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Login Forums Beyond Practicing Forum Applying deliberate practice formula to fixing wrong notes Reply To: Applying deliberate practice formula to fixing wrong notes

  • Noa Kageyama

    Administrator
    November 22, 2016 at 3:44 pm

    The key element of deliberate practice is problem-solving. And if I’m understanding your question correctly, this is where it seems you are getting a bit stuck, yes?

    Do you have a sense of why you’re playing wrong notes? As in, are they generally the same wrong notes, or different ones every time? Is it because you’re not quite sure where your fingers should be going, or the spacing, or do you not hear them clearly enough in your head, perhaps? As in, is it a mechanical reason that is causing wrong notes, or as you describe, a matter of looking ahead better, or having the keyboard or notes mapped out or memorized more deeply?

    With regards to sight-reading, the best way to get better at sight-reading is of course to do more sight-reading. So perhaps this would entail reading with others, or playing with an instrumentalist for fun. Deliberate practice would come into play when it’s time to figure out how to improve your sight-reading. To figure out what is holding you back – whether it’s the discipline of keeping your eyes moving ahead, or being able to let mistakes go, or gaining more technical facility with the keyboard – and then devising ways of improving those areas.

    There’s a relatively new book out that’s all about deliberate practice, written by the researcher who is responsible for the term and has studied this most of his career. It’s called Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericcson. It’s full of examples and really digs into deliberate practice, so you might find it a helpful read if you’d like some tangible pictures of how others have used deliberate practice in different domains.

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