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First edition, 2023.03.06

 How to Succeed with This Plan
Welcome to the 30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan!

You are about to embark on a journey that will transform the way you learn music.

Here are a few pointers to help you maximize your success:

Trust the process.

Some of these approaches will seem weird and counterintuitive, but they are all
backed by scientific evidence, and by the collective wisdom of the Musical U Team
gathered through our years of experience working with thousands of musical
superlearners.

Be open to changing your mindset.

On each of these 30 days, you will be presented with a new musical superlearning
concept. Absorbing these concepts is just as important as the practicing. You will
be facing learning techniques that will openly challenge what you’ve done before,
maybe for many decades, and that may have been taught to you by beloved
teachers. So be willing to try new and unfamiliar ways of thinking, if only for these
30 days. You’ll be glad you did!

Do the work.
In addition to the daily concept, you will be presented with a daily exercise. The
exercises are designed specifically in alignment with the concepts taught
throughout plan. Follow the instructions as best and as precisely as you can.

Keep the pace.

Please keep to the once-per-day pace and do not jump ahead! The span of time
to rest the brain and assimilate the information and techniques in between the
days is just as important as the exercises themselves.
About Superlearning
As we define it, “superlearning” is both a new way of practicing music, and
a collection of specific tools, techniques and mindsets which can unlock a
higher speed of learning for any musician.

The material you’ll find in this Plan is based on a large body of scientific
research, as well as the Musical U team’s own personal experience, and our
experience working with thousands of students inside the Musical
Superlearning course we developed with “The Learning Coach” Gregg
Goodhart in 2020.

Not every technique or concept will work effectively for every musician in
every situation—in fact part of the “art” of superlearning is using your own
judgement about what to try when—but you can assume that anything
recommended in the Plan has been proven to have a valuable place in the
“superlearner’s toolkit”.

About the 30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan

This Plan is divided into five units, with each unit consisting of six days. Each day
presents one superlearning concept and one exercise.

You can either choose to move through the units one right after the other, or take a
day of rest in-between so that it’s one Unit per week.

As you’ll be learning, timing can be critical to your superlearning success! So

whichever option you choose, try your best to keep to the daily pacing to maximize
your success.

Reflection
In addition to the concepts and exercises, on some days you will find instructions
for additional reflection on your learning. As you will discover, reflection is a magic
key to superlearning success.

Taking the time to reflect may be more or less comfortable for you at this point. But
even if it is not, we encourage you to give it a try. You will find that the rewards of
reflection will far outweigh any discomfort you may feel to begin with.

If you find yourself wanting to just jot down a few words to “tick the box” of doing
this step, really challenge yourself to linger with it, and see what further insights
there might be there, waiting for you, if you make the effort to reflect a bit further.

How long will it take?

The exercises are designed to be brief. Sometimes they will be very short,
sometimes longer. And sometimes it will be up to you. Expect to take 15-30
minutes per day on this Plan in total.

What you will need

These items will be essential to the exercises:

● Practice Journal: Tracking your activities and results as you move through
the Plan is essential. You can record your findings in a paper journal or digital
document, whichever you prefer.

● Index Cards (optional): For some tasks you may find it helpful to track things
using physical index card, but this is not required.

● Timer: exercises will often be timed, so always have a timer device available.
An app (or type “timer” into a Google search) will work fine.
 ● Metronome: Spoiler alert! You’re going to love your metronome by the end of
these 30 days! Again, a physical or app-based metronome is fine, and typing
“metronome” into Google will directly provide a basic option above the
search results.

● Recording Device: You will be recording yourself in specific ways in order to

maximize your learning. It will be very helpful to have a way of labeling and
storing your recordings in an organized manner.

● Your musical instrument (or voice if you’re a singer)

● A range of pieces/songs you’ve been learning: You’ll be guided through

selecting what exactly to work on, but the Plan is designed to help accelerate
your progress with the music you’re already learning. There is no specific
repertoire required or included.

A note on sheet music…

This plan can be completed with or without the ability to read music notation. It is
not necessary to play all the music you’ll use “by memory” (unless you choose to do
so) in order to master these techniques, though you will learn very effective
strategies for memorization.

Begin Your Practice Journal Now

Before you launch into Day 1, please take a few minutes to write your intentions
and what you wish to accomplish in this 30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan in
your Practice Journal.

Ready, set… go!

 Unit 1
This unit lays out six foundational concepts from which most of the others are
derived. You may find that there is surprisingly little “practice”, in the sense that you
have known it before.

Feel free to practice on your own as much as you like, and even apply the concepts
that you’re learning. But please keep the assigned exercises and musical segments
isolated in our “learning laboratory” (more on that in a moment).

Before you begin, take a few moments now to set your intentions for Unit 1 and
jot them down in your Practice Journal.
Day 1

Concept: Learn How To Learn

Please keep in mind that the purpose of this Plan is not to learn how to play music!

What we are really here to do is to learn how to learn!

Once you have absorbed your new superlearning toolkit, you will be able to apply it
to your music (or any other) learning with great success.

So set your intention, right now, to

● Release the idea of mastering any specific piece of music in these 30 days
(though that still may happen!) And to

● Embrace the concept of learning how to learn, so you can master the music
you want to play in the future.

Accordingly, we invite you to treat this experience as a “learning laboratory”.

Welcome to the Lab

In a scientific laboratory, very small samples of material are isolated in test tubes
and subjected to precisely controlled experimentation.

Small Segments
Similarly, during the course of this Plan, you will be isolating very small segments
of music and experimenting with them through new practice and thought
processes. Once you can superlearn with small segments, and you gain
understanding of the concepts, you will be able to expand and apply your new
learning skills to larger musical works.

Note: If you wish, you can choose several segments from the same piece of music,
but it can be very helpful to be practicing a wide variety of music if you can.
“Sterile Conditions”
Laboratory technicians maintain the utmost purity of their samples by isolating
them from uncontrolled external influence. In the same way, you will be able to
maximize your results by keeping the musical segments selected during this plan
separate from any other practicing.

You are welcome to practice anything you like, and to introduce the musical
superlearning techniques into your other practice. But please keep the musical
segments that you are working with here isolated from any other practice unless
specifically instructed otherwise.

Lab Reports
The laboratory technicians document each experiment meticulously. Try to do the
same! Keep records of what you’re doing and your reflections, as guided in the
instructions.

This may all seem like hard work - but when you see the results, you’ll begin to see
what fun it can be!

Exercise: Choosing Musical Segments

We are going to begin by choosing short musical segments to “experiment” on.
Each segment should be no longer than a musical phrase (so maybe 5-15
seconds), and can be as short as a single measure or even less.

Select three segments now, according to the following requirements:

● Segment 1: Something new that you want to learn.

● Segment 2: Something old that you’ve plateaued on, or has always given you
trouble.

● Segment 3: Something that you can play well but would like to memorize.
For each segment, jot down in your Practice Journal the name of the musical piece
and something to identify the segment - it may be measure numbers, a timestamp
in a recorded version, some identifier in the form (for example, “The guitar riff at the
end of the chorus”) or anything that helps you remember what it is (for example,
“That really fast part that drives me crazy”).

Now play through each segment, one after another, and record yourself. Label the
recording “Day 1”.

Please note that you will not be playing your segments over and over, as you
may have been taught to do and practiced before. It is very important that you
resist the urge to fall into that kind of “massed repetition” for these segments!
As you move through the Days in this Plan, you will soon learn why.

That’s it! You are done for today. Be careful to now isolate the segments you’ve
chosen, and not to practice them until instructed to do so.
Day 2

Concept: Growth Mindset

Researcher Carol Dweck describes two different types of mindset that affect our
ability to learn.

Fixed Mindset
With a so-called “fixed mindset”, we have a belief that our musical abilities are
innate and static. This leads to what we’ve described at Musical U as “the talent
myth”, that is…

“Either you’ve got it or you don’t.”

