TURNAROUND TIME
Mastering Pieces in Weeks Instead of Months
Lachlan is having a mild panic attack. He has just been given a new piece - and the date for its first performance...
...in four weeks.
"Please tell me you're kidding" he protests
"I'll need twice that long to do a good job..."
"Not true" says his teacher "Just because you're used to having twice as long doesn't mean you need twice as long."
Could this be true? Is it also possible that your pieces could be ready in a fraction of the time it currently takes...?
~ O ~ ~ O ~ ~ O ~
If I ever need to get my computer upgraded or repaired, there's only one thing I'm interested in when I ring around for quotes.
It's not "How long have you been in business" or "What are your opening hours"
It's not even "How much will this be."
It's "How long will it take you to get this done?"
Computer repairers refer to this as turnaround time - the time that passes from receiving the item to the customer being able to pick it up again.
Music students have turnaround times of their own too.
What exactly does "turnaround time" for a music student actually mean?
TURNAROUND TIME FOR MUSICIANS
After one has been learning a musical instrument for a while, one comes to expect that a piece of this size and that difficulty will take this many weeks or months to get ready. So a short Prelude might take 1 month. A major sonata 6 months. A huge concerto a year.
But here's the thing. These numbers are not carved in marble. You can change them.
Musicians are used to the idea of improving aspects of their playing - improving technique, improving intonation, improving sightreading.
Turnaround times can be improved too...!
There are actually two different types -
Type 1: Time to Lesson-Ready
Lesson-Ready turnaround time is a measure of how long it takes to get a piece from:
never seen it before...
to
...ready to play for the teacher
This doesn't mean concert-polished. or up to tempo. It just means that one can comfortably and steadily play it from beginning to end - without having to stop to feel their way.
Any music teacher will tell you that this is a milestone worth celebrating. It means they can ask to hear any part of your piece, without having to listen to you sightread or fake your way through the notes.
The lesson that follows can then be about how you're playing rather than what you're playing. (Which is what lessons should be about).
This means that feedback from the teacher is much more likely to be ideas and suggestions, rather than "There's a sharp in front of that F."
Type 2: Time to Concert-Ready
The clock starts ticking on this turnaround time as soon as one has got the piece lesson-ready.
It's then a measure of how long one takes to get a piece from:
ready to play for the teacher...
to
...ready to perform it anytime, anywhere.
Which is a whole different thing.
Unlike Lesson-Ready, Concert-Ready is not just a playthrough. You need to be able to play at full tempo, with all dynamics, phrasing and articulation worked out and polished....
all stops out and ready to show the world.
WHY SHORTER IS BETTER
Slashing both of these turnaround times is achievable, but it will take careful work. One won't necessarily have to practice any longer than they currently do, but they will have to practice differently.
Beating the Use-by-Date
Pieces might be exciting and fun when they're brand new, but that might not still be the case after six months. The longer one has a piece, the more likely they are to get sick of it - making their entire preparation campaign a race against the piece's use-by date.'
Short turnaround times mean that by the time you'd normally be thinking "not this piece again," you would already be onto the next piece.
Obviously you'll meet some works that continue to delight and challenge even after decades of playing them.
Short turnaround times will help you finish your piece before it starts attracting flies :-)
Racking up experience
If your short turnaround times mean that you can get through twenty pieces in a year, then you're collecting experience five times as fast as somebody who only learns four pieces in a year.
Less hackwork practice
Short Lesson-Ready turnaround times don't just mean that one is ready for concerts earlier. It also means less time spent learning the notes in new pieces (which is the part of practice that most students don't llike) - leaving more time to spend making the pieces sound good (which is the fun part!)
Say "yes" to more opportunities
When the author (P Johnston) was in his second year of undergraduate studies as a piano student, an opportunity came up to play a concerto with a major orchestra - the only catch was that it was very short notice. It was a work he'd never played before, and with only 3 weeks until the big day, he felt the task was impossible. So he passed on the chance...
...and it was grabbed by somebody who could get the piece ready in that time. (She'd never played it before either.)
As a music student, you'll receive lots of invitations to play with other people, but the time frames won't always be generous. If your turnaround times are low, you'll be able to say "yes" to opportunities that most other students will have to turn down.
Cope with commitment peaks
Your workload for your music lessons and schoolwork won't always be consistent. Sometimes you'll have quiet weeks, with little to do. Other times, everything will be insanely busy.
If you hare having one of those fortnights where everything seems to be happening at once, you're going to have to meet your teacher's lesson targets on a minimum of practice...
...which is exactly what students with good turnaround times are able to do.
That fortnight can hit you with school exams, teetering piles of homework, sports finals and visits from family - and you'll still be able to make good progress in your music.
When minutes are precious, it helps to be very, very good at making every second count. Like everything else you do, it's a skill that can be learned, improved, practiced and then unleashed.
