[wccrawford]

I actually disagree with the 'play perfectly' example. It emphasizes the beginning of the practice and de-emphasizes the end. If playing the whole thing 20 times is boring, imagine how boring it is to play the beginning over and over until you get the whole thing perfect 5 times?

Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.

I once had a teacher that took offense at the statement "Practice makes perfect." They always changed it to be "Perfect practice makes perfect." I think it's more in line with the article's meaning, too.

As another anecdote, I've been studying Japanese lately. Never before have I been so acutely aware that the only way to improve a skill is to use it. Reading English for me is -very- easy and enjoyable. Japanese started out extremely difficult, time-consuming and painful. A few years later, and I'm much better at it... But my listening skill (for Japanese) has hardly changed at all. Why? Because I almost never use it.

[jamesbkel]

>Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.

I guess maybe we understood him differently, because I thought that was the point he was getting at.

Regardless, I agree with the idea of "targeted practice" of each section. It's been awhile since I've done any serious piano playing, but my strategy for perfecting a piece was always to nail the final 4-8 bars 5x in a row. Then I would keep adding another 4-8 bars to the beginning of that and repeat the process until I could play the whole thing through.

I found working from the end to be much more effective than from the start. My guess is that it's less tedious since the new part is at the beginning, so if you're restarting after each mistake, you end up focusing on the new material instead of racing through the old boring material to get to the new stuff.

[jonprins]

Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake.

This makes it really, really awful if you're playing a recital and slip up just a tiny bit (obviously, you should practice it so you don't slip up /at all/, but let's be realistic here. Even people studying to be performance majors make mistakes in their recitals) - your first instinct would be to start the passage over, which is the /last/ thing you want to be doing.

It also makes it nearly impossible to play with a group.

[icegreentea]

Yeah. My experience with playing (long long ago), as well as while practicing wrestling moves is that you need to do a mix of isolated, and complete practice. The mix depends on your proficiency, length involved, complexity, and some other contextual stuff. I could tell when I practiced just isolated elements too much because then my transitions would be obvious. In fact, having that mix will increase your engagement (which was his original point anyways).

But in my experience, the 4th criteria is by far the most important. Not only is it more effective, it's a hell lot more enjoyable.

[nandemo]

> Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake.

The key is not making mistakes in the first place! Do slow practice on short passages. If you make a mistake then decrease the tempo (or play a shorter passage) until you can play it correctly. Repeat it until you can't do it wrong. Then increase the tempo.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~schuring/Oboe/practice.html

[wccrawford]

That's a good point, since the author was also making the point that practice should mirror the skill as closely as possible. In a real orchestra, if you make a mistake, you do NOT hesitate. You keep playing and hope not to make another. If all your practice has depended on being perfect, you have neglected a needed skill.

[nandemo]

> Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.

That's exactly what he's saying: "a violin student trying to perfect a short, tough passage in a song". Passage, not the whole piece. To practice the whole piece, you divide it in overlapping passages and master each passage. It's "boring" but it works.

[cwb]

He does say "passage" to refer to a small part of a composition, not the whole thing. Your thinking is spot on though -- the length of the segment needs to be considered.

[dbalatero]

You need to adjust the segment length to reflect your current success/failure. Either that, or you need to slow down. I'm viewing this from a musician's perspective, but those are the two basic tools in my practice toolbox:

1) slow down until comfortable 2) isolate the thing that is giving you the actual trouble, and fix that before attempting the bigger challenge

The thing to avoid is practicing mistakes. These two basic principles attempt to minimize that.

[Jabbles]

I agree.

Principal Skinner: Here's a whole box of unsealed envelopes for the PTA!

Bart: You're making me lick envelopes?

P.S.: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game of it.

Bart: What kind of game?

P.S.: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that record.

Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.

P.S.: Yes, well... Get started.

What works for one child/person may not for any other. Whilst we've seen game-ification take off for many activities, it doesn't mean it's the only way to learn things. If the core activity isn't enjoyable, building a game around it may only encourage someone temporarily.