The 80/20 Rule in Practicing Music

October 14th, 2008 by admin

From Wikipedia we have “The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle for more.)

Applied to learning music we get this, 80% of the benefit of a practice session is gained from 20% of the effort. Could this be true?

When I get started in the morning I usually play over a tune slowly and carefully. I pay attention to how my notes are tuning in to the open strings. I listen to the sympathetic resonance. This really warms up my ear as well as my fingers and arm.

Playing the tune through the second time is easier. If I play the tune five times it’s beginning to sound solid by the end. If the second time through sounds 80% as good as the fifth time, then we have an example of the 80/20 rule.

Until this relationship struck my mind, I had not been aware that practicing by fives lets you employ the Pareto Principle.

Sometimes, instead of playing the same tune five times, I’ll play one tune three times and another twice. That chunk of five repetitions is a basic chunk. No matter how many different tunes I play, and the maximum is five in a chunk, after five reps I move a marker from one place to another.

I settled in to the use of five silver dollars and a Sumerian footed bowl for counting. After the five coins get in the bowl, I have done a minimal session of practice. It’s the least I do every day. That is a total of 25 repetitions.

Again, looking at the 80/20 rule, Maybe I got 80% of my results with the first five tunes. That’s possible.

Another way to look at it is to ask how much can you gain by additional practice.

If you typically practice about a half an hour. then you could enhance your ability 25% by continuing two more hours. (The half hour is 20% of two and a half. The marginal increase in results of 100% over 80% is 25%.)

How well I play, or how well you play is subjective for us. Even so, I suspect there is al least some truth to the application of the 80/20 rule in music practicing.

One last visit to this idea: consider the standard of practicing 3 hours a day to reach real mastery after years of effort. The handful of concert violinists put in much more time. And they are beyond basic mastery.

Here’s the bottom line question. Can you get 80% of that mastery level by practicing only 45 minutes a day? Maybe you can, but that is not very close to mastery. Imagine playing a fiddle tune up to speed and one note in five is flubbed, played out of tune or missed. Would you like the sound of that?

On the other hand, if you play in that fashion with a group of fiddlers, your missed notes are not so obvious. And you are contributing to the over all sound and effect of the group performance.

One last thought. It may be the number of times you play the same passage, piece or etude. That may be the constraint that brings the 80/20 rule into play.