Repetition in Your Practice: Are You Doing Too Much? - PHH 163

Perhaps you have experienced the truth of this. If you've put in lots and lots of repetitions in your practice and still had a piece fail you in performance, repetition can build security, absolutely. But maybe not in the way you're using it. And maybe I can help change that for you.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join Us just go to harpmastery.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. In my family, my grandmother's sister was pretty Much our favorite aunt. Aunt Doli was sweet and generous, although she never had very much of her own and worked very hard all her life for what she did have. She was a gentle soul and totally without worldly savvy. She lacked a lot of practical knowledge, what we would call know how. But that didn't mean she was without courage. Hence this family legend I am about to relate to you. When Aunt Doli was in her 50s, she decided she wanted to learn how to drive. As a city person, she'd always used public transportation or relied on my grandparents for rides to the store or to the doct doctors. My grandfather helped her find a driving instructor. He knew that teaching her himself would likely push his patients past the breaking point. So the driving instructor showed up for Aunt Doli's first driving lesson. They successfully navigated the difficulties of starting the car and pulling away from the curb. Then the instructor made sure she stopped at the stop sign at the corner, told her to signal for a right turn and then turn the corner. Aunt Doli hesitated and asked him, well, how many times do I turn the wheel?

At that moment, it became clear to the instructor that she would never become a confident or even a safe driver. It was her last driving lesson and her last attempt at driving. So what's the point of this story for us today? Well, I am often asked a question that is just as difficult to answer. Fortunately, though, if it's a question you've had and most of us have wondered about this at some point, just asking the question doesn't mean you have to give up heart playing the way my aunt had to give up the idea of driving. The question is this. How many times should I repeat a passage or a piece in my practice? It's a good question, even if it doesn't have an easy answer. The key, though, lies in understanding what repetition can and can't do for you. We'll talk about how to avoid repetition burnout, as well as how to be efficient with the repetitions that you really must do in order to play with accuracy and security. Can I give you a magic number? Nope. But I will show you how to find a number that works for you.

You may know that I recently returned from the American Harp Society Conference in Orlando, Florida, and I just wanted to say that it was a wonderful event. Lots of wonderful workshops, so much to learn, so many things to look at, harps to try.

And of course, so many wonderful concerts to hear. One of the things about this conference that was so much fun was that I got to hang out with a bunch of harp mastery members who were there. And it was just a real treat to get to spend some kind of quality time visiting with them and making those connections even a little bit deeper, particularly since they were in person and not just online.

And that's one of the things that I think is so important, those in person connections. Having connection to a harp world is important. Having harp friends is even more important. And getting to spend time with them in person is really just the bomb, as they used to say. Which is why I want to invite you to our fall retreat, which will also be in the Orlando, Florida area in October. The wonderful thing about our harp Mastery retreats is that it's a small group and we really get to not just work on our harp playing and do workshops and all kinds of things like that, but we get to know each other. And it's a terrific way to really deepen those connections between harpists, right? Those harpist to harpist connections that are just so rare and so important. So I wanted to be sure. If you haven't already checked that out, head over to our webpage. You can look at the, you can get there from the link in the show notes or you can go to heartmastery.com and look under upcoming events and you'll see the fall retreat and you can find out the dates and you can see all the details. And please know that this is, it's a small group. There are usually just about, you know, 10 students max. So it's really a wonderful way to spend some quality time with your harp with me, if that is, if that's an incentive, and certainly with other like minded harpists. So I would really love to see you there. So do check that out and see if that's a connection that you want to make with us this fall.

Let's come back to talking about repetitions.

I have written a lot about repetitions. My little ebook, Kaleidoscope Practice is all about that, about how to avoid repetition. That is repetition just for repetition sake. How to create intelligent, effective, efficient, interesting repetitions that bring you the results that you want in your practice. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about repetitions and I've spent even more time actually doing them, of course, in my own practice. Right.

