Making Clarinet Practice Work: Specific Strategies from Dr. Molly Gebrian (Part 2)

Last week I shared the first part of my conversation with Dr. Molly Gebrian, violist, neuroscientist, and author of "Learn Faster, Perform Better." We covered the foundational concepts: mental representation, interleaved practice, and challenge point theory.

Today we're getting specific. How do you actually apply these ideas in your daily practice? What does this look like in real time?

This is where theory becomes action.

The List Method: Testing Performance Readiness

One of the most practical strategies Dr. Gebrian shared is what I call her "list method" for preparing difficult passages for performance.

Here's the problem it solves: You can play a passage perfectly in your practice room. You nail it ten times in a row. Then you get to the performance and it falls apart. Why? Because playing something successfully in isolation is a completely different skill than executing it on demand in a high-pressure situation.

Here's how the list method works:

Make a list of all your hard spots. Not just one section, but every challenging passage you need to perform. Then perform each spot just once, exactly as if it's the actual performance. No do-overs. No warm-up attempts. Just one shot.

If you play it well, you get a tick mark on your list. If you don't, you get nothing. The goal is five tick marks for each spot.

Here's the crucial part: If you mess up a spot at any point, you have to erase ALL your tick marks for that spot and start over from zero.

"That simulates just doing it at the drop of a hat," Dr. Gebrian explained. "It helps you get into the performance mindset of, okay, what do I have to do to play this right? What do I have to remember about this spot?"

This method also teaches you something equally important: how to brush things off when they don't go well.

"Often in performance, something won't go well and it'll cause this spiral where you start doubting yourself," she said. "But with this list thing, say you come to your first spot for the third time through your list and you really mess it up. Oh well, too bad. That doesn't have anything to do with your second spot. So brush it off. Fresh start."

That's a critical performance skill. Your ability to move on from mistakes is often more important than avoiding mistakes entirely.

"Testing things sort of out of context when you haven't just been practicing it, can you just play it on the first try? That really shows you what you need to think about, how you need to think, getting your mindset in the right place. And then it's much more likely it's going to go well in performance because you've practiced those skills."

Interleaved Practice in Action: Early Learning

I wanted to know exactly how Dr. Gebrian uses interleaved practice at different stages of learning a piece. How does this work in real time?

For something relatively new, she breaks the challenge down into steps:

"I'll work on my first step until I feel like I have somewhat of a handle on this, and then I'll go work on other stuff. When I come back to that new thing I was working on, before I even start to play it again, I will review in my mind, okay, what did I do with this when I was practicing this 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago, an hour ago?"

This is exactly what my chemistry teacher taught me in 10th grade: retrieve the information without aids.

"I'll review in my mind, what did I figure out in terms of whatever my first step is? And then I'll try to see can I do that first step in my mind with mental practice. That helps me learn it on a deeper level rather than just relying on my body to do it."

After that mental review, she tries it on the instrument. One of two things happens:

Either the first step feels solid and she's ready to add another step (staying at that challenge point), or something has been clarified in her thinking. "Oh, I thought I understood this rhythm, but actually now I realize I'm confused about this one place. I need to sort this out."

This is practicing with intention. You're not just repeating. You're actively diagnosing and solving problems.

The Memory Litmus Test

I shared a theory with Dr. Gebrian that I've held for years: If I'm practicing something effectively, I should be able to play it from memory pretty easily. Not that I'm necessarily going to perform it from memory, but my ability to recall it serves as a litmus test for how effective my practice has been.

"I feel the same way," she confirmed. "I memorize super easily. By the time I'm physically able to play something, it is absolutely 100% memorized."

She connected this to how memory works in the brain:

"The more connections you make in your brain to something, the stronger those connections are, and the easier it is to remember. That's why people use mnemonics to remember lists and stuff, because they're creating associations, they're creating connections, and that makes it easier to remember."

When you practice deeply, building complete mental representations with auditory, visual, and kinesthetic information, you're creating strong neural connections. Memory is almost a byproduct of that deep learning.

This is completely different from rote memorization, which is why I can still play pieces from memory that I learned 25 years ago but can't remember phone numbers I looked up yesterday.

Ricardo Morales and the Power of Deep Learning

I told Dr. Gebrian about studying with Ricardo Morales about 25 years ago. He could play the hardest orchestral excerpts in the audition sequence the first time without having practiced them recently. He could do this on B-flat clarinet or any other clarinet, and it was consistently stunning.

This wasn't just about being really good at music and playing the clarinet. His retention of those passages was incredibly powerful. He must have gotten this in his training, learning how to understand music and know music at a deep level.

This connects to something I've always believed: In America, we don't start sight singing soon enough. We don't make fundamental musical skills part of what we're doing early enough in our development.

Dr. Gebrian agreed with this assessment throughout our conversation. The ability to hear what you want to play before you play it, to internalize musical relationships through singing, these aren't add-ons. They're foundational skills that make everything else easier.

The Equipment Trap: Why That New Mouthpiece Stops Working

I had to ask Dr. Gebrian about something every clarinetist experiences:

You go to a clarinet convention and find a new mouthpiece. It solves all your problems. You sound incredible. You'll never need another mouthpiece again (even though you own a hundred).

Three weeks later, you sound exactly the same and have the same problems.

Is there a way to use that moment of excitement and exhilaration to actually make lasting change? To update what we're hearing in our heads so we actually sound different four weeks later, rather than just recreating all those old problems?

"That's a great question," Dr. Gebrian said. "And that is such a clarinet-specific phenomenon because string players don't do that. If we're going to get more equipment, we're going to be spending many, many, many thousands of dollars, so people don't do that."

