I don't know how to stress how grateful I am for these videos. Not only did you base them on research, but you reached the sweet spot of making the information actionable without corrupting the conclusions of the studies. Plus you share this with us for free without framing your content to promote your business. So, thank you, really, for your time and care to make these videos helpful, honest and memorable.
I watched all V PARTS and finished the audio book of Why We Sleep - This combo has changed my life. I'm practicing more actively, but also seeing huge results when putting effort into getting the good quality sleep: my attention, retention, and emotional stability all showing greater strength, and they feed back into an excitement to do more and rest more. Hell, my skin is way better. Covid has been a huge wrench in quality sleep and we'll be processing trauma and changes for a while. I for one, know that it's been a huge confrontation with who I actually am, since who we are in crisis mode requires the first responders in us, revealing our agency (or lack thereof) to manage our systems. I discovered that I'm not nearly as cool calm collected or positive as I'd like to think. I'm not a self-help guide type nor new age/ethereal thinker, so your neuroscience-based videos made a HUGE difference in letting me connect with myself emotionally. Life saver! All to say, Thanks for your generosity, Molly. Grateful!!! - Jane
Dear Dr. Gebrian, last month I spent a week watching ALL of your practice videos. So much relevant information deliviered in a detailed, straightforward manner!! If you have any more thoughts/discoveries on the subject, I hope you can post them in the future. 10/10.
Molly, these videos are great! Really informative, interesting, and gives actual things to try to improve your practice. Thank you for sharing this knowledge!
These videos are great! I am not a musician (my son is and shared) but I compete my dogs in agility which is a motor/muscle skill as well as cognitive (memorizing several 20 obstacle courses per day and performing shortly after seeing the course for the first time PLUS figuring out a handling plan for you and your dog). Anyway, I can't believe how relevant this information is! Thank you!
Yes, a lot of this research appears to be general principles of how all living things learn, not just humans learning music. :) Often there are a lot of really interesting parallels with dog training (both for the human and the dog)!
Thanks for this excellent talk! I was on the edge of my seat for every minute of this but I am a total sleep nerd so no surprise. Really fascinated by the complementarity of cognitive/motor learning in REM and nREM. Hope to use it to build a motivating practice routine for myself.
Thank you for posting this. I do struggle with sleep and wonder how much that affects how I absorb what I have been practicing. Learning techniques so that they become second nature is taking me a lifetime, whereas we see prodigies who pick them up much quicker.
Yes, it probably does have an effect. I'll also recommend Andrew Huberman's podcast Huberman Lab to you (that I mentioned to someone else who commented here). The entire month of January 2021 was devoted to sleep and he had a lot of fantastic suggestions on how to improve your sleep if you struggle with sleeping well. Highly recommended! Also, have you watched my video series on spaced learning? That might help you learn things more quickly. You can find those here: th-cam.com/play/PL7PO5fyuz1-zKhOM9eGfzjakZAwhd9UVU.html
It's great to see some science backed research on this, rather than someone's opinion of what would be effective. Conversely, it would be interesting to see if it was possible to analyze some practice techniques (scales, arpeggios, finger exercises etc.) to see their actual effectiveness, rather than just believing they must be effective.
There is research like this (mostly in the music education research literature), but often the time course is really short (a few days or a week at most) rather than more long term, so it's hard to know how the studies generalize to what musicians actually do.
Great series, really appreciate the effort put into this. One question that came to mind regarding the effects of sleep was how naps of diferrent length affect the learning process. Sometimes when I practice intensely I take a nap for an hour and then come back to it. That happens even if I got 8-9 hours of sleep the night before. I'm curious if there is some research on that.
Thank you so much! I'm so glad this series was helpful to you! And thank you for the question! Yes, there is a ton of research on naps (I discuss that research more in my book, actually) that finds that naps after learning are really beneficial. In fact, taking a nap after learning and then also getting a full night sleep boosts your performance even more than just a full night of sleep. People who take naps after learning also show a boost in performance during the day. The effect seems to be the same as with overnight sleep: stage 2 NREM sleep helps consolidate what you've learned and so you wake up at a higher level of skill. So keep taking your naps - it sounds like your brain is telling you that it needs rest after a bout of intense practicing! :)
@@michapigon1690 I tried to make my book as comprehensive as I could, so there's a lot of information in there that isn't in any of my videos so far. I hope you enjoy it if you do decide to read it! :)
Fantastic. I've watched all your videos up through this one so far, keen to keep going. I learned of your work through the Audiation in the Wild and Bulletproof Musician podcasts, and am currently trying to incorporate some of this stuff, alongside Music Learning Theory, and Direct Instruction, in my music teaching. Is there any research on how the time you go to sleep, wake up, and length of sleep above 8 hours affects learning and retention of cognitive and physical tasks like learning music? E.g. 1am-9/10am or 2am-10/11am vs a probably healthier 11pm-7am. Or maybe it's not nearly as statistically significant. Thanks so much for all this info and these videos!
