Thinking about practising

I have been thinking about practising. The question of how practice makes perfect continues to fascinate researchers in the psychology of music. It is generally accepted that the 10,000 hour rule alone is insufficient in explaining the development of expertise, and that it is quality as much as quantity that really makes a difference. The idea of deliberate practice has been explored. This is usually associated with formal practising, involving goal directed, focused behaviours, the intentional use of practice strategies, and self-regulatory approaches such as reflection and self-assessment. The different strategies employed in deliberate practice have been researched empirically and the idea of deliberate practice has made its way into discourses and reflections on learning and performing, including this thoughtful piece by my own daughter.

Questions have persisted, though, with regards to the approaches to practising that may offer the greatest promise in terms of the development of expertise. This research area has enormous implications for all those who are invested in the intense commitment that instrumental learning requires.

One model of effective practising, proposed by Arielle Bonneville-Roussy and Thérèse Bouffard, synthesises the ideas relating to the quantity and quality of practising, adding in a third dimension of motivation, the thinking being that if we are motivated we are more likely to persist with effortful and deliberate practice (as highlighted by Paul Evans and Gary McPherson in their study focusing on identity and practice – although Susan Hallam and colleagues have reported complex relationships between motivation and practice, pointing to the need for research with this focus.).  

In their study involving 173 Canadian college students learning western classical instruments, Bonneville-Roussy and Bouffard reiterated the view that it is what you do, as well as how much you do it, that makes practising fruitful. Their study showed that focused attention on deliberate, goal-directed and self-regulated formal practice functioned as the key link between time spent practising and the development of expertise. In addition, a positive motivational profile (measured here by self-perceptions of musical competence) had an indirect effect, in that strong self-perceptions of competence were related to more time spent engaged in formal practising.

The question of how young musicians go about their practising has also been researched extensively by Sue Hallam and her colleagues. They have ‘unpacked’ the idea of deliberate practice, identifying several specific strategies and showing how these develop over time, as expertise develops. It may be unsurprising to some to find that there seem to be gender differences in young people’s approaches to practising. Girls reported more systematic approaches to practising, but boys reported higher levels of concentration when they practised. These findings are based on self-report, with a sample of over 3000 children and adolescents learning western classical instruments.

Pamela Pike adopted a different approach to understanding practising, looking in-depth at the practising undertaken by intermediate piano pupils. A striking finding is that the students reported using more practise strategies than were actually observed. Curiously, they could describe effective practice strategies, but were not necessarily actually doing what they said they did. Pike’s study also underlines the importance of context. The students were attempting to engage in deliberate focused practice, yet this was undertaken at the end of the day when they were lethargic and easily distracted.

Much of this research focuses on how we practice, with some attempts to understand how motivation fits in to the practising puzzle. But, perhaps there is a need for a greater emphasis on the bigger ‘why’ that underpins our practice. The answer seems obvious – we practice to make perfect, to become experts. But, is deliberate practice – and lots of it - sufficient if we strive to be creative, to explore our musicianship and to take risks in performance? Is it possible to practice exploratory and expansive approaches to music-making, or is ‘risk-taking’ and ‘deliberate practice’ an oxymoron?

These questions are considered by Guro Johansen in his qualitative study of how jazz musicians practice improvisation. Johansen proposes the concept of incremental, explorational practice. According to this model, practising can be expansive, encompassing exploitation of existing knowledge as well as exploration of emerging knowledge. At one end of a continuum, musicians acquire and exploit well-known knowledge and structures (is this what we might recognise as ‘deliberate’ practice?). At the other end, they explore new knowledge, breaking the rules, finding new and emergent structures. This is described as open ended practising that has as its goal a flexible and intuitive state, with a focus on feeling rather than thinking.

So, do we need to rethink our model for practising, and account for motivational influences, context, deliberate strategies, self-regulation, as well as expansive and exploratory approaches to developing as deeply creative and innovative musicians? An important question may be whether it is ever too early to adopt expansive approaches, and whether it is never too late to rethink our practising.

The curious paradox of music performance anxiety

I have written about the power of music, particularly with regard to the links between music-making and wellbeing. Many argue that participation in music, which leads to a positive music self-concept, has a direct and positive impact on self-esteem. So, it is somewhat of a paradox that the very activity that can foster such positive feelings of joy, fellowship, wellbeing, and self-esteem can also function as host to feelings of terror, in the form of music performance anxiety (MPA). MPA has been defined as apprehension prior to performance, or impairment of performance, that is entirely out of kilter with what might be expected given one’s level of training and preparation.

One of my most vivid early memories is of my first violin recital. It is the terror – the anticipation of catastrophe – that has stayed with me for over 50 years. Therefore, I was particularly interested in the research investigating whether music performance anxiety may be related to the age at which musicians start learning their instruments. A group of Spanish researchers carried out a survey study with over 200 school-aged young people learning instruments, as well as a second group of over 400 conservatoire students. Amongst both groups, those who had started learning at age 7 or younger had lower levels of music performance anxiety than those who had started at age 9 or 10. The researchers explain that it is at about age 8 that children start to develop the complex cognitive mechanisms that underpin ‘mature embarrassment’ and suggest that at younger ages children are therefore in some sense protected from anxiety in performance situations. In addition, the authors highlight the importance of context, in explaining their findings. Starting an instrument at an early age can provide frequent experiences of performance within an encouraging and warm context and these repeated experiences of success can generate a positive feedback loop which evidently may have far-reaching impact. However, the adults and peers in that environment play a key role. Early performance experiences that lack personal warmth and encouragement, or that are just ‘too hard’ and therefore do not contribute to a bank of mastery experience, may lead to a negative feedback loop that can be hard to shift. A key message in this research is that an early start can provide a wonderful opportunity to build positive performance experiences that may, if experienced within supportive and safe contexts, subsequently act as a buffer in the face of MPA.

