book notes 2017-05-22 -- 2018-09-04 Book website with supporting material - https://thepracticeofpractice.com/book-extras/ Part 01 - What - What's Goin' On? chap 00 - Practice is the act of getting better at music. chap 01 - What's Goin' On? - Samskar - unconscious practice (enjoyable musical experience due to circumstance) - When the brain hears a new sound, it takes several exposures for the brain to process it. - Practice is the only way to get better at music. - One becomes talented BY practicing. - There are many other ways to practice besides sitting in a room alone, playing the instrument. chap 02 - Spinning Wheel, Got to Go 'Round - The 10000 hour rule is a red herring. The only important practice is your practice right now. - "Practice" carries a connotation of one type of practice, doing scales repeatedly alone, etc. - A better measure is "how do musicians get better?" - Stereotype of practice is that it is not fun. It *should* be fun. - Anything that increases your musical ability is practice. examples - listening - performing - watching others perform - playing informally - improvising - teaching - composing - group rehearsal - Strategies vs technique: - Strategy is a learning approach any musician at any level can adopt. Ex. Go slowly and fix mistakes immediately. - Technique is the skill necessary to use that strategy well. Ex. Skill at perceiving errors is necessary to hear the errors. chap 03 - Your Plastic Brain - Cortical Fugal Network - processes sounds in the brain. - A new sound creates a Prediction Error Signal. - On hearing a new sound several times more, the CFN is able to process it and not label it as noise. - Brain plasticity like this is the reason practice can be effective. - Plasticity does decrease at the end of adolescence, however, it does continue. - Studying music leads to a different brain, but it is uncertain whether that conveys skills other than musical. - Hearing good music is a powerful influence on the developing brain. - Post-adolescent learning still causes brain growth and learning. - Your brain learns what you feed it, so if you give it flawed input, you'll learn that. - We don't yet have thorough research about how music practice affects the brain. chap 04 - Slow Down, You Move Too Fast - Muscle memory is the learning of something so well that it feels like the muscles know what to do without the brain being involved, but it is very much the brain controlling muscles, still. - When practicing, it is important to practice at a speed just slow enough so that you don't make ANY mistakes. Here's a biological reason for this. - Myelin is a substance that coats axons of neurons and causes the signal to travel faster, more efficiently, and more precisely. - Myelin gets laid on the axon VERY slowly, but reinforces that neurons signal. - Myelin DOES NOT CARE if you're practicing right or wrong. Whatever you're doing will become easier to do. - Garbage in, garbage out. - Take the time to fix any mistake immediately. - Be an active listener when practicing. - You need to be able to hear errors. - "If someone recognizes what you're playing, you're going to fast." - Go slowly is the strategy. Listening for errors is the technique to be developed. - Practice just slowly enough to not make ANY mistakes. (This is the most important tip.) - Take the time to fix any mistake immediately. - Practice slowly. Stare with your ears. On music performance, from Ethan Bensdorf quoting Brandt Taylor, cellist Chicago Symphony - Always make a beautiful sound. - Say something with your music. - Know what you're doing. - You can only play as fast as you can think. - Play what is on the page. - All notes need to be audible. - If you can't play it slow, you can't play it fast. - Continuous vibrato until further notice. chap 05 - Fail Better - Selection Bias - Randomization of the original data set is not achieved, forcing bias. - Beginners often can't percieve any errors but the biggest. - This leads to playing the entire piece to see if they can get all the way through it. - They don't or can't listen for things like intonation, timbre, rhytmmic precision, or expression - Those kinds of errors are there, but aren't detected. - As we gain musical ability, we are able to hear smaller, subtler errors. - Basically, if you're not looking for something, you won't find it. - Searching out failures and their causes in your practice, turns failures into learning. - Embrace and explore the zone where you begin to fail, to expose your tendencies and fix them. - Aspects of failure: - The cause of the failure influences how or if you work toward a solution. - How you feel about failure is linked to your beliefs about talent and intelligence. Part 02 - Why - Motivation Station chap 06 - Motivation for Mastery - Your theories about talent shape your practice in a fundamental way, and even how you approach musical learning in the first place. - Beliefs about intelligence can be fixed (IQ is fixed throughout life) or growth (intelligence can change through learning) mindsets. - If you believe that musical ability and talent are fixed, something you are born with, then you tend to - avoid challenges, because it shows you "don't have it," - to give up more easily, because why bother if you're not talented?, - to see effort as negative, because it should come easily. - If you believe that musical ability and talent are growable, the result of practice, then you tend to - seek challenges, because failing means learning, - keep trying, because you can learn to overcome, - see effort as key, because the hard you work the better you get, - use deeper learning techniques, because the goal is to learn. Techniques to adopt a growth mindset: 1 - Beware of praise for talent, or ridicule for lack of talent. Don't buy into the idea that talent is fixed. Talent is practice in disguise. In teaching, beware of talent based phrases. 