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The Undulating Practice Method How Modular Exploration Builds a Lifelong Creative Continuum By Sarnia de la Maré

The Undulating Practice Method

How Modular Exploration Builds a Lifelong Creative Continuum

By Sarnia de la Maré

Introduction: Practice as Living Research

Across disciplines, serious creative work rarely develops in straight lines. It evolves through cycles of curiosity, immersion, refinement, and return.

Within the Continuum Approach, this process can be understood as undulating practice: a method of sustained, modular exploration in which ideas are entered deeply, developed fully, and temporarily set aside — not abandoned, but archived — for future reactivation.

This essay outlines how undulating practice functions as a self-directed learning system, a creative research methodology, and a foundation for long-term artistic resilience.

1. The Undulating Cycle

Undulating practice moves through recurring phases:

Attraction — An idea, material, or question generates sustained interest.
Immersion — Focused exploration of technique, language, and context.
Expansion — Testing variations, combinations, and applications.
Refinement — Selection, editing, and structural consolidation.
Resolution — Completion of a coherent body of work or skill set.
Archiving — Intentional shelving of the project as a completed module.
Return — Re-entry at a later stage with greater experience and perspective.

Rather than progressing linearly, practitioners move through these cycles repeatedly, building depth through iteration.

2. Modular Learning Outside Institutions

Traditional higher education is structured around modules: discrete units of inquiry assessed and then integrated into a larger qualification.

Undulating practice mirrors this structure organically.

Each creative phase functions as a self-designed module, combining:

research
experimentation
technical development
reflection
public presentation

The difference is autonomy. The practitioner determines pace, depth, and duration, allowing learning to remain responsive rather than prescriptive.

3. Portfolio as Evidence of Process

A dense, multi-layered portfolio is not produced through constant productivity, but through repeated cycles of completion.

In undulating practice:

projects are finished, not abandoned
techniques are stabilised, not merely sampled
ideas are resolved before being archived

Over time, this produces a portfolio that reflects intellectual and technical continuity rather than fragmentation.

4. Returning as Advancement, Not Regression

Revisiting earlier work is often misinterpreted as indecision or nostalgia. Within undulating practice, return functions as advancement.

Each re-entry occurs from a position of greater skill, broader context, and refined judgement.

Earlier material becomes:

a testing ground for new techniques
a comparative benchmark
a site of reinterpretation
a living archive

Return enables cumulative learning without repetition.

5. Focus, Time, and Deep Attention

Sustained creative development requires periods of relative withdrawal from distraction.

Undulating practitioners typically organise their lives around exploration, minimising competing demands in order to preserve cognitive and emotional bandwidth.

This is not absence of activity, but intentional devotion to long-form learning.

Depth replaces dispersion.

6. Assessment Through Meaning

Within institutional systems, assessment is externally imposed. In undulating practice, evaluation is internal and meaning-based.

A phase concludes when:

techniques feel embodied
conceptual aims are satisfied
outputs feel structurally complete
further work would be repetitive

Completion is recognised intuitively through coherence rather than compliance.

7. Resilience Through Cyclical Practice

Because undulating practice builds multiple resolved modules, it generates long-term resilience.

When one area stagnates, others remain active. When motivation dips, archived work provides grounding and continuity.

This reduces dependency on trends, platforms, and external validation.

The practitioner becomes structurally self-supporting.

8. Integration Within the Continuum Framework

Within the Continuum Approach, undulating practice connects directly to the progression:

Foundations → Orientation → Building Rooms → Integration → Transmission

Each undulation builds a new "room" within the creative architecture.

Over time, these rooms interconnect, forming a navigable ecosystem of skills, languages, and methodologies.

9. Pedagogical Implications

Undulating practice offers an alternative model for creative education, particularly relevant for:

neurodivergent learners
interdisciplinary practitioners
independent artists
late starters and returners

By legitimising cyclical development, it reduces pressure for constant novelty and supports sustainable mastery.

Conclusion: Practice as Continuity

Undulating practice reframes creative life as an ongoing research continuum rather than a sequence of isolated projects.

Through cycles of immersion, completion, archiving, and return, practitioners build durable knowledge systems grounded in lived experience.

Within the Continuum Approach, this method affirms that serious creative development is not accelerated by haste, but deepened through patient, recursive engagement.

The portfolio becomes not a record of output, but evidence of a life in practice.

