Desirable Difficulties

 

I recently read a very good book about music and the brain where the author used the term "desirable difficulties." It seems to encapsulate the concept of many of the techniques I use, and have my students use, that improve one's command of the music one is working on.

As you've heard me say before, nothing happens in the hand, fingers, arms, etc. without first happening in the brain. Not so long ago, people believed "muscle memory" was actually in the muscles themselves; now we know it is primarily in the motor cortex of the brain. See my post "It's All (neuro)logical". We are creating and strengthening the neurons and the neural pathways that enable us to perform the movements required by the music in a somewhat automatic fashion, that is, without literally "thinking" about them.

You might think, as many people do, that the way to develop the "wiring" in the brain, as I like to call it, would be to just play the piece, or the passage, over and over again. Virtually everyone who teaches or talks or writes about learning to play the piano will tell you that copious amounts of repetition are necessary. As it turns out, recent scientific experiments with musicians' brains, as well as people from other disciplines, tell a different story. The brain seeks novelty. After a certain amount of repetition, there are diminishing returns regarding how many more neurons and/or pathways are created. 

To get the brain really working again, you need to create some new challenges or difficulties for it. It will then create new wiring that will strengthen and supplement what you already have. You may be thinking, "It's already hard enough! Why make it harder?" But that is, in fact, what is necessary. If it's hard, you probably will benefit from doing it. (Remember, when I say "hard" I mean mentally. There should never be any physical pain with any of this. Never play through pain.)

Maybe you can eventually get to where you have a solid command of the music with just the ordinary repetition, but creating desirable difficulties will get you there faster. And hopefully it will also be more fun and interesting.

Here are some of my top ways of creating desirable difficulties:

1. Tranpose. Transposing the piece, or even parts of the piece, to different keys, by ear, will challenge your ear more than you ever thought possible. And, as I always say, the ear really runs the show, so it's the first thing to work on. (Again, when I speak of the ear I mean the auditory cortex of the brain.)

2. Play with eyes closed. See my post on this topic.

3. Play with hands crossed. Again, see my post on this topic. 

4. Play the left hand's part doubled with the right, meaning they are both playing the same thing. Of course you can go slowly and possibly skip any large leaps or things you just can't reach. Then do the reverse. This way, your dominant hand helps "teach" the other hand. Ironically, the non-dominant hand also helps the dominant hand, probably because it just feels so awkward and foreign to the brain that is had to work really hard at it.

5. Play one hand's part while singing the other hand's part. This would work well for a two-voice piece such as a Bach Invention. 

There are other means of creating desirable difficulties, Experiment and see if you can come up with some of your own.