2 - When things get difficult, look at the ways it makes you feel or how you might avoid it. Come up with 3 ways to tackle the challenge, and do those. 3 - When you make a mistake during a performance, how does it make you feel. Take note of the mistake and put it at the top of the list of things to tackle the next practice session. 4 - Adopt the mindset of the novice. You're there to learn, to take everything in, and experience it. 5 - Plumb your musical past for harsh judgement or praised highly for talent. Feel it fully. Adopt a growth mindset, and ask yourself what you can learn from that experience. Move forward. 6 - Don't take yourself too seriously, it's just music. Focus on mastering the music deeply and worry less about impressing others. chap 07 - Go with the Flow - Flow state - being completely involved in an activity for its own state - ego falls away - The task/challenge must be in line with your abilities. - 7 basic traits of the flow state 1 - You are ompletely involved in the task, focused and concentrating. 2 - You feel a sense of ecstacy, of being outside of everyday reality. 3 - You feel inner clarity, you know what you need to do and how well you're doing it. 4 - You know that your skills are perfect for the task. 5 - You feel a sense of serenity, and of expanding beyond the self. 6 - You feel timelessness, completely focused and hours slip by effortlessly. 7 - You have intrinsic motivation, the activity producing the flow state is its own reward. - Practice happens in the arousal state. The task pushes your ability to the edge of failure. - Achieving a flow state is a powerful motivator. chap 08 - Ass Power Ass Power - The ability to sit your butt down in the chair and get to work, and the will power and commitment to keep your butt in the chair and get things done. Techniques to increase your ass power: - "When in doubt, leave it out." - Leave your instruments out and ready to play. - "If you meet your boredom, kill your boredom." If you start to get bored with practice, change something. - retune your guitar - learn the drums - change the lighting - play barefoot or naked - use new tech - loopers, drones, drum tracks - "Lower your standards." - Setting easily achievable goals is probably the best technique. chap 09 - Goals and Goldilocks - The "Goldilocks" zone is used to talk about a realm where all the conditions are just right. - In astronomy, the solar system Goldilocks zone is where the temperatures aren't too cold or too hot. - In practice, it can be used to set goals that aren't too easy or too hard. - It sets you up to be able to achieve the goal with a bit of work. - This is the most powerful motivation technique of the expert practicer. - Goals are like fractals, there's a larger pattern, and at each successive level of diving in, that larger pattern is reflected in subsequently smaller goals. - Ultimate goals [lifelong] (ex Master the piano.) - Long-Term goals [a few years] (ex Be able to improvise.) - Mid-Term goals [a few months] (ex Be able to improvise over a few songs.) - Short-Term goals [a few weeks] (ex Improvise over Autumn Leaves.) - Single practice goals - Immediate goals [a few/session] (ex Improvise over a section of Autumn Leaves.) - Micro goals [dozens/session] (ex Find/try a few variations to go over first 2-4 chorus chords.) - Nano goals [hundreds/session] (ex Find/try a few notes and variations to go over first chorus chord.) - A goal properly set, is half-way reached. - Look for your own Goldilocks zone. chap 10 - Silence is Golden - If you want to achieve your goals, keep them to yourself. - Telling other people gives your brain a sense of satisfaction, and short circuits the satisfaction gained by achieving the goal. - If you do need to state goals publicly, make them concrete and achievable. - You might also do it in a way that asks others to hold you accountable -- ex I want to play Autumn Leaves at the open mic night at Piano Bar on June 17th. and if I don't, please kick my ass. - Maybe use GiveIt100.com (state a goal for 100 days from now, then post 10 sec videos of the progress). Part 03 - Who - The Who - The Self and Others in Practice The first who is noboby but you. chap 11 - Monkey See, Monkey Do - About 20% of your neurons will fire when you're watching, but not doing, a task you are familiar with. Mirror neurons fire both when an animal acts and when an animal observes the same action. - Humans uniquely have the ability to code not only the achieving of the goal, but *how* the goal was achieved. - Many believe this indicates that listening and watching musicians perform is a form of music practice. - This may be specifically linked to *live* performance. - Top modelling - Having a good model is crucial to