​Competing With Myself at the Piano: Implications for Research and Learning
 
This paper was presented at the 25th Clifford K. Madsen International Symposium for Research in Music Behavior, Asheville, NC, March 20-23, 2024.
 
While preparing to move from Cleveland Heights to Albuquerque eighteen months ago, I dispensed with many items. Among them were tape cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes of my solo piano performances. As I hadn’t listened to them in decades and no longer owned a tape recorder, I had no justification for keeping them. I was curious to hear what I had sounded like back then, however, so before I trashed them I had them digitized. The oldest recordings dated from 1973, when I was a music performance MFA student at Sarah Lawrence College. The most recent one came from the last of three solo recitals I gave at McGill University, in 1984.

I was surprised to discover that my long held beliefs about these performances did not match what I was now hearing. The performances I remembered as bad hadn’t been so bad, and the performances I remembered as good weren’t as good as I had hoped they would be. Listening to the recordings thus gave me both relief and disappointment.

One recording interested me more than the others. It was of Scriabin’s Poéme, op. 32 no. 1, and it caught my attention for two reasons: my performance of it was good, and I hadn’t remembered playing it in recital. Certainly I recalled learning the piece, but I had thought that my only performance of it in front of others was at a 1975 audition. Yet there it was on the recording of a 1976 Syracuse University recital; I had played it as an encore.

As I listened to the Poéme a second time, I wondered if I still might be able to play that well. Krampe & Ericsson (1996) found that the average performance level of older expert pianists was only slightly lower than it was for younger expert pianists. They concluded that older pianists were able to maintain their skills because they engaged in deliberate practice throughout their lives. Given that I had kept up my practicing across the years, perhaps I too would be able to play as well as I once did.
 
My fingers no longer look like they used to. Six are slightly bent at their distal phalanges, and x-rays revealed that all ten are missing cartilage. I have been unable to make a tight fist in either hand since 2020 due to arthritis, and my hand span is smaller than it was when I was younger. In addition, my brain at age 77 undoubtedly looks and works differently than it did when I was 30. I haven’t noticed major negative effects on my piano playing arising from these changes, but perhaps any deterioration has been gradual or minimal enough to avoid detection. Or maybe my technique really hasn’t changed. I could have tested myself more stringently by relearning one of the more technically demanding pieces I had played long ago, say the Liszt Sonata in B Minor, but such an undertaking would have been very time-intensive. Instead, I decided to work on the three-minute Poéme. I was motivated for three reasons: first, I love the music; second, the challenge of trying to match my 1976 performance intrigued me; and third, I would use the opportunity to try some new (for me) ways of working at the piano. This last reason is my justification for presenting this case study, as I believe that what I learned from the experience has implications for both research and learning.

How I practiced

I approach a composition learned years earlier as if I had never played it. I start by practicing interlocking measures: after working on the first two measures until I can play them smoothly, I work on measures two and three, then measures three and four, and so on. I gradually increase the size of practice units to coincide with phrases, sections, and, finally, the full score. I memorize the music as quickly as I can, and I practice predominantly slowly at first, more frequently at final performance tempo later on. I also adhere to some of the ideas presented by ChatGPT in Appendices A and B, such as practicing regularly, practicing hands separately, and recording myself on occasion.[1] In summary, my way of learning and relearning piano music might be considered traditional. I suppose it also fits the definition of deliberate practice, regardless of whether the opposite of deliberate is either mindless or accidental.

My modus operandi changed in 2020. It was then that Covid-19 transformed tens of thousands of musicians into exhibitionists. Like them, I decided that what the world needed were my videoed recordings. Despite the existence of dozens of excellent professional performances on YouTube for any piece I might choose to work on, I was seduced by the possibility that posting my own performances would make a contribution.
An added appeal of my project was that I could play for others without having to experience stage fright. Though the recording process can be nerve wracking, the prospect of unlimited takes makes it bearable. I bought a Zoom Q8 “Handy Video Recorder” and a microphone stand, which along with my Steinway grand piano and living room was all I needed. I felt confident that at a minimum, my playing would improve as I worked toward a polished performance. At a maximum, I would produce recordings good enough to give others pleasure.

I changed my old practice regimen in three ways. The first followed from my purchase of the Zoom 8: I recorded myself incessantly. The second was that I collected data in order to quantify changes in my performance. By timing myself and rating my performances’ technical and musical qualities, I would strive for a series of “personal bests.” In this way I treated piano practice as much as an athletic endeavor as an artistic one.

Neither of these approaches is new. Musicians have been studying their own performances via recordings ever since home sound recording became feasible. Certainly there has been much research using both audio and video to improve almost every aspect of music learning. Both recording oneself and taking data on one’s performance can be considered examples of self-regulation in music learning (Varela et al., 2014), about which there also is much research. However, I couldn’t find any research that employed self-recording and self-data collection as monomaniacally as I did in this study.  

The third and final way in which I modified my piano practice was by listening to and observing audio and video recordings of expert performances of the Poéme while I was relearning the work. This activity is controversial within the classical piano community (Piano World Forum, 2011). Some respondents feel that listening to others stunts a student’s creative development. Others insist that the activity could help one make informed decisions about interpretation, especially if the musician is exposed to many different performances rather than one. I used observation both to seek out new interpretations and to learn in what ways my own performances didn’t measure up to professional recordings.

Scriabin’s Poéme op. 32 no. 1

Faubion Bowers, author of a definitive biography of Scriabin (Bowers, 1996), describes the Poéme as follows:

In it [Scriabin] flung magical distributions of tones into that unknown nowhere he so loved, and whence he evoked such startlingly felicitous sonorities. Pleasing quietude caresses the ear here. The beginning is marked con affetto, or with affection. Sabaneeff calls the Poéme “an erotic kiss…a kind of sexual dissolving in waves of emotion.” Magic and affection are present, certainly, but where? Is it in the symmetry?
 
Unknown nowheres notwithstanding, one might conclude from this description that the Poéme does not require great speed or power. This is true. Instead it presents difficulties in the realms of touch, projection, dynamic control, and rhythm. The Poéme demands the ability to play cross-rhythms such as three-against-five accurately and smoothly, and dynamics must be controlled so that the melody projects while subordinate lines do not become submerged. It’s a contrapuntal work that combines passion with delicacy, and it’s not easy to pull off.

