Perfect Practice Part 3: Interleaved Practice

What is interleaved practice?

Interleaving is the process of structuring practice so that students move frequently from one topic to another. As opposed to blocked practice, which repeats the same skill with little interruption, interleaved practice rotates concepts frequently, even if they’re not yet mastered.

At first glance, this approach can seem counterintuitive. Wouldn’t it make more sense to finish one thing before moving on? Research suggests otherwise. Interleaved practice increases long-term learning and retention—a phenomenon known as the contextual interference effect. Contextual interference has been studied in a variety of fields—most notably in sports—and, more recently, in music. In addition to enhanced learning, interleaved practice has been shown to boost executive functions like goal-setting, planning, and focus. (Carter and Grahn 2016).

How do we implement interleaved practice?

Understanding the benefits of interleaving is one thing; implementing it is another. Some students feel uneasy switching tasks quickly. There can be a sense of incompleteness when a passage isn’t fully polished before moving on. Many musicians were trained primarily through blocked repetition, so deviating from that model can feel unfamiliar—even uncomfortable.

As with any practice strategy, the most natural way to introduce interleaving is to model it in the lesson. When students experience frequent, intentional shifts between tasks, the structure becomes familiar rather than jarring. My personal challenge with interleaving the lesson structure is trusting that learning is happening despite a student’s in-the-moment performance occasionally decreasing. According to the literature on context interference, this is to be expected!

A Basic Interleaved Structure

Interleaving works best when practice has clearly defined topics. Each topic calls for different practice strategies, and rotating among them keeps the brain engaged and prevents practice from becoming automatic.

Common practice tasks to interleave might include:

• Technical work (in exercises or within repertoire)

• Memory work

• Improvisation

• Performance preparation

• Note and rhythm accuracy

• Sight-reading

• Voicing

• Increasing tempo

• Expressive refinement

An hour-long interleaved practice could look like this.

Student-Led practice plans

Students don’t need a formal explanation of the term “interleaving.” When the structure is modeled consistently in lessons, they quickly internalize the rhythm of shifting focus. I’ve incorporated interleaved practice even with my youngest students, and they adapt to it quickly when it’s presented as a normal part of our routine.

This student noticed that the pattern of repeated notes ends in the last two measures, so he put a practice square around them.

Marking specific practice points has been especially helpful when structuring interleaved work at home. Students identify and mark challenging passages—often with a square or removable highlighting tape—and explain why that section needs extra attention. However, the word “difficult” is something that we avoid in this context. Rather, we call difficult passages “the fun part,” “the impressive part,” or, as one of my students puts it, “the spicy part.” This reframes challenges in a fun way that fosters a positive attitude toward practice.

Students can cycle through the practice squares from all their pieces, creating context interference. The key is to practice each section only until it begins to feel easier—not until it is note-for-note perfect. This allows the brain to stay engaged and prevents autopilot repetition. From there, students can work on integrating the practice squares into the larger context of the piece.

“With blocking, once you know what solution to use, or movement to execute, the hard part is over. With interleaving, each practice attempt is different from the last, so rote responses don’t work. Instead, your brain must continuously focus on searching for different solutions. That process can improve your ability to learn critical features of skills and concepts, which then better enables you to select and execute the correct response.”

— Steven C. Pan

Real-life Results

Since actively encouraging interleaved practice, I’ve made some general observations:

• less frustrated by making mistakes and more self-compassionate

• more reflective on their work, verbalizing what they missed and why they think they missed it before moving onto the next repetition of a passage

• more thoughtful before playing rather than diving headfirst into a piece

Although a great number of factors can shape these positive behaviors, I believe that the de-emphasis on perfection inherent to interleaved practice might play a role.

Further Reading

A Short Read: The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning

A Deeper Dive: Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance

Carter CE and Grahn JA (2016) Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance. Front. Psychol. 7:1251. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01251

Perfect Practice: Part 2

Five More Strategies for Successful Practicing

Positivity is Contagious

The tone of a practice session matters. There will be days when your child feels reluctant to practice—and days when you do, too. Even so, the atmosphere adults create has a significant impact on how practice unfolds. Announcing that it’s time to practice with a friendly—not demanding or nagging—tone is a good place to start.

Although part of piano practice is identifying and correcting mistakes, it’s also important to focus on what the student is doing well. Without giving excessive praise, aim for a healthy balance of constructive. comments and positive feedback: for every correction, acknowledge one or two strengths you observe during the session.

