The science behind “I got it right at home”

It’s a phrase every music student has said, no matter what age or ability. They sit down to play something they’ve practised, it doesn’t go as well as they’d like, and then, with varying degrees of emphasis and drama…

“But I got it right at home!”

I’ve heard this phrase countless times myself, and I’ve even half-said it in my own lessons. In my younger teaching days, I used to simply assume the student was stretching the truth. But now I know they are experiencing something very real, and I have learned about the neuroscience behind why this happens.

Let’s look at three different components of this statement:

1. But I got it right at home
2. But I got it right at home
3. But I got it right at home

1. The ‘Illusion of Mastery’ (i.e. you didn’t really get it right)

Sometimes we can be fooled into thinking we got it right. For example, practice might follow this process:

1. Play the piece until you make a mistake
2. Stop and figure out how to play that bit
3. Play it three or four or ten times in a row correctly
4. Think ‘yay I fixed that bit!’
5. Keep going 

Then, at your lesson:

1. Play the piece until you make the very same mistake
2. Exclaim ‘but it got it right at home!’

In the lesson, we get frustrated that it didn’t work on the first attempt of playing it for the teacher. But the thing is, it was never correct on the first attempt at home. This is why it is called the ‘illusion’ of mastery- it was only correct after several attempts and an intense practice session. It was never correct on the first try.

2. Context-dependent learning (i.e. it only goes right at home)

When we are learning to play a piece, we are also learning the piece in a particular context: on our own piano, in our own home, with nobody watching. When we practice something a lot at home, we are used to a certain set of conditions: weight of piano keys, stool height, lighting, background noise. 

In the lesson, all of these conditions are different. And when we change the conditions, the skills we have learned are being tested in a different environment. These means they are more likely to fail. 

This helps explain why a student can honestly feel that the piece was solid the night before the lesson. It probably did go well – at home. But if the passage in question was even slightly fragile at home, it simply won’t hold up when the conditions are altered. 

3. Explicit monitoring (i.e. the reason it falls apart)

Sometimes, it really IS right at home, and maybe in the lesson too. And then suddenly, for seemingly no reason, a passage that used to go perfectly suddenly becomes unplayable. This is something neuroscience calls explicit monitoring.

You may have heard of this phenomenon in sport. In golf, it’s called the ‘yips’. In gymnastics, it’s called the ‘twisties’. A very general term is ‘choking under pressure’. 

When we practice something a great deal, the movements start to become automatic. We are no longer thinking about ‘how’ we play them, we’ve moved on to more nuanced details like expression and dynamics. Explicit monitoring means we are unexpectedly questioning movements which were previously automatic, e.g. ‘which finger do I usually use here?’ . The automatic pilot is suddenly switched off, and we falter. 

In conclusion

These three concepts and how to deal with them are explained beautifully in the book Learn Faster perform Better by Dr Molly Gebrian. This book has changed my teaching life and has also transformed my own practice. I also highly recommend reading the blog post How to Practice Piano Effectively by Leila Viss, which summarises (and credits) much of Molly Gebrian’s research and clearly lays out great practice strategies and how to implement them. 

These days, when my student exclaims “But I got it right at home!”, my reaction is very different from what it was four decades ago. The first thing I say in response is  “I’ll bet you absolutely got it right at home!”

And then it is my job as a teacher to help them discover:

1. You got it right – but after how many tries?
2. You got it right at home – now we have to get it right here!
3. You had it right and now it’s suddenly not… let’s work backwards and figure out your thought processes here

I’m so grateful for the accessibility of work by people like Molly Gebrian, and for the opportunity to have professional development so that I am always learning as a teacher. How has research and learning impacted your teaching?