[Music] Thanks for checking out the Clanet Ninja podcast. That music that you're hearing
right now is my good friend James Dander, Canadian jazz clanetist. If you
like what you hear, I'm going to leave some links to his music in the show notes, so you can check him out further
if you want. Uh, today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Molly
Gabrian. She is a violist and neuroscientist. It's a real treat. She has written a book. It is called Learn
Faster, Perform Better. And it is the most powerful book I've read when it
comes to learning how to solve our problems when it comes to practicing.
How is it that we get from day one of playing a piece to the best performance we can possibly give while learning to
play our instrument and become a better musician all along the way? Well, there's a road map and she has been kind
enough to lay it out in a way that we can understand and
apply without having to be a neuroscientist ourselves. In this first half of the conversation, Dr. Gabrien
shows us how our brain works, the best ways to retain skills and information,
and how to put things together in a general way. The things to think about when it comes to organizing and using a
method in our practice to get the best results from oursel. I also want to have one disclaimer for the people that are
watching this on YouTube. I used a platform that didn't work very, very well. This is early on in my podcast
career and I used a platform that doesn't do what it says. Made some false
promises. But you know where you won't get false promises? At the clarinet ninja dojo. So please check out the dojo
if you want to learn how to play the clarinet. You're an adult. You're getting back into it. You're just starting. Wherever you are, there is a
place for you. And it's a wonderful place to learn where you're going to get everything that you were promised, which
is a person who is insanely excited about helping you learn how to play the clarinet. So check it out. You're going
to love it there if you want to learn how to play the clarinet better. And go ahead and check out
claretninja.com. Uh that's where there's some there's some good free stuff, good information, a very nice blog if I do
say so myself. Check it out. But first, let's talk to Dr. Molly Gabrian.
So, we're here with Dr. Molly Gabrien. How are you, Molly? I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for being here. I want you to know that this book
has been a part of the Planet Ninja Dojo community uh since I learned about it.
When when was the book actually written? Uh well, I wrote in 2021, but it only came out this past summer. It came out
in July 2024. So, I'm not too far behind. So, I have the book here, Learn Faster, Worm Better. Uh, this book has
been one of the things, you know, there's been two book, two or three books in my life about music that I've read them and I've been completely blown
away by what is inside. I've always been a practicer. I always tell people I know
what I'm saying is true, but I can't prove it. And I feel like this book proves everything. Like seriously,
everything that I've ever said and it which also is very validating for me, but but is also it's really great
because this probably won't surprise you. You say it better than me. like this is very thoughtfully written. It's accessible and it's so actionable. It's
really it's a special thing. What made you write the book? Like where where did this come from? I went to Rice after NEC
and I did my doctor in viola, but I was back at a research institution. So I was able to take graduate level neuroscience
classes while I was there and I was also the assistant director on two interdisciplinary symposia on music and
the brain. And as part of those, as like a promotional effort or whatever, um the school asked me to teach some sort of
informal lunchtime sessions about music and the brain because I was doing this with one of the professors there. And
that's when I learned like, oh wait, other people find this interesting, too. And this is really fun to sort of share
this. And so that's kind of how it started. And then, you know, for the last 10 years, I've been a a viola
professor, but I've continued to write and make my YouTube videos and do presentations on the science of
practicing because I discovered that more people than just me find it interesting and and valuable, which I
guess shouldn't be surprising, but it kind of was. And people had been saying for years that I should write a book.
And I was like, "Yeah, I'd love to write a book, but when in the world am I going to have time to write a book?" Like, you know, I'm a performing musician. I'm
teaching all the time, right? It's a very timeconsuming thing to do to write a book. And then the pandemic happened
and I was like, "Oh, wait. If I'm ever going to write a book, like this is the time because I'm not performing, right?"
