Tag: Memorizing Music

The Interleaving Practice Technique

Interleaving is a newer practice technique that I stumbled upon in the past week or two. It’s different than spacing, which I refer to in this post, but they can be used together. It can be hard, but it helps with retention.

What is the Interleaving Practice Technique?

Interleaving is to mix up information within a subject area and study it in different orders, but not studying it all the way through. It’s kind of like using flash cards, but mixing up the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

First Step: Make Sections

You can do this on a macro or a micro scale. If you’re learning a 5-page sonata, it would make sense to make sections that are approximately one page long (macro). If your goal is to learn one page this week, then you might want to divide that page up into phrases (micro).

Second Step: Randomize

Two out of my three sources (this and this) recommended to go through each section three times, so they picked a random order of sections and repeated that random order three times. It could look like this:

2,4,1,5,3 2,4,1,5,3 2,4,1,5,3

If you want to do spacing in addition to the interleaving, you could do other things like scales, long tones and technical exercises in-between each interleaving section, or do non-music related things.

Third Step: Get Out Your Timer!

Two versions of interleaving involved a timer. This version has you switching between subjects every 3 minutes, and this one every 5 or 10 minutes. This way you know that you’re not going to fully practice each section in the amount of time that’s allotted, which is part of the interleaving process.

I don’t know about you, but I feel more productive when I use a timer for anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, I feel like I get more done.

Applications

Obviously, you wouldn’t want to use this practicing technique every single time. You need to play through it from start to finish at least once a week, but I can see how this can really help, especially in the beginning stages of learning a piece.

Memorization

This could help a lot with memorizing your piece. The experts are always saying to divide it into sections and memorize those sections. If science says that this helps you memorize things better, give it a try. Let’s see if it works for you.

Beginning Stages

This would really help with the beginning stages of learning a piece. It forces you to work through parts of the piece rather than gloss over them. It would also help you analyze the piece easier, making choices about dynamics and the feel of the piece.

Middle Stages

You know how it is in the middle stages of learning a piece. You play it through a couple of times and think, “It’ll gradually get better.”

In this practice technique, you could pull out the tough parts and interleave just them for a practice session here and there. I do this all the time with ensemble music, but not usually with solos. Who knew that I was already interleaving?

End Stages

I’m not sure how I’d apply this to the end stages of learning a piece. Those last few weeks are usually just about adding the nuances to make it a great performance.

Conclusion

I love adding to my bag of tricks! Any time I can find a new practice technique, it makes me more efficient. I know this technique is hard, but please give it a try.

The Dreaded Page Turn!

The page turn can be a scary thing in music. It can be simple, but it can get really complicated fast. Here are some suggestions.

I was going to talk about the page turn in a simple Facebook post, but when I turned the corner on the second paragraph, I realized that I needed to talk about it more in-depth.

Who would have thought how complicated turning pages can be. However, when music is involved, almost everything is more complicated. So, I’ll go through some ideas to make page turning easier.

The Basics of Page Turns

Okay, someone is saying, “It’s not that complicated.” I’m saying that it can be complicated, but here are the two most basic ways to turn a page while playing music:

  1. Stop playing with one hand and turn the page.
  2. Get a page turner.

Now I’m going to tell you how you’re taking your life in your hands with each one of those tactics.

1: Only Play with One Hand

You can dog-ear the pages and hope and pray that they turn easily. I get nervous when I play, so this doesn’t work well for me. I grab more than one page, or go to grab the page and the whole book falls on the floor. Not fun.

Another issue is that sometimes you have two-handed notes at the page turn (flute) or part of the piece where it would sound funny if you stopped playing with one hand on the piano. There are solutions for this – memorize before or after the page turn where there is a good spot to turn the page (both my instruments), or on flute play the two-handed notes with a harmonic that’s on one hand so you can use your other hand. I talk about harmonics a little bit here, but that’s a subject that I’ll touch on more in-depth soon.

2: Get a Page Turner

There are great page turners out there. Some page turners need to be trained in with more than one practice session. Some page turners are hopeless and can’t turn at the correct time or in the correct manner, no matter how hard they try. Depending on the day, I can be each one of these, and so can your page turner.

Other Page Turn Options

1. High Tech

The best way to turn pages is the high tech way – have some kind of a tablet and a blue tooth pedal that turns pages. As with all technology, it’s great as long as it works.

I was playing at a gig and one of my fellow musicians had that set-up. It was flawless, but she said she always has a paper copy along because paper doesn’t crash.

2. Cardboard and Bull Clips

This one’s good for if your music is past copyright so you can make copies, or is the download and print kind of music. I hope this picture is blurry enough that I didn’t break copyright!

Page Turn Alternative
Cardboard and bull clips. Note: I still had to have a page turner with two pieces of cardboard because there were so many pages.

3. Paperclips

Page Turn Tool
Look at all those paperclips. They help you grip the page.

I have a hard time getting a hold of a single page at a time, but if there’s a paperclip, it works as a handle for me to grab. Bonus: they weigh things down.

4. Bending the Binding

Binding Helps with Page Turning
I used an evenly distributed weight to hold the book open, adjusting it once a day until it laid right.

This one works well for if you’re allowed to use music in a competition or accompanying. Usually there are strict rules about not copying for page turns, even if the music is out of copyright. It allows you to keep the book open without using weights to hold the pages open.

5. Binding

A Binding Idea
This book fell out of its binding, so I 3-hole punched it. After I did that, it was so much easier to handle!
A Binding Idea
They can do this really inexpensively at an office store.

I like to re-bind things when I have a book that I use heavily, such as a Christmas book or a scale book.

These are both different ways to bind things – stick something in a binder that fell out of its binding, or take it to an office store, have the binding shaved off, and either spiral or comb-bound.

When books lay flat, it’s easier to turn pages. You also don’t have as many problems when you don’t have to worry about your book falling closed or falling to the floor because it snapped closed. As you can see, I use paperclips as handles along with changing the binding.

Conclusion

It’s okay to have a page turn malfunction. Everyone has them, and they’re understandable.

If you can prevent them, do it. It’s unprofessional. I hope these preventions help you as much as they’ve helped me. Do you have any ideas that aren’t on here?