How to Use Sleep as a Music Practice Hack
The way you schedule your practice matters.
Imagine that Juliet is going to practice for four hours each day. She could break up that practice time a number of different ways:
(1) One four hour session
(2) Two two hour sessions
(3) One three hour session & one one hour session
(4) Four one hour sessions
And so on.
It’s best to break up your practice time into at least two sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening.
Your subconscious learns things while you are away from the music. By breaking up your practice, you maximize your brain’s ability to "finish" learning after the session ends.
My friend told me that he thinks playing twice a day keeps him "warmed up" at all times. He always feels ready to go and crush a gig or record a song since he's always in music mode.
In that sense, you are always trying to be warmed up, but never trying to be overworked.
What About Sleep
How does sleep play into this?
When you sleep, your brain repairs itself. It works through everything you learned that day and organizes it.
At the end of a practice session, your brain is full of new ideas. These exist both as mental concepts of music and physical aspects like muscle memory, strength, speed, and flexibility.
Sleep is the hidden ingredient that turns all of those new things into real progress. Until you’ve slept, you haven’t really finished practicing.
The Sleep Hack
The “hack” of learning something faster is simple: Do it immediately before and after you sleep.
In the case of music, that means working on the hard part of the song as the last work you do for the day. Then, the next morning, you do a brief warm up and then try to play the song some more.
Ideally you would commit 30 minutes in the evening and then again the following morning.
This can break through barriers that otherwise keep musicians stuck for weeks. It’s an interesting example of how scheduling can be so important.
There’s a lot more to practicing than just grinding out the hours - remember that!
@heymattsokol I totally agree. The early mornings of my youth were filled with music classes, but piano was always in the afternoon. To this day, the piano remains a mystery while all brass instruments are like extension of my arm.
Great post!
You came out ahead there, brass instruments are the coolest ones :-D
Very good one. Sleep is one of my biggest enemies, because I never really took the time to ''converse'' with it and settle an agreement. I love structure, but always go against my schedule haha. This is very useful, thanks!
Everybody has their own sleep schedule I think. I've never really liked waking up at the crack of dawn even if it's the "productive" thing to do.
Exactly. I feel you on that one. I myself am a big night owl; during the night is where my creativity gets it's biggest boost. I guess the ''productivity'' of waking up early is pretty much the commonly accepted social norm of structuring/scheduling in our society. Finding the balance between habits and responsibilities is where sleep has to pay the price, very often. At least to me that is.
Yeah, sleep is critical. It's also one of the most pleasant ways to grind through problems.
Got to avoid alcohol, though. Booze kills the memory consolidation process that we're supposed to get from sleeping.
That sucks! Booze is really the enemy of progress, physically mentally and spiritually. Which is a shame cuz it's so fun.
You're right about that!
Great concept, my daughter has kinda been doing this in the mornings and i think i will try it too. Thanks
Cool, let me know how it goes if you try it.
I will! I have some gigs coming up that I could use this strategy on as well.
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Cool, thank you!
So you are a writer and a musician? Well, I am asuming you are a writer because of the book club.
I am a musician myself, multi-instrument, low-performance. Loved the advice, and the emphasis in sleep.
What about lucid dreaming? I´ve been reading and chatting about that in Steemit, too. Lots, lots of interesting things and people.
Good to be reading you. See you soon.
Although it is not music, I generally do work before I go to sleep, but I usually do not pick up from where I left the next morning. I'm gonna try your hack! Sounds actually very logical! :)