And I could take a whole bunch of time off from practicing to write a book. So that's how it finally happened thanks to
the pandemic. That's that's how the clarinet ninja YouTube channel started. That's how the clarinet ninja dojo
started was that well, what are you going to do with the time? You got this time and it's it's it's a really really
unique thing. And I didn't know anything about computers. I had always enjoyed teaching adults, which is what whom my
program is for. Then all of a sudden, I found something I love doing, and I had no idea that I love doing it. And if
that the pandemic, I would have never known. Uh, so it's it's nice to take something that's pretty horrible and
turn it into something pretty great. Yeah. So, and I've always been a practicer. Like I I like like I went to
Arizona State University in the early 90s for a couple years, and I was known as somebody who was always in the
practice room. When I reflect on your book and the things that you suggest, the thing I love about this, it can
really consolidate the amount of time it takes someone to learn to be a good practicer because it's taken me forever
to become a good practicer, right? Uh, and it was, you know, it was just it was a lot of of thing. I don't want to make
this about me, but I do want to tell you my origin in terms of practicing, how a lot of it came about. Uh, and I I want
you to sort of talk about how that fits in because it does in some way, but you can tell me more uh than than I know
myself. When I was in 10th grade, I took chemistry from the chemistry teacher that nobody wanted because he was so
weird and so hard. His class was hard and you nobody passed any of his tests.
And the first day of class, he said, "I'm going to teach you how to think, you're doing it all wrong." M and he
proceeded to go along and explain that if you sit in class, pay 100% attention,
take far less notes than you normally take, and then after class when you're
waiting for the bus home, you just remember everything that happened in the class. You just with no notes, no books,
you just remember things. You remember where he stood, what he said, what he was wearing, everything that you could
possibly pull in. And then you do it again later in the evening when you brush your teeth or you go to bed or
whatever it is. And everything that you can recall without looking at any notes without using any aids is stuff that's
going to go into your longterm memory and stay there. Uh and it was going to save a lot of time and you know and so
I'm sitting there in 10th grade. I was a little bit of a nerd but also I was very very interested in people having
thoughts that I'd never heard before. And this was one I never heard before. One of the things for me personally in talking to you that I'd like to get is
an understanding of retaining knowledge versus retaining skills and is there a difference in that and how does how does
that look in terms of this starting point which is still a big big influence on me and how I suggest people practice
and how I practice myself and to lead this into when I when I've read your book twice now. One of the things you
say is it's not really how you sound at the end of your practice session. It's how you sound the first time you play it
the next day. Did your practice need hold? Yeah. Was it effective? Is it something that that's repeatable and is
now part of how you you play? With that sort of as a launching point, can you start talking about that? Yeah,
absolutely. And you're really lucky that you had a teacher like that because he's exactly right that like reviewing in
your mind everything that you could remember from class and sort of recalling that from your own mind without looking at any aids, doing it,
you know, like you were saying when you're waiting for the bus and then later in the evening. That's spaced recall. And that's been shown to be
really powerful for retaining things long term. That's great. Everybody should have a teacher like that in in
high school that teaches them how to actually learn and study and retain information. In terms of practicing,
yeah, I mean, I all of us have this idea that like the measure of whether we
practiced well is how we feel at the end of our practice session. And that makes a lot of sense, right? Like you know, you've done all this practicing and you
feel like, okay, I can play it. But the actual measure is when you come back the next day. And I think a lot of musicians
are very used to the experience of feeling like they did great practicing and then coming back the next day and
having to redo all of it because, you know, they've kind of taken 500 steps backwards and nothing really stuck. And
I think a lot of musicians just assume, well, that's just the way it is. You just have to kind of redo it every day
and eventually it's going to stick with you. But that's not the way it needs to be, right? If that's happening to you,
that's a very strong indicator that you aren't doing effective practice. Um,
because it should stick with you dayto-day. Um, and what you said about
skills and knowledge, yes, skills and knowledge are different. the brain does treat them differently, but both of them
benefit from like within a practice day, let's say, rather than the way that I think most people practice, which is
working on one thing for a big block of time, whatever whatever that thing may be. Um, and then, you know, when they're
done with that, they move on to the next thing. And it's just these like chunks of thing A, thing B, thing C. But what's
much better is if you work on one thing for a while, work on some other stuff, then come back to that first thing and
recall it. Just like your chemistry teacher said, recall it when you're at the bus stop, right? And then later in the evening, recall it again. That's
going to work much better with practicing because you're reminding your brain repeatedly throughout the day or
throughout a practice session. And then it's going to stick with you a lot better. The words that you used was the illusion of mastery. It was very
powerful. Anybody that's tried to learn an instrument really, it is an illusion at times, right? where you get to the
end of the day and I played it 100 times in a row perfectly and it does that doesn't mean that much really when that
doesn't mean that much exactly and it's a very it's not my word actually it's it's psychologist word but it's a very
very powerful illusion it's even if you know that the illusion exists it's a very powerful illusion you're like oh
yeah I have this no you don't especially when if you come back the next day and you feel like you have to re well right I mean like the truth is what people
want to hear sometimes right and ourselves right I I want that to be through. So I believe it. Exactly. Yeah.