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The Continuum Music Framework by Sarnia de la Maré FRSA, Foundation Books in the Series

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The Continuum Music Framework™ (2 books)

Kindle edition

by Sarnia de la Mare (Author)

The Continuum Music Framework

by Sarnia de la Maré FRSA

The Continuum Music Framework is an open, adaptive pedagogy for musical learning, designed to support musicians of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. Rather than promoting pressure, competition, or rigid outcomes, the Framework offers a humane, inclusive approach that recognises learning as a living process—one shaped by individuality, environment, and emotional safety.

Rooted in contemporary pedagogical thinking and decades of artistic practice, the Continuum Music Framework works alongside existing methods rather than replacing them. It encourages musical confidence through clarity, agency, and early creative engagement, including composition as a central part of learning from the very beginning.

Each book in the series explores a different layer of the Framework.
Part I, Foundations, introduces The Continuum Approach—a gentle yet rigorous entry point that focuses on mindset, environment, pacing, and the conditions that allow learning to take root. Later volumes expand into structures, studies, and applied pathways, supported by optional scores, diagrams, and teaching tools available separately.

The Continuum Music Framework is intended for independent learners, educators, parents, and returning musicians alike. It is not a method to be mastered, but a framework to grow within—one that values curiosity over compliance, and continuity over perfection.

All the titles below are free to borrow with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. Learn more.

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Reading Density: A New Kind of Score | iServalan | Continuum Approach

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Reading Density: A New Kind of Score

This image is not a score in the traditional sense. There are no clefs, no staves, no fixed pitches insisting on obedience. Instead, what we are looking at is density made visible — energy, concentration, release, accumulation, dispersal.

A density score does not tell the musician what note to play. It asks a different question altogether:
How much is happening — and where?

In this score, sound is imagined as mass. Some areas are thick, almost granular, pressing against the space. Others are sparse, breath-like, suspended. Density replaces pitch as the primary organising principle. Time is still present, but it is elastic. Gesture matters more than correctness. Attention matters more than accuracy.

For the performer, this creates an immediate shift in mindset. Instead of decoding symbols, the musician listens inwardly. They decide how to translate density into sound — through texture, repetition, pressure, register, speed, or silence. A dense area might become clustered notes, tremolo, noise, double-stops, rhythmic saturation, or harmonic stacking. A thin area might resolve into single tones, long bows, isolated piano notes, or breath between sounds.

What emerges is not one piece, but many possible pieces, all born from the same visual source.

Why Density Works (Especially for Learning)

Density scores are profoundly accessible. They do not privilege advanced notation literacy, yet they remain musically sophisticated. A beginner can respond instinctively. An advanced musician can explore nuance, restraint, and control.

For neurodivergent players, density scores are particularly powerful. They reduce symbolic overload. There is no fear of “wrong notes,” no punitive structure. The eye can rest on colour, contrast, and flow. The brain is invited to translate sensation rather than comply with instruction.

For ageing musicians — or those returning to music after long gaps — density scores remove shame. They honour lived experience. They allow sound to be shaped by the body as it is now, not as it once was.

This score does not demand speed, virtuosity, or endurance. It rewards presence.

Possibilities Across Musical Settings

Solo Practice

A density score can become a daily practice companion. The musician might choose a different instrument, register, or limitation each day:
– only open strings
– only left hand pizzicato
– only breath sounds or harmonics
– one hand, one finger, one texture

The score remains the same; the interpretation evolves. This builds musical identity rather than repetition fatigue.

Teaching Studios

For tutors, density scores open up a shared language that is not hierarchical. Teacher and student can interpret the same image differently and then discuss choices. This fosters dialogue instead of correction.

A tutor might ask:

“Where did you feel the score became heavier?”
“What did you choose to remove rather than add?”
“How did silence function for you?”

These are musical questions — but also reflective ones.

Ensemble Work

In groups, density scores encourage deep listening. Players might agree on a shared timeline but interpret density individually, creating organic polyphony. Or they might assign density roles: one player responsible for mass, another for interruption, another for decay.

This is ensemble playing without domination.

Composition & Improvisation

For composers, density scores function as conceptual blueprints. They can be translated into conventional notation later — or left open forever. For improvisers, they offer structure without confinement, a frame without a cage.

A Different Kind of Authority

What this score ultimately proposes is a shift in musical authority. The authority is no longer embedded in the page. It lives in the relationship between image, body, and sound.

This is not anti-notation. It is post-notation.

It acknowledges that music is not only something we read — it is something we inhabit. Density scores remind us that sound has weight, that silence has shape, and that meaning often emerges not from precision, but from attention.

In a world increasingly obsessed with optimisation, this kind of score gives permission to linger. To feel. To listen before deciding.

And perhaps most importantly, it invites musicians back into a space of trust — trust in their own ears, their own timing, their own sense of when something is full enough… or when it is time to let it breathe.