Why the Progress You Make in the Practice

Room Seems to Disappear Overnight – PART 2

​ by Christine Carter

Of all of the frustrating Greek myths out there, I think the story of Sisyphus is
the one that I could always relate to the most. Sisyphus was the guy who was
condemned to an eternity of pushing a huge boulder up a hill, that would always roll
back down every time he got it close to the top.
I think we’ve all had to deal with this sort of frustrating, seemingly futile task at
some point or another in our lives. Like trying to keep dandelions out of your yard. Or
trying to keep your dog from getting mats in their hair.
But I think the reason why the story of Sisyphus always stuck with me, is
because that’s how practicing often felt.

Sisyphus in the practice room

Like, if I had a good solid block of time, I could totally work all my repertoire up
to a pretty decent level and feel ok about how it sounded. But I rarely bothered to
practice this intently, because it all felt a little pointless.
In the sense that deep down, I knew that when I woke up and took my violin
out of the case the next day, the boulder will have rolled most of the way back down
the hill, and I’d be back to square 2. Or 1.5.
And ok, fine, I hear you Captain Arithmetic. =) Technically speaking, yes, if I’m
starting from step 2, or even step 1.5 the next day, it’s not pointless. But you get the
idea. This sort of daily muscle memory amnesia is super discouraging.

Christine Carter answers FAQ:

Quick Review
Interleaved practice involves rotating between different tasks, rather than
completing all work on one task in a block before moving on to subsequent tasks. If a
swimmer wanted to work on three different strokes, each for 20 minutes, for
example, they could divide the work on each stroke into smaller segments. Instead
of completing 20 minutes on the first stroke, they could spend 5 minutes on each
stroke, rotating through them until 20 minutes of practice are completed on each
one.
This type of practice is more challenging than blocked practice. Restarting
tasks requires more “effortful processing.” And after many years of practicing in a
highly repetitive blocked schedule myself, I can attest to the fact that interleaving
initially feels less comfortable. When we do something over and over again in a row,
the feeling of comfort that arrives gives us the illusion that we are creating
long-lasting learning. But it is precisely the more effortful processing required by
interleaving that leads to enhanced long-term retention. Study after study has
confirmed the advantages of interleaved practice over blocked practice across a
wide variety of fields, including music (e.g., work by Laura Stambaugh, Branden
Abushanab & Anthony Bishara, and me and Jessica Grahn).
Interleaving is one of a variety of strategies that UCLA researcher Robert
Bjork has coined “desirable difficulties” – challenges introduced into the practice
environment that consequently make practice more effective. Other related
examples include spacing (e.g., spreading practice sessions throughout the day) and
variability of practice (e.g., using different practice techniques to work on the same
passage). With all of these desirable difficulties, it is important to assess learning
after a delay has occurred. We cannot know what we have learned until we are
faced with retrieving that learning. Too often, practice is structured to optimize
in-the-moment performance, and research suggests that this is often inversely
correlated with actual learning. We want to practice in a way that leads to resilient
learning – learning that sticks and is there for us when we most need it on stage.