But we all know we don't have enough practice time. So if repetition is about using our practice time, we can't just turn it into a numbers game because we don't have enough time to do all the repetitions that we feel we might need to do. So that's why we need to make our repetitions super efficient and super effective. After all, our practice should be something that brings us results. The whole purpose of practice is to learn and play our music, and we all do that a little bit differently. And that's okay. Which is why there's no set rule for this is how long you have to practice. This is what you have to do in your practice, and these are the number of repetitions you need to do. If it were that simple, it almost wouldn't be fun, right? There's a challenge in music practice, especially I think, in harp practice that is, well, okay, let me see what I can do this time. Can I make it even more beautiful? Can I make it even a little bit better in this way or that? What can I do to really bring across the idea of this piece?

And that's why we do repetition. We repeat our music because that's how we learn it. The question is how much repetition is necessary and how much might just be too much. Now, when I was a kid, of course, repetition was just a matter of repeating a passage the number of times my piano teacher wrote in my lesson book. Right, play this three times, hand separately. Okay, I did it. I don't know that I was thoughtful about it, Certainly not at age 4 or 5 when I started lessons. But my piano teacher was very clear from the very beginning that repetition was what was required. You just had to do it again. That didn't mean I was a fan. If I played it once, why should I play it three times? You know, I just. I wasn't the best practicer. We have to face that. Of course, once I got a little bit older and realized the point of repetition didn't mean I liked it anymore, but I understood that I had to do it. And that's when I started encountering friends who had systems for repetitions. They had beads or they had pennies, or they had put hash marks in a notebook. You know, I'm just going to do this, and I'm going to do it 10 times, or I'm going to do it 20 times, or I'm going to do it 100 times.

And it might have worked for them, but that was not what was going to work for me. I've never been the, okay, we're just going to do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again. As they say, that's just not how I roll. But I knew that I had to find a way to make enough repetition interesting for myself.

And that's what I did. And that's a lot of what kaleidoscope practice is about. But I wanted to tell you this right now because realize that I'm coming from this repetition thing, from perhaps the other side of the argument. I have always been about, do I really have to play it again? And then, of course, as I matured, it was, well, how can I do this again and really get the most benefit from it? Because I know I have to do it again. There are a lot of people who thrive on the practice beads, the repetition beads. I'm going to do it again and again and again and again.

And if that's the side of the discussion you come from, you're going to find a lot that will speak to you in this episode, because I want to make those repetitions interesting for you. I don't want your practice to be something that takes up more time, and not just your practice taking up more time. But I don't want to slow down the way you learn a piece, because I believe that just repeating a passage and doing it X number of times isn't the way to build security or musicality or. Or even confidence. It feels good when you're repeating it, but it doesn't necessarily give you the results that you want. And perhaps you have experienced the truth of this. If you've put in lots and lots of repetitions in your practice and still had a piece fail you in performance. Repetition can build security, absolutely. But maybe not in the way you're using it. And maybe I can help change that for you so that we can talk more about the repetition that helps your music grow and become music and not just be another, you know, hash mark on the page. The power in repetition is not in the number. Whether that number is 10 times or 20 times or 100 times. The power in repetition is the focus.

Fewer repetitions with more focus is better than lots of repetitions with not a lot of focus. Now, the focus that you want to bring is very simply on how. What's your goal for a particular repetition, why are you doing it again, and can you pay enough attention during that single repetition that you can make whatever it is you want to happen happen? You know, if the goal of that repetition is to get your third finger on the A string this time, then that's what you have to watch to do. If the goal is to make sure that you don't buzz with your pedal, then that's where your focus is going to be. If the goal is on making a beautiful crescendo, then that's what you do. The powerful thing about repetition with a focus is that you are creating something beyond just playing the passage or the piece again. You are trying for that next level, that slightly better edge to it, whatever that is. So if you are the type of person who likes to use, you know, beads or pennies, practice beads, whatever it is, to help you mark a particular number of repetitions, that can be really helpful.

