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M AKING THE U NDOABLE D OABLE : T HE C ORE OF E XPERT M USIC P RACTICE B Y M ICAH K ILLION January 2023 • Page 13© 2023 International Trumpet Guild January 2023 / ITG Journal 13 L ouis Davidson’s Trumpet Profiles is my favorite trumpet book with its good, clean, qualitative data. In the book, written in , Davidson simply asks a few founda- . tional questions of an exceptional group of professional trumpet players. Questions like “What size mouthpiece do you normally use?” and “As a student, how many hours of practice did you average per day?” were asked to such greats as Cat Ander- son, Ray Crisara, Timofei Dokshizer, and Dizzy Gillespie. The responses are fun to read, particularly those in the handwriting of these towering figures. Individually, they offer a glimpse into the sorts of behaviors associated with mastery. The book’s deeper story, though, is how the responses read collectively. The pattern that emerges—David- son reports as much in his general observations and comments—suggests that practice behavior differs widely. Great players practice in different ways, with different gear, and for different amounts of time. What we can be sure of, however, which is made evident by their masterful trumpet playing, is that everyone practiced effectively. Each master in this book approached many passages that were, for them, unplayable and turned those passages into something they could perform beautifully every time. They made the undoable doable—a lot. Individual practice is undeniably important to the develop- ment of fluency. Though it is entirely possible and perhaps admirable to be a perfectly happy musical human who never practices, expanding technical and expressive vocabulary to mastery requires practice. Specifically, effective practice reduces the discrepancy between what musicians intend to play in any given performance trial and the sounds that actually come out of the bell. A learner’s practice efficacy is a meas- ure of change. Efficacy measures how much improvement, if any, happens within a span of time. The ability to effect change during practice is perhaps the single most reliable predictor of expertise. The path to expertise is a measure of change over time. Watching experts practice is seeing true superpower. It is arguably what they do best—they improve. The tendency for many music learners (and, unfortunately, teachers) is to turn attention to the quantity of practice. Specifically, there is typically a strong intuitive and cultural desire to correlate the amount of practice with the amount of learning. This myth lives on, despite research suggesting that students don’t all improve at the same rate. The correlation between number of minutes practiced and improved perform- ance is weak. Instead, the quality of practice is a more precise and reliable predictor of expertise than the number of minutes or hours practiced. Paraphrasing an aptly titled influential arti- cle in the Journal of Research in Music Education by some pro- fessors of mine, it is not how much, but, rather, how (Duke, Simmons, & Cash, ).1 The question at the heart of effec- tive practice, then, is what kinds of experiences afford optimal change? How do experts make the undoable doable? Changing procedural memories usually takes time. What is commonly—and unfortunately—called “muscle memory,” is actually the storing, coding, and retrieving of procedural mem- ories in the brain. The brain associates perceptions, actions, and outcomes to better predict how to act in future, similar sit- uations. Associations are built through the strengthening of certain synapses, mediated in part by reward circuitry. Actions, or motor plans, that help us reach behavioral goals (like playing a passage the way we intend) are rewarding. Through the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, the brain changes its struc- ture to make rewarding refinements more likely to reoccur. These changes take time to form in the brain, but time alone is insufficient for the kind of refinement that leads to effective practice. Research into motor learning suggests some of the other key ingredients that are required in order to develop skill. To refine a skill memory, the brain first needs to form a clear intention/prediction for what the body is about to do. Then the brain needs to clearly perceive the result of the action that unfolds. Finally, the brain needs to recognize the discrepancies between the intention/prediction and the outcome. Perceptu- al information resulting from a discrepancy is then fed back into the motor system and used to refine future iterations of similar actions. Much of this predicting and perceiving happens unconsciously for many skilled players, but it happens, nonetheless. It must, because that is the mechanism through which the brain refines skills. This iterative process is central to skill development and should be observable in the prac- tice of experts. To explore this, our study group asked a group of expert trumpet players (Billy Hunter, Amy McCabe, Chris Coletti, Gareth Flowers, Justin Emerich, and Louis Hanzlik) to film their practice and share it with us. Instead of asking about their practice, we wanted to see and hear what these experts are doing in the practice room in naturalistic settings. Our analysis showed that experts identify important discrepancies and modify tasks to afford optimal, iterative updates to future trials. The experts do this in ways that are at once both remarkable and entirely predictable. M AKING THE U NDOABLE D OABLE : T HE C ORE OF E XPERT M USIC P RACTICE B Y M ICAH K ILLION FA2 “Effective practice reduces the discrepancy between what musicians intend to play in any given performance trial and the sounds that actually come out of the