Folks with a fixed mindset don’t believe that they can learn and grow beyond
basically the abilities they’ve always had. The tend to avoid challenges, give up
easily when faced with obstacles, see effort as fruitless, ignore criticism or useful
negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others.

As a result, they plateau early and achieve far less than their full potential.

Growth Mindset
With a so-called “growth mindset”, we have a belief that our abilities can be can be
grown and strengthened, like a muscle. This leads to a desire to improve and a
willingness to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks and to see effort
as the path to mastery.

Folks with a growth mindset are willing to learn from criticism and find lessons and
inspiration
in the success of others. All this gives them a greater sense of free will.

As a result, they reach ever-higher levels of achievement.

Which mindset is yours?
Most people have a mixture of these two mindsets. Through the process of
learning how to learn, we will uncover hidden aspects of fixed mindset and
transform them into a growth mindset.

Exercise: Observing Ourselves

Self-observation will help us to free our minds to open up to more growth and
learning.

Take out your three musical segments from Day 1. Play each one through, then
pause after each one to reflect on the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes you
observed in yourself as you played through the segment.

Jot down these thoughts for each segment in your Practice Journal.

Then reflect (and write) on whether those thoughts indicate a fixed mindset,
growth mindset, or a blend of both.

Play through the segments once more, and this time record yourself and label your
recording “Day 2”.

You are done! Remember to not practice these segments anymore until tomorrow’s
instructions.
Day 3

Concept: Encoding and Retrieval

There are two main tasks of learning to play music:

● Encoding is the process of putting “how to play the music” into our long-term
memory.

● Retrieval is the process of bringing back out “how to play the music” so we
can perform it.

Typically, we tend to focus all of our attention while practicing on encoding - what
we tend to call “learning” the music. When we then fail to play the music well in
performance (retrieval), we believe that we “haven’t practiced enough”.

However, these two equally-important tasks actually require different neural

networks in our brain - and so require two very different learning strategies.

The specific nature and techniques of retrieval practice are generally not
understood or taught. But if done correctly, finely-honed retrieval practice can
achieve far more musical success in far less time than simply repeating over and
over, the way most of us were taught to “memorise”.

The first step is to discern when the music has been encoded and is ready for
retrieval. This isn’t always obvious, but through the Days of this Plan, you will learn
the art of identifying the best ways to practice for any given task.

Exercise: Encode or Retrieve?

Think about your segments. Remember,

● Segment 1 is something new that you want to learn.

● Segment 2 is something old that you’ve plateaued on, or has always given
you trouble.
 ● Segment 3 is something that you can play well but would like to memorize.

Based on those descriptions, which one(s) do you think require more encoding?
Which one(s) would be ready for retrieval practice? Jot this down in your Practice
Journal.

Now record yourself playing through each segment and label it “Day 3”. Then
answer the questions above again. Again, jot this down in your Practice Journal.

Don’t worry about getting the “right” answer. These decisions will become easier
with experience, and we can learn well from mistakes.

Retrieval Practice
So far, we have learned about three concepts. Without looking back through the
pages of this Plan, do your best to recall them and write them down.

You are done for the day! You can go ahead and practice whatever and however
you wish, but remember to resist the urge to play any of these three segments until
instructed to do so.
Day 4

Concept: The Learning Brain

The human brain requires a tremendous amount of energy - up to 20% of the
whole body’s energy use! So it has evolved to conserve energy whenever possible.

This means that when our brains decide that our activity doesn’t require much
thought or attention, they literally shut down.

For example, if we choose a task that is not challenging enough, our brain may well
decide to withdraw energy from the parts that don’t seem necessary to produce
the sought-for result.

Most of us have been taught to repeat our music over and over and over, and we
call this “practicing”. At the end of a session of a great number of massed
repetitions, we may even think we’ve gotten “better”. Then the next day comes and
we wonder why that improvement didn’t “stick”.

Research has shown that our brains literally become bored with this kind of
“massed repetition” and shut down the deep learning processes - whereas novel or
challenging activities stimulate a much higher level of brain activity, and thus a
higher level of learning.

Almost all of our musical superlearning techniques can be seen as ways to keep
our bio-electric brains awake, excited, and more fully engaged in the process of
learning.

As we go through the Days, keep this in mind: learning how to learn is about
learning how our brains work… and how they don’t!

The Power of “Not Finishing”

We have been taught that “practice makes perfect”. But we can actually use more
of our brain for learning when we stop before it’s “perfect”.
When we don’t finish something, it creates a kind of “open loop” in our brains. And
our brains keep working on the task in the background, even when we’re not
consciously aware, wanting to close that loop. So we are quite literally recruiting
more parts of our brains into the learning process.

“The purpose of practice is to tell our brains what to do when we’re sleeping.”
– Josh Turknett, neuroscientist turned banjo instructor.

Exercise: Not Finishing

Choose the most difficult of your three segments. Practice several repetitions until
you notice improvement. Then… stop!

Repeat this process with the other segments.

Then press “record” and play through each segment once. Label your recording
“Day 4”.

Speaking out loud, ask your brain to keep working on this while you’re doing
other things, and while you sleep.

Jot down your observations in your Practice Journal.

Retrieval Practice
Without looking back, jot down all the concepts you’ve learned so far in Unit 1.

That’s it for today!

Day 5

Concept: Deliberate Practice

Massed repetitions are one of the most inefficient learning strategies. But at least,
however misguided, when we do them we generally have the intention and drive to
improve.

Another highly inefficient but popular practice strategy is to play through a piece
from beginning to end, and glossing over mistakes or difficult parts. Or maybe we
stop at the hard parts, repeat them until they’re “right”, and then after we’ve played
them correctly exactly once, we move on.

Or perhaps we just float around, playing whatever feels good… and quit or move to
something else when we encounter a challenge.

Deliberate practice, a type of practice researched and codified by Professor

Anders Ericsson, creates a much more efficient and effective learning. We
can see deliberate practice as having three parts:

● Plan

● Play

● Reflect

Often times, we may just be “acting like we’re practicing”, just playing without
much thought. But let’s say, we decide we want to work on Song X because it’s
harder than our other songs. That’s a plan.

Then, we play it through.

We notice that it’s a little tricky to switch the chord progression from the chorus to
the bridge. In that moment, we’ve stopped to reflect.
Then we decide to do a little extra practice on that transition. So we have a new
plan.

And the cycle continues.

Reflection
Reflection is perhaps the most underutilized learning superpower. We often rush
into playing and playing and playing, but rarely do we pause and really think about
what we’re doing. Intentionally aiming for deliberate practice slows us down and
gives us time to engage more of our brains in the learning task.

Exercise: Plan, Play, Reflect

Press record. Play your retrieval segment just once through - yes only once!

Then you will take each of your encoding segments through three cycles of plan,
play, reflect.

In your reflection, take time to think about any little change that you could try for
your technique or expression that will make your music sound better. Then make a
plan for what you will try, play it, reflect on the outcome, make a new plan, and so
on.

End by playing your retrieval segment one - and only one! - more time.

Write about your experience in your Practice Journal.

Retrieval Practice
Without looking back through the Plan or your Journal, jot down each of the
concepts you can remember from Days 1-5.

All done!
Day 6

Concept: Create, Create, Create

Nothing engages our brains quite so completely as creativity!

As we will experience as we move throught the Days, musical superlearning can be

a very creative process. This is true even when we are learning music that
somebody else wrote.

“Make an art of your practice.” – Steve Lawson

As we go, we’ll learn many ways to be creative in our practice. One way to add
your creativity to any music is to focus on the expression - bringing out the feelings
and emotions that you feel in the music. Expression builds a greater connection
and relationship between you and the music.

Many musicians believe that they have to “learn” a piece of music before they can
focus on the expression. But in fact creative expression can accelerate our music
learning tremendously, even our technical learning of “how to play the right notes”.