deep learning. - The most musical learning can be made from modeling is made by seeing the performer making the music without devices in between. - This is why having a great teacher can be so crucial. chap 12 - The Blame Game - A sense of fairness runs deep in socially minded creatures. - When things don't go our way, we can't help but look for the source of the failure. - Finding the source of the failure is a crucial piece of information if you want to fix what went wrong, and don't repeat the mistake. - There are other factors we seek to understand when something doesn't work out. - This is Attribution Theory, a conglomeration of theories about why humans do what we do and assign responsibility for what happens. - One theory discusses what people perceive about the success and failure of some action. -- - the location - external or internal - the stability - constant, variable, and neutral - whether the cause can be controlled - It may not matter what the true nature of the cause is, it's your perception of these aspects that shapes how you tackle the problem. - Most people who become great at what they do see the cause of a failure as internal. They take responsibility for failures and therefore have the ability to fix it. (Sticking valve? Aren't I the one who forgot to oil it?) - Sometimes the stability of a failure can affect your ability to fix it. - Successful people in all fields tend to see otherwise arbitrary, external causes of failure as controllable. - This means that successful people believe cause for failure can be fixed or improved through effort, even when it seems impossible. - Your perception is the biggest factor affecting success or failure. - If you believe causes are external and out of your control, why try to improve? - If you believe causes are internal and you can take control, you'll put in effort and change them. - This turns failure into a learning opportunity. chap 13 - Parental Units - Encourage young musicians to spend time with their instrument by giving them the freedom to do so. It is one of the most effective ways to support children learning music. - If you "require" your child to spend time with their instrument (avoid the negative connotations of the word "practice"), provide them with suggestions of fun activities. - ex record themselves - The role of early instruction and maximal parental support seems to be much more important than innate talent. - Strong and sustained parental encouragement to practice was a major factor for virtually all successful musicians. - Ecouragement is very different from enforcement. - Parents of successful musicians did whatever they could to make the practice productive and enjoyable. - Most parents are not in a place to be direct teachers as the beginner's skills increase. chap 14 - Hot for Teacher (private teachers (not necessarily formal)) - If you're not active in a learning situation, you probably won't get much out of it. This means that viewing the teacher as the active one in the learning situation is probably not most efficient. The best results come arriving at the learning session with specfic goals in mind. - Some teachers will practice with you to show you techniques to use. - Finding a good teacher is its own challenge and will have a big impact on your musical future. - You are the consumer here and need to make sure that your teaching is meeting your needs. - The current point in your musical development affects the kind of teacher you need. - The individual attention is the most important point about these teachers. Students in private instruction perfomed 2 standard deviations better than those in classroom instruction. - Individual instruction can be direct demonstration of how to practice and this is effective. - Experts often did not show unusual promise at the start. - It's not exceptional kids, but exceptional conditions which create experts. - One of those exceptional conditions involves great teachers. - Exceptional teachers tell the student exactly what's good and bad straight up and how to fix it, either directly or by example. - 3 phases of learning exist and for each phase a different kind of teacher is required - Phase 1 teachers - First teachers are often located nearby for convenience. They create playful experiences, encourage fun, and are ethusiastic. They are not so concerned with perfect technique, but give lots of rewards and encouragement, emphasize playful involvement, and foster enjoyment, - Phase 2 - These teachers are more formal and systematic. Involvement extends beyond the practice sessions. They encourage the student to take part in public demonstrations of their developing skills, like performances and competitions. They connect students with other musicians who play the same instrument, sometimes professionals or expert instructors. These teachers are more critical, rational, and systematic in their feedback than previous teachers. The student desires tips, tricks, and pointers to play better. The relationship changed from fondness to respect and admiration. - Phase 3 - The personal relationship with the teacher was no longer important. Now, it's all about the music, and the shared dedication to the art of performing. Teaching is focused on real-world examples. The students perform these for the teachers, then the teachers