Angela Yarnell

MEMT 898
Daugherty
Fall 2009

Research Analysis 1

Duke, R., Simmons, A.L., Cash, C.D. (2009). It's not how much; it’s how - characteristics of
practice behavior and retention of performance skills. Journal of Research in Music
Education, Vol. 56 (4), p. 310-321.

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to discover if practice quality and strategies
employed by advanced pianists could predict the quality of their performances of a challenging
excerpt 24 hours later. Researchers also describe the practice strategies of the top performers in
the sample.

Research questions posed:

• What are the practice behaviors of advanced pianists who learn new material efficiently?
• Is the total amount of practice time, number of total practice trials, or number of complete
practice trials predictive of performance success?

Primary methodology of this study: quantitative (descriptive)

Participants:
Performers: N=17
Number of Group(s): 1

Methodology Summary:
Advanced pianists at a university’s school of music were asked to practice a 3-measure excerpt
for as little or as long as necessary prior to a performance of the excerpt at a prescribed tempo
the next day. Participants were videotaped during the practice and performance sessions. MIDI
data from the keyboard on which they played was collected for analysis.

Video recordings were viewed to collect the following numerical data: total practice time,
number of performance trials, number of complete performance trials, number of correct
performance trials, number of near-correct performance trials, the sum of correct and near-
correct performance trials, number of incorrect performance trials, the percentage of complete
trials that were correct, the percentage of complete trials that were correct and near-correct, and
the percentage of all trials that were correct.

Videos were viewed again and detailed accounts of practice behaviors were notated.

Using the audio recording only, the researchers placed performances in rank order based on tone,
character, and expressiveness. The top three pianists on 15 trials were identified and their
practice videos were then analyzed first. The behaviors of these top three performers were
clearly different from the 14 lower-ranked performers. The strategies used by the performers
were listed by apparent effectiveness.
Conclusions:
For these performers under these conditions, practice strategies employed were more
determinative of success in performance than the total time or number of performance trials. The
best performing pianists took no less time to learn the excerpt. The top performers went about
learning the passage in a different way than the lower-ranked pianists. The high-ranked
performers shared specific behaviors in practice: errors were immediately isolated, corrected,
and put back into context and tempi were varied systematically and logically. The top
performers had just as many errors at the beginning of practice as the others, but their handling
of the errors when they occurred was different.

Recommendations for future research:

Identify good models for effective practice and further investigate the practice behaviors of
effective learners at all levels.

Evaluation/assessment of this research study:

The present study makes an important contribution to the knowledge of advanced pianists
practice strategies and provides much insight into the learning process of this group of
performers. The study had a unique design of freedom in practice followed by performance
trials that led to discovery of an interesting set of information in a short amount of time.
Replication of this method could be applied to vocal research.

Generalization/transfer possibilities:
Solo practice and performance is very different from group rehearsal and performance for many
valid reasons, however, the decisions made by effective soloists can provide insight for ensemble
directors and perhaps provide a model for teaching students to be more independent and
thoughtful learners. This was a study of advanced pianists’ practice behaviors. There is a need
for future research to investigate effective practice behaviors of intermediate and advanced solo
singers.

Playing with both hands together and with inflection early in practice were two of the hallmarks
of top performers in the present study. Research is needed to determine if it would be beneficial
then for choral students to practice with the voice parts together early in the learning process as
well. I have always remembered Dr. Duke’s presentation at KCOMPTEP over a decade ago
when he stressed to our pre-service teacher group that we must find ways to ‘get to the good
stuff’ early on in music study, both in terms of beginners, and in each new piece in later studies.
This study seems to support this opinion that inflection and expression in music needs to happen
early on in the rehearsal of new music if it is to be fully realized in the performance. Although
the present study findings only address advanced pianists, one could investigate expressiveness
in voice practice. Only the top-ranked pianists under investigation incorporated expressive
elements early in the learning of new material. This study does not address how rewarding it is
to integrate musicality early in learning a new piece, but it corroborates Dr. Duke’s impassioned
speech on its effectiveness in creating thoughtful performers.

In this study, the best performers stopped before a possible error rather than play it incorrectly,
and actual errors were immediately and systematically corrected. My study of intermediate solo
singers found that singers do not detect or correct their own errors consistently. An extension of
this research is needed to determine the effectiveness of choir online learning modules used as
tools for practice outside of rehearsal when students are practicing alone. If students can detect
and quickly correct errors, private practice may be useful. If students practice incorrectly, they
may do more harm than good as they repeat and memorize errors. For group practice it is
obvious that we find and eliminate errors quickly, but even more important that we teach our
students how to anticipate errors and self-evaluate so they might become more efficient at
practice outside of rehearsal. Clearly we as directors cannot allow autopilot or run-throughs as
these poor repetitions may be retained in some way and be detected in the final product.
Identification and targeted practice of short but difficult passages was shown effective in this
study under these circumstances, but more research specific to choral and solo singing is needed
in this area.

One of the most interesting aspects of this study was that top performers did not use less time to
prepare; they just went about learning differently and were able to perform at a higher level as a
result. Practice behaviors should be studied and modeled in ensemble situations so that students
can become more thoughtful and effective in their private practice as well as be more involved in
the group learning process. As directors, we must teach musical independence, which comes
about through effective and efficient practice.