Partly because they give you a limit. I mean, suppose you had 10 practice beads on your music stand, and maybe you do, which is great. So you've got 10 practice beads, and you know you're going to play this passage 10 times. For each one of those 10 times, I want you to have a focus. I'm going to do it this. I want to get through this. I want to not hesitate here and then try to make that happen. You don't have to have 10 different focus ideas, but the more the merrier. I mean, that sort of helps. But then when you're at the end of those 10 beads, I want you to be sure to stop. And that's, I think, the beauty of practice beads, pennies, whatever that happens to be for you, because those finite objects, when you run out of them, you're done. They will keep you from doing more repetition than is helpful or maybe even necessary. They will also prevent you from getting to the point of diminishing returns. I'm sure that you've been there where you start saying, oh, no, just let me do just one more time. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna get it this time, if I can just do it one more time. Well, sometimes that works, but lots of times it doesn't. You get to that place where it's just not going to get any better today and it's time to stop. And that's why those practice beads can be very helpful. Because when you're done, you're done. You'll come back to it tomorrow. And that's the second point I want to make about repetition. If the first one was that repetition is not a number, the second one is that repetition is familiarity.

When we repeat a passage, we become more familiar with it. The more times we repeat it, the more familiar we become.

And when you are doing those repetitions with attention and focus, you learn more about that passage or about the piece. You get the kind of information that can help you keep or find your place in a performance. It can help you recover from errors and help you stay out of panic mode or in less stressful situations. It can just help you Understand more of how the piece works, what the chords are, or what the patterns are, or how the piece is put together. So repetition does bring familiarity, and we need to keep that as part of our practice plan. Which is why you're not going to do a million repetitions today and then not play that piece for a few days. Right? We want familiarity over time, those constant touches, which again is going to help you see that it's not about doing a lot of repetitions all by themselves. It's about doing some repetitions over this course of days and weeks and months. That's the kind of in depth familiarity that lets you play something with confidence. Now, I'm not saying that repetition is going to make your music perfect or make it automatic or bulletproof, although eventually that does happen. But remember, this is over a stretch of time. So don't expect the repetitions that you've done today to stick tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Oh, they'll stick for a little bit, maybe. You know, you've. If you've done a lot of repetitions and you feel like, okay, this is really working today I've got this. How many times have we had that happen? And then we come the next day and it's like, oh, I thought I worked really hard on this. Yesterday I had it working and now today it feels like it's totally fallen apart again and as if I never had practiced it. That's typical musical growth, happens that way. It takes a while. So don't do more repetitions today. Do some. But if you did 10 yesterday, don't feel like you have to do 15 today just because you feel like you're starting over. Do your 10 repetitions again if that's what makes you comfortable and realize that. Let's, you know, let's give it a little bit of time for those results to show up. So We've done our 10 repetitions on Monday and we'll do them again on Tuesday, even though we're kind of a little bit frustrated that Monday's results didn't lead over into Tuesday, and we'll do 10 repetitions on Wednesday, even though we might be just a tad frustrated with it by this time. And then when we do our 10 repetitions on Thursday, hey, this wasn't quite so bad. And maybe Friday is even a little bit better.

