Why it matters, and how to get there
The Premise
Picture this. You are sitting at the piano. Your teacher has given you something specific to work on, and you have a good idea how to go about doing it. You take a small section and give it a try. Then you pause. Was that better than before? Are you on the right track? Do you need to adjust anything?
These are important questions that I get asked a lot during lessons, and questions I hope my students are asking themselves a lot at home too. It might surprise you then to learn that I generally try not to answer them. The reason is that for optimal learning, the student has to be able to tell that they are getting better. They need to be actively engaging the parts of their brains that check what they want to do and if they are doing it in order for those parts of their brains to grow. In other words, an accidental improvement isn’t bad but it may not help us recreate that improvement tomorrow. It only really counts as an improvement if you can tell you are getting better.
That might sound like a pretty hight bar, but it is the difference between easily learning and growing frustrated. Our time at the piano is spent trying to refine the way our brain takes in, processes, and outputs information. If we are trying to make deliberate changes to our brain, it matters how our brain shows up at practice time.
The Problem
Your brain doesn’t want to check if you are making progress second by second, and it has a strong inclination not to because of how it has evolved.
For hundreds of millions of years, our pre-human ancestors had one major objective which was to reproduce. To do that, they had to grow and maintain their bodies, and to do that they needed food. Those who could thrive with less food were more likely to survive. Brains use a lot of energy, so brains that could operate more efficiently became an evolutionary advantage. So far, no surprises.
Now suppose you drive to work on the same route every day. Which set of brain activates will take less energy: 1) reading every street sign and following along on a map, or 2) following the cues you have learned at important moments, possibly even subconsciously? Again no surprises, we’re generally better off relying on muscle memory and allowing our brains to focus on other things.
So why is lower-energy muscle memory and advantage when we’re driving but a disadvantage when we’re practicing? When we’re driving a familiar route we are replicating the same sequence of choices without any real need to improve. When we are practicing, we want to improve, to explore, to find challenges and take small steps forward. Simply recreating past successes is not detrimental in the very short term, and your brain will sometimes follow its evolutionary programming and slip into muscle memory. However, habitually playing without finding small improvements teaches us not to think as deeply as we could, which over time erodes our ability to practice efficiently and confidently deal with challenges.
There is another layer to this problem. We don’t notice ourselves slipping into muscle memory in the same way that we don’t notice ourselves shifting from deliberate breathing to automatic breathing. Not only will you slip into muscle memory at times, you almost certainly won’t notice (at first). Perhaps the biggest challenge I see my students face is thinking they are being deliberate and seeing clearly when they are actually not. This means they are not engaging parts of their brain they want to be exercising, and they do not (yet) have the awareness to do anything about it.
What This Looks Like
To better understand how this shows up in our practice, let’s consider a few scenarios I see often.
Scenario 1: A student isn’t putting any extra effort into forming a clear plan, and can’t tell whether they are playing accurately or not. They may have intended to focus but slipped into muscle memory, or they may not have thought about it at all. Accuracy may be good if they already had good habits, but it also may degrade over time and refining details will be difficult. Students may feel frustrated or discouraged.
Scenario 2: A student puts energy into forming a plan, but relies primarily on their ear to check whether things are on track. They play, hear something is off, stop, and make a correction — either by thinking it through deliberately (better) or by backing up and letting muscle memory carry them through again (not ideal). Playing will likely be more accurately. However, they aren’t finding the most direct path to their goal (for example they may habitually land on a wrong note before finding the right one rather than going directly there). They can also only catch mistakes after they have already happened. I want to be clear that listening well is a genuinely valuable skill, and it’s often the primary tool for assessing expressive elements like dynamics and phrasing. But most students don’t hear robustly enough to rely on their ear alone (specifically for notes and technique), and leaning on it too heavily can get in the way of developing more detailed modes of thinking.
Scenario 3: A student is focused on what’s happening in their brain, where their control lies. They’re building detailed plans and following them consistently enough that many tricky places improve. However, some still don’t. They are still running into occasional stumbles and not easily able to make progress on some details. They may be frustrated; after all they are focusing on their inner world, paying attention to how clearly they are thinking.
This is evolution catching up with them. They know what it feels like to be able to tell they are following their plan and they set a clear intention to do that, but their brain slips into muscle memory and they don’t notice. Tellingly, when I ask how they can tell they are following their plan, they often realize they can’t quite. They also often don’t realize that the stumbles, missing details, and problems that are hard to solve are all hints that they aren’t thinking as clearly as they thought they were. This is (temporarily) a very difficult place to make progress because students are practicing as if they have deep control but they do not. I describe this as “playing slowly enough to plan but not slowly enough to be able to tell you’re following the plan.”
