Here are some ways I’m using reflection to improve my work in the practice room.

BTW, I am writing a longer post about this in my regular newsletter, digging more into WHY these practices work. Hope you can check it out there later this weekend.​

Mirror, Mirror

Reflection involves articulating the specifics of an experience, making thematic observations, and connecting these experiences to broader contexts. It’s a central practice in wiring and rewiring our nervous systems, memorizing and recalling information: to growing intellectually. In fact, one might argue that Learning = Experience + Reflection.

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Benefits

Reflection is a key cog in almost every stage of how we commit information to memory and recall those memories.

1. Reflecting, ideally temporally close to the experience, is a key component of the encoding and consolidation phases of our learning, moving information from short-term to long-term memory, from soft and slippery (the wifi password at that AirBNB) to hard (your phone number).
2. Reflection also enables more effective storage and retrieval of encoded knowledge, facilitating neurogenesis and neuroplasticity—the two processes through which our brains learn and deploy new skills—by offering desirable difficulties and cognitive interference. Great for combating stage fright!
3. Finally, reflection helps us reconsolidate information we’ve learned while articulating which learning strategies have worked.

Here are 2 use cases that are front of mind in recent weeks:

1. Metacognitive Exercises: Reflection for Skill-Building and Refinement

A great way to become an expert reflector is by practicing metacognition: thinking about thinking. Metacognition describes an awareness of our thinking process: the ways we absorb, assimilate, and convey information and participate in knowledge production. Johns Hopkins’ excellent research on the subject argues that the act of reflection helps students “assess and adapt their facility with the knowledge and skills of a discipline and to transfer their learning to new contexts.”

Here are some sample metacognitive questions that we used in our ASU Percussion Group, with the goal of structuring the development of reflective skills:

• How did you envision, expect, or intend the performance to go? Did the performance go as you intended?
• If the grade for this course were entirely dependent on the final performance: What grade do you want? What grade do you expect?
• How much time did you spend: Listening to recordings of repertoire? Studying the score? Marking your part with cues and other logistical information? Practicing your individual part? etc etc
• Based on the information above, what will you do differently in preparing for the next performance? For instance, will you spend more time practicing? More time studying? Less time rehearsing? What questions would you ask the instructor? Be specific.
• What advice would you have for a percussionist joining this ensemble next semester?

2. Distillation: Reflection for Efficient Learning

Practice summarizing your lessons, classes, or other formative musical experiences.

I argue that one cannot understand a concept unless one can both re-articulate the essential elements of its argument in one’s own words and apply the concept within and across disciplines. This process of refined summary and deliberate mental organization fosters thinking in analogies, which empower structural-level analysis, which allows us to learn new material more effectively, and on and on.

​I wrote a long post about how to do this HERE​

Designing Your Learning

I think of reflection as the long-term form of Design Thinking. When crafting new interpretations or learning new repertoire, prototyping solutions, failing fast, and iterating new ideas, taking some time to create positive friction by slowing down to see what’s working and what’s not is essential.

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​Do you like this TL/DR version of my typically longer thoughts? Let me know!​

Happy Practicing!

-Mike

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