One way researchers have begun to make significant improvements to the professional practice of classical music performers is through personalized rehearsing strategies that support the development of a sense of self as an agentic, autonomous, and metacognitive learner. The focus of these types of investigations is on improving the various self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies associated with the behaviors (actions), cognition (thoughts), and affect (feelings) musicians employ when practicing and performing music, and that support a proactive engagement with music making and music learning (McPherson and Zimmerman, 2011; McPherson et al., 2019).

Within music, an important theme in SRL research has focused on helping students apply various tools that can enhance their learning (e.g., McPherson et al., 2018, 2019). These self-regulation behaviors that musicians adopt during their performance have been identified as crucial for improving both performance and learning, as evidenced by Pike (2017) in her case study of a piano student, and with a larger number of advanced, skillful music students who have been shown to engage with this type of activity autonomously, especially when practicing their instrument (Papageorgi et al., 2010).

A major component of self-regulation is metacognition, with the cognitive and motivational component of this construct being seen as crucial to optimizing musicians’ practice (Hallam, 2001; Nielsen, 2011) and performance (Concina, 2019). In music, experts have been shown to demonstrate higher levels of metacognitive competence as they self-regulate themselves while learning (Concina, 2019). In addition, self-regulation behaviors appear to be particularly favored by advanced musicians (Araújo, 2016).

Regardless of the level of expertise, the ability to self-direct one’s learning involves three cyclical phases (see Figure 1) in which an individual analyses a task they are about to complete (forethought), employs various self-control and self-observational skills to focus their attention when completing the task (performance), and then makes self-judgments and experiences self-reactions concerning the quality of their efforts in preparation for the next practice session or performance (self-reflection; Zimmerman and Moylan, 2009; Cleary and Zimmerman, 2011; Cleary et al., 2012; McPherson et al., 2018).

Self-regulation has been linked to the efficiency of music practice and seen as vital in the development of musical expertise (Miksza, 2011; McPherson et al., 2019), especially in the context that expert musicians have typically undertaken thousands of hours of practice to refine their craft (Ericsson et al., 1993). The importance of such experience in connection to the development of expert musical performance has been studied by tracking the behaviors of music students during childhood and adolescence while practicing their instruments (e.g., Gabrielsson, 1999; McPherson and Davidson, 2002; Miksza, 2006, 2007, 2011; Palmer, 2013), as well as the practice efficiency and dedication of classical musicians (e.g., Gruson, 1988; Sloboda et al., 1996; Lehmann and Ericsson, 1998; Chaffin et al., 2002; Jørgensen, 2002; Williamon, 2004; Altenmüller et al., 2006; Lehmann and Jørgensen, 2012; Jørgensen and Hallam, 2016). Much of this research has been influenced by the “deliberate practice” framework of Ericsson et al. (1993), which asserts that focused and attentive forms of practice that are cognitively demanding lead to the best outcomes for skill development (see Platz et al., 2014 for meta-analysis). Other lines of research examine how much of the variance is accounted for by practice alone (McNamara et al., 2014; Bonneville-Roussy and Bouffard, 2015) and the motivational dimensions of novice to expert musician’s engagement when practicing (Nielsen, 2011).

Recently, music students’ motivation (Evans and Bonneville-Roussy, 2016), as well as their deliberate practice approach (Hatfield, 2017) have been studied using self-determination theory. Ryan and Deci’s (2017) self-determination theory (SDT) provides a unified theoretical approach to the holistic study of motivation in musicians (Evans, 2015), including the social, cognitive, affective and behavioral factors mentioned above. Self-determination theory plays a crucial role in understanding the six types of motivation, from amotivation to self-determined or intrinsic motivation as the extreme poles (see Figure 2), particularly over extended periods of time (e.g., Georgiadis et al., 2006; Reinboth and Duda, 2006; Sheldon and Krieger, 2007; Alivernini and Lucidi, 2011; Jang et al., 2012).

The various forms of motivation within the SDT model are related to the satisfaction of three fundamental human psychological needs: autonomy (volition, personal choices and decisions), competence (self-efficacy) and relatedness (social connectedness) (Ryan et al., 1995; Hagger et al., 2006). Thus, it is understood that the more these psychological needs are satisfied, the more self-determined autonomous motivation (Deci and Ryan, 2002; Gagné and Deci, 2005; Hagger et al., 2006) and, on the contrary, the more they are thwarted, the more the individual will procrastinate, adopt defensive reactions, and end up feeling demotivated and/or helpless.