Scenario 4: A student puts real energy into forming detailed plans and slows down enough to tell, in real time, that those plans are being executed better than before. They can be proactive, catching problems before they happen (“I can’t see what that note should be so I’ll pause” rather than “that didn’t sound right”). They can point to specific evidence that they are following their plan: “I can see that the notes I’m playing match the pattern in the music,” or “I can hear that this passage is getting louder,” or “I can feel my fingertip jumping off the bottom of the key.” They are fairly consistently able to see that they are taking tiny steps towards their goals. They may pause or slow down regularly, because they’re more focused on their inner world — aiming for clearer, more coordinated thinking — than on whether it sounds concert-ready today.
Optimizing Your Practice
So, knowing this, how are we going to practice differently? How do we move closer to scenario 4 practice? The good news is, while details may differ, there is only one thing you need to do: focus more on your thoughts, your inner world. Ask if your brain can tell that you’re following your plan and if so, how?
In scenario 1, you weren’t paying attention to if you were making progress (and may not have had a clear plan); now you can look for evidence that you are heading in the right direction. In scenario 2 you were relying entirely on your ears to know that you were following your plan; now you can also use your brain to proactively see what is coming up. In scenario 3 you were focused on your inside world but not giving yourself enough space to do all of the thinking you wanted to (because muscle memory was pulling you along before you could finish thinking); now you can find a better speed that allows your brain do to all of the things it was already capable of (this may be much slower than you expect at first). In scenario 4 you were efficiently and effectively taking small steps forward; now you can deliberately affirm that this is how you want to practice and start building consistency in how you think.
We know evolution and outdated habits will nudge you towards the less deliberate modes of practice. We could at time fluctuate between all four scenarios over a matter of minutes. The good news is each time you remind yourself to pay attention to your inner world you strengthen new habits. Over time you become more aware of when your deliberateness is slipping, more adept at doing the learning in your inside world, and discover more clearly where your control really comes from. In short, to deliberately change your brain it has to be actively engaged, and in order to know it is actively engaged you have to regularly go out of your way to check that it is. When you make a point of focusing on your inside world, everything else will follow.
There are several major benefits to this more consistent focus on our how clearly our brain can see. Firstly, your accuracy will improve. Over time you will play with more confidence because you can proactively see what is coming and that you are taking the steps you want to. Secondly, by actively engaging your brain, it is much better prepared for learning. Actively engaged brains can typically find small (or not so small) improvements fairly easily. Disengaged brains struggle to move forward even when the same potential for learning is there. Being able to find those small improvements also make it much easier to take on large challenges. Thirdly, you will play more expressively. You have more capacity to express each note when you are deliberately aware of each note. You’ve also spend significant time playing below top speed to facilitate your thinking and playing at slow speed give you more time to hear and understand how the music is put together. When I am adjudicating, the students who stand out are always the ones who are the most deliberate in their playing.
A Few Clarifications
Depending on a student’s age and level of experience, the thinking and self-reflection required in scenario 4 may not yet be a reasonable goal. Fortunately, there are a few ways we can simplify this. Firstly, you can ask a student if they can tell if, for example, the notes are right but not ask they how they know. This helps them understand that self-reflection is an important part of practice without overwhelming them. Another very good option is to ask them to follow the steps their brain would take to prove they are following their plan but not ask for any self-reflection (for now). For example, I might simply ask a student to say the name of each note as they play it or to count out loud. This helps them strengthen the proofs that they will need later even if they don’t yet know that that’s why they’re doing this.
Maybe you are supporting a student whose understanding has outpaced yours, or a student who doesn’t need (or want) you sitting beside them for the whole practice. Use that position to your advantage. I always end practices with my own kids by asking them for one thing they worked hard at, but you could ask for one thing they could more clearly tell they were doing right and how they know. You could even ask them to sit down and demonstrate it to you.
Another important note: it is easy to think in absolute terms like “Can you tell all of the notes are correct?” Unless a student is quite close to that point, that also may not be a reasonable goal. A better starting place is “Can you find a few more notes that you can tell are correct?” If we’ve taken a few steps, “Can you tell every note or do you want to look for a few more?” may be appropriate. I find the key is to frame the question such that progress which hasn’t yet reached our ultimate goal is will still feel like a win.
We’ve talked a lot about muscle memory here, and it’s worth clarifying that it is not all or nothing. I may be thinking clearly about one hand but not the other, or one bar but not the next, or one detail but not another. We also slip into muscle memory gradually, like we slip into sleep. There is a moment where you are definitely drifting off (and maybe not fully aware of it) but if some pointed that out you could wake yourself up. That moment may pass quickly or last for a while. Most of our playing happens somewhere between perfect clarity and complete obliviousness, and we always have some degree of muscle memory engaged (you don’t want to think about each muscle you want to fire individually after all). But we know that evolution is always gently pulling us towards the muscle memory side of the spectrum and deliberate thinking is how we can choose to “wake ourselves up” lean in the other direction.