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The purpose of this study was to investigate intermediate musicians’ self-regulated practice behaviors. Thirty sixth- through eighth-grade students were observed practicing band repertoire individually for 20 min. Practice sessions were coded according to practice frame frequency and duration, length of musical passage selected, most prominent musical objective, and practice behaviors. The 600 min of video were parsed into 234 practice frames for analysis. Practice sessions also were rated for overall degree of self-regulation. Reliability of the observational procedures (three observers, 95% to 100% agreement) and self-regulation ratings (two raters, coefficients of .89 to .96) was excellent. Analyses revealed an average of 7.8 practice frames with a mean duration of 2 min 45 s across sessions. Participants most frequently addressed the musical objective pitch accuracy and most commonly selected passages of nine measures in length or greater. The most common practice behaviors were varying tempo, repeating fewer than four measures, repeating more than four measures, and irrelevant playing. Significant relationships were found between self-regulation ratings and frequencies of the behaviors writing on music (r = .55), varying tempo (r = .42), repeating four or more measures (r = .41), and irrelevant playing (r = −.59). Implications for future research and practical applications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to determine if adults are able to remember how much time they actually spent practicing during a past time period of their lives where detailed daily records were kept of actual number of minutes practiced. It also addressed how past practice time relates to their highest level of musical performance across the 30 years on a scale of top-level expert to competent. Responses were divided into six classifications: (1) professional, (2) semiprofessional, (3) free-lance musician/college instructor, (4) music teacher, (5) community musician, and (6) jury/senior recital. Results indicated that after a 30-year period, students are not accurate in assessing past amounts of applied music practice when comparing records of actual practice time to later perceptions of this practice time. Also, there is not a strong relationship between practice time and their highest level of performance, although most participants indicate that they believe that there is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]