 
Method
 
Video-recording
After rememorizing the Poéme, which took about a month, I began video-recording myself. I had recorded infrequently in the past, but for the Poéme I recorded takes on about half of my practice sessions. I’d play through the piece once or twice slowly, work intensively on sections that were not secure, then record myself while playing the piece in its entirety at its final tempo from one to three times. Altogether, I recorded the Poéme about 300 times over eight months.

Record keeping
Quantifying improvement, like a runner or a swimmer keeping track of trial times, or a baseball pitcher using a speed gun to measure pitch velocity, became an important aspect of my practice. I logged timings of completed performances, numbers of mistakes made, and numerical ratings of expressivity. I didn’t statistically analyze these data because I was wary of reliability for the second and third measurements; as for the first, it was obvious from looking at the data that gradually I played the Poéme faster as I continued working on it. 

Listening to other performances
I listened to other performances of the Poéme every third or fourth day. One of my most frequently used techniques was to hear in sequence a YouTube performance by a concert pianist, one of my own recent recordings, and a performance by a second concert pianist. The procedure often depressed me, but it did show me clearly what I needed to do to make my version more professional.

 
Results
 
Tempo
My first recordings were disappointing not just because I was still making mistakes, but because I was playing too slowly. I was surprised at my slowness. My tempos seemed right when I was playing, and it was only when I listened afterward that I realized how sluggish they were. This divergence between how I perceived tempo while playing versus listening persisted for months.

“Too slow” might be considered a matter of opinion. Certainly there are numerous examples on CD of performances by great pianists that are aberrantly slow. In addition, it is known that performance tempo may vary considerably across pianists (Wapnick, 1987), and even across different performances by one pianist. I had thought that my initial 2023 performances dragged, but were they slow compared to how the Poéme is played by experts? In order to find out, I compiled a list of recordings as performed by 15 select professional pianists. These were chosen from over 100 different recordings of the Poéme I found on Classical Music Online (https://classical-music-online.net) and on YouTube. I added my 1976 recital performance and two video-recordings from 2023 to the list, shown in Table 1[2]. The duration of each recording was established after locating its beginning and conclusion, as recordings sometimes started or ended with dead space or applause.
 
 
Table 1: Durations of the Scriabin Poéme on Selected Recordings

Performer                                    Duration (minutes:seconds)

 

Maria Lettberg                           2:22

Christopher O’Reilly                  2:22

Daniil Trifonov                            2:37

Yunchan Lin                                2:50

Heinrich Neuhaus                       2:52, 3:08

Joel Wapnick (2023)                  2:52, 3:23                        

Joel Wapnick (1976)                  2:55        

Valentina Lisitsa                          2:57

Vladimir Sofronitsky                   3:00, 3:14

Vladimir Horowitz                       3:04, 3:16

Yuja Wang                                   3:10, 3:48

Mikhail Pletnev                            3:10

Walter Gieseking                        3:12

Vladimir Ashkenazy                    3:15

Josef Hofmann                            3:20

Joseph Villa                                  3:20

Anna Fedorova                             3:36

Ivo Pogorelich                              4:18

 
With the exception of one of Yuja Wang’s two performances and Ivo Pogorelich’s outlier, my early 2023 recordings (not included in Table 1), which ranged from 3:40 to 3:50, were slower than those of the professional pianists. Indeed, I had been playing too slowly.

My 1976 and 2023 Performances of the Scriabin Poéme
I’ve posted two files of my Poéme performances on YouTube; the links to them are given below. 
The 1976 performance is here:[3]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83AI_jFmmFU

If you get an “Advanced Threat  Protection” warning, just click the “Skip Verification” button.

My two best (in my opinion) 2023 performances are here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2nmrKAkrMk
​
I’ve included them both because I couldn’t decide which I liked better. They differ considerably in tempo. 

The 1976 performance, to my ears, sounds more technically assured than either 2023 performance. Dotted rhythms are played more precisely, and the differences between staccato and legato passages are more pronounced. These advantages are particularly noticeable in the Poéme’s short sixteenth-note passages, which occur eight times throughout the piece. 
 
The sixteenth-notes are also played more softly in the 1976 recording than in the 2023 recordings.
Another impression I received is that in the 1976 recording, differences between loud and soft playing are more pronounced than in either 2023 recording. In order to verify my impression, I would have had to somehow measure loudness variability in each performance, while keeping overall loudness constant. Given the limited technology I had at my disposal, I wasn’t able to do this. 

It is interesting that although the duration of the 1976 performance is three seconds longer than it is for the faster of the 2023 performances, the tempos of the first six measures of the Poéme’s two B sections (the first three lines of pages 2 and 4 of the score, respectively) are considerably slower (at 22 and 23 seconds, respectively) than they are in the 1976 performance (19 and 19 seconds, respectively). Tempo variability apparently was greater in the earlier recording.

The second 2023 performance on the video is about 31 seconds, or 17%, slower than the first 2023 performance. It sounds more relaxed than both the 1976 performance and the faster 2023 performance, and at certain times of the day I prefer it over the others. So much for listener reliability. 
 
Discussion
 
Self-Recording
 
Though there is a considerable amount of research on audio and video self-feedback, and on self-regulation in music performance, I was unable to find studies that employed self-recording to the degree that I did in this study. I recorded myself regularly for eight months, made hundreds of recordings, and spent much time listening to them. I continue to use self-recording as part of my regular practice because I find it valuable.
Self-recording makes me self-conscious. I spend much more time evaluating my playing when I’ve recorded myself than when I haven’t. In fact I feel as if another person is in the room when the Zoom Q8 is on.  Even after many months of recording myself, this feeling has not gone away. During a successful recording, I’ll get progressively more anxious the closer I am to the end of the piece. This of course makes it increasingly difficult to produce error-free recordings. On the other hand, recording oneself may be good preparation for playing in front of an audience. 

Record keeping

The data I produced from record keeping was not useful, especially as it may have been unreliable. It is difficult to count mistakes while playing. My overall evaluations (on a 100-point scale) of how well I played after finishing a take may be more reliable than counting errors, but my standards may have changed from month to month.  There was an important benefit of record keeping, however: it motivated me. On a day-to-day basis, I have difficulty detecting improvement. Even over longer periods this is not easy—not only because improvement at an instrument comes slowly, but because it is difficult to accurately recall how well I played, say, a month or two earlier.

Listening and watching model performances

Listening and watching recordings and videos by professional musicians made me aware of many details in the music that otherwise I might have overlooked. I adopted a few fingerings from other videos, and made note of the surprisingly frequent moments when professionals played something different from what the score indicated.

