Teaching Tidbit #4: Interleaved Practice
Interleaved practice is the practice of alternating or randomizing various tasks, assignments, and pieces during a longer practice session. It’s how I, as a professional, practice. And it’s one way that I’m attempting to train my students to practice. While I haven’t done any scientific studies, I can tell you that when my students practice this way, it works. They are far more efficient.
I wouldn’t know what the official term for this was if I hadn’t learned it from Noa Kageyama over at the Bulletproof Musician - an absolutely indispensable blog and podcast for musicians and music teachers. If you don’t know about the Bulletproof Musician, stop reading this right now and just go look at his website! (Just kidding. I would like you to read the rest of my post here.)
Noa’s specific posts on interleaved practice can be found here (part 1) and here (part 2).
My colleague, Nicola Cantan over in Dublin, Ireland, posted this video below titled “A parent’s guide to interleaved music practice.” This is a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the term. She refers to her book Practice Pie, which you can purchase here. Nicola promotes interleaved practice as a way of engaging the student’s focus much better than simply using blocked practice.
For my own practicing and that of my intermediate to early advanced students, the benefits go beyond engaging the student’s focus and achieving meaningful repetition, although that is a fantastic goal in and of itself. My two additional benefits are:
Taking time between tasks allows the brain to process the things you have just done. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where you work hard on something, only to be stumped, and when you take a break from it, you come back and see the solution immediately. It’s my (unscientific) understanding that our brains continue to process the activity we’ve just completed, connecting synapse to synapse, even when we aren’t actively thinking about it.
Juxtaposing tasks that feel comfortable (old repertoire) against those that feel uncomfortable (new repertoire, new technical skills, etc.) is a great way to help our bodies use natural, efficient technique. It’s as if playing something with technical challenges that we’ve already solved helps us solve similar problems in the newer repertoire. If I feel free and easy in my Chopin Waltz and interleave that with my new Bach Invention, I’m more likely to release tension in the Bach as I play because my body has been reminded while I played the Chopin.
Nicola also has a longer video for teachers about interleaved teaching, and this was what really convicted me. (Click here to watch.) I realized that none of my late elementary - early advanced lessons used an interleaved method during the lesson time. Why on earth would my students try interleaved practicing if we never did that in the lesson?!
Even worse - the assignment sheets I was writing out for my students were entirely in a blocked format, such as this (but with far more detail):
Technical warmups / drills
Sight reading or similar practical skill
Creative activity or duet or something else below the student’s repertoire level
Repertoire piece #1 - goals and practice strategies
Repertoire piece #2 - goals and practice strategies
Repertoire piece #3 (etc.) - goals and practice strategies
Written theory assignment
My students who are overall good, consistent practicers, were doing exactly what I set out for them: working in blocks.
So, for the past few weeks, I have tried writing out assignments for a few of my students in an interleaved fashion. My hope is that over the course of a few weeks or months, they will see the benefits of this and then learn to do some interleaving without me explicitly writing it out for them. Here’s an example of what this same assignment might look like. It looks very long, but remember, instead of long blocks for each item, these are short tasks. The idea is to move from one to the other after just a few minutes. (And really, if an assignment sheet like this keeps them at the piano longer, then who am I to complain? 😉)
One to two technical warmups/drills
Repertoire piece #1 - the piece needing the most attention - one to two practice strategies
Repertoire piece #2 - one to two practice strategies
Repertoire piece #3 - one to two practice strategies
Sight reading or similar practical skill
One to two technical drills not assigned above
Repertoire piece #1 - the piece needing the most attention - one to two practice strategies on a different section or review of previous strategies
Repertoire piece #2 - one to two practice strategies on a different section or review of previous strategies
Repertoire piece #3 - one to two practice strategies on a different section or review of previous strategies
Creative activity or duet or something else below the student’s repertoire level
Written theory assignment
Review of repertoire piece #1 - remember, that’s the one that needed the most attention
Below is an image of an actual assignment sheet of one of my students. Can you guess which piece I was prioritizing? 😆 This is a student who, like many other young teenagers who has good parental support and years of lessons under her belt, faithfully practices, but who doesn’t always dig in and focus during those practice sessions. So far after two weeks of assignments written like this, she has made much more quality progress.
Lastly, I made a video discussing how I use interleaved practice myself. This is just a little sneak peak into my own practice room. I hope you have found something helpful here. Let me know if you have had success using interleaved practice, either in your own practicing, or in your teaching.
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