Exactly. So one of the things that came up this morning in the uh clarinet ninja dojo was a very interesting thing. Uh a
student playing something, you know, was supposed to come in on beat two on some 16th notes. Wasn't coming in on beat two. And I all I did was say, "Hey,
could you be careful to come in on beat two?" They became aware of the problem and we've done a lot of work get the
skills to fix the problem, but he could immediately fix the problem. and that you you talk in your book a little bit
or maybe a lot the idea of we can't fix a mistake unless we actually know what
what it is that we're trying to do. And my question to you is obviously that's a part of the role as a teacher is to
point out, hey, do this a little bit differently, do this a little bit better. But when looking at it like particularly for my community which is
adult learners, how is it that they foster the ability to hear the mistake
that they could easily fix on their own so that they can make more progress and then I can tell them about something
else. Right? Great question. I think the most powerful way to do this is to record yourself because when you're
hearing yourself from the outside, it gives you much more awareness and much more clarity of what's going on. And
people hate recording themselves, right? And I get it. There's a there's a big cringe factor that you record yourself and you listen back and you're like, "Oh
god, I sound like that." But you sound like that regardless of whether you know or not. And for me personally, I would
rather know so I can fix it. But also th those kind of things like, "Oh, wow. I'm not coming in on beat two, right?" A lot
of times people aren't aware of that when they're actually playing, but then they hear a recording and it's immediately obvious to them and then
they can fix it and then they don't need their teacher to give them that input. So they can fix a lot of things on their
own. and what the teacher can then give in a in a lesson or whatever are things that they don't have any awareness of of
at all even when they're listening to themselves from the outside. Well, we were talking this morning about the
complicated nature of hearing what you want to play ahead of time, which is what we should be doing, but then also
evaluating what you just played, which is thinking forwards and backwards at the same time, which I find to be nearly impossible to to do. When when I was
studying with Ricardo Morales, he was incredibly good at that thing, you know, and and I I wonder is that something
that people can cultivate the ability to self assess as they're playing and is
there a way to do that that's healthy in in terms of how to play music? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, and you're
absolutely right, like when you're playing, you do need to be always thinking ahead, but also thinking I like thinking backwards. I've never heard
that before. I like that way of expressing it that you, you know, reflect on what just happened. And I will also say that recording really
hones that skill. I know for me personally when I first started recording myself, there was a very large
gap between what I thought I did and how I actually sounded. And that's where the cringe factor comes in. And then over
the years, the gap between how I think I sound and how I actually sound has gotten very small to the point that when
I I record myself daily multiple times. I'm always, you know, I'll work on something and then I'll record just a
little bit, like 5 10 seconds of music, record it, listen back, self assess. And I would say these days I'm rarely
surprised by what I hear. Sometimes there's like little things that I didn't pick up on, but the recording process
has helped me hear in real time and reflect and self assess in real time much more accurately. I've also seen the
same thing in my students who start recording themselves accurately. their ability to know what it actually sounds
like is far improved once they've been recording themselves regularly and listening back for a while. Okay, so
here here's another question that I have. Like when I am in like in a recording session and you get that immediate feedback, they play it and you
hear yourself through the headphones. Okay, we'll take it again and you do it again. Like there's a very very quick feedback that it is seems to play a
different role for me. One of the things I like to do is record myself at the end of my practice session and I don't
listen to it until the next day because then I'm able to hear myself without the
bias of what I believed I sounded like in that moment. And the more space I can put in between that, the more I can hear
myself as a student of myself versus actually me. Because I often times when
I listen to a recording after I just made it, I still believe what I thought I played more than what I actually did play. Did do you find any of that to be
true? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. Particularly if you're recording longer segments, entire
movements or entire pieces. Um, so yeah, for me when I record like something
long, I will always almost always it's because of just time constraint. I will have to listen to it the next day
because I don't have time to listen to it in the moment. Most of the time when I'm recording myself though, it's tiny little snippets, you know, like four or
five measures of music. Um, just to hear back like, am I bringing across what I
want to musically? Am I in tune? Like that kind of thing. Um, and that kind of thing I find really valuable to do in
the moment. Um, but longer things, yeah, it's it's really helpful to listen back later when you've kind of like forgotten
what you did and you're not influenced by by how you feel in the moment of playing it. years ago. I I want to share
this with you because I I I was this was super powerful. It was totally overkill. I was on tour. I went for like three
months and tour can be kind of a grueling place and it can be a hard place to practice. And so I I invented
this thing where I would I would record myself practicing for an hour. Right when we got to the hotel on the on the
day, I would talk to the future me, right? I would say, "This is what I'm trying to fix. This is what I'm hearing.