Focusing on their group of 437 conservatoire students, the same group of researchers explored the relationship between psychological vulnerabilities and MPA. The results showed that a sense of helplessness was a strong predictor of MPA, and that self-efficacy and optimism were both negatively related to MPA. Helplessness, they explain, can have its roots in early childhood, and once established can be persistent. Circling back to the discussion around links between age of starting learning and MPA, it seems ever more clear that early childhood experiences of performance must be handled with care. While these early experiences may form the building blocks of positive strategies and attitudes towards performance, they may very easily also form the foundation of helplessness, spiralling into debilitating MPA.

Finally, these recent papers concerned with MPA once again highlight troubling and persistent gender differences. In line with other research, the group of Spanish researchers reported that women experienced higher MPA than men, and that self-efficacy was higher amongst the men. This phenomenon of gender differences in anxiety under stressful performance conditions was explored in some depth by a group of Dutch researchers. Eighty-one conservatoire students described what they were thinking about when they play under pressure. It seems that while playing under pressure women are distracted by many more worries and disturbing thoughts, compared to men – 37% of the women’s thoughts were coded as worries or disturbing thoughts, compared with 18% of the men’s thoughts coded in that way. The men seemed to have strategies for remaining focused on task – 46% of the men described being focused on the music, as compared with just 25% of the women.

This brings me back to my early memory of MPA, and to the paradox. Music-making can be a joyful and enriching lifelong activity – there can be little doubt about that. But what are the facets of those early formative experiences that set our children off on a pathway of vulnerability, or alternatively resilience, with regards to MPA? And, why is it so persistently women who are the most vulnerable? Perhaps we need to be exploring in-depth our pedagogical practices in the early years, looking for the potential roots of gender differences in MPA.

Bouncing back: Can music be used to restore wellbeing?

Several researchers have explored possible pathways between engagement with music and subjective wellbeing. A recent Australian study suggests that dancing to music and singing, are activities that are related to high levels of subjective wellbeing. This study, which involved 1000 telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 500 men and 500 women, highlighted the importance of musical social networks – the positive relationship with wellbeing was strongest amongst those who said that they danced or sang with others.

But can engaging with music help us to bounce back from stressful and threatening experiences, and to restore our sense of wellbeing? The authors of the Australian study, Melissa Weinberg and Dawn Joseph, explain that subjective wellbeing represents a stable and consistent sense of general mood happiness. In the face of stressful events, we draw upon external and internal resources to restore our baseline ‘setpoint’ for subjective wellbeing. Music, it is argued, might function as such a resource.

Emotional regulation may play an important role in restoring the status quo for subjective wellbeing. One recent study, carried out in Spain, adds to the growing evidence that listening to music can help to regulate emotion, in this case helping individuals to regain a sense of relaxation and equilibrium following an acute stressful event. Alejandro de la Torre-Luque, and his colleagues used an experimental approach (randomized controlled trial), and measured cardiovascular outcomes as well as affective state following a recovery period after the stress-inducing task. While the experimental group listened to their own preferred calming music during the recovery period, the control group rested in silence. Listening to self-selected calming music helped physiological recovery from the stressful event and the music-listeners also reported more positive feelings after the recovery period, as compared with their colleagues who had not listened to music.

The deliberate use of listening to music as a way to alleviate negative moods has been highlighted in a study by William Randall and Nikki Rickard at Monash University. Using an experience sampling report method, these researchers collected data from 327 participants about reasons and contexts associated with their music listening. Emotional reasons were the most frequently cited, and it was particularly when individuals were in a negative mood that they chose to listen to music in order to release emotion, feel stronger, forget problems, cope, reflect, express themselves, or improve their mood.

Engaging with music may have an even more profound role in relation to wellbeing. According to those who have theorised the idea of Terror Management Theory, the greatest existential threat that we must negotiate, as humans, is the unconscious or conscious knowledge of our inevitable death. In her thought-provoking paper, Audrey Cardany reviews the literature concerned with the role of music as a mechanism for mitigating what is referred to as ‘mortality salience’ – that is, the conscious awareness of the certainty of death. Cardany discusses a small but growing body of empirical evidence in support of the idea that musicking (including listening, creating, and performing) may function as a buffer in the face of mortality salience because it promotes a sense of social connectedness, and strengthens our cultural identities.  In this psychological account of why we ‘do’ music, it is proposed that the power of music lies in its potential as a symbolic world that distracts us from our physical existence, helping us in our quest for meaning, and providing a safe space within which to develop a relationship with death.

In a curiously roundabout way, this brings me back to the idea of bouncing back and regaining one’s subjective wellbeing, in the face of threat or stress. The emerging evidence provides ever stronger support for the view that musicking, be it listening, creating, or performing, can function as a profoundly important mechanism for coping with the multitude of threats that life presents, including loss, stressful events, and even our deepest existential crises. Whether we refer to deliberate individual music listening musical social networks, music in community, or shared musical identity, the power of musicking seems to be extraordinary.