Week 8: pre work
Podcast 1:
-practice - (Hallam 2016) ‘practice is central to the development of all aspects of musical expertise’
-consists of a variety of different strategies, not just imitation
-technical exercises
-playing or learning repertoire
-learning processes
-skill acquisition (Fitts, Posner):
-cognitive stage, learning/practicing new things take up more attentional resources,more concious
attention
-associative stage, repeating actions to get better at something
-autonomous stage, completing the task becomes more automatic because we are more aware/have
more knowledge of the skills needed to complete a task, moves into longer term memory as we are
more familiar to leave space in short term memory
-predicting musical success is not that simple
-form self-teaching
quantity of practice:
-10,000 hours over the course of a decade= expert performance level
At least
-10,000 of deliberate practice
-accumulated practice time is equal for people at a certain level
-just considering the quantity is not enough (mcpherson)
-levels of accumulated practice time is the best predictor
-starting at a young age, piano and violin (less physically demanding for kids)
Podcast 2:
-quality of practice
-10,000 hours of deliberate practice, structured activities prepared most likely by teachers
-different from play and work
-formal practice, for sloboda et al.
-better players, more likely to do formal and informal practice
-those who became professional musicians were more likely to have engaged in improvisation
-debate about genes
-effective practice:
-’achieves desired end-product in as short a time as possible’ (Hallam 2016)
-setting goals
-metacognitive skills, reflecting on your own learning
-uncorrected errors
-targeted actions to improve certain things
-people playing repertoire all the way through, or stopping to fix things and practice
-we develop our metacognitive skills to be able to practice effectively
Practice strategies:
-regular practice
-can vary between levels of performance ability
-when? Morning
-warm up, technical skills, repertoire
-practice should be safe, breath control or stamina,
-sufficient sleep
-mental practice
Podcast 3:
-preparing for performance
-chunking= move away from cognitive stage (now autonomous) , break down work they’re practicing
into more manageable stages, can aid memorisation, related to part-whole strategies
-structure and notation skills to be able to break into chunks
-over-learning, can help to aid long term memory for musical content, can help free up attentional span
and mastery
-novices- play through music without stopping to break up sections, maybe due to shorter pieces so may
be more appropriate
-a change in techniques is needed at middle level of expertise
-practicing at different tempi, using metronome or recording devices
-sight reading= first stage in learning new repertoire, hand-eye span, more experienced sight readers
would play 7 notes ahead, novices= 4,
-structure effects different factors
-eye-tracking studies= difficulty of score and level of musician play big role,
Memorising music:
-playing from memory can help musicians perform more expressively, fluency, interaction with audience
Expert memory:
-meaningful encoding= knowledge about something new is processed in relation to our own
understanding and experience
-well learned retrieval structure in long term memory= used to organise different information to
complete a task
-sustained and extended practice= makes recall processes more fluent
-hierarchical approach
-results fit with theories of memory practice and performance skills
-less analytical strategies at middle level
More common at higher level
