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The truth will set you free - but first it's going to hurt 😬 As you start using Deliberate Practice, it's common to find that things seem to be getting worse instead of better. While part of that comes from the "Desirable Difficulty" technique you'll read about in the next section, part may also be due to the fading away of what is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect (named after the researchers who first described it). They discovered that people learning a new subject or skill area are prone to over-estimating their own expertise. In music that means we believe that we are playing better than we really are. For example, imagine that you've listened to that one particular David Gilmore solo hundreds of times. You may now have such a strong and emotionally meaningful mental representation of that remembered version that when you go to play it you're actually hearing David Gilmore rather than yourself! When we start leveraging Deliberate Practice, our perceptions and reflections sharpen, and we begin to see more clearly what's really going on and what we want to improve. If you're feeling truly courageous, you'll want to start using recording as a regular part of your music practice. Audio (or even video) recording is a great way to keep ourselves honest about our playing. You can use any physical or software audio recording device, including a recorder app on your phone or tablet. Generally the audio quality of any modern device will be sufficient to enable an effective "Reflect" step, so don't let concerns about microphones, audio gear or room acoustics hold you back from starting to record yourself. I recommend starting today. This may be painful at first, but "the truth will set you free". Once you know the actual problems and limitations you are dealing with, you can use the Plan-Play-Reflect process of Deliberate Practice (as well as the more specific techniques we'll cover in the rest of the chapter) to do something about them. It will take much less time, and produce much greater success than if you rely solely on listening in the moment as you play. --- This is an excerpt from Chapter 6: Superlearning in the Musicality book.