Exercise: Express and Create

Record and label today’s practice session:

● Plan: Choose the most difficult segment.

● Play each segment as expressively as possible, even if you have to go slowly,

adding creative changes to the way you’re playing it.

● Reflect on your experience: how did this feel different from “normal”
practicing?

Repeat this cycle of creative deliberate practice three times for each segment.
Then…
 ● Plan: Think back over what’s happened this week.

● Play: Play each segment through once “normally”.

● Reflect on your experience: how have these segments changed over these
six days? You may want to compare these final play-throughs with your Day
1 recordings.

Retrieval Practice
Jot down the six concepts from Unit 1.

Reflect
Reflect on your experiences and learning from Unit 1.
 Unit 2
In this unit, we will continue to elaborate on the Unit 1 concepts as well as
introducing some new ones. Your practice exercise time will expand as we
incorporate the concepts into your learning process.

Before you begin, take a few moments to set your intentions for Unit 2 and jot
them down in your Practice Journal.
Day 7

Concept: Direct Practice

Direct Practice is to practice the thing that you really want to do. Sometimes that
means focusing less attention on the things we’re “supposed” to do.

Direct practice would have you practicing in a way that was as close as possible to
the actual experience you want.

For example, let’s say that your dream is to play a solo singer-songwriter gig. But
you’re spending most of your time practicing instrument technique and cover
songs. In this case, it might be better to do “direct practice” by focusing on your
own songs, and even trying to duplicate the experience of performing in the venue
in your practice space - maybe getting just the right stool, setting up mics (even if
they’re just empty stands for now), turning down the lights, making a set list and
playing through it, complete with banter addressed to the picture of the audience
you’ve tacked up or even for a cat, friend, or family member.

The concept of direct practice doesn’t have to go this far to be highly effective as a
guiding principle. Sometimes we hold ourselves back unnecessarily from playing
the music we really want to because we think we aren’t “ready”, when in reality we
could make great strides by diving in and giving it a good try.

Exercise: Musical Dreams

What are your pie-in-the-sky musical dreams? A certain piece of music? Being a
music creator? Jamming with friends? Playing shows? Composing a movie
soundtrack?

Reflect and write them down in your Practice Journal.

Note: This may be uncomfortable for you! You may even find yourself reluctant to
write down your true musical dreams. Notice how this indicates the presence of
Fixed Mindset, and probably points to a lack of Direct Practice up until now…
Now choose two “dream songs” that you’d like to play some day. Find just a small
segment of each piece of music, identify it with a measure number, timestamp or
distinctive phrase as we did in Unit 1, and add it to your list.

Alternatively, you may choose two contrasting segments of the same song.

Run these these two “dream segments” through as best you can and record
yourself, labelling the recording “Day 7.1”.

Now set a timer for 5 minutes, take one of the segments and run it through a few
cycles of Plan, Play, Reflect.

When the timer goes off, repeat that 5 minutes of deliberate practice with the other
“dream segment”.

Play these two new segments once more through, recording yourself. (Label: Day
7.2)

Finally, play through and record your three segments from Unit 1 (Label: Day 7.3)

Tip: at this point, you will want to get very organized in your Practice Journal! You
will be adding various segments as we go on and doing different things to them, so
you’ll want keep very good track of everything in your journal, using whatever
system of organization works best for you. Another option is to keep an index card
or some sort of digital notecard for each segment.
Day 8

Concept: Metronome Mindset

For many musicians, the metronome = pressure. Always ticking, faster and faster,
as we struggle to make our speed goals. But this way of using the metronome only
creates more tension, and tension is the greatest enemy of speed and fluency in
our musical expression.

(And many of us have other “choice words” to describe our feelings for the
metronome and the brutal honesty with which it intrudes into our music practice!)

However, most of our discomfort and disagreement with the metronome arises
from misunderstanding as to what it is for and how it can even become a powerful
friend in our quest for musical superlearning.

The Metronome and Mental Models

The metronome can help to create a type of sonic “grid” in our brain that helps us
to organize where all our notes go. This function can be completely separated from
the idea of speed. Instead, we focus on lining everything up with the beat until our
brains have a crystal clear idea of the placement of each musical event. In other
words, we can use the metronome to tidy up our rhythmic image of the music,
which in turn produces confidence and relaxation.

Once this is done, changing tempo - faster or slower - becomes a separate task,
and is much easier - and more enjoyable!

Meet Metronome, your Practice Buddy and Jam Partner

We often see the metronome as a tyrant and an enemy. But the metronome is
there to teach us about the beautiful dance between rhythm and beat. While it
may seem to be just a machine, the metronome shows us where the beat is, which
is the thing that all our rhythms are relating to.
So celebrate this relationship and shift your attitude to the metronome. Pay
attention to the sound and timbre of the click, and jam with it as if it were your best
musical friend sitting in the room with you. In your mind, make that click a part of
the musical experience, and engage fully in your conversation with the metronome.

You’ll enjoy yourself more, and internalize your own inner sense of the beat on a
profound level, which will accelerate all your rhythm learning.

Exercise: Mindful Metronome

Choose one of your five segments (three from Unit 1 and the two you have added
in Unit 2).

If you are working with written music, mark very carefully in the music where each
beat falls.

If you are working by ear, then sing your part and clap the beat, or play the music
and tap your foot to the beat.

Make special notice of when the beat falls:

● on a note that you are starting,

● on a note that you are sustaining

● on a rest in between notes

Tip: if this step is challenging for you, it just means that you probably have to do
some work on understanding the relationship of the rhythm to the beat. This
understanding is fundamentally important to being able to use a metronome at all!
So either choose a segment with simpler, more straightforward rhythms, or
dedicate some time to learning more about beat and rhythm inside Musical U or
from other sources.

Now play through your segment at a comfortable, stress-free tempo with the
metronome.
Repeat the process with your other segments if you have time to do so.

Retrieval Practice
Jot down all the concepts we have learned so far in Units 1 and 2.
Day 9

Concept: Interleaving
One great way to keep our brains active is to keep changing things up.

So far you may have noticed that in our exercises we’re never really doing one
thing for very long before we switch to a different musical segment or a different
superlearning technique. This is known as interleaving.

Interleaving works on many different levels:

● Our brains stay active and interested.

● When we only allow a short period of time to work on something, we

leverage other parts of our brains through “The Power of Not Finishing” that
we learned about in Unit 1.

● The other parts of our brain are left with something to work on while we turn
our conscious attention to something else.

● We provide opportunities for convergent learning, in which we can -

consciously or subconsciously - transfer what we are learning from one piece
or activity to another.

● We can practice a lot more music and get more done in a shorter period of
time.

Interleaving can be planned out in advance, or be more “improvised” based on

deliberate practice decisions. Having a timer close by when you practice will keep
you from getting in the rut of practicing something for too long.

5 minutes is a good rule of thumb for interleaved segments, although you can try
up to 10 minutes or even just 1 or 2 minutes, depending on what you’re working on
and on the particular practice strategy being used.
Exercise: Interleaving
Jot down the name of each of your five segments on index cards or pieces of paper.

Put retrieval practice segments aside. Then mix up the rest.

Choose one from the pile, set the timer for 3 minutes, and run the chosen segment
through cycles of Plan - Play - Reflect until the timer goes off.

Then choose one of the retrieval practice segments and play it once through - no
stops, no corrections, no repeats.

Continue this process until you have practiced all the segments.

Record and label a play-through of all five segments. And you’re done!
Day 10

Concept: The Power of Forgetting

“Forgetting” seems like just the opposite of what we want to do when we’re
learning music!

But allowing ourselves to forget, and then going through the process of
remembering builds powerful strength in our minds to retrieve the music we’ve put
so much work into encoding.

When we reach back inside to remember what we put in there and where we put
it, our brains go to work to figure it all out, building the neural pathways to bring it
our into our working memory where we can access the information we need to
play the music - whether we encoded it yesterday, last week, or years ago.