Sometimes listening to others made me aware of certain aspects of performance that I wanted to avoid. Many experts injected what I thought was too much rubato into their performances. Others omitted certain details in the music that I felt were indispensable. Musicians can become hypercritical when listening to other musicians play “their” piece, and I am no exception.

Of the three interventions, my guess is that self-recording was most influential in helping me improve. It was also the most cringe-inducing. I hated hearing when I sounded like “two elephants,” as my teacher sometimes described my hands when I played too loudly or clumsily. Even worse was when I sounded too timid. Observation helped me notice mistakes both of omission and commission, but even more important was how listening to my own performances helped me to see if I was making compelling music.
I could have recorded myself without video, but decided to include it primarily to observe how my fingers, hands, arms, and body moved. I don’t think there was any connection between these movements and how well a take sounded. Nor do I believe that there was anything problematic in my technique, as shown in the videos[4].
 
Performance differences

Was I able to play Scriabin’s Poéme in 2023 as well as I did in 1976? The three performances did not differ much with regard to accuracy. Moreover, the faster of the two 2023 performances was played at the same tempo and with similar rhythmic control as the 1976 performance. Nevertheless, there are a few aspects of the 1976 performance that I didn’t—or couldn’t—emulate 46 years later. Differences between staccato and legatoplaying are more evident in the 1976 recording. Moreover, the earlier recording sounds more improvisatory through its use of a wider dynamic range and greater tempo variability, and by making changes in the music suddenly rather than gradually. Consequently, I believe that the earlier recording achieves a sense of freedom and vividness that is lacking in the recent performances. On the other hand, the slower 2023 performance has a relaxed charm that is perhaps more in line with Faubion Bowers’ description of the Poéme than is the 1976 performance.

I had long known that wide dynamic range in performance contributes to expressivity. Patterson (1974), however, showed that in certain cases a pleasing effect of smoothness could be achieved by playing within a restricted dynamic range[5]. A case might be made that such smoothness is appropriate in the Poéme, given its relatively calm nature. If so, my 2023 performances may be better suited to the musical content of the Poémethan I think they are. 
 
Limitations of the performer
I found it difficult to radically alter my playing after I had learned the Poéme well. I might listen to a take, for example, and resolve to play the following one more quickly. When I would listen afterward, confident that I had succeeded, I would discover that I had shaved off only a second or two from the earlier take. What I thought I had been doing while playing did not match what I actually did. Or I’d be satisfied with a take, thinking that it was at least as good as my 1976 recording. Then I’d listen to the 1976 recording afresh and find that my latest recording had fallen short yet again. My inability to achieve the level of playing evident in the 1976 recording was the main reason I continued practicing a three-minute piece for eight months.
Eventually I was able to match my target speed of 2:55—the duration of my 1976 performance—but it took me much so-called deliberate learning to get there. Perhaps the importance of deliberate learning lies not so much in paying attention as it does in its promotion of a willingness to experiment.

Reliability

A comparison of the artistic value in my Poéme performances must begin with the understanding that, beyond technical proficiency, preferences sometimes change with the wind. I prefer my 1976 performance of the Poéme to either of the 2023 performances most of the time, but not all of the time. I continue to experience some indecision in determining which of my recordings is best. It is possible that even for the most serious of listeners, performance preference may change—not just over months and years, but within a day or even an hour.

I don’t recall how difficult it was for me to learn the Poéme back in the mid-1970s. My guess is that relearning it last year took longer, and was more arduous. Here’s another guess: older pianists learn new pieces more slowly than do younger pianists. They may be more reluctant to learn new pieces as well.
The specific circumstance of the 1976 performance may have resulted in a freer performance than anything I could have produced, either recently or 46 years ago. I had played the Poéme at the end of a long recital, and it was preceded on its second half by two highly emotional and virtuosic pieces: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso. When it was time to play the Poéme, I may have been unusually inspired and relaxed. Such a potentially idiosyncratic situation shows how my study is subject to the weaknesses of many case studies, in that circumstances may have been unique enough to make the validity of generalizations from it suspect. 

Problems of cause and effect

One might consider self-recording, record keeping, and listening and watching model performances to be the three independent variables in this case study. A problem with this formulation is that there is no control group. Indeed, the only real “treatment” here is the passage of time. Musicians change in performance proficiency for many reasons, including physical and cognitive aging, increased knowledge of music, aesthetic development, the influences of other musicians, and changes in the amount of practice. If performances were not to change much over many years, it is unclear whether we should marvel at how resistant they are to the effects of time, or wonder about the musician’s lack of artistic growth.

It would be interesting to gain a greater sense of how musical performance changes with age. There appear to be wide differences between individuals. Most of us have witnessed in concert both musicians who should have quit years ago and musicians who appear to be ageless, for example. Also, knowledge of what aspects of musical technique and expressiveness are most susceptible to the effects of time has not been extensively researched. Knowledge in this respect might be gained by having older accomplished musicians relearn music that they recorded long ago but haven’t practiced recently. 

In certain sports (swimming, gymnastics, tennis), peak performance comes early. For musicians, this may or may not be the case. Pianists such as Artur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Claudio Arrau, and Menachem Pressler pleased audiences well into their 80s (90s in the case of Pressler). On the other hand, at a purely technical level these pianists were far superior when they were in their 40s. If in fact their later performances can be shown to be more musically satisfying than their earlier ones, it would be interesting to know how the older masters accomplished such miracles. Is superior late-life performance a consequence of having experienced more of life, and of music? Or is this supposition false, and the goodness of a musical performance primarily depends on the performer’s technique?

Implications

The literature on playing the piano is enormous. Hundreds of books and studies have been written on technique, piano teaching, historical performance practice, and practical advice for pianists of all kinds and at all levels. More are filled with preparatory exercises written by the likes of Cramer, Hanon, Czerny, John Thomson, and countless others—to say nothing of technical exercises and etudes—real music!—composed by Bach, Clementi, Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms.

With fecundity comes disagreement, and with disagreement comes the need for answers. Perhaps the most obvious controversy in piano performance relates to technique. Should a pianist play with curved or flat fingers (Zhdanov, 2023)? High or low wrist? How much involvement of the forearms, upper arms, and entire upper body is ideal?

One might question the implied either-or dichotomy inherent in these questions. In sports, there is considerable variability in certain well practiced motions such as tennis serve, baseball pitching and batting, golf swings, and basketball foul shooting. Similarly, it is possible that there is no one right way of playing the piano. Or maybe there is? If we look to experimental research on the topic, we find little to guide us other than motion studies. A partial bibliography of such studies (Turner et. al, 2021), reveals that this research consists primarily of case studies—alike in form though not in the specifics of what I’ve done in this case study.