This is what I want to do." I would always count myself off before I played so the future of me knew what tempo I
meant to play. And then I wouldn't listen to it until I was on the bus the next day where there was plenty of time with nothing to do. And I would sit and
listen to myself practice for an hour and then do that every day. And I did that every day for 3 months. And it was
overwhelming how impactful that that was. Not sustainable in daily life for
sure really. I mean, it was impractical and it was a very special circumstance, but it was it was really really amazing
and I was very enamored with myself that I I'd stuck with it for 3 months. It was it was a lot. Yeah. No, that's amazing.
That's a that's a great thing to do. First of all, the talking out loud thing is something that I recommend people do
all the time in practicing because it really helps clarify your thoughts. It really helps you like realize where
you're not clear with what you want to do or that you have more clarity than you thought you did. So, the talking out loud thing is great. And then I also
advocate that people record themselves practicing and and listen or watch back because you will learn so much about how
you're using your time, how you're practicing, how you actually sound, how you're self assessing in the moment. Just Yeah, that's amazing that you did
that. The other thing in your book that I found super insightful and I think you're younger than me, but when I was a
kid, we used to practice in front of the mirror because there wasn't you couldn't really video record yourself practicing and even audio was not quite the same
thing. But the idea that recording yourself practicing, you're not taking in any of the feedback in immediate time
that is influencing how you're going about it in that moment. That that was
that that was a very interesting thing. I I spent I don't know how many hours in front of a full- length mirror practicing the clarinet. Yeah. Same
same. I used to Yeah. I mean, I used to always practice looking in the mirror
and to sort of assess in the moment h how things were going and then I'd get on stage where I didn't have a mirror
and you know, obviously it didn't work. Um, and so yeah, don't use a mirror. That that immediate feedback is actually
detrimental. That's interesting. And I never heard anybody speak to that really. you know, that that was a very,
you know, there's a lot of things in your book that I had already thought and you proved, but then there was a bunch of things that I had never actually had
the thought and there's nothing I love more than having a thought I've never had before. It's really fun. Same. Oh,
I'm I'm glad uh you talk at the end of the book, I think, more than in the in
the body of it. I I it's very funny. The first time I read your book, I didn't look through the whole thing before I
read it. And I did a very intense reverse outline of the book and I I I was a little bit frustrated, not with
you maybe that there's a reverse outline at the end of the book. I mean, there's an outline at the end book. It's it was
way better than what I've written down, but it was very for me that way. I had a
very very intense practice journal habit when I was in college and and I found one of them the other day in a box, you
know, like from 1990 or something. It was a long long time ago and and it was it was a very interesting thing cuz I
was logging how many hours I practiced, what I practiced, how it went, what you know, you know, on and on and on. And I
think that that's something that the idea of having a piece of paper and a pencil and recording things. We don't
really do that anymore. How do you suggest people get into a practice
journal or logging what they're doing or having it written down? Because because, you know, as you were talking about before, it's easy to sort of get lost
and lose focus if you're practicing. Sometimes I would be hardressed to say what is it that I'm trying to accomplish
right this second. In good practicing you should be able to say this is what I'm trying to accomplish right now otherwise what are we doing this second.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah practice journals are something I talk to students a lot about
because I think a lot of people have been told oh you should keep a practice journal. And people maybe will keep them for a little bit and then they'll stop
keeping a practice journal right and they'll they'll get out of that habit. And what I have found is most of the
