An interesting article in a recent issue of the American Music Teacher magazine titled “The Problems of Once-A-Week Lessons” has gotten me thinking about the disadvantages of the “traditional” once-per-week lesson schedule.

In particular, this article highlighted two learning concepts that have gotten more attention recently, the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and Spaced Repetition.

The Forgetting Curve

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve was an idea developed by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 19th century. It describes how, in general, most people will forget newly-learned information fairly rapidly unless attempts are made to reinforce it.

However, subsequent reinforcement of memory makes the new information more durable. While you may lose up to half of a new idea within a day, if you reinforce the memory within a 24-hour period, that information will now persist longer in the memory. This leads to the development of a style of learning known as spaced repetition.

Spaced Repetition

Spaced Repetition is a learning technique where information is introduced and then re-introduced over a series of days, weeks, and months.

After the introduction, a new concept is shown every one or two days, until an initial memory is formed. Once the new knowledge can be remembered over one or two days, then the next review of this material will increase to 3 or 4 days, followed by approximately 7 days, then multiple weeks, and then even less frequently. If a concept is forgotten over one of the intervals, it move “back” to a more frequent interval to strengthen the concept.

There are many learning applications that employ the Forgetting Curve and the concept of Spaced Repetition to increase the efficacy of learning a new concept. One of my favorite apps that uses these neurological traits is Anki – a flashcard application with the spaced repetition logic built-in. It’s incredibly flexible and you can download cards on almost any subject, plus you can make your own.

Application to Music Lessons

For a student on any instrument, there are two related-but-distinct kinds of information that a student is learning.

• Declarative knowledge
• Applied knowledge

Declarative knowledge are things that are relatively easy to teach. Learning how to read music, music vocabulary, fingerings for specific notes on a brass or woodwind instrument, key signatures, notes within a scale, etc. Applied knowledge is the actual “meat” of learning an instrument – posture, embouchure, hand position(s), tone production, fluidity in various registers/keys, etc.

In short, declarative knowledge is like learning vocabulary definitions in a new language, and applied knowledge is the ability to have a meaningful, flowing conversation in that new language.

The declarative knowledge is easy for any motivated student to do on their own. In fact, a student could use something like Anki to learn this information almost completely on their own.

The applied knowledge, on the other hand, is much more difficult to teach and to learn. This kind of knowledge must be physically embodied by the student, and often requires at least a little bit of trial-and-error to learn correctly. This trial-and-error is the essence of practice – attempt a new technique or phrase of music, evaluate whether the goal(s) were achieved, and either proceed to the next thing (if the goal was achieved) or modify what you’re doing and try again (if the goal wasn’t achieved).

While music teachers often complain of students who don’t practice, the bigger issue (in my experience, at least) is that students are unwilling/unable to engage in this trial-and-error process during their practice. They either run through their assigned pieces without noticing if they were done correctly, or they endlessly repeat things incorrectly while changing nothing.

Even when these incorrect actions are fixed in the very next lesson, a student may have performed dozens of incorrect repetitions by that point. This means that the incorrect version is more ingrained than the correct version, and their is a good chance that the incorrect version will come back at some point in the intervening week.

So, even for students who practice regularly, a large percentage of them may spend most (or all) the time between weekly lessons without much productive practice.

Revising the “Traditional” Lesson Schedule

This article, along with my own observations of students over the past 20+ years has me thinking about possible ways to modify my own studio lesson schedule to help students – especially younger beginners – make more progress from week to week.

I’m not exactly sure yet how I’m going to adapt things currently, but this information has my gears turning. The article mentions several options, including multiple weekly lessons, group classes for students of similar ability, masterclass-style lessons where students can observe, review recordings, and peer learning (which seems better for more advanced students).

All of these options have various positives and negatives, with one of the biggest negatives being scheduling. Students are busy, parents are busy, and I am also busy. However, the positive impact of this kind of schedule seems like it could really 10x the progress of motivated students and it could help a struggling student avoid the frustration that comes with months of no progress.