provide higher-level feedback on expression subtle nuances of style with little or no time spent on technical aspects or music theory. - A great teacher can help you carve years off your practice time by showing you strategies and techniques that you probably won't discover on your own. - Teachers are everywhere when you adopt the mindset of a voracious learner. - Those, who can, do. Those, who do and understand, teach. chap 15 - Under Pressure - Peer pressure can be a strong positive influence on your practice. - We are emotionally connected to a desire to do well. - It comes from people we care about and don't want to disappoint. - There are two types of peer pressure: - Outgroup Peer Pressure - when performing for people you don't know. - Can be motivating if you don't let yourself get too nervous. - Ingroup Peer Pressure - when performing for friends, peers, frenemies - Groups often are willing to take risks together. Risk taking is demonized, but it is essential to progress. - It instills a need to "deliver" or "bring it." - Bands living together can often profit from this kind of peer pressure. - Benevolent peer pressure can push your skills further than they would go if you practiced alone in a room. - Music making is fundamentally a social activity. Before the invention of recording and radio technology, people had to make music themselves. - It is the lack of social interaction that takes place in the classical music practice room that is rejected by many other musicians. - Learning with others is fun and meaningful, ex jam sessions and cutting contests. - All of us have peers. In music, age and experience don't matter. Chad McCullough said, "Either you're working to get better or you're not working to get better. Everyone who is working to get better is on the same level, they're just at different phases of the journey." - The more peers you can surround yourself with, the better your practice will be. Get together with other people and make some sound. Part 04 - Time is on Your Side - When 10000 hour rule is a red herring. What's important is not the hours of practice, but the kind of hours in your practice. Temporal aspects of practice: time of day, length of practice session, and how practice skills develop over time. chap 16 - The day is long, but time is short. - Published research suggests that mornings are best for practice. - You're fresh mentally and physically and powers of concentration are at their peak. - Often gives you something musical to think about the rest of the day. Writing down something to think about on a notecard for the day can enhance this. This technique can be especially helpful if you have a morning and evening practice session, as you've been prepping for the evening session all day. - This is the preferred practice time for many expert and professional musicians. - What time of day you practice may be less important than how quickly the practice session is followed by sleep. - Early music practice followed by an afternoon nap is extremely effective. chap 17 - How much is enough? - Most research says that practicing 2 or 4 hours a day is the maximum benificial time. BUT that is for master musicians at the height of their careers. They are very efficient practicers. - Musicians talk about getting that which took 6 hours of work in their early career done in an hour now. They know themselves and their tendencies well enough that they know what they need to focus in on to get better faster. - Sometimes musicians are hit by a need to do nothing but practice for years. This is called a "reverie" or a "drive to master." If it hits you and you have the time for it, GO! - For the rest of us, just make sure you put in as many hours as you are driven to. It's continuing the drive and the passion that's most important. Focus on making those practice hours efficient, quality practice. - Getting better is a long, slow process. Beware of injury, both physical and psychological, which might prevent you from practicing. Psychological injury might be thinking that you're not getting better, trying something too far above your level and getting discouraged, or overdoing practice so that it feels like drudgery. - Overpractice risks: - Just getting tired of the piece by playing it too many times. - Becoming so prepared that your mind starts playing tricks. - One way to get around these risks is to focus on only the most difficult portions of the piece. - Break it up. -- Evidence suggests that spreading out a learning task will help you learn it more quickly, so several short sessions over multiple days is better than one intense session each week. Two sessions each day is better than one session each day, even if the total time is the same. - Beware injury -- Many musicians have had to add physical exercise, yoga, etc to their practice or relearn how to play, sometimes taking years, in order to avoid the repetitive injury associated with playing a musical instrument. - Find other ways to practice instead of just sitting down with the instrument. - Listening, watching, talking about, and thinking about music are all examples. Watch a documentary, go to an open mic, pick up another instrument, and watch youtube. - Practice is a way of life, not an activity you do for a certain amount of time. This lets you use minutes