Retrieval itself is a practice. No, it doesn’t feel or look like anything that we’ve
previously thought “practice” was. That’s why it’s so weird, and even brutal at
times!

Spaced Repetitions
Spaced repetitions are the bread and butter of retrieval practice. We play the piece
once and only once, with no “do-overs” or corrections. Then we wait for a certain
interval of time before repeating them.

We then leverage the way the brain gradually forgets by increasing the interval
each time. For example, you may begin by interleaving your repetitions in between
10 or 15 minutes worth of other practice, maybe three times in a day. Then
perhaps we break it down to once a day, then once every two days, and so on.

Oftentimes, when we put our music into retrieval practice like this, it gets worse.

Sometimes much worse.

This can be challenging emotionally, but it does not mean that you’re doing
anything wrong! Don’t be tempted to put your piece back into deliberate practice or
massed repetitions. You’ve been there and done that! Have faith that the music is
well encoded, and that forgetting will lead you to remembering.

Spaced repetitions take time to work their “magic”. When embarking on a course of
retrieval practice, it’s good to give yourself 4-7 days before you re-evaluate. At that
time, you can go through the music several times at different metronome speeds
and see what happens. If needed, you’ll have plenty of other superlearning tools to
then make any other improvements necessary.

Exercise: Selecting for Spaced Repetitions

You’ve probably realized that if you’ve been following the instructions, you have
already been applying the principles of retrieval practice as you go through this
30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan.

Let’s plan to use deliberate practice in order to learn how to choose the best
practice strategies for each of our musical segments.

First pull out your retrieval segments and play through each one a few times. What
do you notice? Reflect in your Practice Journal.

Then play through the other segments, two or three times each. Reflect by asking
yourself which ones need specific deliberate practice on difficult passages, and
which ones have gotten to the point that you can play them through fairly well,
with maybe an occasional random mistake or two.

Now we’ll plan how we will practice these segments in the future.

In your journal, and with your index cards if you are using them, place your five
segments from Unit 1 and Unit 2 into three categories:

A. Still very difficult and needing deliberate practice.

B. Can play through with perhaps a few random mistakes.
 C. Have become quite fluent and familiar.

Tip: It’s okay if all your segments seem to be in just one of the categories, but if you
think they are all still in category A, put the best ones of those into category B.

From now on, we will place categories B and C into levels of retrieval practice,
while we continue to use deliberate practice on category A to determine the best
practice strategies.

Retrieval Practice
Jot down all the concepts from Unit 1 and Unit 2 that we’ve learned so far.
Day 11

Concept: Encoding vs. Memorizing

What does “memorizing” really mean?

For most musicians, memorizing means that they are able to play a piece of music
“from memory” without sheet music or other notation such as a chord sheet or a
lead sheet.

Often when we learn with the notation, moving into playing it by memory can be
quite challenging - even if we know the piece quite well!

Again, we resort to massed repetitions, maybe little by little looking away from the
page, hoping that our so-called “muscle memory” will kick in. Then we come back
the next day to find that we’ve actually made very little progress.

This is not our fault! First of all, we have not really been taught

● what memorization really is, and

● how to really “memorize” music.

Encoding, Retrieval, and Memorization

The concepts of encoding and retrieval can help us gain much more clarity on
what it means to memorize.

Consider these two learning tasks:

● encoding puts the music into our long-term memory.

● retrieval brings it back out.

If we play our music “by memory” that means that we’ve done both of these tasks.

So where does the sheet music fit in?

When you think about it, once you’ve read through your piece two or three times,
you have a pretty good idea of how it goes. In other words, we’ve encoded it - so, in
a sense, it’s already memorized!

Simply put, if we’ve encoded a piece of music through reading sheet music, we’ve
encoded it with a visual cue - the notation is encoded along with the music.

once we’ve played a piece a couple of times through with the music, it is
memorized (encoded) - but with a visual cue.

What Memorizing Really Is

So if we want to memorize something that we’ve learned with a visual cue, we
need to replace the visual cues with something else. What that “something else” is
will depend on your musical experience.

For example, some musicians actually memorize the visual image of the scores and
“read” off of them mentally. Many more, however, focus on the sound and flow of
the music, the kinesthetic sensations of playing the instrument, or the visual
patterns on, say, a fretboard or keyboard.

At this point, you may have realized that perhaps it’s better to start memorizing
right when you start learning a song. But you still may want to memorize
something you’ve been reading for a long time, so let’s practice strategies for each.

Exercise: Memorizing (Learning to Play Without Visual Cues)

We will now interleave memorization practice with our other practice strategies.

Something Old
Plan: choose one of your segments that you’d like to memorize.

Play through it as best you can without any visual cue.

Reflect on what other cues you could substitute for for the visual cues: sound?
musical form? feeling of the instrument?

Run through 2 or 3 more cycles of Plan-Play-Reflect with the intention of

memorizing.

Spaced Repetitions 1
Play through your category B segments from Day 10, just one time through each,
with no corrections or repetitions.

Something New
Plan: Now choose a new, very short segment of music - something completely new
that you haven’t played before.

Play through it only once with the sheet music or other visual cue.

Reflect by trying to play back the music in your mind (audiation).

Now do your best to play this new segment by memory, without visual cues. You
may run through 2 or 3 more cycles of Plan-Play-Reflect with the intention of
memorizing if you wish.

Spaced Repetitions 2
Play through and record your category B segments from Day 10. Each segment,
just one time through with no corrections or repetitions. Label your recording for
future reference.
Day 12

Concept: Improvise to Learn

Many musicians believe that they must acquire a great deal of music theory and
technique before they can learn to improvise. But the truth is that we can begin to
improvise from the moment we begin to sing or play an instrument, and that
improvisation can be an invaluable tool for superlearning.

In other words, rather than “learn to improvise”, we can “improvise to learn”.

Improvisation can unveil many secrets in a piece of music, and keep our brains
engaged and active.

But before we unleash our creativity, let’s pause for a little clarity…

Getting Organized
When we are superlearning, we can release our traditional “one big project”
mentality and cover a surprising amount of music in a much shorter practice time.
But that can also lead to a feeling of scatteredness and confusion.

So before we dive into today’s practice, let’s get organized:

Segments
We now have seven segments of music interleaving in our learning laboratory:

Three from Unit 1, Day 1:

● Segment 1: Something new that you want to learn.

● Segment 2: Something old that you’ve plateaued on, or has always given you
trouble.

● Segment 3: Something that you know well but would like to memorize.
Two from Unit 2, Day 7:

● Segment 4: “Dream song” segment 1

● Segment 5: “Dream song” segment 2

Two from Unit 2, Day 11

● Segment 6: Something Old to Memorize

● Segment 7: Something New to Memorize

If you haven’t already, organize these segments by listing them out in your Practice
Journal, and on your index cards if you are using them.

Categories
In addition, we have classified some of these into three categories, in order to sort
them into the best practice strategies:

A. Still very difficult and needing deliberate practice.

B. Can play through with random mistakes.
C. Have become fairly fluent and familiar.

Recordings
You also may want to take some time to organize your recordings. If you haven’t
already, make sure they are clearly labeled so you can reference them in the future.

Now that we’re all organized, let’s activate our creative brains!

Exercise: Improvise to Learn

Plan: choose your most difficult segment. Set your timer for 5 minutes.

Play it in as many different ways as you can. Change the rhythms, the dynamics,
the tempos, the emotions, even the notes. If it’s a fast piece, play it super slow and
expressively. If it’s slow, play it up-tempo.
Reflect on the experience and write in your Practice Journal.

Spaced Repetitions
Play through your category B segments - once and only once each! No fixing.

Play through your category C segments in the same way.

Reflect on Unit 2
Jot down all the concepts from Unit 1 in a list in your Practice Journal. Then jot
down all the concepts from Unit 2. Draw lines from one column to the other to
show the connections between the concepts.

