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Abstract
The aim of this research was to determine how elite instrumental musicians set about learning unfamiliar and difficult repertoire. By focusing on one distinguished oboist in particular, this study discovered how he organized, strategized and motivated his practice. Two challenging test pieces were selected, each to be learnt in a demanding context, allowing the researcher to capture a variety of practice strategies and skills.
Three important outcomes are presented: (A) The development of new techniques for measuring music performance, including a ‘Note-time Playing Path’ for pitch and tempo visualisation, and protocols for assessing pitch and rhythmic accuracy. Application of these tools found that the musician’s pitch errors occurred within 3 notes distance - before or after the location of the target note on the score; (B) The Model of Elite Practice was proposed; (C) The performer’s passion emerged as a powerful strategy for efficient practice.
The model divides general practice strategies into four sequential levels: (1) The Problem defines the problem to be solved: to learn, e.g., “get my head around the notes”; self-efficacy, e.g., “to believe that the work is achievable”; affinity e.g., “to connect with the music”; planning e.g., “to plan my practice time”; and regenerate “to rest a tired hand”; (2) The Cognitive Path which is classified as either General Task, Metacognition or Self-regulation; (3) The Action which applies an explicit strategy (such as repetition, goal setting, switching attitude and beating time) to address the performance problem of level 1; (4) Skills, defined as a collection of tools, are recruited by the Strategy (level 3) to most efficiently fulfil the goals driven by the Problem (level 1). These skills include processing notes, processing rhythm, motivation, persistence and memorization.
The thesis calls for greater attention to the newly proposed Action and Skills levels of the model, which emerged as integral strategies to this musician’s practice. For example, “Switching attitude” from negative to positive at Level 3 was considered a novel strategy. With careful application, this study’s findings could make music learning less effortful, more enjoyable, and less time consuming - as it may need less time to achieve a finer product.