That's what happens. You don't need to increase the number of your repetitions probably to get the results that you're looking for. You just need to ease up a little bit on those Instant gratification impulses, and realize that those results are going to just take a little while to show up, but when they do, they're going to stick. What I want you to hear from this, something very important is that the goal of your repetitions in a practice session is not per se, to make that passage perfect, not in one practice session. Over time, sure, we want it to be the very best it can be. But repetition in a practice session doesn't have to be about perfection. It's going to be about learning. And that's why I want you to start thinking about repetitions in a systematic way. And we'll talk about some systems and some ideas and frameworks that might help you with that in just a second. But for right now, I want to ask you to let go of the idea that you have to get it right, whatever that means in the context of your practice, to get it right in a single practice session. I know I'm asking something that might be really difficult for you because I'm asking you to release the need to get up from your practice session feeling that you have fixed it, that you've conquered it. That mindset will lead to frustration because a lot of the time, music unfixes itself between practice sessions, right? And even if that thing that you worked on so hard yesterday seems to be fine today, there's going to be something else, some other problem that shows up. That's just the nature of music practice. And it happens at every level. It's not a beginner thing or an intermediate thing or an advanced thing. It happens to all of us. Because music practice is not a once and done thing thing. So putting the expectation on yourself that your practice today will have fixed whatever it needs to fix forever, that's simply unrealistic. And it just sets you up for disappointment. So I don't want you to go through your pennies in your practice jar a second time or a third time just because the first time through didn't solve the problem. I want you to give your practice time to work, to work its magic. It takes time. That's where systematic repetition can help. Systematic repetition gives you that framework and gives you those bookends, gives you that concrete number, if you will, so that when you're doing your repetitions, you're actually creating progress. You're making the notes turn into music. You're keeping that frustration at bay. You're giving your practice time to work. So when you create your strategy for your repetitions, then you allow yourself to move faster toward that goal. That Music that you want to play. Systematic repetition comes in a lot of different forms. Practice beads, right? That's just one of them. And that's great. As I mentioned before, and I hope you took note of this, just repetition by the numbers, just keeping track of those beads, that's not the key to really powerful repetition. The power of repetition is in the intention and the focus. But if you combine the two and say, all right, I've got 10 practice beads and I'm gonna do 10 repetitions of this and I'm going to put that different focus on every one, then you've got some powerful repetition. And that's not a bad system. It doesn't perhaps allow for a lot of flexibility. It locks you into 10 times and maybe you don't need to do 10 times. So what I'm going to share might help you adjust your thinking just a little bit. If you're a practice bead sort of person, it might really help with that. If you're the sort of person who doesn't tend to spend a lot of time doing repetition on a particular passage because it's kind of boring, this may sort of gamify it for you and help you find a way to make those repetitions not only powerful, but interesting. So whether we need to have you think about doing fewer repetitions or think about doing more repetitions, you might find this little 30 day system helpful. So let me describe it for you. This is sort of like a little diet plan for your repetitions. And it isn't just about decreasing the number of repetitions that you might now be doing. It could also be about increasing them if you're not doing enough. So you. Here's what I'd like you to try. And this is just sort of how to get started with this system. Choose a passage from your piece. Could be a tricky section, whatever it is. There's something probably between four and eight measures long and have a goal for that section for right now. Like you want to put it hands together or you want to get it to tempo, or you want to play it smoothly or you want to work out the pedal or lever changes, something like that. Now, for the first week of this month long plan, I want you to play that passage seven times each day you practice. Now, hopefully you're practicing at least five days of the week. If you practice four days of the week, that's okay. But remember, the fewer days you play, the less sticky these repetitions are going to be. The more you're going to have to do in order to Stay in the same place. Right. Or to move forward. So we really want you to do at least five days of practice a week. That's a good thing. So of those seven repetitions, I want you to make four repetitions about making it very correct. This shouldn't be hard because this is what most of our repetitions are geared to. But then I want you to take those other three repetitions and direct them toward your goal. So if your goal is to get this passage hands together, then maybe you're going to do four repetitions of each hand alone. And then three repetitions might need to be slower, but they're going to be at least partially, if not completely, hands together. So those three repetitions might be pretty rough. But remember, we're going to be doing this for a week. By the end of the week, it should be better. So you're going to be repeating these