Avoid Mirroring Tension

Sometimes, tension will build in at-home practice sessions. Perhaps your child is reluctant to practice altogether, or is frustrated with challenging parts of their assignment—no matter the issue, tension will escalate when met with more tension. Young children are still developing emotional regulation skills, so adults often need to take the lead in diffusing tension. Diffusing tension may including pausing for a moment to tell joke and have a laugh, offering praise for effort if the student is working diligently on something challenging, or keeping communication open by having the student evaluate their own work. What do they feel is the hardest part of a particular practice session? In what areas do they feel like they are excelling?

Be Fair and Follow Through

Students thrive when expectations are consistent and reasonable. To feel safe, communicate openly, and be freely creative, students need to trust that their teachers will not give them more than they can handle, hold them to unrealistic standards, or be inappropriately picky.

At home, parents temporarily step into a teaching role, and fairness matters just as much there as it does in lessons. Avoid asking the student to do more than is listed on the weekly assignment, and be consistent with requests—it isn’t fair to have a student play a passage ten times if five times was the agreement. Consistency builds trust, and trust supports effort.

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Deep Dive: Give Rewards—But Know How to Use Them

Some families choose to use rewards to encourage practice. When used thoughtfully, rewards can acknowledge effort without replacing intrinsic motivation. In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink distinguishes between two types of rewards:

• If-Then rewards (“If you practice, then you earn…”), which are anticipated and tied directly to task completion.

• Now-That rewards, which are unexpected acknowledgments of effort, focus, or persistence.

Research suggests that frequent If-Then rewards can shift attention away from enjoyment and toward the reward itself. Over time, they may need to increase in size or frequency to maintain the same effect. Now-That rewards, by contrast, recognize qualities such as focus, independence, and perseverance.

If-Then rewards ultimately stifle creativity and inhibit deep thinking. This is because the focus is on the short term and the reward itself. Pink also explains how If-Then rewards can deflate motivation: “If-Then rewards require people for forfeit some of their autonomy…And that can spring a hole in the bottom of their motivation bucket, draining an activity of its enjoyment” (36). When an enjoyable task becomes a job, our motivation to perform the task out of genuine excitement interest declines.

If-Then rewards are also hard to maintain because they are anticipated by recipients, who come to then expect rewards upon completion of similar tasks. Pink notes, “…before long, the existing reward may no longer suffice. It will quickly feel less like a bonus and more like the status quo—which then forces [the use] of larger rewards to achieve the same effect” (53).

Now-That rewards, on the other hand, foster intrinsic motivation because they allow students to see the relationship between their behavior and rewards. What do Now-That rewards look like in the context of piano lessons and practice? Here are a few examples:

• When the student accomplishes their practice goals before their practice session is finished, reward their focus and effort by allowing some time for games via music apps. Explain that the surprise app time is a result of their focus.

• When the student successfully uses visual aids included in their take-home pouch (e.g., fuzzies, picture cards), reward them with some fun, affordable manipulatives like Iwako erasers or finger puppets. Mention that since they know how to use those aids so well, you got them some new, cool ones!

• When the student uses practice strategies independently, reward their ownership with a treat.

Because they are a surprise, Now-That rewards should always be followed up by explaining why the reward was given—this will get the student eager to show off their good attitude and effort in the future!

What I Don’t Use as Rewards

Creative activities—such as improvisation or musical games—are integral parts of music learning in my studio. For that reason, I do not use them as rewards or withhold them as consequences. They are part of the learning process itself.

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For more a in-depth look at rewards and motivation, I recommend reading Daniel Pink’s book or giving this episode of Dr. Ashley Danyew’s podcast, Field Notes on Music Teaching & Learning, a listen.

The Art of Marking Music

A skill of its own!

Marking music with purpose and clarity makes for more efficient lessons and practicing. Perfecting this art has been an ongoing goal of mine.

The Issue

Piano teachers are in a constant race against time—there’s so much content to fit in during the 30-60 minutes per week that we see a given student. I am in never-ending pursuit of spending less time talking and writing down assignments and more time making music! Throughout this journey, I’ve found myself returning to two questions:

• How can we actually engage with what we mark on the page?

• Are assignment sheets truly helpful? If so, how can they be more practical?