time when people get out of the habit of practice using a practice journal is for two reasons. One, it was too
timeconuming. So it felt like they didn't have time to actually do it. And two, it didn't feel that helpful. So if
something's timeconsuming and not helpful, like why would you stick with it? Um, and so the way I definitely keep
a practice journal and the way that I do my journal is at the end of each practice session, I don't write down how
much I I don't write down how much I practiced. I don't write down what I did. I I write down what needs work. Um
because at the end of a practice session, it's the most fresh in your mind, right? What isn't sounding good
and what needs attention. And so I will make notes and mine are filled with abbreviations when I look back. I have
all my old practice journals, too. When I look back on them, I can't make heads or tails of most of what I wrote because
it's just a quick note for myself to know, you know, exactly what to do. Um
but now because I'm not practicing it, like I don't know anymore. Um but I find that a very quick and easy way. It takes
me at most a minute at the end of my practicing to write down the stuff that I I noticed. And then when I go to
practice, you know, the next time either the next day or the next practice session or whatever, I have a list of
exactly what my goals are going to be for my next practice session and they're and they're really specific. So I find
that a much more sustainable way to keep a practice journal that you are logging something that's useful and it's not
timeconsuming. Could I log more? Sure. but I don't find it as helpful and it would take too much time and therefore
it would make make it hard to stick with. I I want to get a little bit to the specific practice strategies that
you talk about because they're all super powerful. I think in terms of my own experience with the the things that I've
done which are super similar to what you talk about. I had to really get over the idea that it didn't feel like I was
getting better. The perception of you know I just play that 10 times in a row perfectly. Also this idea of what did
you call it? uh a challenge point, right? I always, you know, I always tell people if you can play it seven times
out of 10 correctly, that's the tempo or that's that's the place you should start from,
right? So, there's a challenge. It's not an overwhelming challenge, but it's also if you can play it 10 time 10 times out
of 10 correctly, then then you're not there's something it's not working, right? You got it
already. Stop doing that. You got it already. You're fine. when somebody is getting into refining their practice,
what what are like the first couple of your strategies that people find the most impactful to to get going with? And
then the most Yeah. Right. I would say well having a goal. The number of times
I ask people, do you have a goal when you practice? And the answer is no. So that's often the first thing is just
having specific goals for your for your practice session um is often really impactful because people just go in and
just start playing. Aside from that, I would say the three most impactful things for me personally and what I've
seen in my students and the people I work with are the importance of taking breaks, interleaf practice, so
constantly switching between what you're doing, and the importance of mental practice. I would say those are the three things that people typically
aren't doing that make the the biggest difference in terms of making progress, retention, the whole thing. Could you go
through what those in more depth what those things are? So, yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. I didn't
want to just like talk at you. Well, that's exactly what I want. So, yeah. Okay, I will talk at you then. So, um in
terms let's start with taking breaks because I think that's kind of a fundamental one. I think that in our
culture broadly, but certainly music training culture, we tend to think that
you should just practice as much as possible for as long as possible. that if you're, you know, if you do like,
especially in conservatory, like, you know, 3-hour blocks of time, practice as many hours as you can possibly fit into
the day, if you're taking a break, it means you're lazy. You know, all these all these sort of cultural messages around taking breaks. Um, but the
research is exceptionally clear that not only are breaks really important, but we make the most progress during breaks,