things, this passage, seven times every day that you practice during that week. Week two is kind of similar. You're going to be doing seven repetitions of that passage during your practice that week. But this time, only two of those repetitions are going to be devoted to just being correct, and five are going to be devoted toward your goal. So I. You know, this might be two hands separately repetitions and five hands together repetitions. Or if your goal is about the flow for this passage, two might be at a very slow tempo, and five will be maybe moving that tempo a little bit faster and seeing if you can maintain the flow. So these aren't going to be seven identical repetitions, and they may not be seven completely correct repetitions. Those first two might be, but the others are going to be pushing that envelope just a little bit, moving that passage forward. And I think that's where repetition can get its power when you're doing the repetition, but focusing on moving it forward, not just keeping it in the same place. Okay, so that's week two. Week three, we're going to reduce the number of repetitions. Do five repetitions only. Make sure that the first one you do and the last one you do are the correct ones. But then the second and third repetitions that you do should definitely be focused toward your goal for that passage. And. And try number four at your goal. So if you've been trying to get this to be hands together, and you're still having, you know, problems with it, so, you know, the first and last repetitions might be super slow. They might be hands separately, and 2 and 3 are going to be a little bit more hands together, and repetition number Four is going to be completely hands together. And maybe it's hands together at your particular tempo that you wanted to do. Remember that that's the fourth of five repetitions. So after that, you get to go back and do it correctly again at probably a slower tempo or whatever that looks like. And then the fourth week, the last week in our little plan, you're going to do your five repetitions again, only we're really switching it up. And four of those repetitions are going to be at your goal, what you've been trying to do. And the last one can just be correct. So if you've been trying to speed something up, well, those four repetitions should be at that goal tempo. And then the last one, slow it back down and make that all correct again. Now, I've given you those rough kind of ideas and numbers for a section, but you can use these same principles to apply to a whole piece. What's important, two, is not necessarily the number of repetitions. Seven or five. I've chosen those numbers because I want you to think about doing a little bit fewer repetitions than maybe you do right now and making them more focused and using those repetitions to help you move forward instead of just stay in the same place. This is where I see a lot of people get stuck. They're doing it over and over and over again, and it's not getting exactly correct. And. And so they keep it in the same place, thinking that, well, if I just do this passage the same way over and over, eventually it'll come together. I don't like to wait for eventually, and I don't think you should have to wait for eventually either. I want you to move it in the direction that you want it to go. One other thing you might want to try with your repetitions. The great thing about repetitions is that they work over time, but that doesn't mean they all have to be done at the same time. So that. Let's suppose you want to do 10 repetitions of a particular passage. Because you just want to make sure that it's really firm and really correct and that you just really keep it in your fingers. Well, rather than do 10 repetitions right in a row in your practice, why don't you do four of those repetitions in your practice and then do three more repetitions later in the day when you're walking by the harp, and maybe three more repetitions at night right before you go to bed? Remember that your goal is not to make each one of those repetitions perfect before you stop Right. You don't have to keep repeating it until it's all perfect. You're just going to do three more repetitions, repetitions.

Those constant touches. In other words, doing those 10 repetitions at three different times during the day instead of just once is going to really multiply your benefit. So spacing your repetitions apart or sort of interspersing them during your practice, I'm going to do three at the beginning of my practice, three in the middle of my practice or during your day can be really super effective. And that can be something that's really great to try. I hope I've given you some food for thought here, some possibilities for reframing the way you think about your repetition in your practice. Rethinking the idea that you have to solve it in this particular day or that more repetition is necessarily better. Repetition is important, but the focus you bring to repetition is just as important. And that's what will keep the energy up, keep you motivated and inspired as you continue your practice journey. And let's face it, some pieces are more of a practice journey than others. So thank you so much for being here this week. Next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about dividing your piece into sections. This is something I talk about all the time, and yet I don't often give you a lot of the whys and the how to's, and that's what we'll be talking about next week. Why would you divide your piece into sections? And what's the best way to do it? Well, I don't know if it's the best way, but I'll give you my way and that may help you. Please consider yourself invited to the Harp Mastery Retreat. I'd love to have you there. Just check that out under upcoming events@harpmastery.com and remember, every day is a day you can add more Harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.