Write down your reflections on these connections.

 Unit 3
You may be seeing by this point how the superlearning concepts relate strongly
one to another. In this unit, we will continue to expand upon the principles of
superlearning with new concepts.

Much of this unit focuses on making things harder on yourself - in just the right
way!

Before you begin, take a few moments to set your intentions for Unit 3 and jot
them down in your Practice Journal.
Day 13

Concept: Context
We learned in the last Unit that we often encode visual cues like sheet music into
our music learning. Well, the more you think about it, you will discover that all kinds
of things get thrown in there with the music we encode!

For this Day, let’s be mindful - without judgement - of what’s going on around us
and inside us while we are practicing our music. Soon, we’ll learn how to leverage
this context to our advantage.

Outer Context…
… is about what’s going on around us. Our bodies, our instruments, our chair, the
sheet music or devices that we use, the wall that we face, the pictures on that wall,
the room where we sit, how we sit or stand, sounds from the next room or the
street, time of day, etc.

Inner Context…
… is about what’s going on inside us. Thoughts, emotions, focus, reactions,
distractions, enjoyment, audiation, lack of enjoyment, judgements, etc.

Exercise: Contextual Awareness

Plan: Let’s pull our attention back a bit and get a picture of what’s going on around
and inside of us while we practice. Get set up to play, and notice what’s around
you. Do you usually sit in the same place? What does it look like? Jot down a few
observations in your Practice Journal.

Play: Play through your category B retrieval segments once each. What’s going on
around you while you play? What thoughts and feelings run through your
consciousness? Jot them down - and be honest!
Reflect on these external and internal contexts. How do you think they affect your
musical experience?

Repeat the same exercise. But this time choose one of your category A segments
that needs more work, set your timer for 5 minutes, and run it through some
deliberate practice Plan-Play-Reflect cycles.

If you have time, you may interleave some cycles of Plan-Play-Reflect with your
other category A segments.

Write down some notes on today’s practice in your Practice Journal.

Day 14

Concept: Mistakes are Your Friends!

Imagine having a friend that will always be there to support you in being the best
you can be. That’s what mistakes can be for your music practice.

You may have been raised to think mistakes in music are embarrassing... But for
now, at least inside our practice room, it’s time to flip that on its head.

Mistakes tell us where we need to focus our attention. They are an infallible
guidance system as we Plan-Play-Reflect our way through our practice journey.

Mistakes also tell us a lot about our emotional reactions, and teach us where we
can shore up and build a true growth mindset to accelerate our superlearning.

An important corollary to this concept is that music learning and music

performance are two different things. Our best and most immersive learning
experiences come when we’re making mistakes - while during our best
performance experience, mistakes are not nearly as desirable!

The good news is that the more we embrace and even enjoy our mistakes while
practicing, the fewer mistakes we’ll make when performing. And if we do make a
mistake in performance, we’ll be much better equipped to handle it with poise and
grace.

Exercise: Doing It Wrong

Oftentimes, we jump off a mistake so quickly that we don’t open ourselves up to
the lessons it has for us.

Plan: Choose a segment where you have a particularly troublesome spot - one of
those where you keep making the same mistake over and over. That might be
getting a note wrong, bodging a rhythm, fumbling a sequence of notes, making a
strange noise, or anything else your inner critic tells you is “a mistake”.
(If this is not the case in any of the current seven segments, find a new one from
your existing repertoire or something that you have tried to learn before.)

Play: Play through the segment, and be very intentional about playing your regular
mistake on purpose! Repeat this two or three more times.

Reflect on how that felt. Did your fingers flow with the mistake, or did they “fight”
it? What do you notice in your thoughts and feelings that may be leading you to the
make that mistake? What could you do differently to play it correctly?

Plan: Let’s gain further clarity on the difference between the mistake and the
correct version.

Play: Slowly and carefully, alternate playing through with the mistake and with the
correct version. Try increasing the tempo. What happens? When? Remember to
pay careful attention to your thoughts and emotions.

Reflect on your experience in your Practice Log.

Optional: If you have time, try this with your other segments.

Spaced Repetitions
Play through your category B and C segments, one time each.

Retrieval Practice
Jot down all the Unit 1, Unit 2, and Unit 3 concepts you have learned so far in your
Practice Journal.

Write down some notes on today’s practice in your Practice Journal.

Day 15

Concept: Desirable Difficulty

Neurologist, Brainjo founder and music-learning innovator Josh Turknett
recommends that for optimum brain health “learn something that you’re terrible
at”.

Our brains love a challenge! That’s why we can learn more when we make things
harder on ourselves.

On the other hand, being overwhelmed sends us into fight or flight and shuts down
the learning process.

So the key for superlearning is to find our “Goldilocks Zone” of what’s called
“desirable difficulty”.

Exercise: Shifting Context and Desirable Difficulty

One of the best ways to produce desirable difficulty in our practice - and wake up
our learning brains in the process - is to change our outer or inner context.

Plan: Change the outer context of your practice by moving to a different physical
location - this can be as simple as just turning your chair around! You may also sit if
you usually stand, or stand if you usually sit.

Please note: if you play piano or a similar non-movable instrument, do something

to change the visual stimulus around you. For example, if you usually play with the
lid down you can open it up. Or you can change the picture hanging above the
piano. Or drape an interesting piece of fabric over the top, or add a row of small
stuffed animals… have fun and use your imagination!

Play through your category B segments once more.

Reflect on the effect from this change of outer context. Note whether the change
produced enough difficulty or too much, and make further changes to the outer
context before repeating this cycle of Plan-Play-Reflect.

Plan: Let’s look now at the inner context. Choose to focus intentionally on a
specific thought and/or feeling.

Play through your category B segments once more.

Reflect on the effect from this change of inner context. Again, gauge the level of
difficulty to find your “Goldilocks Zone” and repeat.

Plan: Move location again. Set your timer for 5 minutes.

Play: deliberate practice on one of your more difficult category A segments.

Reflect on the effect from this change of outer context. Continue to evaluate your
level of desirable difficulty.

Plan: choose to focus intentionally on a specific thought and/or feeling. Set your
timer for 5 minutes.

Play: deliberate practice on one of your more difficult category A segments.

Reflect on the effect from this change of inner context. Continue to evaluate your
level of desirable difficulty.

Optional: Repeat the exercise with any other category A segments you have time
for.
Play through and record all your segments just once. Be sure to label your
recording.

Write any other general reflections on context in your Practice Journal.

Write down some notes on today’s practice in your Practice Journal.

Day 16

Concept: Contextual Interference

Producing desirable difficulty through changing context is known as contextual
interference.

As well as the inner and outer contexts explored yesterday, we can also make
effective changes in the context of the music itself. One of the most often-used
methods is to change the rhythms of a passage.

For demonstration purposes, let’s look at a C major scale:

Now let’s alternate longer (marked “L”) and shorter (marked “S”) notes:

And then shorter and longer:

These kinds of rhythms are known as “dotted rhythms” after way the notation
which describes them uses dots to show the note durations being extended.

The “reverse dotted rhythms” (where the shorter note comes first in each pair) is a
favorite of “The Learning Coach” Gregg Goodhart, who has found it’s one of the
most reliable types of contextual interference, to get a musician directly into the
desirable difficulty zone.

Exercise: Dotted Rhythms

Plan: Choose one of your segments that has a run of notes. If you don’t have one,
look into your past repertoire or something you would like to learn. Make sure you
add the new segment to your list!

Alternatively, you may choose a challenging scale, chord progression, or technique

exercise.

Play: Set the timer for 5 minutes. Play through with dotted rhythms. First try the
long-short, then the short-long. If it’s too easy, then you’re not producing enough
desirable difficulty, so change the tempo or some other musical aspect until you’re
challenging yourself.

Remember not to frown but to rejoice when you make mistakes!

