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.