Practice as Problem-Solving
When first thinking about interleaving, it is easy to envision practice that
randomly jumps between tasks without much else going on. Many people have
asked me over the years how improvement will occur if you play through something
once inaccurately and then move on. What is important to articulate here is that
there is a difference between running through passages and doing the deep work of
problem-solving. Whether you run through a passage 10 times or only once and
return 10 times, neither approach will fix underlying problems if the problems
themselves are not addressed. We have to listen to what we are doing, determine
what needs to be improved, and then decide how we can work towards making
these changes. Do we need to play with more musical intention? Does our legato
need to be smoother? Does a technical passage need to be more even? Once we
decide what we need to focus on, we can then address these issues through
appropriate practice techniques. The structure of how we work on music, whether
through blocked repetition or interleaving, does not replace the essential work of
problem-solving.
It is rare that I play through something as it is written when I am
woodshedding. I will gradually go through my full arsenal of practice techniques,
getting to know each of the notes as though they were old friends. As I ask my
students, are we more likely to remember someone if we pass by them 10 times or if
we stop and have a conversation with them, asking them about their life? We need
to take the time to interact with the notes in interesting and varied ways. We can
practice with different rhythmic variations, change the beat groupings, practice
forwards and backwards, practice slowly, record, speak the notes or rhythms, sing,
and remove notes from each beat (e.g., removing the first sixteenth of each group of
four, followed by the 2nd, etc. – a technique my former student, Holly, has now
brilliantly labelled “excavating”). We can look to jazz and use the metronome on off
beats or odd beats (e.g., dotted quarters in 4/4), forcing us to feel a strong inner
pulse, rather than having it supplied externally by a metronome that marks every
beat. We can “skeletonize,” playing only the notes that fall on beats, or “chunk,”
playing one beat’s worth of notes at a time – both techniques introduced to me by
practice expert, Dr. Carol Aicher. The strategies are limitless and making up new
ones can be a real source of creativity and challenge in the practice room.
So interleaving is not necessarily a standalone practice strategy, but a way to
structure work that incorporates many practice techniques to solve the problems at
hand. Rather than playing through something once “as is” and then moving on, we
need to engage with the music through deliberate practice and problem-solving, then
shifting to other tasks before returning to engage meaningfully once again. This
looks very different than playing something once inaccurately and moving on.
Remembering a Solution is Different than Solving a Problem
One of the reasons interleaving is so effective is that it helps induce the
conditions necessary for problem-solving. When we repeat something over and over
again, we are not necessarily problem-solving at all, but remembering the solution.
I am going to ask you to solve the following math problem:
4+7–2+1=?
Okay, now I am going to ask you to solve the same math problem again:
4+7–2+1=?
Most likely you did not engage in the same mental processes that took place
the first time you read the problem and instead remembered that the solution was
10. Likely you could not engage in the same problem-solving, even if you tried. The
solution becomes a cued-up response. When we practice a passage the same way
over and over again, we are also cuing up a response, significantly limiting our
brain’s ability to engage in the effortful processing necessary to optimize learning.
And when we remember a primed solution in practice, the feelings of fluency we
experience following the ease of this remembering are often mistaken as evidence
that we are learning.
Cognitive psychologist Larry Jacoby drives the point home in his article, “On
Interpreting the Effects of Repetition: Solving a Problem Versus Remembering a
Solution” (1978): “It is incorrect to conclude that because an event is repeated the
processing of that event is also repeated. Rather, repetition of an event can result in
the solution being remembered without the necessity of engaging in the activities
that would otherwise be required to obtain that solution.”
Interleaving is a way to induce a level of forgetting that, far from problematic,
is actually essential to long-term remembering. By moving on to other material and
returning, we have the opportunity to problem-solve once more. Incorporating varied
practice techniques is another way to induce more elaborate problem-solving
processes. If I ask you to solve the above math problem backwards, you will once
again have to engage in real problem-solving (especially since this problem does not
have the same answer when solved backwards.)
A Question of Focus
Another common question I receive about interleaving relates to focus. If we
are regularly switching between materials, won’t this interfere with the development
of focus? This is a great question and one we can address by once again returning
to our math problem above. Once you have read through this problem a couple of
times, your focus will wane. You can try to force focus, but it won’t fundamentally
alter the reduced processing taking place in your brain. When we are repeatedly
shown the same stimulus (and that “we” applies to all ages of humans – from babies
through adulthood), a process called habituation occurs, in which our response to
the repeated stimulus gradually diminishes.
We seem to understand this more intuitively in other learning contexts. I
couldn’t imagine telling my son to read the exact same book 10 times in a row before
moving on to new material. When we provide variety and challenge, we create a
learning environment that welcomes focus naturally. I remember my days of “play it
perfectly 10 times in a row” and the mind-wandering that would ensue a few
repetitions in. I would feel guilty for being distracted and berate myself to “focus!” But
when I fundamentally changed the way I practiced, incorporating far more challenge
and variety, the focus came easily. Time goes by so much faster now and I leave
practice feeling like my brain has had a real workout. So often when people are
feeling bored or distracted, it isn’t from a lack of focus at all, but from a lack of
challenge.
Most importantly, the focus required in performance is very different than the
focus often cultivated in the practice room. Performance provides a highly stimulating
environment. Practicing in a very repetitive and unstimulating way does not prepare
us to take on these additional challenges. We don’t have the luxury of starting 10
repetitions in when we are on stage in front of an audience.

Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?