Thank you so much for your question! I'm so glad my videos have been helpful to you! To answer your question: it depends! All of us have a slightly different internal clock that is determined by our genetics. If a night owl tries to go to bed early and get up early, even if they get 8 hours of sleep, they will still feel exhausted. Same thing if a morning person goes to bed really late and gets up late. So you need to align your sleep with what works best for you. Hope this helps! :)
@@DrMollyGebrian maybe I've just been in the habit of going to bed a bit too late for my body clock. Need to reset I guess. Thanks so much for the reply!
@@camtaylormusic I think so many of us have ideas of when we "should" go to bed that are culturally determined and don't match what we actually need as individuals! I'm a big proponent of experimenting on yourself, so try different things out to see what works best for you. :)
Thank you so much for your question! I apologize for taking so long to get back to you! Yes, there are lots of benefits to taking an afternoon nap. In fact, if you take a nap during the day and you get a full night of sleep, you get a double boost in ability the next day! I talk about this research more in my book that just came out (Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing) if you want to read mmore about it. :)
Slept more than 8 hours do you mean? Earlier and more does not necessarily = better. We all have different chronotypes for when we optimally sleep (how late we go to bed and wake up) and different people need slightly different amounts of sleep. It's also possible to get too much sleep.
No, it's definitely not pointless. :) Andrew Huberman (neuroscientist from Stanford) has an outstanding podcast called Huberman Lab and the entire month of January (2021) was devoted to talking about sleep. The final episode that month (I believe) was all about people who can't sleep in an ideal way because of kids or working the night shift or whatever and ways to work around that. It's fascinating and worth a listen!
@@DrMollyGebrian Thank you so much for this recommendation and the for the video itself! I've watched many of your videos and they are great. I use random and spaced practicing as part of my schedule,, thanks
I don't know how to stress how grateful I am for these videos.
Not only did you base them on research, but you reached the sweet spot of making the information actionable without corrupting the conclusions of the studies.
Plus you share this with us for free without framing your content to promote your business.
So, thank you, really, for your time and care to make these videos helpful, honest and memorable.
Wow, thank you so much! I'm so glad you've enjoyed them and found them useful!
I watched all V PARTS and finished the audio book of Why We Sleep - This combo has changed my life. I'm practicing more actively, but also seeing huge results when putting effort into getting the good quality sleep: my attention, retention, and emotional stability all showing greater strength, and they feed back into an excitement to do more and rest more. Hell, my skin is way better. Covid has been a huge wrench in quality sleep and we'll be processing trauma and changes for a while. I for one, know that it's been a huge confrontation with who I actually am, since who we are in crisis mode requires the first responders in us, revealing our agency (or lack thereof) to manage our systems. I discovered that I'm not nearly as cool calm collected or positive as I'd like to think. I'm not a self-help guide type nor new age/ethereal thinker, so your neuroscience-based videos made a HUGE difference in letting me connect with myself emotionally. Life saver! All to say, Thanks for your generosity, Molly. Grateful!!! - Jane
I'm so happy my videos have made such a difference for you! :) And yes, getting enough sleep is amazing!!!
Dear Dr. Gebrian, last month I spent a week watching ALL of your practice videos. So much relevant information deliviered in a detailed, straightforward manner!! If you have any more thoughts/discoveries on the subject, I hope you can post them in the future. 10/10.
I'm so glad you've enjoyed them and foundn them so helpful! I am hoping to have time to make more videos this summer. We'll see...
Wow! Excellent info! New incentive to get to bed earlier especially in the summer when the light wakes me up earlier. Thank you!😊
Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed my video! :)
Molly, these videos are great! Really informative, interesting, and gives actual things to try to improve your practice. Thank you for sharing this knowledge!
You're very welcome! I'm so glad you've enjoyed them and found them helpful!
These videos are great! I am not a musician (my son is and shared) but I compete my dogs in agility which is a motor/muscle skill as well as cognitive (memorizing several 20 obstacle courses per day and performing shortly after seeing the course for the first time PLUS figuring out a handling plan for you and your dog). Anyway, I can't believe how relevant this information is! Thank you!
Yes, a lot of this research appears to be general principles of how all living things learn, not just humans learning music. :) Often there are a lot of really interesting parallels with dog training (both for the human and the dog)!
Fascinating. I have watched your first two videos as well and find them enormously important! Thank you for your research!
Thank you for watching! I'm glad you've enjoyed them!
@@DrMollyGebrian okay where are you located
Thanks for this excellent talk! I was on the edge of my seat for every minute of this but I am a total sleep nerd so no surprise. Really fascinated by the complementarity of cognitive/motor learning in REM and nREM. Hope to use it to build a motivating practice routine for myself.
Thank you for posting this. I do struggle with sleep and wonder how much that affects how I absorb what I have been practicing. Learning techniques so that they become second nature is taking me a lifetime, whereas we see prodigies who pick them up much quicker.
