Anki for music
Using flashcards to manage learning music
I am both a musician and a programmer, and sometimes those interests intersect. Recently, I read this story about using Anki, an open-source application for creating and studying flashcards, to help you learn Javascript. I read up a little bit about spaced repetition methodology, and quickly realized that this methodology was what was driving my use of a googleSheet to keep track of all the pieces of music I’m working on. I had a date field on each entry, and had been using an AppSheet app tied to that spreadsheet to plug a date in when I practiced a song, so that I could instantly see what I had (and hadn’t) been working on.
Another thing that I had already implemented into my AppSheet process was the use of tags. In my spreadsheet, I have 3 tag fields that I use for genre, composer, and other categories. The app can search on those fields, so finding songs with my phone was very easy. Anki has tags built into its process, so I’m already good to go.
So a week ago I set out to put my current spreadsheet of songs into Anki and see how it went. I’m still tweaking the settings and reading the manual a lot, but I’m learning how to apply the patterns I saw emerging from my spreadsheet into Anki’s settings to configure this thing to work optimally. And I really want to do that because the initial results have been really, really good. My mind is blown at how much this has changed my outlook in just the week I’ve been using it, and I’m not even using it well yet.
I have a deck called “music”, and “marie piano” is a sub-deck of it. Already I can imagine a future where there will be a deck called “marie guitar”, and a deck for Marie ‘n Me, etc.
Right now I am allowing it to show me 20 “new” songs a day. You have to take each new item through the learning steps until it becomes “review”, and the settings work slightly differently. I’m playing with this still. I have about 150 pieces of music in there, so I’m limiting it to introducing 20 every day that I haven’t worked on yet.
You can create sub-decks by dragging and dropping them on this screen, and then click the gear to rename it or access the deck options.
This screen tells Anki how to work with cards you’re learning. I tend to play in 3 or 4 sessions throughout the day, so if I’m actively learning a song, it’s helpful to have it introduced in every session. I have my learning steps set to (in minutes) 2 hours, 4 hours, eight hours, and a day. So when the card comes up, I play the song, and if things went well, I say “Good” and it will graduate to the next step, until finally it graduates to becoming a review card. “Again” will put it back to step 1 and start the whole process over.
Anki also has this concept of “sibling” and “related” cards. I have not discovered a use for this functionality; using tags is suiting me perfectly right now, so I just ignore all options about “related” and “sibling” cards. I’ll let you know if that changes.
I’m not doing much with the “Reviews” and “Lapses” options yet. I do have the maximum reviews set to 100 right now, but if I hit that limit, I’ll just increase it. Since each card represents a piece of music that I play, if I’m presented with 100 cards, and I play all those pieces, I will have put in a serious amount of time, so I’ll see how that works. For most of this, I’m just trying the default settings.
I did, however, change the “Ignore answer times longer than” setting to an hour instead of the default minute. Sometimes I work on a single piece for a long time, and it’s okay for Anki to track that time for me. And by checking the “show answer timer” option, I’m getting a sense of how long each piece is, and I will probably start recording that information, because it’s helpful to know.
This is the “browser” screen. I use it to review the cards for what I practiced that day, and make any adjustments I need. All the tags are listed down the left-hand side so I can search on them, and I have 3 “Note” fields on each card that I can use for cheat-sheet notes when I’m doing the song. The card shown is one that I’m actively working on, so I have some notes on the bass line, and the format of the song flow, but after a day or so, I don’t even need these notes any more.
So that’s about it, really. Here’s what my deck looks like today when I select it. It will present me with 20 songs I haven’t seen yet, but in about a week, that number will be limited to new songs as I add them, so that will even out. In the meantime, it will make sure that I don’t neglect pieces that I already have down pretty well. My goal is to be able to keep the entire repertoire in reasonable shape, even as it grows.
Here’s how it looks when the card comes up. I immediately click “Show Answer”, although it doesn’t affect the timer, but this way if there are any notes that I might have made that will help me remember things I need to work on, I can see them before I start.
So after I’ve played the piece, I make a decision: do I need to see it again today, or is tomorrow good enough?
If I choose “good”, it will graduate to the next interval (as I outlined above in “steps”), and be presented accordingly.
“Again” will send it back to Step1 and start the process completely over.
“Easy” will turn it into a review card. I haven’t used that one much yet, so I’ll probably have updates on that down the road.
That’s all I’m going to say for today. This seems like an incredibly useful tool for learning things, and its ability to sync between my laptops and my phone is truly wonderful. I can do all my card editing and reviewing on the computer, and just take my phone to the piano. It tells me how many pieces I’ve played so far each day, and the number of minutes spent doing it, which is good information to have.
The thing that’s so cool about it for me is that it remembers things for me. Often while I’m playing a song, I’ll think of 2 or 3 other songs that I really should play, but by the time I’m done with the song I’m playing, I don’t remember. Now I finish a song, hit “good”, and it tells me which song to play next, and I know that no song is going to fall through the cracks, because I have an 8 day maximum interval set.
Thanks for reading!
