Angela Yarnell

MEMT 898
Daugherty
October 1, 2009

Research Analysis 1

Duke, R. (2009). It's not how much; it’s how - characteristics of practice behavior and retention
of performance skills. Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 56 (4), p. 310-321.

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to discover if practice quality and strategies
employed by advanced pianists could predict the quality of their performances of a challenging
excerpt 24 hours later. Researchers also describe the practice strategies of the top performers in
the sample.

Research questions posed:

• What are the practice behaviors of advanced pianists who learn new material efficiently?
• Is the total amount of practice time, number of total practice trials, or number of complete
practice trials predictive of performance success?

Primary methodology of this study: qualitative

For qualitative studies, list the specific qualitative approaches used: grounded theory

Methodology Summary:
Advanced pianists at a university’s school of music were asked to practice a 3-measure excerpt
for as little or as long as necessary prior to a performance of the excerpt at a prescribed tempo
the next day. Participants were videotaped during the practice and performance sessions. MIDI
data from the keyboard on which they played was collected for analysis.

Video recordings were viewed to collect the following numerical data: total practice time,
number of performance trials, number of complete performance trials, number of correct
performance trials, number of near-correct performance trials, the sum of correct and near-
correct performance trials, number of incorrect performance trials, the percentage of complete
trials that were correct, the percentage of complete trials that were correct and near-correct, and
the percentage of all trials that were correct.

Videos were viewed again and detailed accounts of practice behaviors were notated.

Using the audio recording only, performances were put in rank order based on tone, character,
and expressiveness. The top three pianists on 15 trials were identified and their practice videos
were then analyzed first. The behaviors of these top three performers were clearly different from
the 14 lower-ranked performers. The strategies used by the performers were listed by apparent
effectiveness.

Conclusions:
For these performers under these conditions, practice strategies employed were more
determinative of success in performance than the total time or number of performance trials. The
best performing pianists took no less time to learn the excerpt. The top performers went about
learning the passage in a different way than the lower-ranked pianists. The high-ranked
performers shared specific behaviors in practice: errors were immediately isolated, corrected,
and put back into context and tempi were varied systematically and logically. The top
performers had just as many errors at the beginning of practice as the others, but their handling
of the errors when they occurred was different.

Recommendations for future research:

Identify good models for effective practice and further investigate the practice behaviors of
effective learners at all levels.

Evaluation/assessment of this research study:

The present study makes an important contribution to the knowledge of advanced pianists
practice strategies and provides much insight into the learning process of this group of
performers. The author makes great use of the learned information by communicating many
generalization possibilities and uses of this research. The study had a unique design and found
an interesting set of information in a short amount of time.

Generalization/transfer possibilities:
Solo practice and performance is very different from group rehearsal and performance for many
valid reasons, but in this area of discovery, the decisions made by effective soloists can provide
insight for ensemble directors and perhaps provide a model for teaching students to be more
independent and thoughtful learners.

Playing with both hands together and with inflection early in practice were two of the hallmarks
of top performers in the present study. Perhaps it would be beneficial then for choral students to
practice with the voice parts together early in the learning process as well. I have always
remembered Dr. Duke’s presentation at KCOMPTEP over a decade ago when he stressed to our
pre-service teacher group that we must find ways to ‘get to the good stuff’ early on in music
study, both in terms of beginners, and in each new piece in later studies. This study seems to
support this opinion that inflection and expression in music needs to happen early on in the
rehearsal of new music if it is to be fully realized in the performance. This study does not
address how rewarding it is to integrate expressiveness early in rehearsal, but it might
corroborate Dr. Duke’s impassioned speech on its effectiveness in creating thoughtful
performers.

In this study, the best performers stopped before a possible error rather than play it incorrectly,
and actual errors were immediately and systematically corrected. If choir online learning
modules are used as tools for practice outside of rehearsal, are they effective if students cannot
correctly prevent errors or at least detect and correct errors in private practice? If students can
detect and quickly correct errors, private practice may be useful. If students practice incorrectly,
are they doing more harm than good as they repeat and memorize errors? For group practice it is
obvious that we find and eliminate errors quickly, but even more important that we teach our
students how to anticipate errors and self-evaluate so they might become more efficient at
practice outside of rehearsal. Clearly we as directors cannot allow autopilot or run-throughs as
these poor repetitions may be retained in some way and be detected in the final product.
Identification and targeted practice of short but difficult passages was shown effective in this
study, just as we are encouraged as directors to address some issues under intense magnification
before returning the passage to the surrounding musical context. One of the top pianist’s
behaviors with varying tempi could prove highly useful. When the target passage is put back
into context, it may be helpful to employ unmarked rubato; as a possible error point approaches,
the conductor could indicate a gradual slowing of the tempo to allow the students to correctly
navigate the troublesome area, rather than repeat a previous mistake. Repetition of this rubato
technique should include varied tempi, gradually returning to performance tempo.

The most interesting aspect of this study was that top performers did not use less time to prepare;
they just went about learning differently and were able to perform at a higher level because of it.
Practice behaviors should be modeled in ensemble situations so that students can become more
thoughtful and effective in their private practice as well as be more involved in the group
learning process. As directors, we must teach musical independence, which comes about
through effective and efficient practice.