Error management for musicians: an interdisciplinary conceptual framework

Abstract

Musicians tend to strive for flawless performance and perfection, avoiding errors at all costs. Dealing with errors while practicing or performing is often frustrating and can lead to anger and despair, which can explain musicians’ generally negative attitude toward errors and the tendency to aim for flawless learning in instrumental music education. But even the best performances are rarely error-free, and research in general pedagogy and psychology has shown that errors provide useful information for the learning process. Research in instrumental pedagogy is still neglecting error issues; the benefits of risk management (before the error) and error management (during and after the error) are still underestimated. It follows that dealing with errors is a key aspect of music practice at home, teaching, and performance in public. And yet, to be innovative, or to make their performance extraordinary, musicians need to risk errors. Currently, most music students only acquire the ability to manage errors implicitly – or not at all. A more constructive, creative, and differentiated culture of errors would balance error tolerance and risk-taking against error prevention in ways that enhance music practice and music performance. The teaching environment should lay the foundation for the development of such an approach. In this contribution, we survey recent research in aviation, medicine, economics, psychology, and interdisciplinary decision theory that has demonstrated that specific error-management training can promote metacognitive skills that lead to better adaptive transfer and better performance skills. We summarize how this research can be applied to music, and survey-relevant research that is specifically tailored to the needs of musicians, including generic guidelines for risk and error management in music teaching and performance. On this basis, we develop a conceptual framework for risk management that can provide orientation for further music education and musicians at all levels.

Impact of a Differential Learning Approach on Practical Exam Performance: A Controlled Study in a Preclinical Dental Course

“…2,[4][5][6][7] In others, positive results of the differential learning method were not only found for training gross motor skills but also for fine motor skills, e.g., learning to play music instruments or handwriting. 8,9 However, the effect of differential learning on the development of manual skills of dental students has not previously been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate if differential learning in a preclinical dental course impacted the performance of dental students in a practical exam (preparation of a gold partial crown) immediately after the training session and 20 weeks later compared to conventional learning.…”

“…To allow for the self-organizing process, corrections and feedback from experts should be avoided during the exercises. 8,9 However, the effect of differential learning on the development of manual skills of dental students has not previously been investigated. In some, by including different interventions in the training sessions, the differential learning approach was more successful than the conventional training method.…”

In-the-moment and Beyond: Combining Post-hoc and Real-Time Data for the Study of Audience Perception of Electronic Music Performance

“…From the Latin errare, meaning to stray, "error" suggests a stepping outside of accepted boundaries. Kruse-Weber and Parncutt [22] define error in a classical music context as "unintended result of an action", and classify intended actions as those specified in the score. However, experimental electronic music performance is highly improvisational and has no vernacular resembling a classical score.…”

Changes in Perception Accompany the Development of Music Performance Skills

“…What varies among the performances of novices and experts is often more than simply the number of errors that occur but how quickly adjustments are made that render errors imperceptible to observers (Chen et al, 2008; Kruse-Weber & Parncutt, 2014). Chen and colleagues (2008), for example, observed that trained cellists make small positional changes in finger shape after initial contact with the string to correct the resulting pitch.…”