She identified two reasons why the magic fades:

First, you have an old sound in your head. "This is how I've always sounded." You haven't updated your mental representation of your sound.

Second, it's a physical thing. You have old muscle memory. "You're playing your new mouthpiece subtly like your old mouthpiece. You're not really listening and paying attention to what this new mouthpiece will give you."

The solution goes back to mental clarity:

"Do you really know how you want to sound? Can you really hear that? Are you very clear in your mind about what you want, or is it just kind of vague? Do you have this general sense of 'I just want to sound good' or 'I just want to sound like ex-famous clarinet player' without actually hearing that sound in your mind?"

You need to be able to hear the sound you want AND feel how to create that sound on your instrument. "Being as precise with yourself as you can and not settling for just a general 'well, I want to sound good.'"

Breaking Out of Your Sound Bubble

I've heard myself play the clarinet for thousands more hours than I've ever heard anyone else play the clarinet. Whatever idiosyncrasies I might want to change in my playing, I have a hard time identifying them because I don't know they're happening. I'm so used to hearing them.

How do we battle that?

Dr. Gebrian had two specific strategies:

Play for other people and get their opinion

"It's funny to me that once we're done with school and we're professionals, we don't take lessons anymore," she said. "Singers take lessons their entire career. Actors take lessons their entire career. We as musicians, once we're done with our training, we're done. We never take another lesson, or it's very rare that people do. And that's kind of weird, right? Because it gets you stuck in what you were just talking about."

Playing for others gets you different ears. They'll point out things you hadn't noticed, and then you're able to hear them with more clarity.

Use listening to recordings in a very intentional way

"Pick a recording, pick a piece, pick a particular artist, and listen very specifically to how does this person use their articulation, or how does this person use timing, or how does this person use XYZ. That's a much more specific way of listening than I think a lot of us do most of the time. We just listen and we're like, 'Oh yeah, that sounds great.' But we're not listening for specific details."

This kind of intentional listening changes how you listen to yourself.

"If you've just spent a whole afternoon listening to how different clarinetists use their articulation at the beginning of Mozart's Concerto, and then you go practice Mozart's Concerto, you're going to be much more aware of how you're using your articulation. You might discover things that you hadn't heard before, especially if you're recording and listening back."

This is the difference between passive listening for enjoyment and active listening for learning. Both have their place, but only one makes you better.

The Singing Question

I've always believed that we should be able to sing what we're trying to play. Not perfectly, but well enough to demonstrate that we hear it correctly.

Dr. Gebrian's response: "If you give yourself the root and the fifth and you're trying to play the third in tune, if you can't sing that third in tune, you're not going to be able to play that third in tune."

She was careful to clarify: "If you can sing it in tune, that doesn't automatically translate to being able to play it in tune. But if you can't sing it, you certainly can't play it, because that means you don't know what it's supposed to sound like."

This connects to everything in her book: We need to hear what we want to make, the sound we want to create, and then learn how to make that sound. Whether it's a timing issue or a pitch issue or a tone issue.

You can't create what you can't imagine.

Why This Conversation Matters

I told Dr. Gebrian that I've read a lot of books about how to play music, and many of them are great. But her book is the real thing. It proves everything I've been saying about practice, but it does it better than I ever could.

More than that, the kindness, joy, and love of music that shine through in her videos come through in how she wrote the book. "It's not only great information. It's fun. It's fun to read."

"That means a lot to me," she said. "That was my goal. I really wanted to write something that was accessible and enjoyable to read, because if it's not enjoyable to read, why are you going to waste your time reading it?"

That's exactly what makes this book special. It's rigorous neuroscience made accessible. It's research translated into action. It's proof that effective practice isn't about grinding more hours, it's about understanding how your brain actually works and practicing accordingly.

Practical Applications for Your Practice

Based on this conversation, here are the specific things you can implement immediately:

Use the list method for performance preparation. Make a list of hard spots, perform each once without warm-up, track your success rate, and reset to zero if you mess up. This builds performance consistency and mental resilience.

Practice interleaving early in the learning process. Work on something new until you have a handle on it, move to other material, then return and mentally review what you figured out before touching your instrument.

Test your learning with memory. If you can't play it from memory (or nearly from memory), you probably don't know it well enough. This isn't about performing from memory, it's about verifying depth of learning.

When you get new equipment, immediately update your mental representation. Don't just play it the same way you played your old equipment. Actively listen for what's different and consciously adjust your physical approach.

Find other ears. Take lessons even after school. Play for colleagues. Get feedback from people who aren't trapped in your sound bubble.

Listen with intention. Don't just listen to recordings generally. Pick specific elements (articulation, timing, tone quality) and analyze them systematically. Then practice with heightened awareness of those same elements in your own playing.

Sing what you're trying to play. If you can't sing it, you don't know what it's supposed to sound like. Fix that first, then work on the technical execution.

Next Steps

Listen to both parts of this conversation. Part one covers the foundational concepts. Part two (this episode) gives you specific implementation strategies.

Get Dr. Gebrian's book, "Learn Faster, Perform Better." Every serious musician should own this.

Listen to the episode here: Apple Podcasts Spotify

If you want these concepts integrated into a systematic clarinet learning program designed specifically for adults, join the Clarinet Ninja Dojo at clarinetninja.com. I've built Dr. Gebrian's research into everything we do.

One final thought from our conversation: Singers and actors take lessons throughout their entire careers. Musicians often stop after finishing school. That's weird. It's also why so many of us plateau.

Don't plateau. Keep learning. Keep practicing smart.