Piano Practice and the Brain
One thing I’ve been fascinated by in my 20ish years of teaching piano: why is it that some people seem to be way more efficient at practicing?
You can have two people at the exact same level, and give them a 30-minute practice session.
Person #1 might make some very modest gains.
Person #2 might make significant gains.
This is a complex issue, and I’ve talked about it from all sorts of different angles – organization of practice time, not doing the same thing for 30 minutes straight, working on smaller passages instead of just full playthroughs, and so on.
But another idea I’ve had lately: my hypothesis is that there’s a difference in brain wave activity.
Lately I’ve been back in the habit of meditating. One thing that’s interesting about meditation is that some sessions feel almost completely useless, with my brain even more stressed than before, chasing its own tail for the duration and not getting any real rest. Other sessions are better, and I seem to “drop in” to some kind of quieter state, where the monkey mind eases up, and where my visualizations (if I’m doing them) are much stronger. And then every once in a while, I have a meditation experience that is pure delight – I feel a hum in my spirit, and a deep sense of love, joy, and unity takes over.
I’ve also been thinking about how, lacking an object of focus, the brain tends to ruminate and rehash past hurts.
I think there’s a similarity between these meditation experiences, and the different kinds of piano practice experiences.
Another way to think about this that is probably familiar to many of you: flow state. Surely you’ve had experiences where you get so in the zone, where time ceases to be relevant, where a lot seems to happen in a short time, where you’re not thinking so much as doing.
What’s going on when this state comes on?
Okay, so let’s pull these threads together.
An unsatisfying, stressful meditation experience. A disorganized practice session where you never really get into it. No shift into flow state. What’s going on?
I have two ideas:
- The default mode network (DMN) is active and engaged. This part “comes online” when you aren’t engaged in a task, and when it’s online, you tend to ruminate, think about conversations, replay scenarios in your head, and so forth.
-
-
- So it’s only when the DMN pipes down that you can really start getting into the zone, whether that’s with piano practice or meditation.
-
- Beta brain waves are dominant.
-
-
- So, it’s only when beta brain waves pipe down that you can really start getting into the zone, whether that’s with piano practice or meditation.
-
Let’s look at the first one.
When your brain is in flow state, and your DMN pipes down a bit, the self-consciousness that tends to be ever-present in daily life loosens up a bit.
Now let’s look at the second one.
When your brain is in flow state, slower alpha waves dominate. You can think of it like this, in simple terms:
- Beta brain waves are dominant in regular waking tasks, like working, doing chores, and the general bustle of daily activity
- Alpha waves spool up when you’re daydreaming, imagining, or engaged in a TV show or movie
- Theta waves come up when you’re right on the cusp of waking and sleeping
- Gamma brain waves are on the other end of the spectrum, and are related to the bliss states achieved by meditators
One area of fascination, for me, is the imagination (it’s something I studied in university, and continue to study now). One interesting thing about the imagination – visual imagination, but also aural and etc. – it is very hard to trigger when you’re flush with beta waves. Images start to become easier to hold, and become much more intense, with alpha and theta waves. If you’ve ever started having crazy imagination sequences right on the cusp of sleep, you’ll have experienced this yourself. While theta can be active in creativity and meditation, it isn’t such a marker of flow because flow requires more engaged energy.
On the other hand, beta brain waves can give one a feeling of anxiety and a sort of neurotic hypervigilance.
What does this all have to do with piano practice?
“A person grinding through a difficult task in high-beta is working hard but not in flow. They are exhausting themselves and producing average results, not exceptional ones.” [1]
This, I think, is the crux of the matter. It probably goes some way to explaining the difference between student #1 and student #2.
Student #1 is probably locked in high-beta, grinding it out, with anxious monitoring or a sort of disengaged distractedness. Their DMN is probably quite active as their mind drifts to thoughts about conversations, grievances, and self-criticism.
Student #2 is probably locked in high-alpha, immersed in the task, feeling energized but not anxious, engaged but not neurotic. Their DMN is probably quite dimmed, so in some sense there is a feeling of becoming the task instead of persistently self-monitoring.
These students spend the same amount of time practicing, but get dramatically different results. They have dramatically different experiences, too: Student #1 probably gets quite frustrated, while Student #2 enjoys their practice session the way someone might enjoy going for a run – hard work, but satisfying work.
In the next video, we’ll discuss the practical implications.
-Allysia
Alpha Waves and Flow State: The Neuroscience of Peak Performance (And How to Train It)
HOW BRAINWAVES AFFECT MUSICAL PERFORMANCE | Local 802 AFM