Very important! Practice your dotted rhythms version only until you can play it at
about 80%! We want to leverage the “power of not finishing” and keep in our
Goldilocks Zone of desirable difficulty.

Optional: Apply contextual interference to your other interleaved category A

segments through dotted rhythms.

Spaced Repetitions
Play through your category B and C segments once each.
Retrieval Practice
Jot down all the concepts so far from Units 1, 2, and 3

Write down some notes on today’s practice in your Practice Journal.

Day 17

Concept: The Many Faces of Contextual Interference

Contextual interference is only effective when it produces desirable difficulty. For
example, if you always do dotted rhythms, and you get really good at them, they
stop working. That’s why it’s helpful to develop a wide repertoire of contextual
interference techniques.

Let’s explore more rhythmic options for contextual interference.

Let’s say you have a passage with uneven rhythms:

You can do one level of contextual interference by evening out those rhythms:

And then add another level of contextual interference by applying dotted rhythms
to the evened out rhythms:

This may sound crazy to your ears, and seem weird that you would go through all
that to make the music sound so different from what you want it to sound like in
the end. Indeed, it may seem to fly in the face of the concept of “direct practice”
that we explored in Unit 2.
But each time we make one of these changes, especially if it produces desirable
difficulty, we are also allowing our brains to explore the music in different ways
with different focus of attention. And though it seems counter-intuitive, this
actually results in more efficient and robust encoding of the music.

Exercise: Evening Out, and More…

Plan: Choose a segment that has varied rhythms and even them out.

Play through the evened-out version.

Reflect on what that sounded and felt like. What was the level of desirable
difficulty?

Please note: it’s okay for now if this is easy to do. Right now we’re just learning the
technique. You can then repeat this process with more challenging sections of
music.

Plan: Apply dotted rhythms (long-short, then short-long) to your evened-out

segment.

Play through this version.

Reflect on what that sounded and felt like. What was the level of desirable
difficulty?

Plan: Evaluate the results.

Play the original segment.

Reflect on your careful observations.

Optional: Repeat this process with your other category A segments.

Spaced Repetitions
Play through your category B segments once each. Alternatively, you may
interleave these once-through spaced repetitions with the exercise above.

Write down some notes on today’s practice in your Practice Journal.

Day 18

Concept: Creative Contextual Interference

There is no limit to the number of creative contextual interference variations and
combinations you can come up with! We already experimented with creative
contextual interference with our Improvise to Learn concept (Day 12).

For example, you can play the music…

● Backwards (yes, really!)

● Upside down (if playing from sheet music you can literally turn it
upside-down),

● With different articulations or playing techniques (specific to your

instrument),

● Exploring even more rhythmic patterns (use arbitrary patterns, or swap

rhythm and pitches across pieces),

● Changing the dynamics (loud to soft, etc.),

● Changing instruments (different models of your instrument or even a whole

different instrument),

● Combined with outer contexts such as changed body position and location,

● Combined with inner contexts such as intentional thoughts and emotions

(even “negative” ones to produce more difficulty),

● And more!

As you continue through this Plan, feel free to to experiment with with any of these,
and to create your own.
Remember to treat it as a creative process, not just a practice exercise. That means
listening as you play, and forming your own aesthetic judgements about what
sounds “good” or what you like. You might just surprise yourself!

When you incorporate your creativity in this way, your superlearning becomes a
very enjoyable game, and the wins are tremendous!

Getting Organized
By now, you may or may not have accumulated more segments. Make sure you’ve
clearly documented them all and placed them in categories:

A. Still very difficult and needing deliberate practice.

B. Can play through with random mistakes.

C. Have become fairly fluent and familiar.

To that, let’s add a fourth category:

D. Mastered! (Or at least: good enough to move on and focus your practice time
on something else.)

Hopefully, you have documenting all your “experiments” in your Practice Journal. If
not, take some time to catch up so you can begin to see how all these concepts and
practice strategies are working for you.

Graduation time!
We’re a little more than halfway through through your 30-Day Superlearning
Practice Plan, and it’s quite possible that you’re noticing great improvements
already. Have a good look at your segments, and choose which ones are ready to
move into the new category.

If your category A has emptied out, take some time to consider some new
segments to put in there for the upcoming days.
Exercise: Creative Contextual Interference
Use deliberate practice to select segments from category A and apply creative
contextual interference to them.

Spaced Repetitions
● Play through and record your remaining category B segments - once and
only once each! No fixing.

● Play through and record your remaining category C segments - in the same
way.

Reflect on Unit 3
Jot down all the concepts from Unit 1 in a list in your Practice Journal. Then jot
down all the concepts from Unit 3. Draw lines from one column to the other to
show the connections between the concepts.

You may also want to see how the Unit 2 concepts fit in.

Write down your reflections on these connections.

 Unit 4
In Units 1-3 we’ve encountered some pretty weird ideas and odd practice
strategies - especially when you compare what you’ve been doing for the last 18
days and how you used to learn music.

It’s all a lot to take in! But understanding how it all relates to the basic principles of
how our brain learns will help you to remember the great palette of learning
resources you now have available. And of course the best way to remember is to
put your new skills to work and practice using these new tools and techniques that
we have been guiding you through.

Unit 4 continues to build on what you’ve been doing in the exercises and introduces
some fun departures from the routine that we can then interleave with our other
practice - along with revealing some deeper reasons for why superlearning works.

Before you begin, take a few moments to set your intentions for Unit 4 and jot
them down in your Practice Journal.
Day 19

Concept: Recording and Honesty

Have you noticed that there are times in the course of this 30-Day Plan that things
have gotten worse instead of better?

A good part of that may be due to the fading away of what is known as the
Dunning-Kruger Effect (named after the researchers that first described it).

They discovered that sometimes we believe that we are playing better than we
really are.

For example, imagine that you’ve listened to that one particular David Gilmore solo
hundreds of times… You may now have such a strong emotion associated with it,
that when you go to play it you’re actually hearing David Gilmore in your head
rather than yourself!

When we start on a course of improvement such as this Plan, our perceptions and
reflections sharpen, and we begin to see more clearly what’s really going on and
what we want to improve.

Recording is a great tool to keep us honest about our playing! It may be painful at
first, and even provide contextual interference in its own right. But the truth will set
you free.

Once you know what you are dealing with, you now have the superlearning tools
to do something about it, in much less time, and with much greater success.

Sharing Your Music

Even if we’ve been “private” musicians all our lives, almost every musician has the
desire to maybe, someday, share their music with other musicians or an audience.
Recording is a wonderful first step to that potential, as you have to face them most
demanding audience ever: yourself.
Exercise: Recording and Listening
So far you’ve done a fair amount of recording in the course of this Plan. But have
you taken the time to listen back?

Plan: For today, plan a practice session in your Practice Journal, in which you
interleave deliberate practice on your various category A, B, and C segments.
Prepare your timer - you will not stay on any one segment for more than five
minutes at a time. Remember all the tools that you have at your disposal, and try to
incorporate a good variety of them, as directed by your deliberate practice
Plan-Play-Reflect cycles.

Play: Press record on your device and proceed with recording your entire practice
session.

Reflect: Listen back to part or all of the recording. Reflect on what you’re hearing
and compare it to what you thought was going on during the session.

Write down what you learned in your Practice Journal.

Day 20

Concept: Believe in Yourself

The Dunning-Kruger Effect seems to have grim implications, but it has a powerful
upside potential too.

In Greek mythology, the sculptor Pygmalion carves a statue so beautiful that he

falls in love with his creation, beyond all realistic hopes. The Goddess Aphrodite
sees his plight and brings the statue to life so it can return his love.

Psychologists have noted that those who have high, even unrealistic expectations,
tend to achieve greatly improved performance - often beyond what an outside
observer may have thought possible. They call this the Pygmalion Effect.