Over time, I’ve realized that I’m most comfortable and at my best when I understand the exact purpose behind what I’m doing in a lesson. If I’m going to invest time in a system, I want to refine it so that it clearly supports the student’s progress. Ultimately, I want to spend less time writing instructions and more time making music. Thoughtful score markings help make that possible.

Why do we mark our music?

A marking is a call to action. It signals that something deserves attention. When I reflect on the markings my students and I make, they generally fall into a few categories:

• To analyze

• To encourage phrasing

• To prevent mistakes

• To reinforce a new concept

• To give meaning to an abstract concept

• To guide practice

How Students Interact with Their Scores

I think of markings along two independent spectrums:

• Passive vs. Active

• Fixed vs. Flexible

The first describes how a student engages with a marking in the moment (usually during the lesson). The second describes how the marking functions over time (usually during practice at home).

Passive vs. Active

Passive markings are teacher-driven: I circle something, I write an instruction, I highlight an error.

Active markings invite student ownership—the student identifies the issue, makes the mark, and engages with the solution. When students interact with their scores directly, they begin thinking like musicians rather than simply following directions.

Fixed vs. Flexible

Fixed markings stay on the page. Examples include:

• Circling accidentals

• Labeling formal sections

• Marking harmonic events

Flexible markings evolve over time. They are moveable, removable, stackable—the list goes on. I like to use removable highlighter tape, but I have also used erasable colored pencils. The goal is that flexible markings be eye-catching, engaging, and fun.

Glenn Gould’s score to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. (Source)

More About Flexible Markings

Flexible markings are especially helpful for:

• sudden dynamic changes

• sudden position changes

• practice strategies for particular sections of music

• errors made in a run-through of a piece

• places where memory slips occurred if a student is working toward memorization

In these situations, I use flexible markings for a few reasons:

• The tape can be removed when the student solves a problem. Errors can also be highlighted again in another color to show that a concept still needs another week of practice. Asking students if they think the tape is ready to be removed also sets the tone for self-evaluation.

• Visual clutter doesn’t accumulate over the weeks. Students won’t likely practice the same way each week; practice techniques can be swapped in and out.

• Students love taking ownership of their scores by choosing colors and applying tape on their own. Even my high schoolers enjoy picking the week’s tape color.

How does this relate to practicing?

If we expect students to practice independently, these conditions must be met:

• The teacher has shown the student how to practice their material in the lesson.

• The student has successfully replicated the practice techniques more than once in the lesson, under teacher supervision.

• There is a clear, concise explanation of these techniques where the student can review them, like a practice notebook—or, better yet, right on the score where they require fewer steps to access.

Therefore, thoughtful, intentional, and dynamic markings that extend the practice notebook onto the score in an engaging way can be considered a student motivator. When we know what to do and how to do it, we’re more likely to take action!

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Examples

Burgmüller Op. 100, No. 9: The Chase

Here, we have a few flexible markings that outline which practice technique to use in specific passages.

O.F. = on the fallboard

G.P. = ghost practicing

S/P = stop/prepare

I don’t always use abbreviations, especially with younger students. Practice technique shortcuts like these are only useful if the student knows what they mean and how to execute them, so I write more detailed instructions in an assignment book, if necessary.

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Kabalevsky Op. 27 No. 13: A Little Joke

Since different practice techniques will be used to master the rapid position changes and left-hand speed and clarity, this passage is a great place to use flexible markings.

B.P. = blocked practice, with circled notes practiced together in a “block” to aid with the rapid position changes in the notorious B section of this piece.

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Rachmaninoff Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32 No. 12

I wanted to include an example using fixed markings to illustrate the potential for creativity; fixed markings don’t have to be passive circles on the score. Here, I’ve quantified the gradual crescendo (an otherwise abstract concept) that begins in the first measure of this page. This activity is a great opportunity for advanced students to listen to recordings of concert pianists, observe the artists’ varying interpretive decisions about the crescendo, and decide for themselves how and when the volume will increase in their personal interpretation of the piece.

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The Takeaway

The marks we make on our scores can be active or passive, fixed or flexible. When we are intentional about those choices, our expectations become clearer and our teaching becomes more efficient.

When students know what to do and how to do it, practicing feels more manageable. Whenever possible, students should participate in marking their own scores so that they develop ownership of their music.

Flexible markings, in particular, allow students to track progress without cluttering the page. They encourage reflection, reinforce strategies, and support steady growth over time.