Slow practice and tempo-management strategies in instrumental music learning: Investigating prevalence and cognitive functions

Abstract

Practicing slowly is an intuitive and prevalent learning strategy among instrumental musicians. Nevertheless, little is known about the psychological mechanisms of slow practice, or how rehearsing slow movements may support the performance of fast-tempo playing. This study investigated the prevalence and possible functions of slow practice strategies. A total of 256 adult instrumental musicians provided self-report ratings about slow practice and tempo-management strategy use, musical background information, and the Musical Self-regulated Learning Questionnaire in an online survey. Results indicate that practicing slowly is an extremely common technique among classical (99.45%) and non-classical (89.12%) musicians of varying expertise, supporting both technical and expressive goals, with technical more frequently reported. Principal components analysis identified three types of slow practice as serving expressive, technical, or preparatory functions. Expressive Slow Practice and Technical Slow Practice were positively associated with self-regulated learning, but not expertise across both music genre groups. Preparatory Slow Practice was positively associated with self-regulated learning and expertise in classical musicians, while in non-classical musicians, it had no association with self-regulation and a negative association with expertise. These findings provide groundwork for further research exploring causal effects of slow practice and tempo-management strategies on learning and development of self-regulated learning in various music genre cultures.