which is very, very counterintuitive. But when you take a break, your brain continues to process what you were just
practicing. Your brain has to do actual physical reconstruction on itself in order for you to get better at
something. And your brain needs you to take a break to do that physical reconstruction. An analogy I use is road
construction, right? If they have to fix the road, they can't have people driving on it while they're trying to repave it. Um, another analogy I've been using more
recently because I think a lot of people have an understanding of how strength training works. So, when you, you know,
are trying to get stronger, you don't actually get stronger while you're lifting weights or doing push-ups or whatever. you're creating micro tears in
your muscles which are then repaired when you're taking a rest day and then when you come back it's stronger and I
think that is something a lot of people understand because people understand the importance of of rest days it's exactly
the same thing in your brain you're not creating like micro tears in your brain but it is the same thing that you you
give your brain the input while you're practicing but your brain actually does something with it when you're taking a break so the importance of lots of
breaks throughout a practice day the importance of taking short little micro breaks 10 15 seconds long within a
practice session and just kind of spacing your practice out within a practice day. Take days and weeks off
from things once you get good at them and that will solidify them further rather than continuing to just like
practice it to maintain it. Taking breaks is a real game changer for for a lot of people. So that's the that's the
first big thing um on the list. Connected to that is something called
interleaf practice or random practice, which is essentially what I was talking about a little bit ago where you practice one thing for a bit and then
you go practice some other stuff and then you come back to that first thing that you're constantly kind of switching
back and forth between different things rather than practicing only one thing for a big block of time. That's
beneficial for lots of reasons. One is then you have breaks built in like we were just saying. But when you're
constantly switching like that, kind of like what your chemistry teacher taught you that, you know, when you when you come back to something repeatedly, your
brain has to recall, wait, what is this thing that we're working on? How do I do this? And that reminder for your brain
is really beneficial for actually solidifying it in your memory so that it so that it sticks. Going back to the
illusion of mastery, when you, you know, do something for a big block of time and you do it like repeatedly, it's a lot
easier on your brain. So you feel like, oh yeah, I I like this. Like it feels really fluid. you feel like you have it.
When you're constantly switching, it feels a lot less fluid. You know, you come back to something you were working on 10 minutes ago and you're like,
"Wait, what? What did I figure out with this?" Oh, yeah. Right. And there's that kind of like cognitive friction um that
doesn't feel as good, but that's that friction is what you need. It helps it solidify um in your memory when you have
to kind of dredge it up again and remember remember how to do it. Um, so interleaf practice really gets rid of
that experience of having to redo all your work the next day and helps it helps it stick better with you. And then
third topic that I brought up was mental practice. Often people ask what I mean by mental practice. So what I mean by
that is being able to hear and feel in your imagination everything you need to
be aware of when you actually play. So all the soundbased things, pitch, quality of sound, dynamics, shaping,
phrasing, all that sound stuff. and then all the physical aspects of playing um
and being able to feel all the physical details and you can fix stuff and you can improve stuff in your mind whatever
you're working on like can you imagine it in your head can you feel yourself playing it correctly can you hear
yourself playing it correctly if the answer is no you can fix it in your mind
you can you can really concentrate on wherever the issue is and try to feel it and hear it correctly whatever the issue
is once you can do that it's often either solved or much better on the instrument, it kind of feels like magic.