throughout the day to practice and allows music to be a daily focus, even when you may not be able to sit with your instrument as long as you like. chap 18 - Guerilla Practice - There is some research suggesting that breaking up a memorization task into multiple short sessions spread at random intervals can lead to better retention than regularly spaced sessions. - Guerilla practice is the technique of breaking up practice into multiple short (1-20 min) sessions with specific micro- or nano-goals. These short sporadic sessions lead to results when waiting to get in a longer session may not, and may even be better than the longer sessions for retention. - Short sporadic sessions also fit in as a break from other activities, especially when the instrument and player are already prepared (guitar out and tuned, goals decided beforehand, etc.) chap 19 - When no practice is good practice - There is research whch suggests that taking half of your practice time and listening to music that you're trying to learn while doing other tasks may actually be MORE effective than just practicing the whole time. - This could simply be that you practice your normal amount, then use other time when you cannot practice to listen in the background. chap 20 - Blame It on My Youth - Four phases of awareness which affect your practice - Unconscious Incompetence - bad, but don't know it. Don't have skill to percieve your mistakes. - This phase is fun, because you're learning your instrument, but are unaware of how much you don't know. - Conscious Incompetence - You become aware that you're not that good and you have a lot of practicing and learning to do. - This is the longest, most stressful, and unpleasant phase, unfortunately. - Remaining motivated during this phase is about setting realistic goals, and is crucial to continuing to play and practice. - Avoiding the trap of perfectionism is important. Competence is relative, as your abilities are probably several levels above someone else's also in this phase. - Pushing aside or ignoring the trap of Conscious Incompetence is important to foster a lifetime of musicmaking. You *will* get better. - Conscious Competence - You can achieve success at playing music by your own standards. - This phase can be dipped into early and often with reasonable goal setting. - At some point, you have to own both your competence and incompetence. The transition between conscious incompetence and conscious competence is not a step function. You move forward in different areas at different rates. - Unconscious Competence - You can play music without worrying about all of the rules that you know inherently. Most musicians will not get to this stage. This is inhabited by the best of musicians. - This can be likened to having a great, easy-flowing conversation with an old friend. It just flows without having to think about the specifics of syntax, grammar, phrasing, etc. chap 21 - When I'm 64 - Research is proving that our ability to learn new things continues throughout life, because the brain retains its plasticity. - Take your time - it takes more time for the brain to grow new neurons as adults. This is partially due to a later appearing protein that inhibits neuron growth. - To keep motivated when learning slowly, be sure to set easily achieved goals. They well give you something to work toward and give you the feeling of progress. - Playing music is a social activiy, and finding a group of like minded individuals to play with is challenging. - Some options: - community music schools - New Horizons bands - craigslist - local classifieds - Research also indicates that playing music as one is aging can lead to increased production of HGH (Human Growth Hormone), which is associated with many health and mental benefits - It is possible to avoid sounding like a beginner for many years with a new instrument by composing music using composition software on the computer. Part 05 - Where - Wherever You May Roam - Practice Spaces and Places There are 2 aspects to the where of practice: - the cultural and local context including attitudes and opportunities, and - the actual practice space itself, though the psychological is more important than the physical. chap 22 - Trash to Treasure - The lives of exceptional performers are not a result of exceptional individuals, but exceptional circumstances. - Where you live and who you are surrounded by matters. chap 23 - Under the Influence - entrainment - the tendency of things to vibrate at the same frequency - Psychological entrainment can have an impact on your practice. - If you are in a location where you have peers and like-minded people, it can support your musical journey. chap 24 - In the Zone - The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the distance between capability as an individual and capability under guidance of adult, teacher, or peer supervision. - One can also use scaffolds to increase one's abilities. Scaffolds in this context are tools that one uses to improve one's capabilities. An example is using a chord chart when one hasn't memorized the piece of music. - Fading is the process of slowly internalizing the scaffolds and removing them. - A good teacher can help you in the ZPD by recognizing your level, giving you the right scaffolds, and look for ways to slowly ween you from