written by Allison Jarrell, MMM Founder and CEO
If you’ve ever practiced an instrument, you’ve probably had the experience of playing the same difficult passage over and over again, hoping that one more repetition will finally make it stick. But what if part of learning actually happens when you stop playing?
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have studied what happens in the brain when we’re learning a new physical skill. They found something fascinating: during very short periods of rest, the brain rapidly replays the activity it just practiced. In the study, these neural replays happened at about 20 times the speed of the actual activity.
For musicians, that’s a pretty interesting reason to rethink the way we practice.
What Happens During a Short Practice Break?
Imagine a piano student working on a scale or a difficult few measures of a piece. They play the passage several times and then take their hands off the piano for 10 or 15 seconds.
It might look like nothing is happening during those few seconds, but the brain may still be very busy.
The NIH researchers found that during these short periods of waking rest, the brain replayed the sequence that had just been practiced. The hippocampus, an area of the brain we usually associate with memory, was communicating with areas involved in movement as the brain essentially reviewed the new skill.
Even more interesting, the people whose brains replayed the activity more often during their breaks tended to show greater improvement in the skill.
In other words, those little breaks weren’t necessarily time away from learning. They were part of the learning process.
More Practice Isn’t Always Better Practice
As a music teacher, I’ve always believed that the quality of practice matters more than simply watching the clock. Playing something incorrectly 20 times isn’t necessarily going to help you learn it correctly on the 21st try.
This research gives us another reason to think about practice differently.
Instead of playing a difficult section over and over without stopping, students can break their practice into small, focused chunks. Work carefully on one specific skill, give the brain a few seconds to process it, and then come back and try again.
That approach can also make practice feel much more manageable, especially for younger students or anyone who has difficulty staying focused for a long practice session.
Try the 10-Second Practice Break
Here’s an easy experiment to try during your next practice session.
Choose something small that you’re working to improve. It might be a scale, a chord change, a difficult rhythm, a few measures of a piece, or even a new fingering pattern. Practice it slowly and with your full attention.
Then take your hands off your instrument and rest for about 10 to 15 seconds. Don’t grab your phone or immediately start working on something else. Just sit quietly for a few seconds.
Then play the passage again.
You can repeat that process several times: focused practice, short break, focused practice, short break.
It may feel strange at first, especially if you’re accustomed to measuring a good practice session by how continuously you’re playing. But those few seconds aren’t necessarily wasted time.
Your brain may still be practicing.
A Good Reminder Beyond Music
I especially like this research right now as students are heading back to school and families are settling into busy fall schedules. There can be a lot of pressure to fit everything in, and music practice can easily become one more thing that needs to be checked off the list.
But effective practice doesn’t necessarily need to mean longer practice.
Ten or fifteen focused minutes can be incredibly valuable when a student knows what to work on and practices with intention. Adding short breaks may make those minutes even more productive.
And I think there’s a lesson here that goes beyond learning an instrument. We tend to associate progress with constantly doing something. Practice more. Work longer. Keep going.
Sometimes that’s exactly what we need to do. But sometimes our brains need a little space to process what we’ve just asked them to learn.
Maybe that’s another one of music’s superpowers. It teaches us when to work, when to listen, and sometimes, when to rest.
Keep learning, keep growing, let music lead the way.
Ready to put smarter practice into action? Whether you’re beginning music lessons for the first time or looking for the right teacher to help you take the next step, we’d love to help you find the right fit.