Practise the hard bars, not the whole piece

Why playing it through again and again stalls

Most of us practise by playing the piece from the top. The easy pages get replayed ten times, the three difficult bars get played ten times too, and each time they go wrong at the same place. Repeating a mistake is still repetition: the stumble gets rehearsed along with everything else.

The hard bars are a small share of the piece but cause most of the breakdowns. Time spent on the bars you already play well is time not spent on the ones you do not.

The method: five steps on one passage

1. Pick a passage

   Open a score and select the bars that trip you up. Only those bars are shown and played, looping, so nothing else gets in the way.

2. Loop it slowly

   Start at 60% tempo. Use "Back to loop start", "Previous bar" or "Next bar", or tap any bar to begin there.

3. Build a clean streak

   Count clean passes in a row (3 by default), judged by a MIDI keyboard or marked by you as Clean or Missed. A miss highlights the bar where it happened. "Drill this bar" loops just that bar until it holds, then the full loop returns.

4. Climb the tempo ladder

   After a clean streak the tempo steps up: 60, 70, 80, 90, then 100% of the score's tempo. After 2 misses in a row it steps back down. You work at the edge of what you can play, not far beyond it.

5. Build from the end, or start anywhere

   "Build from end" practises the last bar, then the last two, then three, so every run finishes on ground you know. "Start at a random bar" begins somewhere in the middle, which breaks the habit of only knowing the passage from its first bar.

6. Hands separate (optional)

   Turn it on and each clean streak walks the right hand, then the left, then both hands together before the usual drill resumes.

7. Lock it in, then review

   A clean streak at 100% marks the passage solid. It comes back for review after 1, 3, 7, 21 and then 60 days. A library card shows "Due for review" when it is time. A miss at review restarts the gap at one day, and the passage stays solid.

Why it works, and how sure we are

The ideas behind this are not new, and the research is modest in size. Here is what the sources say, and no more.

• Practising the hard parts. Duke, Simmons and Cash (2009, Journal of Research in Music Education), "It's Not How Much; It's How", compared how pianists practised. Better performers tended to work on the difficult passages rather than playing through, and to fix errors where they occurred. The study had a small number of participants and looked at behaviour, so it shows an association rather than proof. Read a summary.
• Chunking. A University of Twente thesis on chunking in music learning examines how splitting a piece into small units supports learning. It is a thesis, not a large trial, so treat it as supporting evidence. Read the thesis.
• Memorisation. Roger Chaffin and colleagues studied how a concert pianist learned a piece for memory, and found practice organised around structural sections and "performance cues". It followed one pianist in depth, so the findings are rich but not general. Read the paper (PDF).

None of this guarantees results for you. It is a reasonable, low-risk way to spend practice time, and you can judge it by whether the hard bars get easier.

What you get

• Offline, installableRuns as a PWA. Once loaded it works without a connection.
• No accountNo sign-up and no cost. Your library stays on your device.
• MusicXML and MIDI importBring your own scores and practise the music you are learning.
• Web MIDI judgingPlug in a keyboard in Chrome or Edge on desktop and each note is judged right, wrong or late. With the on-screen keyboard you mark each pass Clean or Missed yourself.
• Saved passagesEach piece lists its saved passages with their tempo and solid status, and Continue reopens the one you practised longest ago.
• Next passageSwitch to another passage of the same piece. Mixing passages sticks better than drilling one.
• Works on iPadTouch-friendly controls sized for tablets, including adding it to the Home Screen.
• English and Tiếng ViệtThe interface is available in English and Tiếng Việt.

Web MIDI is not available in every browser. Where it is missing, mark each pass Clean or Missed yourself.

Questions