them. Ways how: - Gain and maintain your interest in the task. - Simplify the task. - Emphasize aspects of the task that will help you get it. - Help you control your level of frustration. - Demonstrate the task. - Play along when necessary. - You can bootstrap yourself into the ZPD. - videos - metronomes - suggestions is the "how" portion of this book - try to do what the teachers do from above - mental practice strategies - self-talk - talk through a tough spot - Play with musicians who are better than you to get some ZPD help. chap 25 - A Shed of One's Own - There are two kinds of privacy that one's own practice room will give: - inward - the knowledge that no one can hear you, allowing freedom from judgement - outward - the knowledge that no one will be annoyed by your playing - Seek out a practice space that allows you both so that you can be free to really practice. - Practice spaces can be found for rent, or you might have to be inventive to find one for yourself. Sonny Rollins played on the Williamsburg bridge for 3 years to improve his chops. Part 06 - Let's Get It On - Useful Practice Strategies - How Three parts : setup, execution, and assessment Remember the difference between a strategy and a technique: A strategy is and idea that anyone can use. A technique is the skill you need to get the most out of a strategy. chap 26 - Creative practice - Infusing creativity into your practice can engage you in practice in a way that makes it so much fun, it may not feel like practice. This is the best practice. - Ex - learning scales - Instead of learning patterns dictated by others, invent and create your own patterns through the scales. Start at the top. Don't go evenly spaced. Whatever interesting way you can learn the scale. - Creating your own exercises engages one more and gets better results in less time. - Retune your instrument. Create exercises specific to problems you're having. - Need to change the warmup daily. (Foundation for the warmup is the music of the day. Ex - drones in the key of the day's music.) - Creative strategies: - Constrain yourself somehow. - As abstract as "play the color yellow." - As concrete and specific as "only short notes in the key of E harmonic minor." - Fear and apathy are the mindkillers. - Maintain play; get silly! - Can help you break through blocks. - Same thing day after day can be made less tedious by trying to do it from a new perspective. This makes it a new experience. - Get two-faced. - Janusian thinking. - Looking at a problem from opposing viewpoints. - Play a passage backwards. - Play a passage upside-down. - Play a passage in a very different style. - Distance makes the heart grow creative. - Imagine a problem is something everyone encounters and it's your job to find a solution to help others. Your techniques are to be put into a book or video. - A study showed that this can lead to more creative ideas. - Temporal distance can also boost creativity. How would your future self handle this problem 1 year from now? - What would Dizzy do? - Imagining how someone else might tackle a problem can boost creativity. - Imagine yourself as another person can give access to superior abilities, too. - Getting together with another person regularly can also help out with creativity. - Creativity is like a muscle exercise it to get better at it. - Use creativity to connect with your practice more. You'll get more out of practice. - Both engagement and enjoyment will sustain practice for the long haul. chap 27 - Practice Anatomy 101 - How the best players get the most out of a practice session. - To get the most out of a session, you need focus. - Setup: Use setup to get that focus. - Privacy: Need privacy to be able to focus. - Best if you limit phone and computer use during practice. - Simple: Pick just one thing for a practice session. - May be working on many in reality, but focus on just one. - Toughest section: Practice only the thing that you're having trouble with. - Before you start, figure out what the tough stuff is. - Write these down at first in order to get practiced at this. - Don't waste your time on what you already know how to play. - Execution: Warming up, exercises, and playing - Warm up around what you're going to be playing. - Do exercises which improve your ability to play. - Play the section you're working on. - Assessment: How did it go? - What did you do? - What worked and what didn't? - Write it down, if that helps. - Review the practice session and prep for the next session. - Prime the pump for next session. chap 28 - Stare with your Ears - Intricate/active/deep listening takes practice. - Listening as a musician is an active process; you're fully engaged in the experience. - The way a musician listens to music is both more intense and more purposeful than the way normal people listen to music, especially when listening to music you want to learn. - "Hear" training - The ability to hear what's going on and reproduce it. - Singing is a form of embodied cognition, and is integral to this. - It will reveal what you can hear and what you can't. - If you can't sing it, you can't really play it. - Start by memorizing melodies with your instrument and with your voice. - Next, move to trying to hear the bass line. - Listening while looking at a lead sheet can be helpful. - Next, focus