Learning curves

In April I ordered a ping-pong set to use with the ping-pong table the building management had put on the playground area. The last time I had played was in some friend's basement as a child - every basement had a ping-pong table, and usually we just used them for setting up dollhouses or other games, but sometimes we'd hit the ball back and forth. I never knew the scoring or rules. But my dad taught me (diligently, regularly) to hit a wiffle ball, and to catch a softball, so I knew how to track a ball and hit it. That was in the 1970s.

But after batting the ball back and forth in March, and realizing the uselessness of the endeavor because the paddles were atrocious and the balls dented from being used in the foosball table by the local viking horde, I ordered the nice quality set I mention above. We used it once, spending most of our time chasing the balls around because we weren't very consistent in hitting them.

We never touched it again until today. Today on a whim we went down to take a work break and hit the ball back and forth. Neither of us missed a ball very often - volleys went on for minutes. It was a whole different level than that one time in April. I was surprised at the 'progress' made without consistent practice. It was more like the one time we played in April woke up a bunch of old connections which then spent the last four months 'practicing' in secret.

I wonder if anyone else experiences this?

Another example is with music. I always practiced music the way I grew up practicing: banging away at the piece for an hour a day, so that the 10,000 hours might take effect. Then, in the last few years, we began noticing that if I went away for two or three weeks and couldn't practice during that time, when I came back I would have improved tremendously on whatever we were last working on. And so I began deliberately practicing only once or twice a week, just doing slow focused attention to small sections of the music, rarely singing the entire piece all the way through, rarely singing full voice, and I made much better progress than with the "banging my head against the wall" version. 

So I'm wondering if this is common? Is it like one of those dietary secrets where if you don't count calories or exercise you actually lose more weight than if you do? Is it quality versus quantity? Anyone else notice something similar with skills they study?

With piano, I often find that shorter practice sessions where I only play the part I'm having trouble with, followed by a day off and a good sleep or two, always help. So much of it is muscle memory - if I start thinking about what I'm doing, it pretty much always falls apart.

The ping-pong example is a familiar one. I used to play a lot as a child and after one or two sessions, it's easy to bring back some of the skills acquired as a child.

I guess as a freelance musician I'm constantly doing that. I have to know about 30-40 songs for each gig, I rarely use sheet music (if I really don't like the music, I might write up the chords, so I only have to listen to the song one or two times) and the repertoire varies from gig to gig. I have developed a mental tool of analysis on music, which makes learning fast and efficient. I need to write down the key signatures of the music, because my system is based on the relationship of the chords and not on the names of the notes. There is a kind of "party music literature", which most musicians know mostly, so usually there might be just 2-10 completely new songs for each gig. For others, even if I haven't played the song for years, it's enough to listen and maybe play through it once or twice if it's tricky. So there's a constant learning progress going preparing for the gig on next weekend.

I think musicians also develop a lot of different skills in learning. It's useful to know and be able to map out what is difficult about a certain piece of music, so one can focus on the parts that are difficult (instead of spending the time of practice just playing through the material that is easy). Sometimes it's necessary to practice a part in the right tempo straight away and do just little bits at a time (because the music might be completely different in a fast or slow tempo), sometimes it's better to practice slowly at first. Professional musicians need to be able to learn a lot of music quickly and they usually have very limited time to practice considering the amount of material to digest. So focusing on essentials and not practicing too much is key, I think. Also learning to practice mentally without an instrument is tremendously important. I think most professionals do that all the time. They hear the relationships between sounds or rhythms in everyday environments. I have a habit of practicing polyrhythms by singing or tapping my hands/fingers/whatever when ever I hear an interesting rhythm, come up with one or realize that some rhythm is difficult for me. Also reading through sheet music by hearing each sound in one's own head is one of the fastest ways to learn music I think. In that case going slow might be a good idea. Going as slow as is necessary to hear everything.

When I'm learning new music, the breaks between the sessions are important. If I try to memorize too many songs at a time, it won't be as effective as shorter sessions with more breaks. Breaks might mean doing the laundry or dishes or whatever.

Interesting topic!!

Interesting to hear other people's learning strategies!