When it comes to researching how to play the piano, there may be little alternative to the case study. We cannot randomly assign students to treatments in order to answer even basic questions such as whether practicing scales versus appropriate control activities is beneficial, what warmup exercises and technical approaches are most resistant to injury, and whether practicing beyond three, six, or nine hours a day has long-term negative consequences. Indeed, almost all of ChatGPT’s recommendations in Appendix A have come down to us as given truths learned through extensive experience. There is value in them—probably. On the other hand, I haven’t used a metronome in fifty years. What have I been missing?

In conclusion, one case study about piano playing demonstrates nothing. But maybe ten, or a hundred, can.
 

References
 
Bowers, Faubion (1996). Scriabin: a Biography. Second edition, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.T., & Tesch- Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406.

Hallam, S. (1997). The development of metacognition in musicians: Implications for education. British Journal of Music Education, 14(01), 19-34.

Krampe, R. T. & Ericsson, K.A. (1996). Maintaining excellence: Deliberate practice and elite performance in young and older pianists. Journal of Experiment Psychology: General, 125(4), 331-359.

Lehmann, A. C. & McPherson, G. E. (2002). Conceptions of musical ability. Research Studies in Music Education, 18(1), 19-32.

Patterson, B. (1974). Musical dynamics. Scientific American, 231(5), 78-95.

Piano World Forum (2011). https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1688281/1.html

Shea, J. B., & Morgan, R. L. (1979). Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5(2), 179-187.

Turner, C., Visentin, P, Oye, D., Rathwell, S., & Gongbing, S. (2021). Pursuing artful movement science in music performance: single subject motor analysis with two elite pianists. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 128(3) 1252–1274. 

Varela, W., Abrami, P., & Upitis, R. (2014). Self-regulation and music learning: A systematic review. Psychology of Music, 1-20. 

Wapnick, J.  (1987).  A comparison of tempo selections by professional editors, pianists, and harpsichordists in Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, Book I. In C. K. Madsen  and C. A. Prickett (eds.), Applications of Research in Music Behavior. University of Alabama Press, 190-203.

Zhdanov, D. (2023). A SCANDALOUS Theory about Horowitz's peculiar Piano Playing Technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6iVT1qyj_8

Zimmerman, B. J., & Kitsantas, A. (2002). Acquiring writing revision skill: Shifting from process to outcome self-regulatory goals. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(4), 660-668.
 
 
Appendix A: ChatGPT 3.5 Presents Effective Ways for Practicing at the Piano
 
Effective piano practice involves a combination of focused and strategic approaches to improve technique, musicality, and overall performance. Here are some tips for making your piano practice more effective:

1. Set Clear Goals: 
Define specific, measurable goals for each practice session. Whether it's mastering a particular piece, improving a specific passage, or working on technical skills, having clear objectives helps keep your practice focused.

2. Practice Regularly: 
Consistency is key. Regular, shorter practice sessions are often more effective than infrequent, lengthy ones. Aim for daily practice to build muscle memory and reinforce learning.

3. Warm-Up: 
Begin each practice session with a warm-up to prepare your fingers and hands for playing. Simple scales, arpeggios, and hand-independence exercises can help increase flexibility and prevent injury.

4. Focus on Technique: 
Dedicate part of your practice time to technical exercises. Work on scales, finger exercises, and other drills to improve finger strength, dexterity, and overall technique.

5. Practice Slowly: 
Start practicing at a slow tempo to ensure accuracy and control. Gradually increase the speed as you become more comfortable with the passage. Playing slowly helps build muscle memory and ensures you learn the correct fingering and hand coordination.

6. Isolate Challenging Sections: 
Identify the challenging sections of a piece and isolate them for focused practice. This could involve practicing a specific measure, a tricky transition, or a complex rhythm until you master it before integrating it back into the whole piece.

7. Use a Metronome: 
Practice with a metronome to improve timing and rhythm. Start at a slow tempo and gradually increase it as you become more comfortable. This helps develop a steady sense of tempo and precision in your playing.

8. Practice Hands Separately: 
Break down complex passages by practicing each hand separately. This allows you to focus on the specific challenges each hand presents and ensures that both hands are proficient before combining them.

9. Listen Actively: 
Pay attention to the sound you produce. Listen for tone quality, dynamics, and expression. Active listening helps develop a musical ear and enhances your interpretation of the piece.
 
10. Record Yourself: 
Use a recording device to capture your playing. Listening to recordings of your practice sessions provides valuable feedback, allowing you to identify areas that need improvement and track your progress over time.

11. Take Breaks: 
Avoid long practice sessions without breaks, as fatigue can lead to diminished focus and increased likelihood of mistakes. Taking short breaks helps maintain mental freshness and physical relaxation.

12. Experiment with Different Interpretations: 
​Once you have mastered the technical aspects, experiment with different interpretations of the piece. Explore variations in dynamics, phrasing, and tempo to add expressiveness to your playing.

Remember that effective practice is not just about the amount of time spent but the quality of that time. Tailor your practice routine to address your specific needs and goals, and be patient and persistent in your efforts to improve.

 
Appendix B: ChatGPT 3.5 Presents Research Dealing With Effective Ways of Practicing at the Piano
 
Research on effective piano practice has explored various aspects of learning, including cognitive processes, motor skills, and pedagogical approaches. Here are some key areas of research related to effective piano practice:

1. Deliberate Practice:
The concept of deliberate practice, popularized by psychologist Anders Ericsson, emphasizes focused and purposeful practice. Studies in music education, including those specific to piano, support the idea that deliberate practice, which involves setting specific goals, receiving feedback, and repeating challenging tasks, leads to greater skill development.

Reference: Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406.

2. Slow Practice and Chunking:
Research suggests that practicing at slower tempos can enhance accuracy and learning, particularly when focusing on complex passages. This aligns with the concept of "chunking," where information is organized into meaningful units. Slow practice allows for the deliberate chunking of musical information.

Reference: Hallam, S. (1997). The development of metacognition in musicians: Implications for education. British Journal of Music Education, 14(01), 19-34.

3. Motor Learning and Memory:
Studies in motor learning and memory provide insights into the physical aspects of piano playing. Research indicates that distributed practice (spacing out practice sessions over time) is more effective than massed practice (cramming). This aligns with the idea that consolidation of motor skills and memory occurs more efficiently with distributed practice.

Reference: Shea, J. B., & Morgan, R. L. (1979). Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5(2), 179-187.

