortest time, weekend camps and international championships featuring Wilma Wickerwhopper who wove her first master basket at the age of 4. It may sound funny, but it would not be further away from normality than a lumberjack festival.

The way to happiness is easy to find: look at excellence, then turn by 180 degrees and start walking.

[JonZ]

I am surprised by how many people have a negative reaction to the deliberate practice model, especially the notion that it is harmful to children. I suppose the parts about measurement and feedback bring up memories of being graded. But when you are dealing with an individual, measurement and feedback are not a form of ranking; they are just useful information.

Either of the models above can be done in a way that is harsh or nurturing.

[Bertram Henze]

I am not a friend of hardwired procedures, but I am partial to analysis, so here is my theory regarding organisation of practising:

Everybody needs some kind of organisation, and there are three types of dealing with that need:

1. The Successful Student: has no organisation of himself, likes to do things by the book and readily accepts the full package of instrument, music and instructions. May learn fast by not questioning principles.

2. The Total Teacher: is self-organised and able to apply this organisation to others. A programmer of people.

3. The Tardy Troglodyte: is highly self-organised in a subconcious way, which is very efficient (non-zero progress divided by zero concept) but incompatible with written procedures. Unable to follow the Total Teacher or to lead the Successful Student.

I am firmly in the #3 category, for instance, but #1 and #2 might get along well with each other.

There is also the question of diversity: everybody needs a balance of different approaches in their lives. I am a professional analyst and programmer, writer of documentation and concepts. Music has always been my total retreat from that, and has so far saved me from severe mental disorders (or so I believe). Concepts in music would destroy this balance.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Above all,practice should be fun !!. The whole idea of playing an instrument is ''to have fun & enjoy it''. Unless your intent is to go into the ''Classical'' mode of music,where technique in order to be able to accomplish complex passeges of music is of great importance - learn to play tunes by ear. In order to accomplish that,you need do no more than to play slowly at first in order both to memorise the tune & to get the right & left hand synchronised. Learn to find where 'the sounds' are on the fingerboard. No need to name them,that'll eventually come on it's own.

I'm totally 100% self-taught on banjo / guitar & mandolin & that's the way i did it,& from what i've read on here,so have many,many other players.
If learning to read musical notation is deemed to be important,do that as well. That's the one thing that i wish i'd kept up with,but with no written music for Bluegrass back in the mid 1960's,there wasn't much point.

Above all have fun,& too much regimentation will kill that off pretty quickly - purely my opinion,
Ivan

[Bertram Henze]

Above all,practice should be fun !!.

Absolutely. And I was late to discover that. I grew up as the only child of two professional classical musicians, and the word "fun" would have been downright heresy in connection with what they did - after all, it was called "serious music". Writing about it and thinking back to it gives me the creeps this very moment. I'll resume now playing the A part of "Lexie MacAskill" until it sounds good and solid, makes me feel better immediately and is therefore effective by definition.

[Bertram Henze]

...when you are dealing with an individual, measurement and feedback are not a form of ranking; they are just useful information.

Feedback goes two ways: directly from the instrument and from the teacher. Only if both ways provide consistent information it is useful, otherwise it is like that dentist scene in Marathon Man ("is it safe?"), and the student is just searching for a way of playing that will end the torture.

[Jess L.]

"Which type of practice do you do?"

You mean now, or when I was a kid? The reference to kids in the original post, has me a little confused.

I'll just list the progressions. No one made me do any of these steps, it was my idea, not someone else's. Further, there was never any scripted plan, it was just me being curious & wanting to figure out how stuff worked, a little bit at a time over many years.

1. Kid. I learned by ear & example, from other people in the household & from musicians who stopped by the house to visit my folks.

2. Playing along with records.

3. Learning details from half-speed records.

4. A long time later, learning the basics of how to read standard notation.

5. Learning to read tablature.

6. Learning to *write* tablature, which had the side effect of making it easy to learn to write standard notation (fiddle tunes only, not complicated classical stuff).

7. Now: how I learn new stuff now, is first find something I like well enough to *want* to learn to play it (I've become picky in my old age). Then I listen to it over & over again until it kind of sinks in by osmosis. If a written version exists, I occasionally look at the written version while listening (if it needs transposed to a different key, I do that). If a written version does *not* exist, I make one, by writing down approximately what I think the notes are. Then I set about figuring out the most likely chords that would sound good (often not impressed with online or fake-book chords which sometimes seem deficient), & I write those down (usually onscreen via MuseScore) otherwise I'd forget. Now that I have chord names I can make a practice backing track at any speed I want, in any style I want, and play along with that until I'm at least somewhat comfortable playing the tune. Then I might try some harmony stuff, lately I like to write down potential candidates for harmony notes (based on what the chord is), then try to actually play that, then adjust it while playing so it sounds better. At some point in this process, usually, there will be an "aha!" moment when everything comes together & I 'understand' the tune. From there on out, it's just a matter of mechanics, getting the fingers to play the notes I 'hear' including whatever little variations I might or might not come up with.

[Mark Wilson]

I'm a lazy sort these days. I could sit down and noodle on tunes and be content.
The only thing I've adapted is picking one simple thing each day that I want to achieve
If I can learn something new or make permanent some technique improvement each practice I'm making progress

[jshane]

Now I am curious--

Is there any evidence that any of the mandolin players that we all admire have actually ever followed some sort of "deliberative" process to achieve their level of proficiency?

The whole thing seems so formulaic and rigid and mechanical that it seems it would squeeze the life out of any spark of art that was present... But, then again, what the heck do _I_ know???

[Bertram Henze]

Is there any evidence that any of the mandolin players that we all admire have actually ever followed some sort of "deliberative" process to achieve their level of proficiency?

Even if there is, the question remains if it would help others the way it helped them, or if they might have become better without it.

Like the proverbial millionaire, who became rich by selling books on how to become a millionaire.

[Mark Wilson]

Is there any evidence that any of the mandolin players that we all admire have actually ever followed some sort of "deliberative" process to achieve their level of proficiency?

I would like to hear more pro players asked about that. "What was your learning process?"

[T.D.Nydn]

I would like to hear more pro players asked about that. "What was your learning process?"

Probably practicing an awful lot,and when turned pro,probably playing an awful lot,,