Researchers in music have highlighted the importance of intrinsic motivation to overcome difficulties when experiencing failure (e.g., McPherson, 2012). To date, little research has dealt with the intertwined dimensions of self-determination and self-regulation in relation to both practice and performance. Within one-to-one music studio settings (in depth reviews in Küpers et al., 2014; Evans, 2015) these studies have examined the relationship of SRL and SDT with well-being and participation (Creech et al., 2013; Krause et al., 2019), or the frequency and quality of practice in music students (Evans and Bonneville-Roussy, 2016; Schatt, 2018; Valenzuela et al., 2018).

A mixed-methods, concurrent triangulation design (see Creswell, 2013) was employed, framed in the art-based educational research (ABER) and creative analytical practices (CAP) to generate practice-based knowledge (for an overview, see Gouzouasis, 2019). This research approach embraces the view that significant inroads to increasing knowledge in this area may be achieved through studies in which researchers are active participants who generate data as a result of their membership of the social world being studied (e.g., Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Denzin, 2006). The advantages of employing this type of insider knowledge to reinforce research on expertise development is highlighted in recent publications that advocate the use of such mixed-methods approaches in order to “build a rich picture of phenomena exploring subtle social dynamics and interactions between individuals and employing organizations […] trying to understand what is happening, when, and why” (Yardley et al., 2020, p. 412).

A quasi-experimental approach (León and Montero, 2002) examined within-person change and variability through an intervention that consisted of making self-reflections and filling in surveys across concerts and a commercial recording. More specifically, the study examined whether and how such interventions (independent variable effects: concerts and diary interventions) affect the repeated measures of the dependent variable (basic psychological needs), in trajectories of time (pre-, during-, post-rehearsals) and in different stages (concerts, recording).

The self-reflective approach to this study was framed within Boud et al. (2013) three major elements of reflective thought processes of individuals: (1) returning to the experience immediately after the event has finished, to clarify missed details and perceptions; (2) attending to feelings to assess the affective/emotional impact of the event; and (3) re-evaluating the experience to integrate the new knowledge into one’s existing knowledge or repertory of behaviors.

This was complemented by a single-case descriptive approach to describe the intervention in the real-life context in which it occurred (Yin, 2003). For this, the researchers employed a visual inspection approach to make judgments about whether the independent variable was affecting the dependent variable based on level, trend, and latency (Fisch, 2001). This approach helped to reduce the limitations found in retrospective self-report measures that are frequently used in SRL studies (see McPherson et al., 2019).

The following sections include descriptive statistics for the Likert and dichotomous questions regarding the five types of motivation¹, as well as linear regression results. We also include a section that provides the Leximancer analysis of the self-reflections across concerts.

This study examined the self-regulatory and self-determined processes of a single professional cellist across a period of 100 weeks, as she prepared for performances and a commercial recording. It sought to understand how the cellist’s psychological needs and motivational resources changed across time, and how her behavior, cognition and affect within the social context of performing music publicly was aligned to her use of various self-regulatory processes that impacted (both positively and negatively) her ongoing actions, thoughts and feelings.

The cellist is a professional musician and concert cellist who was capable of undertaking this study as a single participant due to external funding to carry out an artistic research project of this kind, and also having the technical resources and knowledge to prepare the research design described above. She was capable of devising specific goals for her practice, and approaching tasks strategically, particularly in terms of assessing her future success and failure. She also possessed clear artistic career intentions that were evident throughout the project and especially during the performance that culminated in a commercial recording of the literature she prepared. Finally, her strong intrinsic motivational orientation and desired to be autonomous and personally competent formed the basis from which she was able to continuously monitor her practice and choose behaviors that would support her in achieving her goals, particularly by feeling and thinking more positively about herself and her own learning.