4. Auditory Feedback and Self-Monitoring:
Studies exploring the role of auditory feedback in piano practice suggest that musicians who actively engage in self-monitoring and adjust their playing based on auditory information demonstrate improved performance outcomes. This supports the importance of developing a keen musical ear during practice.

Reference: Lehmann, A. C., & McPherson, G. E. (2002). Conceptions of musical ability. Research Studies in Music Education, 18(1), 19-32.

5. Practice Strategies and Self-Regulation:
Research in music education emphasizes the importance of teaching students effective practice strategies and fostering self-regulation. Providing students with tools to set goals, monitor their progress, and adapt their practice strategies can contribute to more efficient learning.

Reference: Zimmerman, B. J., & Kitsantas, A. (2002). Acquiring writing revision skill: Shifting from process to outcome self-regulatory goals. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(4), 660-668.

While these studies offer valuable insights, it's essential to recognize that individual differences play a significant role in effective practice. Tailoring practice strategies to an individual's learning style, goals, and preferences is key to optimizing the effectiveness of piano practice.

 


Footnotes:

[1] ChatGPT’s information appears accurate, though incomplete. It doesn’t include anything about fingering, the study of musical style, the effects of social reinforcement, the uses of imagery, and the effectiveness of practice by time of day.

[2] The timings of Alexander Scriabin’s recordings of the Poéme, though quite slow (3:30 and 3:43), are suspect, as they come from music rolls. For this reason, they are not included in Table 1.

[3] I fiddled around with trying to imbed with performance within this paper, but abandoned the idea out of frustration.

[4] I hate how I look in profile, which is why, for a time, I video-recorded myself so that my fingers were shown but my head was outside the viewing frame.

[5] This was the case for certain woodwind instruments, such as the oboe and bassoon, when performers were playing scales.

In your twilight years, having hung up your gloves (or sheathed your knife), you don’t want to keep doing what you did throughout your life: a change, a change—your kingdom for a change! A lawyer will walk away from his clients, a doctor from his patients, a general will paint china, a diplomatist turn to fly-fishing.
 
Saul Bellow, The Bellarosa Connection
 
Not everyone agrees with the narrator’s contention. Indeed, Bellow’s last novel, Ravelstein, was published when the author was eighty-five. I decided, however, to follow the narrator’s advice. I have been writing fiction for twelve years now, the last four full-time. I don’t consider myself retired. I merely have switched professions. My accountant begs to differ.

Nothing in my previous professional life prepared me. Indeed, to contend that novel writing differs from scientific writing understates the obvious: styles of the two are diametrically opposed. It is difficult to conceive of a worse preparation for an aspiring novelist than to spend forty years collecting and writing up scientific research.

Nevertheless, similarities exist. Both scientist and novelist make things up. They hypothesize. As a scientist, I would ask questions such as “Do nonmusical factors such as attractiveness, dress, and stage behavior affect evaluations of musical performance?” As a novelist, my questions so far are these:
 
                              To what extremes will a person go to save another’s life?

                              Is a dating website for suicidal people a good idea?

                              Is life worth living?
 
It is curious that in both disciplines there are no immediate answers. One scientific study by itself proves nothing, and the same is true for one novel.

A scientist of course cannot make up answers. She designs an experiment, runs it, and reports what was found. The successful writer of fiction, on the other hand, creates a compelling narrative consistent with human behavior. Given what we know about individual differences, the imperative to be consistent is hardly a limitation; rather, it provides more opportunities than the novelist can possibly exploit.

Research in fiction

“Writing out of one’s ass” is the phrase that the literary world reserves to describe fiction contrived without regard to the way things really are[1]. One does not employ this phrase admiringly. Its application indicates that the writer has not done her homework, and it assumes that the resulting product is inferior to what it would have been the case had background research been carried out with diligence.

One might question this assumption. Though it is clear that the historical novelist must be accurate, the need for other novelists to adhere to reality is less obvious. One writer, Jim Crace, has gone out of his way to make up imaginary places, plants, trees, and objects in his novels. Few people mind:
 
Jim Crace is a liar. His novels are peppered with invented detail cunningly disguised as fact: Tarbony trees, Boulevard Liqueur, manac beans, Panache automobiles, swag flies, a wise old poet named Mondazy. A careless reader will mistake the make-believe for realist detail—which is all part of the plan. (Begley, 2003)
 
In most cases, however, reality checks are necessary. Novelistic research corrects inaccurate impressions. A few pages in my first novel, The View North from Liberal Cemetery (2014), are set in the Liberal High School library, circa 1940. I knew from online research that the population of Liberal, Kansas back then was approximately 5,000. Surely its high school, built in 1913, had to be small; In my imagination, its library was no larger than a large closet.

I visited Liberal in 2007. The old high school, boarded up by then, surprised me. It was a massive brick building. Thanks to a 1949 high school yearbook I found in the Liberal Town Library, I learned that the school had twenty-six classrooms. A photo of its library showed that it was a large airy room, and the yearbook informed me that it contained seventeen hundred volumes. Here is how I described it:
 
At 11:15 a.m.on Wednesday, November 20th, 1940, I entered the Liberal High School library. Other than the boy’s gymnasium and the auditorium, the library was the largest room in the school. A double-door archway entrance contributed to its grandness, and the sixteen windows on your right as you walked in, arranged in four two-by-two squares and all well above eye level, made it the brightest room in the school. One thousand seven hundred books occupied oak bookcases lining its walls, and fourteen rectangular tables, each with four standard-issue wooden chairs assigned to it, took up every inch of floor space.
 
I suppose I could have perversely kept my original conception of Liberal High School as a one-room log cabin standing all by its lonesome in the middle of a Kansas prairie. The image is dramatic, but there are people still alive who know better.

Let me correct a misconception at this point. It is commonly believed that people read novels for pleasure, and for insights into human behavior. I believe that they also read them for information. A novel that teaches the reader nothing about the real world, be it how a whaling ship operates, how gloves are cut to measure, or what bizarre American roadside attractions could have been visited in the 1950s, is a novel doomed to fail. These days, many readers want to learn about the externals as well as the internals of lives. 
  
The necessity for interpretation

Writers of scientific studies strive to summarize findings clearly and accurately. The fiction writer does the opposite. She doesn’t aim for obfuscation and inaccuracy. Rather, she filters the data so that it reads as if written fresh, even like poetry in some cases, on the page. 