Yes, it probably does have an effect. I'll also recommend Andrew Huberman's podcast Huberman Lab to you (that I mentioned to someone else who commented here). The entire month of January 2021 was devoted to sleep and he had a lot of fantastic suggestions on how to improve your sleep if you struggle with sleeping well. Highly recommended! Also, have you watched my video series on spaced learning? That might help you learn things more quickly. You can find those here: th-cam.com/play/PL7PO5fyuz1-zKhOM9eGfzjakZAwhd9UVU.html
It's great to see some science backed research on this, rather than someone's opinion of what would be effective. Conversely, it would be interesting to see if it was possible to analyze some practice techniques (scales, arpeggios, finger exercises etc.) to see their actual effectiveness, rather than just believing they must be effective.
There is research like this (mostly in the music education research literature), but often the time course is really short (a few days or a week at most) rather than more long term, so it's hard to know how the studies generalize to what musicians actually do.
Thank you doc for the update. I guess I need to get that 8-9 hour sleep.
Matthew Walker's book was an excellent recommendation!
So glad you enjoyed it!
thanks for these insights!
Purchased the book on your recommendation! Now, waking hours towards reading it... Cheers, Daniel
Great series, really appreciate the effort put into this. One question that came to mind regarding the effects of sleep was how naps of diferrent length affect the learning process. Sometimes when I practice intensely I take a nap for an hour and then come back to it. That happens even if I got 8-9 hours of sleep the night before. I'm curious if there is some research on that.
Thank you so much! I'm so glad this series was helpful to you! And thank you for the question! Yes, there is a ton of research on naps (I discuss that research more in my book, actually) that finds that naps after learning are really beneficial. In fact, taking a nap after learning and then also getting a full night sleep boosts your performance even more than just a full night of sleep. People who take naps after learning also show a boost in performance during the day. The effect seems to be the same as with overnight sleep: stage 2 NREM sleep helps consolidate what you've learned and so you wake up at a higher level of skill. So keep taking your naps - it sounds like your brain is telling you that it needs rest after a bout of intense practicing! :)
@@DrMollyGebrian Thanks a lot for the very quick and informative reply. I guess I might check out your whole book then:)
@@michapigon1690 I tried to make my book as comprehensive as I could, so there's a lot of information in there that isn't in any of my videos so far. I hope you enjoy it if you do decide to read it! :)
Fantastic. I've watched all your videos up through this one so far, keen to keep going. I learned of your work through the Audiation in the Wild and Bulletproof Musician podcasts, and am currently trying to incorporate some of this stuff, alongside Music Learning Theory, and Direct Instruction, in my music teaching.
Is there any research on how the time you go to sleep, wake up, and length of sleep above 8 hours affects learning and retention of cognitive and physical tasks like learning music? E.g. 1am-9/10am or 2am-10/11am vs a probably healthier 11pm-7am. Or maybe it's not nearly as statistically significant.
Thanks so much for all this info and these videos!
Thank you so much for your question! I'm so glad my videos have been helpful to you! To answer your question: it depends! All of us have a slightly different internal clock that is determined by our genetics. If a night owl tries to go to bed early and get up early, even if they get 8 hours of sleep, they will still feel exhausted. Same thing if a morning person goes to bed really late and gets up late. So you need to align your sleep with what works best for you. Hope this helps! :)
@@DrMollyGebrian maybe I've just been in the habit of going to bed a bit too late for my body clock. Need to reset I guess. Thanks so much for the reply!
@@camtaylormusic I think so many of us have ideas of when we "should" go to bed that are culturally determined and don't match what we actually need as individuals! I'm a big proponent of experimenting on yourself, so try different things out to see what works best for you. :)
Thanks for this video. Any benefits of taking an afternoon nap in addition to night sleep? Thanks,
Thank you so much for your question! I apologize for taking so long to get back to you! Yes, there are lots of benefits to taking an afternoon nap. In fact, if you take a nap during the day and you get a full night of sleep, you get a double boost in ability the next day! I talk about this research more in my book that just came out (Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing) if you want to read mmore about it. :)
Was this/something else also tested with people who went to bed earlier + slept more? I'd be interested to see that!
Slept more than 8 hours do you mean? Earlier and more does not necessarily = better. We all have different chronotypes for when we optimally sleep (how late we go to bed and wake up) and different people need slightly different amounts of sleep. It's also possible to get too much sleep.
@@DrMollyGebrian That's very interesting, many thanks!
How about quadruple training while other people are sleeping. I am not talking about extra in a day...but over a period.
I just sometimes don't have the luxury of optimal sleep
So if you live in a house with small children it's actually pointless to try and learn a musical instrument?
No, it's definitely not pointless. :) Andrew Huberman (neuroscientist from Stanford) has an outstanding podcast called Huberman Lab and the entire month of January (2021) was devoted to talking about sleep. The final episode that month (I believe) was all about people who can't sleep in an ideal way because of kids or working the night shift or whatever and ways to work around that. It's fascinating and worth a listen!
@@DrMollyGebrian
Thank you so much for this recommendation and the for the video itself!
I've watched many of your videos and they are great. I use random and spaced practicing as part of my schedule,, thanks
That's it I'm going to sleep.