DATE STAMPING YOUR PIECES
Ok, so life is a happier place when your turnaround times are shorter. But how do you make that happen?
Uncovering the awful truth
The first step to being able to shorten your turnaround time is to understand what your current turnaround times are.
From now on, whenever you are given a brand new piece, write the date on the score.
On the day that you first are ready to play the entire piece through for your teacher, write the date again.
Then look at the two dates, and ask yourself, "how much time passed?" That number is your Time to Lesson-Ready figure.
You can work out your Time to Concert-Ready simply by repeating the process on the day of your first performance.
When you see these numbers...
You might not like the figures you first see - weeks turn into months very quickly, and can leave some unflattering data for your first recorded turnaround time.
That's ok though. You'll be transforming them to something much shorter soon enough.
Not just about calculation
These dates are handy for confronting the reality of your existing turnaround times. But there's another benefit too:
As you prepare pieces in the future, simply knowing that you'll be recording dates like this will add a sense of urgency to your preparation.
If you recorded the "just started the piece" date back in March - and it's June already and there's still no possibility of writing in the "lesson-ready" date - then that first date and its missing siblings will really start to nag at you.
CUTTING TURNAROUND TIME
There are plenty of measures you can take to speed up your turnaround times - mostly because there are plenty of causes for bloated turnaround times in the first place.
Any one of these measures can have a dramatic impact on your turnaround time. Use all of them though, and you won't believe how much faster you'll prepare your pieces.
1. Taming Parkinson's Law
Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available. In other words, if you allow yourself six months to learn a new piece, then it will take you six months.
That's not because you needed six months. It's simply you sticking to the plan you made for yourself.
If the work expands to fill the time available, then it makes sense that it might contract when there's less time available.
What would happen if you set yourself one month instead of six? Or one week?
The point is that much of our turnaround time is based on how long we think we need. If we expect our pieces to take less time, then they will.
2. Improving our sightreading
If one's sighreading is strong enough, then the Time to Lesson Ready can be a figure that's very hard to beat:
Zero.
Remember, all one needs for lesson-ready is to be able to play right through their pieces comfortably and steadily, in which case we should be asking ourselves this:
What if our reading was so good that we could do this first time - no practice required?
This is not science fiction. There are students who can do exactly that, and they lead a charmed practice life - all of their work is about making their piece sound better, not figuring out how to play things in the first place.
So they get to completely skip the note-slogging part of practice that most students hate.
3. Getting things right first time
A huge amount of practice can be wasted unpracticing errors - notes, rhythms or fingerings that were mislearned when one first looked at their piece.
If one is fanatical about accuracy in the early stages, they can eliminate a lot of corrective practice that would otherwise need to happen later.
4. Scouting thoroughly
Scouting allows one to get a head start on their new pieces by becoming thoroughly familiar with that piece even before they've played a single note. *covered elsewhere on this blog*
It's such an important practice skill, but a lot of students skip the process, trying to save time.
The irony is that by refusing to scout, they're actually costing themselves time.
It's certainly possible to master a new piece without scouting. It just takes longer.
5. Not overpracticing
If one wants tight turnaround times, one can't afford the luxury of continuing to practice passages after they've been mastered.
6. Starting from the cells
Fast turnaround times for an entire piece are built from fast turnaround times for the tasks one sets in each individual practice session.
Every time your extra concentration and smart practicing enables you complete a task in 20 minutes instead of an hour, you're contributing to the likelihood that the entire piece will be ready in a third of the time.
But it works the other way too. Every time you daydream, or produce sloppy practice, you're actively adding to your turnaround time.
7. Tracking progress
To see proof of your new speedier results, keep a Breakthrough Diary. Every time you can do something new - e.g. when you're able to play through the first page of the piece for the first time - make a note in the diary.
Plenty of daily entries is a sign that good turnaround time is on the way. Similarly, if a few days go by and there's nothing new... then that strange echo you hear is your turnaround time receding into the distance.
8. Setting milestone deadlines
You want the whole piece Lesson-Ready within two weeks? For you to have any chance, after one week, you should be ready with half.
Setting milestone deadlines like these will allow you to see whether you're on schedule, or need to work a little harder.
Remember, though, it's worth being outrageous. Slashing turnaround times is about rejecting limitations you've placed on yourself in the past - and that starts by making headier demands for the future.
9. Being Practice Trap Aware
There are plenty of inefficient practice habits that can eat up your time AND fill your piece with errors - hugely blowing out turnaround times in the process. *See separate blog on Practice Traps*
10. Buddy up with a speed learner
Choose a Practice Buddy who already has turnaround times that are far better than yours.
Because they're already where you're trying to get to, you'll be able to learn plenty as they talk you through how they work.
START NOW. ASTONISH YOURSELF.
Unless all 10 of those elements have been in place, up till now - whatever we've been playing, however one has been practicing - our progress has been a shadow of what was actually possible.
... your new turnaround times will transform your entire experience of music lessons. :-D
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