In my second novel, Let’s Go Out on a Date, there is a scene in which the sleep-deprived protagonist, Julian Hershtik, hangs on for dear life to Beatrice Tracquinelle as she blasts her Harley-Davidson down several miles of the FDR Drive. Before writing the scene, I watched these two YouTube videos:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6ekchEj1Hc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1KgMJn5VZI
 
In both videos, all is peaceful. The sun shines, and traffic is surprisingly light. In the novel, however, Julian and Beatrice believe they are fleeing from the police. Julian’s state of mind is markedly different from mine as I watched the videos, so my task was to capture what he is feeling—fun for me, though not for my character. I chose details from the videos and altered the pacing, and I granted the reader access to Julian’s thinking:
 
Oh I was so tired! Fear kept me awake, but instead of focusing on “the long view,” as driver education instructors advocate, I absorbed random snippets from an avalanche of stimulation. I couldn’t filter. I’ve heard it said that people facing imminent death replay the totality of their lives in their heads. Life experiences flash before them in a few seconds, as if viewing a rapid series of photographs. Not me. Too tired to construct such images, I absorbed my environment without discrimination. We passed under a building. Multiple pillars on our left broke up the light, creating shadow stripes. My life was on the line and I was thinking, Holy shit, those stripes are cool. A diamond-shaped sign in yellow appeared to our left before we reached the first of several underpasses. Written in black was 12’ 3”. Wonderful. Say you’re a truck driver. Two hundred yards separate your thirteen-foot-high truck from the underpass, so you realize that in a few seconds, kaboom, instant vehicular crewcut. What to do, stop on a dime? Then what?

Random stimuli assaulted me. I registered signs titled E. 34 St. Ferry Landing, NYU Medical Center, Geraldine H. Coles Laboratories, Alexandria Center in big white block letters, Weight Limit 8000 Pounds(prompting me to recall one of my favorite films from when I was a kid, Destination Moon), No Fee Apts, and Litter Removal Next 1 Mile Ibex adopt-a-highway.Kids off to our right played basketball in cages. A slobbering Labrador retriever’s head hung out of a VW Golf driven by a guy wearing sunglasses. His car blasted mindless misogynistic rap (“Hey babe, give it to me now, ’cause I’m the king and you’re the thing”) at a volume loud enough to blow out both his and the dog’s eardrums. Instead of wondering how to cushion myself from a fall, or how best to deflect a collision with a Yaris driven by a texting teenager to our right, I observed the unimportant things with a clarity I rarely experience in unthreatening situations. I imagined what Geraldine H. Coles looked like. I got as far as coiffured hair, wrinkled face, and dressed out of the pages of Vogue before I was distracted by the magnificent Williamsburg Bridge, popping up in front of us like a silvery Godzilla sleeping on its side. Beatrice darted us two lanes to the right and accelerated up the Exit 5 ramp onto Houston Street. She drove us a block west, stopped at a red light, and I exhaled.
 
The Williamsburg Bridge looked not so much like a sleeping Godzilla as a sleeping Godzilla’s backbone[2]. No matter at this point in the narrative, because Julian is so tired and stressed that to him, anything can look like almost anything else. 
   
In Let’s Go Out on a Date, both Julian and his novelist conduct research. To decide whether to set up his dating website for suicidal people, Julian learns all he can about suicide: its history, how it is viewed within current Western society, populations at risk for it, and how it might be prevented. He determines whether such a site already exists, and if it likely would be profitable. What skills would he need to run it? How much would it cost, and how would it be staffed? It also behooves Julian to anticipate unintended consequences. Several such events occur in the novel, including one that he finds particularly upsetting—some of the site’s members join Let’s Go Out on a Date not to establish relationships, but to die together.

Given that I was writing a novel rather than an essay, I had to figure out a way to present this information in a way that would intrigue the reader. I began by researching the topic—not exhaustively, because that would have been impossible, but selectively. I read three books (Alvarez, 1990; Critchley, 2001; Hecht, 2013), as well as the Wikipedia article on suicide. I studied websites such as Lost All Hope and Speaking of Suicide, and examined dating websites in order to determine if some of them intersected with suicide. None did, though some centered on depressed people (Depression Dating) and people with mental illness (No Longer Lonely).

I included a few weird factoids, such as the following one, from Al Alvarez’s The Savage God:

Even in the civilized Athens of Plato, the suicide was buried outside the city and away from other graves; his self-murdering hand was cut off and buried apart.
 
Here is how I incorporated that information in the novel. The passage, as is the entire book, is in Julian’s voice:
 
It was common practice back then to slice off the hand that administered the coup de grâce. It would be buried far from the body, so as not to taint the corpse with sin. One might therefore wonder: where did all the hand graveyards go? Surely at least one of them must have survived. What great tourist attractions they would have made. Imagine a typical tombstone inscription: Roland Finch’s Left Hand, 1218-1246. As for Roland Finch’s corpse proper, the inscription on its tombstone might have concluded with Rest in Pieces.
 
The passage can be omitted from the novel, as it is not necessary to the plot. I kept it because it gives some insight into Julian’s character. He has a sarcastic side, and in the middle of researching a dark topic, he is able to make a joke. I felt that the reader would find the joke funny. Who knows, I may be wrong.

I had Julian report on the suicide videos that he (and I) viewed. He locates The Bridge online. It is a one-hour documentary, and it mainly consists of interviews with friends and family members of people who suicided by jumping from the Golden State Bridge. The film’s director, Eric Steel, hired a crew to film the bridge continuously throughout all of 2004. Twenty-three of the twenty-four people who jumped that year were captured on film[3]. Though the jumps themselves occupy a tiny fraction of the documentary, I viewed enough for Julian to describe them thusly:
 
Because the movie’s suicides are shown from afar rather than close up, the viewer’s reactions are muted. The moment of death itself gets airbrushed out by the opacity of San Francisco Bay. Someone has just died, yet the violence perpetuated on his or her body seems almost an aesthetic occurrence rather than a gut-wrenching one. The videos I watched afterward, however, left little to the imagination. 
 
Once again, Julian doesn’t simply describe the jumps; he adds how they affected him, thus livening (I hope) the narrative. The descriptions also were designed to disturb the reader. Murders and suicides are reported in our society so frequently that many of us have become inured to both their violence and their significance. We forget that someone has lost a life. 
  