There are several factors that helped the cellist in her performance and learning optimization development across the study. On the one hand, there was a clear increase of intrinsic motivation throughout all concerts while external regulation decreased. According to all concerts and the 10 rehearsals sessions within each concert, significant differences were found in these two types of motivation pre- and post-intervention and after all concerts. The cellist explains this in connection to two main factors: (1) the change of pianist for a more supportive one and improving her overall conditions for the project (mental and physical work, better concert venues and instruments), and (2) the desire to become more autonomous, confident, and competent both technically and artistically. This shift toward more specific and intrinsically rewarding music objectives and focused practice as the project developed is consistent with reports from studies dealing with tertiary music students’ practice, where SRL instruction has been used to change traditional learning approaches (Miksza, 2015).

On the other hand, integrated, identified and introjected regulations increased markedly during the project. Significant differences were found as per each concert and all study sessions within a concert, whereas differences pre- and post-intervention and after all concerts were only found for identified regulation what comes to study sessions’ progress within a concert. The results concerning integrated and identified regulation align with the cellist’s continuous desire to learn the necessary skills to succeed in each concert according to her predetermined goals. At the same time, the overall increase in these types of regulations after each concert can be explained because the cellist wanted to avoid external disapproval and achieve her outcomes, even if sometimes she relied on internal pressure to achieve this due to the importance of the project for her and, for example, time and conditions constrains to make it happen—thus keeping a professional attitude for both rehearsals and performances as she focused her attention on preparing for quality concerts. Additionally, the feedback from critics, audience and the expert musician who attended the concerts—generally positive and encouraging—as well as the external funding received during the project, could be linked to the increase of, particularly, introjected regulation, as these narratives were regularly appearing while the cellist was rehearsing in the studio or performing publicly, and therefore extrinsically influencing her learning processes. However, as might be expected through extrinsic forms of motivation, their importance can be interpreted as less influential since they did not appear in the Leximancer analysis.

Overall, this continuous engagement in self-monitoring and self-observation of behavior across the period studied led to an increase in the cellist’s metacognitive ability to apply more progressively complex rehearsal strategies. For instance, as described in section “Description of the aspects featured in all stages,” the cellist monitored her learning by:

She acknowledged that her constant responses on the printed sheets throughout the project cued her desired development as per a choreography of learning habits, strategies, and abilities that she had developed across her entire musical development (McPherson et al., 2019). This also shaped the way she pursued and refined her own identity as a learner (Coll and Falsafi, 2010)—a type of learning mindset that has recently been associated with musicians’ career success and enjoyment (López-Íñiguez and Bennett, 2020)—, in ways that allowed her to thrive motivationally (Ryan and Deci, 2002).

The cellist’s self-determined motivation was studied through a lexicometrical analysis of how relatedness, competence and autonomy acted to increase or decrease motivation by means of more progressive complexity in all stages of preparation. Prototypical phrases selected by the Leximancer software across concerts showed that during rehearsals, the cellist was constantly improving on (1) her technical and strategical learning processes, (2) her mental preparation before concerts, rehearsals with pianists and individual study sessions, (3) her body awareness and physical development as per muscle strength and energy; (4) the conditions that affected all stages, such as different pianists, venue acoustics, type of audience, broadcasting, funding and praise, and (5) her short- and long-term artistic goals.

Our analyses highlight strategies that the cellist adopted to optimize her learning and performance in preparation for concerts and a CD recording. Many of the aspects are also present across the entire life of a musician, such as striving for technical proficiency through progressive muscle development, employing a particular style to a certain repertoire, or working on mental preparation and memory processes. There are, however, a number of aspects inherent in this 100-week preparation cycle that the cellist has not previously experienced for other artistic projects. These include (1) understanding how emotional and professional support from peers is crucial for feeling competent and thriving, (2) working on more creative, stylistic, and improvisatory aspects of music making, particularly in terms of the canon repertoire, to help select better strategies for learning and performances fresh and unique, (3) using video-recording study sessions and rehearsals to better inform the path to a desired outcome, and (4) taking care of the body as a fundamental aspect in the life of a performing musician.

Systematically organizing her own thoughts, feelings and actions in connection to her learning and performance goals, helped the cellist to balance the quality and quantity of practice undertaken during the period of preparation. For instance, working on mental preparation and physical strength, changing her first pianist for a more supportive one, continuously focusing on improving technical and expressive-aesthetic aspects of the repertoire, and becoming more selective with her practicing strategies and the conditions of the study sessions leading up to a series of successful concerts and commercial recording (in line with Usher and Schunk, 2018) ensured that external feedback provided triangulation of the data (contradicting versus supporting).

