Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Scientific explation to off practise improvement ??

Why does off/post practise period actually help
with improving piano playing ? I cannot explain it
scientifically, but have certainly experienced it
myself. I wonder if the same happens to other
athletic activities.

Specifically, movements and reading could improve
noticeably for me if I have a break of 1-2 days in between. However, too long a break becomes
detrimental which is understandable as skills get
rusty, a non-scientific explanation, that is.

Check JRME and CRiME. I seem to recall some work being done in this area.

Well I cannot speak for any athletics except that reaction time would be an asset.

Quite a few pianists have also been very good racing drivers. One way round or the other. So a connection is there probably in reaction and sub conscious timing.

In other sports I have no experience. Dedication and commitment are other factors common to both activities.

Perhaps you could enlarge on your experiences?

Alan (swingal)

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I am a serial hobbiest so I'm quite familiar with the phenomenon. What I think is happening is that although you are not actually playing the piano, your brain is still going over the music and the hand motions subconciously. Perhaps that is what dreaming is all about, taking the data that was input during the day and programming it into new skills. Dreaming is merely the concious interpretation of the data moving around.

I've also found that there are a lot of connections between skills, even if it's not apparent. I find I can drop a hobby that is hard to make progress in, then when I come back to it a few years later it's easy to learn again, once I've scrubbed the rust off the skill. I think that's because I've learned things in other hobbies that help provide insight into the original.

My understanding is that learning a manual skill means developing neural pathways in the brain. The development is initiated by using these pathways, but doesn't stop immediately when you stop using them. Also, growth rate has a maximum which means that there is a limit on how much the learning process can be speeded up.

Great to hear there are more serial hobbyists out there!

Current insights into neuroscience point particularly to sleeping time as instrumental in consolidating memories, including the kind of complex motor coordination required to play the piano. That is one reason some teachers advocate playing sections you are overwinning and/or mastering one or two times slowly, completely and correctly as the last thing you do on the piano in a day, or before going to bed, to cement these learnings.

Because the physical acts of playing the piano are controlled primarily through our "unconscious", being able to play better after a break could be explained alternatively thusly:

A. When you are consciously pushing while practicing hard and long on something, you actually wind up transferring too much control over the act of playing to the conscious mind, which really can't keep up and therefore mistakes arise. By taking a break and then going back to a piece later, a more functional balance of conscious intent and unconscious movement comes into place.

B. For fluid unconscious movements to arise, our psycho-motor systems require an unconscious learning period to make them reliable. If we have been trying to do too much, too soon, this can interfere with our body's ability to consolidate learnings. Taking a break gives the room for things to stick.

About a month ago, the New York Times ran a long and interesting article on the effects of sleep on a wide range of behaviors and outcomes, including musical skill, which I think answers your question.

The article is at:
NY Times article on sleep


Here's a relevant excerpt:

"In a series of experiments that he began in the early 1990s, Dr. Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Canada has found a strong association between the amount of Stage 2 sleep a person gets and the improvement in learning motor tasks. Mastering a guitar, a hockey stick or a keyboard are all motor tasks.

Musicians, among others, have sensed this for ages. A piece that frustrates the fingers during evening practice often flows in the morning. But only in recent years has the science caught up and given their instincts a practical shape.

For instance, Dr. Smith said that people typically got most of their Stage 2 sleep in the second half of the night. “The implication of this is that if you are preparing for a performance, a music recital, say, or skating performance, it’s better to stay up late than get up really early,” he said in an interview. “These coaches that have athletes or other performers up at 5 o’clock in the morning, I think that’s just crazy.”"

This caught my eye. I have long found that I do much better practice before work (and coffee) than after work, when I tend to be a bit tired- mentally and physically.

Furthermore, starting the day with some technical exercises, plus some repertoire, seems to put me in a pleasant head space, better equipped to deal with the commute and subsequent office experience.

I am a "serial hobbyist" as well. While not a psychiatrist, I do have a docorate in human physiology. The neuromuscular connections do require some amount of time to allow for what is called the "upregulation" of receptors and transmitters in response to stimulus. Sometimes this requires gene transcription which takes a little time.
A good example is after you lift weights. Of course due to increased blood flow your muscles temporarily will be bigger just after exercise. But the actual muscle building/strengthening takes place over the next couple of days.

I also like before work practice as well. I think over the day your ear gets exposed to so many sounds and noises...In the am the ear is "fresher" and more sensitive.


So there we have it...work on expression and tone early, and repetetive practice before bed!

I've always thought the reason that music learning should be structured was not only because of the sequences making sense in a progressive, and need to know the next step way, but that the brain was layering the information appropriately for retrieval both in thought and in movement. With gaps in the sequences, the process would be impeded or incomplete or non-functional until key things (the missing ingredients) were added.

This is one of my concerns for piano students self studying - I feel there are certain steps we take with other steps that complete the knowledge and make it usable. A self studying person would not know that sequence - it is not in method books. It's the observance of the individual's learning style, and feeding it appropriately in an organized way.

When huge gaps of progressing to very difficult music too soon, without preparing the neurological way is made, this presents easy access to the brain, and is the biggest problem with why it takes some learning musicians so long to put a piece together. This is my opinion from personal study, and from my experience in 37 years of observation and working with people's progress in piano lessons.

Old time teachers I have known used such terms, as learning music being "like": 1) minestrone soup sitting on the stove perking away, and 2) baklava (Greek dessert) made of layers over which honey drips down and throughout.

Not very scientific in description. But, something I've adhered to because it makes a great deal of sense to me.

I don't think any one loses by being sequential and concrete in approach - creative, random and abstract always has it's opportunity in music, too. But the layering of information appropriately, with checks and balances, and review, and "testing" (the actual playing of what we have learned - taken from a thought process to a physical movement process and made into musical sounds).

Respectfully, and knowing I don't know this as a given, is there any comment on this posting? I'd be happy to hear it.

Betty

I thought this was well established. The brain simply needs time to myelinate its neurons. Once the neural pattern you are working on has become myelinated, the connections are much more efficient meaning you can now play that difficult pattern you have been working on. Time and practice (work) are needed for the brain to build up - same as building muscle really.

Note: If you practice mistakes - these mistakes get myelinated as well - this is why teachers get so freaked out at you if you practice mistakes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin

No, I also thought that but in email exchanges with Fredrick Ullen (concert pianist AND myelination expert) I discovered its not that simple. Here's an extract:
An interesting quote is from William James who said "You learn to skate in the summer and swim in the winter". He said the reference was German.

I like this explanation of conscious vs
unconscious. I think I can relate to it
personally. However, I must also speak from my
own experience that the unconscious aspect relates
more to the mechanical/motoring movement and
the conscious aspect relates to the musical side
of playing as no two or more playing of the same
piece can ever be identical in terms of musicality
and interpretation, and one does need the
consciousness and awareness to bring out his/her
interpretation of a piece.

Thanks very much for you insight on this topic.

There's an interesting series of articles on memory in the LA Times describing structural changes within the dendrites as a memory is laid down. The interactive flash feature is very neat.
LA Times - memory