Julian watches individual suicides viewable on the internet. I’ll spare the links; suffice it to say that they were as upsetting as one might imagine. But how to present them in the novel to maximize their impact?
I used a technique that might be called accelerando. The first two suicides were described extensively. Here is the first one. Its description is based on fact, and was reported in the New York Times (Dewan, 2004). Julian’s interpretation does not wander far from the New York Times article:
 
Paris Lane was a young black man who grew up disadvantaged. His parents died of AIDS. He lived in a rough Bronx neighborhood, hung out with gangs, committed petty crimes, and struggled in school. Nevertheless, he had potential. His foster mom supported and loved him, he had a lively outgoing personality, and he rapped like a hair-trigger Gatling gun—fast, sharp, bursting with energy. Then his girlfriend broke up with him.

The pair stand in a foyer of a Bronx apartment building, by an elevator. She gives him a last hug. It’s an empathic attempt—not at all dismissive, but tender, as if rather than breaking up she is saying au revoir to a lover who is about to fight in a faraway war.

The elevator door opens. She gets in, the door shuts. Paris stares at the closed door as he removes a handgun from his right coat pocket. He opens his mouth, positions the gun inside it, fires. His head jerks back just an inch, and he falls straight down.
 
I devoted slightly less space to the suicide of Ricardo Lopez, the would-be murderer of the Icelandic singer Björk, then launched into a series of thirteen additional suicides, all presented briefly: 
 
Marcus Jannes, a Swedish twenty-one-year-old kid wearing a red t-shirt on which is written, “JUST DO IT,” hangs himself using a window cord. An anonymous guy dressed in a freshly ironed white shirt douses his head and shirt with gasoline, lights a piece of paper with a match, applies the flame to his body, and shrieks in pain. A man, naked except for his black underwear, cuts his neck repeatedly using a razor. He’s lying in a bloodstained tub. After a few minutes, his head tilts to one side and stays there. A nineteen-year-old woman live-streams her own death up to the moment before she throws herself in front of a train. A thousand people watch on Periscope, a video-oriented social media site. A guy in a store shoots himself in the chest because his ex-wife won’t reconcile with him. He remains standing for twenty-five seconds, then falls to the floor. A Japanese girl, nineteen years old, is found hanging in her house. She cannot be cut down until the police arrive. One man narrates, others talk in the background, and a woman, perhaps the girl’s mother, wails. A pretty Syrian university student, fashionably dressed in a maroon top and dark jeans, hangs herself in her apartment. A young Mumbai man jumps in front of an oncoming train. He doesn’t die, but is cut in half. People on the crowded platform turn away. Eugene Sprague spends an hour and a half on Golden Gate bridge. He’s got tattoos all over his face, his long hair flows with the breeze. He’s wearing a sharp black leather coat, and he looks pensive rather than despondent. Suddenly he climbs onto the railing and lets himself fall backward.      
Another young man points a handgun at his right temple and fires. A girl, this one wearing a heavy red wool sweater, places her head in a noose and fastens the rope to a ceiling fixture. She hangs herself by kicking away the wooden platform on which she had been standing. A woman jumps off a bridge. An elderly man with cancer swallows poison.
 
In a literary workshop, I was criticized for ‘overkill[4].’ Fair enough, had it not been that I wanted to create a cumulative effect great enough to motivate Julian to leave his room, walk to the beach, and stand before the ocean for a good fifteen minutes before deciding not to attempt suicide a second time.

Here is another example: Julian listens to Sonya Grankovich, a woman he is smitten with for reasons that I won’t go into here, play a fragment of a Rachmaninoff Prelude:
 
“I’m surprised.”

“What, that I play the piano?” 

“That you play it so beautifully,” I said, pretending to ignore the staggering effect of her appearance on my person. 

“I was playing at half speed. At tempo it’s nothing more than a trifle, but when it’s played slower than the composer intended, you cover it in gold leaf. It gleams. It’s a prayer, spoken softly in the midst of a Siberian pine forest, and it’s sincere and it’s beautiful, and its tones bloom, as if dozens of white roses were floating in the air. The music weaves such beguilement that all the animals in the forest, from the tiger on down to the chipmunk, become at peace with each other. Women as well.”

“What about men?”

“There are no men in this story.”
 
No question about it: if you write about music in fiction, you have to take the referential path. A chapter later, Julian Sonya plays a complete performance, plus an elaboration:
 
What strange music. It flickered between a dance and a thought, stopping and starting unexpectedly as if alternating between doubt and certainty of its place in the universe. Yes, no, maybe. A gentle bumpity-bump melody, then a pause. An infectious tune stops dead in its tracks, allowing two eighteenth-century dancers dressed in frilly garments and elegant sandals to bow to each other with exaggerated courtesy. This Prelude is a lost world. It’s beautiful, but fragile.

“It doesn’t know where it’s going. I could reorder some of its measures and it would sound just as good.”
Sonya began the Prelude again, but immediately morphed it into something different. She added rumbling repeated patterns with her left hand, and multiplied what had been the spare sound of two bells by a factor of four or five. Her fingers flashed up and down the keyboard like laser beams. Although she had begun quietly, within the second minute of her improvisation the piano sounded like an orchestra. She filled the house with a succession of tones, chords, runs, and melodies expressing joy and suffering simultaneously.
 
Here, Sonya loses some of her inhibitions, which was necessary in the novel not to get close to Julian, but to confess a terrible incident from her past.

Methodology

I researched and wrote the novel concurrently. Sometimes I paused the writing to read a book or to search out some tidbit of information. At other times, I wrote and hoped that forthcoming research would not force me to modify my work. Often it did. On the other hand, I have found that completion of the research component before starting the novel is impossible. Many but not all novelists have an idea concerning where their plot with take them. Some, like me, don’t. 

Both music researchers and novelists may on occasion fail to distinguish between collection and utilization. It is possible, for example, for a literature review to be too comprehensive. Such completeness may cause the review’s argumentative flow to slow to a trickle, like a clogged shower drain. 

The same issue may arise in novel writing. A novelist might spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars gathering background information for her work. That does not mean that she should include as much background information in the novel as possible.

Many fiction writers undertake research not just because they must do so in order to write a good book, but for two additional reasons. First, they enjoy it. They travel to restaurants, hotels, and cities they otherwise never would have visited. They interview interesting people, read history and background information, search out locales on Google Earth, and use YouTube to travel down highways, learn about illnesses, and watch instructive videos. What fun!

Second, research operates as an artistic constraint. As the style of a musical composition limits what is acceptable, so does the real world limit what the writer can make up. The scientist and the novelist both operate in restricted spaces. No scientist would ask, “Is music good for people?” The question is so general that an answer is not possible. As Madsen & Madsen demonstrate early in  Experimental research in music (1970), testable questions must be highly specific. Similarly, the novelist is not free to go, to paraphrase the Star Trek television series, where no one has gone before. The writing of fiction is restricted by setting, timing, character, likelihood, and, for the most part, the laws of physics.