So how do we reconcile the “emperor has no clothes” aspect of Dunning-Kruger

with the limitless potential of Pygmalion?

Believing in yourself can be more powerful than either one. If you started this
30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan and are still here after 20 days, you must
believe in yourself enough to think that you might be capable of the wild-sounding
promises of dramatically faster music learning.

So when the going gets tough, remind yourself of the belief that first set you on this
journey, that there is, in fact, a better way to learn music and achieve your musical
dreams, and that you can and will find that better way for yourself.

Exercise: Practice Session Design

Plan: For today, plan a practice session in your Practice Journal, in which you
interleave your various category A, B, and C segments. Prepare your timer, and do
not stay on any one segment for more than five minutes at a time. Remember all
the tools that you have at your disposal, and try to incorporate a good variety of
them, as directed by your deliberate practice Plan-Play-Reflect cycles.
Play: Press record on your device and proceed with recording your entire practice
session.

Reflect: Listen back to part or all of the recording if you have the time. Reflect on
what you’re hearing and compare it to what you thought was going on during the
session.

Write down what you learned in your Practice Journal.

Day 21

Concept: Task vs. Time

Many of us have been taught as children to practice for a certain period of time.
Watching the clock tick… 27 minutes… 28… 29… We may have had checklists that
we turned in to our teacher each week, showing that we had practiced 30 minutes
a day.

And if we didn’t? The dreaded question comes: “Did you… practice??”

How could they possibly tell!?

Many of us have carried that idea of setting aside a fixed amount of time for music
practice, whether it’s 15 minutes or five hours.

But in most other areas of our lives, we practice by task, not time. For example,
when we wash the dishes, we start when they are dirty and finish when they are
clean. If we learn to wash them in 10 minutes rather than 20, we don’t chide
ourselves that we didn’t spend enough time washing dishes!

When we learn to practice music by task rather than time, as we have been doing
in this Plan so far, we can be much more efficient, focused, and attentive rather
that just filling up the time with less productive practice strategies.

And when we do use timed practice, we can use time as a limit to keep our brains
lively, rather than something empty that we have to somehow fill.

Exercise: Practice by Task

Plan: For today, jot down the practice tasks that you would like to achieve, and
then plan your session in your Practice Journal. You may want to consider
graduating some of your segments to a new category, and/or bringing in some new
segments.
Prepare your timer, and do not stay on any one segment for more than five minutes
at a time. Remember all the tools that you have at your disposal, and try to
incorporate a good variety of them, as directed by your deliberate practice
Plan-Play-Reflect cycles.

Play: Press record on your device and proceed with recording your entire practice
session.

Reflect: Listen back to part or all of the recording. Reflect on what you’re hearing
and compare it to what you thought was going on during the session.
Day 22

Concept: What If?

So far, our practice time has been fairly structured. And we have been focusing on
pre-determined learning and musical goals.

But what if we loosened this up just a little?

Exercise: What if?

Begin with a challenging segment. Ask yourself “What if I …?” (You fill in the blank.)

Then try it! Let that question lead to a different “What if?” Or perhaps the next
“What if?” is completely different.

Keep following this chain of “What if?” questions. Allow your curiosity to unfold,
and reach beyond what you think you ever intended to do.

Do this now, before reading on.

This can be a little like improvising to learn, but it doesn’t necessarily have to
include improvisation. “What if?” also overlaps with contextual interference, but
maybe not so direct and goal-oriented. You could wind up making music
completely different than you originally intended and still be quite happy with the
experience!

If you felt stumped coming up with “What if?”s to explore, here’s a short list that
can help get you started:

● What if I played it as fast as possible?

● What if I slowed it down to a crawl?

● What if I danced while I played it?

● What if I only played every second note?

 ● What if I played it in another octave (register)?

● What if I transposed it to a minor key?

● What if I played it like a conversation between a dog and a cat?

● What if I sang or hummed it instead of playing?

● What if I kept all the rhythms and changed all the notes? (or vice-versa)

● What if I sang it like Frank Sinatra?

● What if I reharmonized it with minor 7th chords?

● What if I called my Auntie and played it for her?

● What if this list went on forever? :)

Reflect on your experience in your Practice Journal.

Retrieval Practice
Write down all the concepts from Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 (so far) in your Practice
Journal.
Day 23

Concept: Heroism
Deliberate practice teaches us to focus on minute details with greater and greater
awareness of what we are doing.

We may begin to notice the most nuanced micro-movements of our fingers or our
breath.

Through contextual awareness, we may begin to also notice the shape and
movement of our emotions and how they sync up with or hinder our musical
expression.

We have also begun to be aware of the vast unknown reaches of our brains and
what they are capable of accomplishing - even when we are sleeping!

Our practice journey so far has been as much a change in mindset has it has been
a change in habits. When we begin to accept a growth mindset, and have a taste
of superlearning success, perhaps we will entertain the possibility that…

… we are so much more powerful than we know.

Exercise: Stepping into Musical Heroism

Follow the steps below.

Step 1. Choose a Segment

Choose a segment from any of your categories. Play it through, then record
yourself playing through it again. You may consider video recording for this
particular exercise.

Step 2. Identify Your Musical Hero

Who is your greatest musical hero? (First person that comes to mind, please!)
Yo-Yo Ma? Steve Vai? Miles Davis? Pink? Joni Mitchell? Bad Bunny?

Typically, we observe our heroes closely - they way they move, sound, their facial
expressions. Take a few moments to visualize and audiate your hero of choice.

So let’s ask ourselves another “What if?” question…

“What if I played like [insert hero here]?”

Press record on your device. And play it like a hero! Let your imagination run wild.
Try and imitate all the mannerisms you observe in your chosen musical hero.

Step 3. Reflect
Listen back or watch the recordings. Compare the two: what do you notice? Write
down your reflections in your Practice Journal.

Optional: If you have time, interleave whichever segments you like with deliberate
practice, retrieval practice, and perhaps some hero practice!
Day 24

Concept: Just Play

Discipline is important to our musical forward motion. Hopefully, with the great
variety of concepts and practice strategies that you’ve tried so far, along with the
endless possibilities that open up when you can use these principles creatively in
your practice, you’re beginning to experience the fun of this discipline!

But as much fun as all this is, it’s important to remember that we love playing
music, and to give ourselves the opportunity to “just play”.

Getting Organized
By now, you may or may not have accumulated more segments. Other segments
may have graduated to a new category. Make sure you’ve clearly documented
them all and placed them in categories:

A. Still very difficult and needing deliberate practice.

B. Can play through with random mistakes.
C. Have become fairly fluent and familiar.
D. Mastered! (Or at least: good enough to move on and leave some practice
time for something else.)

If category A is emptying out, choose some new segments to add.

Hopefully, you have documenting all your “experiments” in your Practice Journal. If
not, take some time to catch up so you can begin to see how all these concepts and
practice strategies are working for you.

Exercise: Have Fun!

Play whatever you feel like playing, in the most enjoyable way you can imagine.

Reflect on the experience and make some notes in your Practice Journal.
Retrieval Practice
Jot down all the concepts from Unit 4 in a list. Then pick and choose from among
your favorite concepts in Units 1, 2, and 3 and see how they relate. Write down
your observations in your Practice Journal.
 Unit 5
In this final unit of our 30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan, we will look at concepts
that will help us carry forward what we have learned during this time into our
future musical lives.

As we come towards the end, you will be given more and more freedom and
ownership of how your practicing is designed, to prepare you for continuing with
momentum beyond the final day of the Plan.

Take a few moments to set your intention for Unit 5, and write it down in your
Practice Journal.
Day 25

Concept: Play Music

In Victor Wooten’s book “The Music Lesson”, the teacher picks up a cheap, beat-up
guitar and plays some amazing music. The student’s jaw hits the floor and he asks
how the teacher did it. The teacher replies with something like, “It’s because you
play the bass. And me? I play music.”

