JAVS Fall 2016

Another such practical session was Dr. Molly Gebrian’s “Random Versus Blocked Practice.” Possibly the best-attended lecture-presentation, Gebrian recounted several studies that had the entire audience believing that random practice is definitely the way to go. As she explained, if you know what’s coming at you, you do it more easily. That’s why the more we repeat a passage, the easier it gets. But that’s not how a performance happens. We don’t have the luxury of telling our audience, “ this time I’m ready; listen now!” Blocked practice, which we were all taught to do—repeat, repeat, repeat—is necessary in the early stages of learning. But once all of the hard licks have been digested to a fairly high degree, randomly interspersing them between other passages trains you to perform them accurately when you only have one chance, as in a real performance. Gebrian presented results of functional MRI studies that showed which parts of the brain were activated in various learning scenarios. Areas of the brain that deal with higher level cognition and planning were more active during random practice. Thus, during performance, there is less activity in these areas because the brain is working more efficiently. Given this research, the facts seem irrefutable: random practice elicits the most efficient and effective performance (once the skills have been solidified). You can read Gebrian’s in-depth and fascinating article about random versus blocked practice on page 37. While at the Festival, I was also introduced to loads of music I’d never heard before, as well as new ideas about pieces already in the established repertoire. For example, Dr. Christine Rutledge’s session on articulation in Bach was enthralling. She compared Anna Magdalena Bach’s copies of Bach’s Violin Sonatas and Partitas to the original in his own hand, and extrapolated J.S. Bach’s bowings for the Cello Suites, for which his original manuscript does not exist. Scholars largely agree that Magdalena Bach was an extraordinary copyist—when slurs weren’t involved, posits Rutledge! While there were also other scribal errors, those of articulation were most common and egregious. J.S. Bach had a tendency to write “curled” slurs, as Rutledge called them, where the starting point curled in on itself.

The Bertram and Judith Kohl Building, Oberlin Conservatory (photo credit: Claire Stefani).

but rather moves in a stick-slip cycle, sticking to the hair until the tension increases enough to pull it away, then slipping along the hair until it reattaches and the cycle starts again. You can watch the video here: https://goo.gl/Qta7Oj. It’s fascinating!

Festival Welcome (photo credit: David M. Bynog).

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 32, No. 2, Fall 2016