Musicians spend many hours of them lives practicing with theminstruments, because of this, It´s very important to have good techniques tomaximize our practice time.



I have been a great fan of music studies techniques from many years.I would like to write a complete article about this subject in the near future,because I think It´s very important for musicians.

Next, I´m going to speak about the 3 rules to deep practice what DanCoyle introduces in his book The Code Talent. This book is highly recommendedto everybody.



Daniel Coyle visited nine of the world’s greatesttalent hotbeds, tiny places that produce huge amounts of talent, this include asmall music camp in upstate New York as well as an elementary school inCalifornia or the baseball fields of the Caribbean

Those 3 rules are very easily adapted to musical practice, we onlyneed to know them well and practice them obstinately.

What is the deep practice?

The deep practice is very similar to going into an unknown dark andunfamiliar room. First, we start exploring slowly, we pay attention to ourmistakes, and we repeat our movements little by little. After we are begin tomove easer.

According to Coyle “Deep practice means doing threethings: 1) chunking - which means breaking things down into their basic parts,then putting them together again in ever-larger groupings; 2) reaching justpast the edge of your ability; 3) intensive repetition. When you combine thesethings, you literally change your brain by constructing new circuits, andmaking new connections.”

The 3 rules of deeppractice:

Rule 1º: Chunk it up.

- Absorb the whole thing.Imitation:
This means spending time staring at orlistening to the desired skill, - songs, rhythms, music pieces, etc. – as asingle coherent entity. An example is Ray LaMontagne, a shoe-factory worker,who at age twenty-two had an epiphany the he should become a singer-songwriter.He bought dozens of used music albums and holed them up in his apartment. Fortwo years, every day he spent hours training himself by singing along to therecords. LaMontage said “I would sing and sing, and hurt and hurt, because Iknew I wasn´t doing it right. It took a log time, but I finally learned to singfrom the gut”. Eight years after he started, LaMonntagne´s first album soldnearly half a million copies.

In my opinion, musicians can apply thisdepending on the level of the musician.

• Beginners + Intermediatestudents: Listen to the music before practicing. Use it as a musical guide.

• Advance students: Practice the musicfirst and then listen to recordings and use them to create own version.

- Break it into chunks:
To divide the music into pentagrams, in small fragments or sections.A good idea to apply this is to make a photocopy and then cut them into smallchunks. After, we put these all together into an envelope, shake it, andpractice those strips in smaller fragments by altering rhythms, playing them inlong notes…etc.



Coyle said “a musician will play a difficultpassage in dotted rhythm. This technique forces the player to quickly link twoof the notes in a series, then grants them a beat of rest before the nexttwo-note link. The goal is always the same: to break a skill into its componentspieces (circuits), memorize those pieces individually, then link them togetherin progressively larger groupings (new, interconnected circuits)”.

In the Book Mastering the Tuba, Roger Bobo,shows a good example of this technique. He works a difficult passage in thebars 15 and 16 of first moment of R.V. Williams Tuba Concerto. Bobo makes with 16 notes a long 5-pages extensive exercise.If you do it well, you will never have problems again.

- Slow it down:
the slow practiceis very important, because it helps to our brain to learn well. In his book, Coyle explains, “in the MusicSchool of Meadowmount the notes are stretched into whale sounds. One teacherhas a rule of thumb: if a passer-by can recognize the song being played, it´snot being practiced correctly. He spends three hours covering a single page ofmusic

Rule 2: Repeat it.
This quote shows us how important is to be constant and to focuswhile practicing. Coyle is very clear in this point, if we don´t practice it fora month, our skills will evaporate. Then, if we practice deeply and constantly,our skills will reach a into high level. To illustrate it, we can quote thegreat pianist V. Horowitz: “If I skip practice for one day, I notice it. If Iskip practice for two days, my wife notices. If I skip it for three days, theworld notices”



Rule 3: Learn to fell it.

It´s very important to get a balance point where you can sense theerrors when they come. If we want to avoid mistakes, first we should learn tofeel them immediately. A violin teacher said to his students “If you hear astring out of tune, it should bother you a lot. That´s what you need to feel.What you are really practicing is concentration.”

Coyle writes about the sweet spot: “that productive, uncomfortableterrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds ourgrasp”. For the author, Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it´sabout seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinctactions:

1º - Pick a target.
2º - Reach for it.
3º - Evaluate the gap between thetarget and the reach.
4º - Return to step one.

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