Much of what we get hung up on in our practicing has to do with the technique of
playing our instruments. The initial thing that attracted us to picking up the
instrument in the first place - the music - fades as our goals become more and
more technical than musical.

And we’ve all seen musicians who had lots of technical fireworks, but forgettable
musicality. While there are others where the technique seems to melt away and we
lose ourselves in the musical expression.

The Gateway
Technique is important because it helps us take the music we have inside and
produce the sounds we want to hear and share on our instruments. But it’s only the
gateway to the music. Too many aspiring musicians get stuck milling about the
gate and never truly make it through into the lush garden of the music.

That’s why this Practice Plan so frequently encourages reflection and consideration
of the creative and expressive aspects of music-making, and of practicing itself.

Exercise: Play the Music

Design a practice session interleaving your various segments from the A, B, and C
categories. Record a before and after version of each one as you first play through
“normally” and then with an intense focus on the sound of the music coming from
your body and your instrument - even on the most technically challenging
segments.
Write down in your Practice Journal what you did, what the results were, and how
you can use the principle of playing the music in the future.
Day 26

Concept: Flow State

We often use the term “flow” in a loose, colloquial sense when talking about music,
to mean “things are flowing nicely”.

In fact there is a more precise and technical meaning, and much of what we’ve
been learning to do in this Plan builds towards what researcher Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi termed the flow state.

When we achieve this flow state, we often feel a sense of exuberance and
confidence. And despite what we might assume, this does not happen by playing
the easiest material we can!

One of the key hallmarks of the flow state is striking the right balance between
challenge and ease. We’ve encountered this same idea in the form of desirable
difficulty. So it’s no coincidence that research has shown that our ability to absorb
our learning becomes extremely efficient in the flow state.

Some people mistakenly associate the flow state with more dreamy states of
consciousness. And while it’s true that we often feel a sense of altered
consciousness in the flow, this feeling is more due to our increased awareness,
focus, and conscious attentiveness to the task at hand.

Paradoxically, the attention to minute musical details that we’ve been cultivating
through planning, playing, and reflecting (our deliberate practice) and our
contextual interference can be instrumental in producing a flow experience, both
while practicing and playing music. And, since humans find the flow state
particularly enjoyable, let’s always remember to find joy in the more creative and
expressive aspects of our superlearning.
Exercise: Flow Awareness
Plan: According to your reflection on what would best serve your musical progress
with your “laboratory samples”, design today’s practice session in your Practice
Journal.

Play: As you practice, keep your awareness on observing where you feel like you’re
getting into flow, and where you’re not.

Reflect: Jot down your observations, and…

Plan what you will do next time to enhance flow in both your practice and your
music.

Tip: You might like to start adding flow awareness to your new practice habits by
making a note about how “in flow” you felt during each practice session. You could
score or grade each activity or the session as a whole.

Retrieval Practice
Write down as many superlearning concepts as you can remember. Then look back
through the Plan for the ones that you’ve missed. Write them down as well.
Day 27

Concept: Structuring Practice

This 30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan has provided you with a structured
approach to organizing your practice, and - more recently - opportunities for you to
structure your own practice.

When we want to expand our music learning, having a structured practice will help
us target our goals and reach them in the most efficient way possible. Even without
all the concepts and mindsets that you’ve learned in the past 27 days, the one
change of organizing and structuring your practice towards the achievement of
your musical goals can make a world of difference.

Exercise: Expanding Your Practice Vision

Up to now, we’ve kept this structure isolated “in the laboratory” in handling very
short segments of music.

Take some time to reflect on how you will expand what you’ve learned into your
daily music practice. Write down your reflections in your Practice Journal.

If you have time, you may plan a session for today with your category A, B, and C
segments.

You may begin to integrate other music that you’ve been practicing as well.

Retrieval Practice
Jot down as many of the superlearning concepts as you can remember. Write them
down, along with a word or two that will help you remember them.
Day 28

Concept: Composed Practice

In thinking about our practice as a musical experience, we can “compose” our
experience in much the same way as a composer composes music. This is what
we’ve been doing over the past two units when you have been asked to plan your
own practice session.

Deliberate practice (Plan-Play-Reflect) is the overarching principle that helps us to

organize our experience and make the most productive choices as to what
concepts to apply.

Another huge advantage of composed practice is that we can integrate a wide

repertoire of music, rather than only focusing on one big project at a time. As we
have seen, the learning advantages - even in regards to the “big project” - make
expanding your repertoire a superlearning concept in and of itself.

Exercise: Retrieving and Applying Concepts

Look back at your list of concepts from yesterday.

“Compose” a practice session that uses at least 15 of these concepts - maybe

more!
Day 29

Concept: Improvised Practice

Even our most pre-composed practice can’t be 100% predictable, since
Plan-Play-Reflect leads us to new decisions that we can’t - and should not try to -
predict. Too much of the same leads us to a bored, low energy brain and puts the
brakes on our superlearning acceleration.

Remember, for example, that contextual interference requires desirable difficulty to

really work. So even if you believe you’ve got your practice routine “dialed in”, it’s
crucial to be open to shaking things up as well!

What’s more, growth mindset would have us stay open to the unexpected learning
opportunities that may arise during a more “improvised” practice session.

Improvised Practice
In music, we improvise to respond in the moment to our inner and outer musical
contexts. We can do the same in practice. And just like the most meaningful
improvisations, these deviations from the more “composed” aspects are still based
on the sound principles and practice techniques which will have guided you for
these 30 Days.

It’s good at times to allow Plan-Play-Reflect guide your moment-by-moment

practice choices into unexplored territory. “What if?” practice, “improvise to learn”,
“just play” - these and the other creative concepts in this Plan will ensure that you
can find your way out of any box and keep your superlearning vibrant, fresh, and
successful.

Exercise: Improvise Your Session

Pick at least five concepts from the list you made recently. Without much (or even
any) planning, improvise a practice session.
Reflect on your experience. Were you able to maintain your new superlearning
mindsets and skills? Or did you fall into old habits? Jot down your thoughts in your
Practice Journal.
Day 30

Concept: Plan, Play, Reflect… and plan for the future

Congratulations! You’ve completed your 30-Day Superlearning Practice Plan!

By this time, you’ve had the opportunity to build a rich resource of new ways of
thinking about and doing your music practice, that will lead you to much faster,
more satisfying, and more musical results.

Feel free to return to this Plan as many times as you like and use it as a template
for your expanding practice skills.

Remember, that even though everything we’ve discussed in this plan can be found
in scientific research on learning, practicing music is an art - just as much of an art
as the music itself.

Like any art, creativity combines with skill to produce unique individual expressions.
You can be using the same concepts and exercises as someone else, and yet your
practice sessions may look and feel very different from each other, and still produce
the same amazing results.

New Habits
This 30 days may have seemed like a very intense, hopefully life-changing
experience. Even if you had been acquainted with superlearning, there are many
concepts within this Plan that take it to the next level.

But it’s likely that you’ve been practicing music for a much longer time in a much
less productive way. And it can be quite easy - and even comforting to a degree -
to slide back into our old habits.

One of the most valuable habits to take with you is to keep writing down your
reflections in your Practice Journal. Time and time again, we have seen that
Musical U members who do so set themselves up for much greater and richer
success.

In order to transform this superlearning experience into a lifetime of learning and

growth beyond what you thought possible, it’s going to take persistence, practice
using the concepts and exercises, and a keen sense of vigilance to spot when the
old habits and mindsets are moving in.

Your joy, expansion, and musical expression are worth the effort.

Exercise: Reflect and Celebrate!

Read through your complete list of concepts.

Listen to your earlier and later recordings and note the differences and
improvements.

Reflect on your experience in Unit 5, and in this whole 30 Days. Write down your
reflections.

Perhaps you want to design an affirmation or two to be there for you when you
feel a chink in your resolve to maintain your superlearning practice.

And celebrate your accomplishments… by playing some music!