Using writing for reflection is a well-established and acknowledged device based on cognitive psychology. It is therefore important to ascertain how the students put their written notes to use and whether this was a method that they would continue to adhere to. As expected, they applied the method in different ways, both in terms of what they wrote down and in terms of how much they wrote. The main issue was to adjust their writings to the ongoing performance process. One student says “I felt the problem was that it took so long writing things down. It was strange to read it back, because you think so much faster than you write, and then you lose the thought before you have put everything down on paper”. Legibility was also somewhat of an issue: “I couldn’t understand what I’d written,” as one of them put it.

Another reason could be confusion over what keeping a “practice diary” or “practice log” actually entails. Two of the students were initially opposed to the idea, because they “thought it had to be incredibly detailed: first create a plan, then describe the execution”. One of them wanted a “schedule describing what I will be practising from day to day, not the whole package”. Future experiments with written notes during practice should clearly spell out different alternatives with regard to content and scope and then try out individual solutions suited to the nature of the different exercises. By following up on the written notes they can also be tied in with the instrumental lessons and form a basis for discussion between teacher and student, for example.

One alternative to written notes is audio or video recordings whereby the student comments on what he or she is doing in real time. The teacher drew the same conclusion, saying that “writing interrupts the practice process and can be demotivating when you’re in full ‘practice flow’”. The method is used in education research to establish which thoughts emerge during a problem-solving process. Studying these thoughts can help identify mannerisms and bad habits and inspire new ways of thinking. The method has been applied in several research projects on music practice, including by Professor Siw G. Nielsen at the Norwegian Academy of Music (For additional information, see the article ‘Self-regulation of learning strategies during practice: A case study of a church organ student preparing a musical work for performance’. In: H. Jørgensen & A. C. Lehmann (Eds), Does practice make perfect? Current theory and research on instrumental music practice, pp. 109–122. Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Music, NMH research publications 1997:1.).

The students are open to adopting this method, saying that “the best option is video or audio recording, and thinking out loud”. One key opportunity to strengthen the link between practice room and teaching room lies in the fact that recordings can be presented to the teacher for comment and form part of the process of learning how to practise.

If all we want to do is reduce the number of times that our concentration fails, we can do as they did in an American experiment. A group of students were asked to draw a line on a piece of paper every time they found that they lost concentration, hoping that this would reduce the frequency of loss of concentration. It worked for many, but not all of the students (Madsen, C. K., & Geringer, J. M. (1981). The effect of a distraction index on improving practice attentiveness and musical performance. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No. 66/67, s. 46–52).