Restrictions are necessities in all of the arts. Some are imposed from without, as for example the budget set aside for the production of a movie, or the size of a stage for a musical. Others are self-imposed. A photographer eliminates all colors except grays, a poet completes a work in fourteen lines, a composer writes a short piece for solo violin. In novel writing, restrictions often change throughout the writing process. A work becomes longer or shorter from draft to draft as plot elements get elaborated upon or eliminated. A subplot that seemed necessary early on now appears false. A character or two vanish; the description of a house party becomes more detailed.

For the novelist, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and even whole sections of a manuscript are moving targets. Unfortunately, so is the novelist’s mind. What appears good one day seems trite the next. It is for this reason that most writers revise unceasingly, but that is a topic for another day. 

References
 
Alvarez, A. (1990). The savage god: a study of suicide. New York City: Norton & Co.

Begley, A. (2003). Jim Crace, the Art of Fiction. no. 179. The Paris Review, 167. 

Critchley, S. (2001). Notes on suicide. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Dewan, S. (2004). “Video of suicide in Bronx appears on shock web site.” New York Times, April 1. 

Hecht, J. (2013). Stay: a history of suicide and the philosophies against it. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Madsen,  C. K. and  Madsen,  C.  H.  (1970). Experimental  research in  music.  Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
 
Wapnick, J. (2014). The view north from Liberal Cemetery. Montreal: Wapiti Press.

Wapnick, J. (2019). Let’s Go Out on a Date. Unpublished manuscript. 


[1]This argument is relevant to literature centered in the real world. Many genres in fiction writing these days are speculative in nature, allowing authors to violate everything, even the basic laws of physics, with impunity. 

[2]I neglected to mention before that a novelist, or one of her characters, may be unreliable. That is, instead of teaching us how the world is, we (perhaps) infer the truth from lies given to the reader instead.

[3]Only a few jumps appear in the film. The filmmakers saved six lives, as they had a direct phone line to police working on the bridge and would phone in whenever they spotted someone who seemed likely to jump. Most of the jumpers completed their acts too quickly to have been prevented, however.

[4]Overkill? What I wrote is nothing compared to Roberto Bolano’s presentation, one after the other of about a hundred murders of women in his incredible novel, 2666.

The title of this post overstates the scope of this essay. I am an academic, and academics often do such things. At any rate, what I am interested in is how often the word fuck gets used in award-winning contemporary Canadian literary fiction. For the purposes of this essay, fuck includes the word’s variants and derivations (fucked, fucking, fucker, fuck’s, motherfucker, etc.) as well as itself. My interest in the topic arose from the possibility that I may have overused the word in my novel, The View North from Liberal Cemetery. It occurs 95 times. Given that my novel is 95,603 words long, fuck-related words show up once every three-plus pages on average. 

I limited my data mining effort to the five most recent Giller Prize winners. This decision enabled me to compare my novel to ultra-high-class contemporary Canadian fiction. Also, I needed the guidance that only this particular analysis could provide. One day I’d like to have one of my books in the running for the Giller. Actually, I would be happy just making the long list. I want to go to the awards ceremony. The party looks pretty grand on TV, more fun even than raking leaves or shoveling snow.

I acquired ebooks of the Giller winners from 2009 to 2013 and opened them in Marvin, my favorite iPad ebook reader. I used Marvin's capabilities to quantify occurences of fuck, and to calculate each book's total number of words. Here are the results. My novel is included at the bottom of the table for comparison:

and multiplying the result by ten thousand in order to eliminate numbers smaller than one. As can be seen from the chart, Giller winners always employ fuck. In fact, one might reasonably conclude from the data that a book bereft of the word has a snowball’s chance in Hell of taking the prize. Second conclusion: fuck wasn’t used all that frequently by four of the five Giller winners. Fortunately, my novel was saved from anomaly by Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentamentalists. Thanks, Johanna, much appreciated.

Further analysis revealed that all of the three female Giller winners employed motherfucker and/or motherfucking in their books, but neither of the two men did so. Though this "reversal" seems surprising, it merely indicates that men are more likely to avoid longer and more ambiguous words than are women. Fucker has but one meaning, motherfucker at least three.

I was disappointed to learn that none of the award-winning writers used fuckingly. This nonword appeared in an earlier version of my novel. I eliminated it because my Squaw Valley workshop leader, Max Byrd, had double-underlined it and added the comment, “No,” though without further explanation. He probably disapproved of the specific word choice rather than of its adverbial nature, but I won't know for sure unless I ask him, which I don’t think I will.

Next, I attempted to determine if Canadian authors of literary fiction are prudes, relative to American authors. What better way to find out than to compare the F values of Giller Prize winners with those of Pulitzer Prize fiction winners? Here’s the Pulitzer data:

Clearly, Canadian authors are not more fuck-aversive (literarily speaking, that is) than U.S. authors. In fact, the F values total up to 17 in both tables, or a 2.4 mean per book. Note, however, that unlike the Giller Prize, it is possible to win a Pulitzer Prize without including fuck at all. Paul Harding did it with Tinkers (a fabulous book, by the way). On the other hand, Tinkers was a shortish book. Had Mr. Harding added another 50,000 words to it, I’m confident that at least a handful of them would have been fuck-related. In his Enon, after all, an even better book than Tinkers in my estimation, fuck appears 29 times in 72,261 words for a respectable F value of 4.

There are many examples in literary fiction of books attaining higher F values than those reported above. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, for example, contains 213 fucks in 150,369 words (F value = 14). Martin Amis’s Money: a Suicide Note presents the word 198 times in 151,000 words (F value = 13). I was surprised to find that Fifty Shades of Grey employs the word at a much more modest clip: just 117 times in 151,530 words (F value = 7.7).

What’s the all-time record, you ask? Remember, we’re talking literary fiction, not pornography. In a recent New Yorker, James Wood wrote the following of James Kelman’s Booker Prize-winning book, How Late It Was, How Late: “...it was reckoned that ‘fuck’ occurs four thousand times….twenty-one times in the first three pages alone.“ The correct total is actually 2,114, but once you get past a thousand or so, who's counting? How Late It Was, How Late clocks in at 119,000 words. Its F value thus is a staggering 177. Fucking amazing, eh?

All in all, I’m encouraged. My book isn't even close to being an outlier.