But if you don't have a clear mental representation of how you want something to be, how would you be able to do it,
right? It doesn't, you know, if you think about it, it doesn't it doesn't really make sense. Mental practice is is
really powerful for people. It really helps people clarify what they should be doing, how to do what they're doing, and
because it's harder than doing it on the instrument. You were talking about the challenge point. It's right at your
challenge point, which is where we do the most learning. Um, and if you can sort it out in your mind, then you can
sort it out on the instrument. One of my best friends in the early 90s at Arizona State University, uh, I don't know if he
won the curto competition or he came close to it and, uh, he played his piece from memory. I never saw him practice
it. Never saw him practice it. And I like, "Hey man, how how do you do that?" He goes, "Well, I just thought about it
when I rode my bike back and forth to school." And he was able to get access and he was a good enough kind of player
that that was enough. He was actually a a person that that helped me form a lot of ideas in terms of how powerful it is
to know what you want to play. And I and I also I I have a failed failed isn't
the wrong word. Not as successful as I was would like ability to play jazz. And I studied it very hard and I really
wanted to do it. I you know it was one of those things I was good enough at. It wasn't embarrassing but I also when I
would hear somebody really do it I knew that wasn't me. So, I stopped doing it, you know, in a in a public way. But that
that was another thing that really clued me into the idea that you have to hear what you want to play before you play it. And we should be doing that with
print music. Totally. But sometimes we're not really taught in that fashion, right? And that's that's where like like
as far as I know, I imagine every European can sight sing everything perfectly because that's how they learn music there. probably not true, but but
I would imagine you know like the European training has more of that than we have in our you know all of a sudden
you take sightseeing class as a freshman in college and no one's ever asked you to do it before as if that's some sort of skill you can just easily add and and
then the other thing that frustrating me is they don't tell you how to integrate that into your practicing and playing. It's a skill that you sort of develop on
in isolation and then there's no talk about okay what do you do with this? Same thing with music history, music
theory. Okay, you have this information, but let's actually put it into place. And that's something that you talked about in the book is that these help us
know where we are, right? These help us understand the music and frame the music in a way that we know where we are when
we're playing a piece. It helps our recollection, helps all of our abilities. And that's something that I
feel like if any music school wanted to note from me about what they should do, it's connect the disciplines a little
bit a little bit better, maybe a lot better because I I feel like I had to do that all on my own when I was when I was in school. And I think you're right. I
think that a lot of those academic classes that we take in in music school are really disconnected from our lives
as as performers and many people don't ever connect them up. I in my first
college teaching position, I was the viola professor at the school, but I also taught theory and oral skills and I made a real point in my theory and oral
skills classes to come at them from the perspective of a performer because I was one. Um, but you know, the students were
too so that they could really see like this is relevant to you. Like this is how it informs your life. I I'm always
bringing that stuff into my private lessons also because I think it's just so important. It helps you learn better. It helps you remember better. But I
think you're absolutely right that theory, history, ear training, like they feel very much in isolation the way
they're often taught in in music school and it's to everyone's detriment, I think. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that
I've always thought that. So, this is how I say it. Tell me your words on this. Um, sometimes what I what I tell
students is you can play that. You just don't know it yet. Right now, I can't
remember the words that you use. This I was reminded of this. This is I actually I say this a lot cuz a lot of times, you
know, people can play it, but then when it comes time to actually play it, this I think goes back to like being able to play it the first time or in a
performance situation. Do they know it well enough? Are they really ready to go? Is there any way that that you could
you can help us understand what it feels like to make the jump from being able to
play like I can do this versus actually being a to execute it when the when the
time comes. How do we is there a way when the time come? That's a yeah no that's a great point. I mean the the way
to make that jump is interleaf practice. Uh, but that was a distinction that I really did not understand when I was a
student that I thought that just because I could do something that automatically
meant I could perform it. And that's clearly not the case. But it would make me very frustrated like I can do this.
Why when I get up to play in studio class or my recital things like go wrong on me? The solution again is is the
interleaf practice. And in in the book, I talk a lot about um methods of using interleaf practice to test performance
readiness because it's one thing to be able to do something 10 times in a row like you were saying or in the privacy
of your practice room. It's another thing to do things on the first try at
the drop of a hat in a high pressure situation, right? It's just a different skill for your brain. It's a more
difficult skill for your brain and it's a skill so you have to work on it. if you haven't worked on that skill of just
being able to do it and know what you need to think, know what you need to remember, like of course it's not going
to be there. Um, and so yeah, interled practice I find has been a real game changer for me in that regard, too.
That's the first half of the conversation with Dr. Molly Gamrian. Check out the second half on the next
podcast where we're going to learn so much more about how to apply these ideas
and how to make them a part of what we do every day to get the most out of our practice time. And don't forget to check
out the gentleman that's bringing us out, Mr. James Dander. I've got links to
him in the show notes, as well as the clarinet ninja dojo and all the things
that it has to offer you as somebody who is trying to learn how to play the clarinet as a grown-up because we do it
a little differently at the clanet ninja dojo. It's tailored specifically to
adults that are just starting, coming back after a long layoff, or if you've been playing a long time, and you've
really honed your skills and you want to up your level a little bit more, there's something there for you. clarinet
ninja.com. Check out links right to the clanetninja dojo down in the show notes. And don't forget to rate us and review
us. Give us five stars, would you? Come on.