In fact, the external feedback supported her personal understanding of the overall quality of the project, and that thought by other people, for the solely purpose of being as realistic as possible with regard to the artistic outcomes of the project and its legitimacy in the research field of musical expertise. Overall, she was confident in the quality of her performances, particularly from the fourth concert, and enjoyed pushing herself to work hard and collect the data. This project included music close to her heart that she wanted to perform at a higher level than previously through the use of self-regulation materials and a better understanding of how human motivation functions in her particular case. In fact, she perceived that engaging in self-regulation made her feel more efficient in her practice and experiencing progressively more flow while practicing and performing. This led her to accomplish a number of short- and long-term goals, as has been reported in other research using music students (Miksza and Tan, 2015).

Our results can also be related to the fulfillment of the cellist’s psychological needs. This aligns with previous research in which such satisfaction of needs has been related to autonomous motivation (in music, Evans and Bonneville-Roussy, 2016; in other educational contexts, Standage et al., 2005; Niemiec et al., 2006). However, the negative experiences described when playing with one of the pianists of the project was clearly a demotivator for her. In this regard, a supportive environment—from both other pianists and the praise from experts, public and critics—has been associated with better well-being (in healthcare. Deci and Ryan, 1987; Ferrand et al., 2014; in music education, Krause et al., 2019) and engaging in SRL led the cellist to take action and change this situation. This led to higher levels of enjoyment, engagement, performance, and self-determined motivation, as well as higher perceptions of musical competence—all aspects that could be understood as educational implications to better support students in the fulfillment of their basic psychological needs (Ryan and Deci, 2019).

This study has a number of methodological implications. It documents an innovative research intervention and analysis not employed before in self-regulation studies in music: intentional self-regulation and time-series analysis in music by a musician-researcher who was researching herself. This is also one of the first times that Leximancer analysis has been employed in a music study. Thus, the current study expands the positivist and post-positivist research paradigms (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000) common to the literature on self-regulation and self-determination theories. The study also contributes to the enhancement of more realist, positivist approaches to the field of artistic research where artists research themselves by rigorously merging the eternal divide of theory and practice through a multiplicity of research methods and domain-specific expertise (artistic, psychological). This combined approach is based on the assumption that:

In addition, we are aware that there are other motivational aspects that affect a musician’s practice. Because of this, our ongoing research plans to target the role of academic emotions (as enumerated by Pekrun et al., 2002), quantity and quality of practice (following Ericsson et al., 1993), and the use of learning conditions, processes and results (in line with the model proposed by Pozo et al., 2020) during her practice. Such work will provide a holistic picture of the psychological aspects behind the practice of expert musicians.

We recognize that the study reported here has certain limitations. First, it is restricted to a sample of a single cellist and therefore the results obtained are difficult to generalize to other professional musicians. However, the implications of the use of these reflective materials on the increase of intrinsic motivation and decrease of extrinsic motivation in the cellist across time could be replicated in other longitudinal studies of professional musicians within the classical genre and those of other genres that strive for such outcomes. In this regard, our results do not aim to be prescriptive; instead, they imply that the intra-individual change in highly experienced musicians can be partly explained by intra-mental processes (inside the person), and to some extent through inter-mental processes (between people), as defined by Vygotsky (1978).

Future studies might explore self-determination within chamber music making to consider simultaneously the types of motivational orientations of groups of musicians, given that we did not explore here the motivations of the different pianists who accompanied the cellist. In addition, according to the statistical analysis, in this study we used the concerts (including all study sessions) instead of per 10 sessions to maximize significance power. Thus, high significance of the data is needed because the regressions in this particular case do not measure the independence of data collection (estimates), so the variability are, in fact, underestimates of the correct variability.

A selection of the datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

This study involves human participants and was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from the individuals for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data derived from this research.

GL-Í conceived the presented idea, planned the design of the study, carried out the experiment and artistic project, collected, transcribed, and translated the data, performed the statistical and lexicometrical analyses, and took the lead in writing the manuscript with support from GM in all sections. GM developed the theory in music studies, devised the conceptual ideas of the manuscript, supervised the findings and statistical analysis of this work, contributed to the interpretation and presentation of results, and provided language support, literature advice, and writing encouragement to GL-Í. GL-Í and GM provided critical feedback, discussed the results, and helped shape the final manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.