More than any other question on interleaving, I am often asked to articulate
exactly how to use the strategy in practice. While there is no formula, and
implementation is open to considerable experimentation, I will write a few thoughts
on each “W” below.
Who?
 Interleaving can be used by people of all ages and at all stages of
development. Research suggests that interleaving is effective for beginners,
including in music. When I was teaching clarinetists at a public elementary school in
New York City, I frequently incorporated interleaving in our activities. Making the
lessons more engaging, with interleaving as one of many tools, meant that I didn’t
have to work to keep students’ attention. As with any new strategy or skill, however,
we need to provide the scaffolding necessary for our students to implement these
ideas on their own.
(As a side note: While numerous studies have shown that interleaving is
effective for novices learning a variety of new skills, a few studies have found that
progressively increasing the amount of interleaving used is beneficial to early skill
learning. Once again, experimenting is key to find the challenge sweet spot for each
musician and skill.)
What?
Any type of repertoire or technical exercises can be practiced using
interleaving. I have found the strategy particularly useful for developing technique,
working on challenging sections in repertoire or excerpts that require significant
woodshedding, and also for working on stylistic contrast. Even when I am warming
up, I interleave the types of exercises that I do, building the flexibility required in
performance.
In warm-ups pre-interleaving, I used to practice all of my long tones first,
usually starting at the bottom of the instrument working my way up, followed by a
long stretch of articulation work, etc. I found that, while a skill might have felt strong
at the end of 20 minutes, I wasn’t necessarily noticing a huge improvement in that
particular skill when it was embedded in a more complex environment in the
repertoire. In my warm-ups these days, I alternate between long-tone work (and
within that work I frequently change registers), articulation work, and technical work.
When?
We have to decide when to use interleaving. There are of course still times
when we need to focus on running through our repertoire from top to bottom. I
generally do a lot of interleaving in the early stages of learning my repertoire, when
there are many tricky spots that need substantial practice time. As the repertoire
becomes more comfortable, I continue interleaving whichever sections still provide
technical or musical challenges. I make a point of fitting in work on the most difficult
spots numerous times throughout the day. If a particular scale or technical exercise
in my warm-up poses challenges, I will also continue to come back to this over the
course of my practice sessions.
Unfamiliar repertoire already presents certain challenges due to its newness,
so the type of problem-solving in the early stages of learning a piece may look quite
different than the problem-solving later on. Whichever problem-solving activities or
tempi we choose across the learning process, we can incorporate interleaving as an
umbrella structural technique.
Interleaving can also be incorporated when working with a recording device.
Instead of recording one section or excerpt, working on it, and then recording again,
you can record two or three in a row, work on the challenges you hear in each of
them (and interleaved if you wish!), and then re-record.
Where?
Anywhere!
Why?
See above.
How?
Answering exactly how to use interleaving is the most challenging question,
because the answer is infinitely variable. When I first started interleaving, I used a
timer, switching between sections or excerpts every 10 minutes. This alone was
challenging in the beginning, because I was so used to wanting to arrive at the
“product” before moving on. It took time to accept that I wasn’t moving on for good,
but just pressing pause (letting my mind continue to work on whatever I was leaving),
and then returning minutes later. I eventually started using shorter stretches of time,
again with the timer.
While I often recommend starting in this way, I have now abandoned the timer
altogether in favour of a more fluid approach. Interleaving has become fundamental
to the way I practice now, so I don’t need an external reminder to do this. I always
have a few things on my stand at a time so that I can easily switch between them. I
might engage in a few different practice techniques on one very short challenging
passage (and this might not even take a minute) and then move on to some lyrical
work that could take much longer, then coming back to that first short passage or
moving on to a third section. I want my practice to be flexible and responsive to what
I am hearing.
 Ultimately, we need to continue exercising our self-assessment skills, deciding
what needs the most attention in our music at any given time. A session that starts
alternating between 3 passages (e.g., ABCABC) may evolve to alternate between
only 2 once we see what needs the most work (e.g., ABABAB). Or perhaps we can
spend more time on the two more challenging excerpts, while still incorporating a
third, and eventually adding a fourth (e.g., ABCABABABDABCAB…) After a stretch
of time on these, we may want to move on to another group of passages that need
our attention.
My best advice is to experiment and to become comfortable going outside of
the comfort zone. There is no one right way. Be mindful of your level of engagement
when you are practicing, and if your mind is wandering, try increasing the challenge
and variability. Engaging practice is effective practice and once this higher level of
mental engagement becomes the norm, it is the previously “comfortable” practice
that becomes uncomfortable.
(As another side note: For those wondering if it makes a difference whether a
truly random schedule is used (e.g., BCAABC…) or a repeating serial schedule (e.g.,
ABCABC), the research suggests that it doesn’t. The benefits are from the
non-repetition of events, not from the unpredictability of a random schedule. I
generally rotate in a serial way because it’s easier for me to keep track of this
mentally.)

A Final Note on Science, Music, and Experimentation

Research in sport psychology, cognitive psychology, and a variety of other
fields provides such a rich source of ideas for us as musicians. While I feel strongly
enough about the importance of empirical research to have run scientific
experiments myself for over a decade, I can also say that no study can determine
the exact conditions that work best for all people in all settings. We need to
experiment and determine through trial and error what works best for each of us. As
we do this, it is important to take a long view of our learning, remembering the
potential trap of feelings of fluency in practice. Through the use of desirable
difficulties, including interleaving, we can provide engaging sources of challenge,
optimize problem-solving, and make practicing far more effective. A great side effect
is that this type of practice is also a whole lot more interesting.
***
About Christine

Photo credit: Mike Meyer

Dr. Christine Carter is interested in how musicians can be more effective on stage
and in the practice room. Her research has led to a variety of article publications and
invitations to give workshops at dozens of institutions around the world. She
currently holds a SSHRC Insight Development Grant with co-researchers Dr. Jessica
Grahn (Brain and Mind Institute, Western University) and Dr. Jonathan De Souza
(Don Wright Faculty of Music, Western University) to investigate music practice
strategies. She is a Visiting Scholar at Dr. Grahn’s Music and Neuroscience Lab.
Christine is also an active clarinetist. Performances have taken her across the globe,
from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House. She completed her Doctor of
Musical Arts at Manhattan School of Music, where she taught the Woodwind Lab for
4 years, and is now Associate Professor of Music at Memorial University in Canada.
Christine is a Buffet Crampon Artist.