Thursday, April 6, 2023 | Uncategorized

Lesson 3

“I practice all the time, but I’m just not getting any better!”

Your brain 🧠 is very selective as to what it chooses to ENGRAVE- that is, to ‘permanently’ commit to memory. 

If you learn how to properly enter. information into your brain, your brain will ENGRAVE this information, and retain it much better than before. 

Any mistake- note, rhythm, fingering, tone, etc. will cause your brain to REJECT what you have just practiced.

TEMPO:

Since it only accepts and records perfect input, your brain rejects learning new material unless the tempo is extremely SLOW. 

It shows you that it is ‘unhappy’ by making the usual random mistakes-  notes, rhythm, fingering, tone, etc. whenever you practice too fast. 

Your brain ‘likes’ to learn in a state of total relaxation, and fast practicing stresses your brain out. 

How slow is slow enough?

Students often tell me, “I’m now practicing slowly enough to not make mistakes, but I still feel that I’m not making good progress.”

When you begin to practice slowly, you’ll see the mistakes start to fall away. You’ll begin to form the habit of playing perfectly. But ‘playing no mistakes’ is just the beginning. 

If you don’t play slowly enough, your brain will use up ALL of its PROCESSING POWER just to play the right notes, and there will be no power left for the brain to ENGRAVE, to go into ‘record mode’, and retain the new music ‘permanently’. 

That is why you can practice slowly and perfectly, and STILL make little progress. 

You have to go slowly enough to achieve complete relaxation, and then go EVEN SLOWER than it seems necessary to play the correct notes, for the brain to have enough PROCESSING POWER left over to ENGRAVE, to go into ‘record mode’. 

Once you have successfully gone into ‘record mode’, you can incrementally double and even triple your playing speed!

How will you know that you’ve gone into ‘record mode’ and ENGRAVED?

This part is amazing… 

LOOP (seamlessly repeat) your 2-bar section 8-16 times. Since you are now playing extremely slowly, you won’t be making any mistakes at all. 

All of a sudden you will lose control of your playing, blank out, and make many mistakes. DON’T STOP PLAYING!

This is called the POINT OF FATIGUE. When the brain goes into ‘record mode’, it can’t control your playing. The mistakes are the sign that this section is being ‘permanently’ ENGRAVED! If you

stop when you blank out, your brain will trash the recording, so keep the loop going until it becomes perfect again. 

This music is now ‘permanently’ encoded in your brain. 

Next post: “How do I know how fast to practice?”

Yehuda/Jordan Kaplan teaches piano & guitar world-wide 🌍 via FaceTime & Facebook Instant Messenger. 

Contact: Yehuda Kaplan via Facebook Instant Messenger • https://www.facebook.com/yehuda.kaplan74  

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