bell.” “Through the release of neuro- transmitters like dopamine, the brain changes its structure to make rewarding refine- ments more likely to reoccur.”14 ITG Journal / January 2023 © 2023 International Trumpet Guild In these videos, the professionals •demonstrate a clear intent. Their vivid aural and physical ideal serves as a point of comparison for evaluating each performance trial. •identify errors quickly. They quickly and accurately iden- tify important discrepancies between their intentions and the sounds they produce. •strategically repeat target passages. Multiple iterations pro- vide for exploration, experimentation, diagnosis of per- formance problems, and refinement. •pause to think. Taking time between performance trials facilitates detailed assessment of what just occurred and clear planning for upcoming performance trials. •do-able-ize (yes, it’s a word). There are few instances of multiple unsuccessful repeti- tions. When they recognize problems that require explicit attention, they modify ele- ments of the passage to ensure quality per- formance. •maintain contextual elements to the extent possible. Mod- ified passages are altered only to the extent necessary to accomplish goals in several repetitions. •recontextualize strategically. Once proximal goals are accomplished, passages are recontextualized in a sequence that affords consistent quality. These elements combine to form a procedure for skill refine- ment, which is entirely consistent with the fundamental principles of procedural memory formation and the refinement of procedural memories over time. We then asked college trumpet students to watch clips of the expert trumpet players prac- ticing. Each excerpt showed them refining passages that need- ed polishing. After viewing, students were asked what they noticed in the video they saw. There was tremendous variety among the responses, which included mutes, artwork in the practice space, light, posture, metronomes, singing, thinking, fans, phrasing, intent, focus, beautiful sounds, “pingy” articulations, microphone placement, repetition, exploration, and comfort, among other things. Although several participants described how experts approached solving problems, there were very few responses that identified the essential features of effective practice that appear above. This pilot study suggests that even experienced musicians seem not to notice the most important elements of expert practice. Our results highlight the importance of guiding aspiring musicians through the procedures that lead efficiently to suc- cessful learning. Although it is often the case that teachers pre- scribe so-called “practice strategies” for their students, it may be that the effective application of the various approaches that are intended to do-able-ize (yes, it’s still a word) are not well understood. This suggests that trumpet students at all levels stand to gain from guided practice opportunities in which learners experience the sequence of imagining, planning, pre- dicting, performing, and perceiving that forms the basis of all effective practice. To help in the building of practice habits that optimize motor learning, here are some guiding questions to ask your- self and your students during practice today. Do you know what you intend to play for every single trial? A vivid idea of what you intend to play affords more and more subtle discrepancies between your intent and the sounds that are made. Experts do this every time they play music. It may be so common to their practice that they don’t notice how consistently they imagine what they intend to play. The vivid- ness of intention evolves with expertise, but students of all lev- els can practice habituating the formation of an aural intent. Are you perceiving discrepancies between your intent and what you actually play? This requires attention. Experts listen for discrepancies because they afford practicers valuable information: namely, what is causing the error, and what should be done about it. Have you do-able-ized enough, but not more than you need to? When presented with an undoable passage, modify it into a doable task— immediately. Reduce the demands of the task so you can focus attention on some- thing you can make great right now. When doing this, only decontextualize as much as needed. Doing so encourages maximal transfer when recontextualizing. Are you recontextualizing at a rate that keeps you mostly suc- cessful? Experts perform fewer errors in part because they practice fewer errors. In other words, they practice in ways that habituate success. In addition to optimizing motor learning, this also likely aids in raising self-efficacy, a construct linked to better learning and per- formance. Expert performance is the outcome of expert thought. Learners at all skill levels can begin thinking like experts now to maximize the amount of learning in every individual practice session. About the author: Micah Killion is an assistant instructor and PhD student in music and human learning at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies with Dr. Bob Duke. His cur- rent research explores the cognitive and perceptual-motor processes underpinning music learning. Prior to pursuing his terminal degree, Micah was principal trumpet of the United States Air Force Band in Washington, dc. He holds degrees in trumpet performance from The Juilliard School and music education from Teachers College at Columbia University. Endnote 1Robert A. Duke, Amy L. Simmons, and Carla Davis Cash, “It’s Not How Much, It’s How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills,” Journal of Research in Music Education , no. (January ): – . “When presented with an undoable passage, modify it into a doable task—immediately.” “Expert performance is the outcome of expert thought.”Next >