WHAT DISTINGUISHES COMPETENCE? AN INVESTIGATION OF PIANO PRACTICING

The present study sought to investigate how piano practicing develops with increasing familiarity with particular musical materials and with increasing musical competence. In order to accomplish this, piano students of varying musical levels (from Music Grade I to the artist and concert pianist levels) were observed as they practiced a variety of musical pieces, carefully selected for their musical levels. A subset of these subjects, from Grade II, Grade VI and artist (ARCT) levels, were observed as they gained competence in practicing the pieces over 10 practice sessions.; A number of analyses were performed to gain an understanding of the practicing behaviours including descriptive statistics, factor analyses, correlational analyses, analysis of variance and sequence analysis. In addition, the subset of Grade II, Grade VI and ARCT students, together with the concert pianists, were interviewed concerning their knowledge about the strategies they used when they practiced.; The most salient finding from the observational data was the increasing size and complexity of units of repetition that were evident with increasing musical experience and familiarity with the musical pieces. Pausing and playing one hand at a time were also important variables that were found to relate to skill development. An analysis of errors indicated that rather than decreasing with practice, errors tended to increase in frequency in advanced practice sessions. The findings were conceptualized in terms of the formulations of Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) on the automatization of a motor skill and of Reason (1979) on the sources of errors in the automization process.; The metacognitive interview data offered both confirmatory and complementary evidence. The interviews corroborated the finding that more experienced students tended to repeat larger and more complex musical units and also indicated that the metacognitions of these more experienced students tended to be better articulated, more cognitively complex and more goal-directed, more varied and richer in strategies than those of less experienced students. The metacognitive data also yielded information concerning a number of cognitive, attitudinal and motivational factors that appeared to influence the efficiency and productivity of the practice.; The methodology employed was seen as applicable more generally to the study of the acquisition of any skill and a number of directions for future research were outlined.