How is it that some can practice the same amount of time as others yet a few make significantly more progress? You know, the really talented ones. They stand out – you know it when you see it, and their superior skill relative to everyone else is obvious.
It’s not too much of a stretch nowadays to understand that the culprit is the quality of the work these musicians are dong within the same amount of time. I think we’re all aware that the same amount of work can be done very, very differently producing very different results.
The best learners have been paying close attention in practice, asking questions, etc since the beginning or close to it. This has a compounding effect so that progress happens more and more quickly as they continue. No wonder their progress seems astounding.
There is a misunderstanding of what focus is and how to apply it, and this misunderstanding can last an entire lifetime. As a recovering high school music teacher I can’t tell you how many times friends and colleagues have said to me, “I took lessons when I was a kid. I tried, I put in the time, I really worked, but I just don’t have what it takes.” This judgement is based on real world feedback (you know, knowing what it’s supposed to sound like and not sounding like that when we play) and is also the foundation of stage fright which can compound this situation. But did they really ‘try’?
I would always ask them, “When you practiced did you think about what your teacher told you to do in your lesson? Did you pay attention or just, you know, kind of ‘play’ for a while? Did you take notice of areas you were having trouble with, try to figure out if you might be able to do better and if not ask your teacher in the next lesson about it?”
Of course they always say they did little to none, and it is usually none, of that kind of thing.
When they say they didn’t have what it takes they are actually saying they didn’t have what it takes to begin understanding how to improve themselves in practice. This is one of the many areas that has led to the myth of ‘talent’. Trust me, you’ve got all the talent you need.
We know focus is important so how is it taught and learned? The most common way seems to be doing it FOR students in lessons. It’s assumed they’ll remember, evaluate, apply and improve when they practice, but do they? If teachers have to repeat themselves week after week then they probably don’t, and it’s not their fault. They have not been taught. Teaching focus is like doing scales. You don’t show it to someone once and hope they get it (i.e. naturally talented) you address it consistently over time, over and over in multivariate situations, and work specifically on it. That’s the kind of work that fits into the cognitive architecture of learning backed by tons of research.
Let’s see what some good respected teacher/performers have to say about this. How are we getting this message to learners?
For instance, we’re very familiar with Wynton Marsalis’ oft circulated, and entirely accurate, – 12 Tips on How to Practice (I’ve put the link below) Surely he mentions focus and does, “4. Concentrate: You can do more in 10 minutes of focused practice than in an hour of sighing and moaning. This means no video games, no television, no radio, just sitting still and working…. Concentrated effort takes practice too, especially for young people.”
That’s it. That describes the environment not the process, and the younger the student the more they’ll need specific instruction in what is called orienting selective attention then applying critical thinking. Do we share directions like Wynton’s, defer to his awesomeness (and he is totally awesome) and hope others know how to take the advice?
The worst part is that the music learners might do something to ‘try’ doing it, but will likely not even come close to actually focusing on what they are learning, thinking they’ve given it their all. “I turned off my phone, I didn’t play video games or listen to the radio.” Guess what’s next? Giving up. Too bad they didn’t have natural talent. Remember the adults who told me they really tried but just didn’t have what it takes, right.
Here is some other fuzzy focus advice. From the ubiquitous wonderful technique book Pumping Nylon by the accomplished teacher and performer Scott Tennant, “Get used to listening well instead of just watching your fingers.” The respected pedagogue Aaron Shearer gives us four, “. . .enemies of concentration: confusion, anxiety, boredom, fatigue,” and, “(That) you need to maintain the sharpest possible concentration as you practice.” I could go on.
They mean well, and they know what they are talking about, but the psychological principal of the Dunning-Krueger effect taints the delivery. They assume that the learner will fill in the blanks, and a few may be able to do that. But many need to be taught what focus is very specifically, or they’ll seem untalented. A good way to tell if someone needs this type of instruction is if they seem untalented. That’s a great indicator. Go to the area of untalent and make the goal teaching focus in that area. See what happens.
METACOGNITION
Metacognition refers to thinking about what we’re thinking and doing in the moment. Don’t just address an issue or even give a solution. These are crucial steps to be sure, but also teach the underlying thought process. What did we do in specific GENERIC steps (we FOUND an issue, CONSIDERED x amount of solutions, TRIED them and EVALUATED the results to find the best SOLUTION then CONSIDERED x amount of solutions. . .blah blah).
The first time we do this we lay the cornerstone of a mental model, or what the researcher Anders Ericsson calls ‘mental representations’ that we can reference and grow in future situations. We can then can reference this growing model and compare our performance to that in real time. If they don’t match then one needs to change. Focusing enriches the mental model so that finer details become apparent to the learner which will enrich the mental model and so on. I call this the opening of focus, and it’s a glorious thing to behold in a learner when they are finally taught how to do it.
WOW THAT’S GREAT! OR IS IT. . .
Be careful – I’ve noticed that sometimes when more advanced learners start to experience this they can become a bit depressed. They now see the deficiencies that they have been overlooking for some time. They know what it’s supposed to sound like, and have always known they never really sound like that, but now they know why and hear it. Had they known this years ago they would not have wasted so much time! In the same amount of time they could have reached their goal of being a straight up good performer instead of just having to live with their performances. Isn’t being a good performer why we start in the first place?
I might point out two things here.
One – would we rather know or not? Now we can adjust and move forward at an impressive rate, and the more previous practice we have under our belt, no matter how inefficient, the greater our current progress will be. All of that previous work is worth something. It’s like water behind a dam and learning how to learn gradually pokes holes in that dam for all of your previous work to come gushing out into your playing.
Two – why are we not incredibly happy about this? The solutions that have been eluding us for a long time are now right here in front of us. We were already putting in the time and it wasn’t really working. Now we can put in the time and see both short and long term results. Yippie!
Plus getting good at stuff makes one want to put more time into getting good at stuff. It’s how passion can be created for something like practice, where there was none before.
It’s one thing to inspire. It is another to inspire by empowering.
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