on individual parts in the middle. - Can you focus on one player? - Can you hear one note in a chord? - Focus on the musical context and emotional resonance are more important than interval names and chord types at first. chap 29 - Imitation Station - Imitating is how we learn best. We're hard-wired for it. - Until the last hundred years, the only way to imitate someone was to be in their presence. Recording technology changed that. - Learning a piece by ear is trying figure out, note for note, what the other performer is doing. Imitating using sound allows one's music to "disappear" into the recording of the music. - Trying to learn with just audio is a process of playing it over and over until your notes match the notes of the recording. It's "fishing for fingers," because you just keep trying things until you get it. - With the advent of Youtube, now you can hear AND watch masters play, so it becomes easier to learn. - You can't annoy technology, so another replay is always available. - Can also slow down pieces of music to make it easier to learn. chap 30 - Drone Power - Drones are long continuous tones. They can be used as a backdrop for other notes. - Attempting to merge your tones on top of drones teaches playing in tune. - You have to listen to be in tune with the drone. - Notably not necessary for guitar and piano. - The trick is to be able to hear the off-pitch tone. - Most instruments have notes that are chronically out of tune, and this can teach you to find and fix those. - Best if you create your own exercises, but here are suggestions. - Play the same note or chord tones. - Play melodies against the tonic of the key. - Unison long tones. - Improvise over a drone. Add a rhythm, too. - Play chord tones with a drone. - Play scales. (Start off-tonic, do patterns, go high to low, etc.) - Play long tones together with others. chap 31 - Going Mental - Mental practice. - Anything that doesn't involve actually playing the instrument. - Mental strategies during physical practice sessions - isolating problems sections to practice mentally - self talk (coaching yourself, most effective in 3rd person) - chanting, clapping, or tapping out rhythms - singing parts - counting - fingering silently while hearing the music in your mind - imagining someone you admire greatly is in the room, listening closely - visualizing a performance in great detail - dynamic visualization of rhythms as nodes pulsing on a line in time with the music - Mental strategies - Studies show that visualizing a practice method away from the instrument can cause similar brain growth as actually doing that practice method at the instrument. Some studies even suggest that combining mental with physical practice may even be better than just physical. - Mental stategies and practice away from a physical practice session - learning music theory - learning how to read music - auralizing the vocal melody - hearing the poetry of the words - learning new rhythms - Write down on a card information about what it is that you're planning to work on later. Refer to the card throughout the day to prepare you for the next practice. - Brains retain information better if it is spread throughout the day. - Also finding out facets of the music you're playing can improve your performance. - Who created it? - When and where was it created? - Why and for whom was it created? - What is the subject? - What is being expressed? - What techniques are being used? - What is its structure and form? - What does it sound or look like? - How and to whom is it trasmitted? - What does it mean to people? - Who performs and values it? - What is its historical and cultural context? - Does its meaning change for different performances? - How does it change when interpreted? - What is its function for people? chap 32 - Chaining and backchaining - Chaining and backchaining work equally well for the master and beginner. - Just have to know when to use it. - Strategy - Learn a short snippet until it's polished. - Learn a previous (back-chaining) or subsequent (chaining) short snippet with a little bit of overlap. - Learn to string them together. - Backchaining is best when the end of the piece is the hardest. - Use a combination when the middle of the piece is the most challenging. chap 33 - Go Go Gadget Practice - Technology can improve your practice, but remember that your absolute first priority is to get better at the instrument. - apps - itabla pro - Play with drones. - ireal pro - Chord charts and rhythm section. - tempo slow mo - Slow down tempo of sections of songs - other instruments - Working with a 2nd instrument can benefit your practice by making it more fun and causing you to focus on different aspects of the music. - Rhythm instruments can relieve you from having to think about notes and focus only on the rhythm. - Harmony instruments (piano, guitar) are great for learning chord progressions, especially if your main instrument is a melodic instrument. - Amplifying your sound can open up new possibilities. Don't wait until a gig to try amplifying your instrument, because Murphy's Law. - Microphones are great for recording your practice sessions. - Looping effects pedals can be a real benefit to practice, because they let you play 2 or more parts of a song at the same time. chap 34 - Ryhthmning - Rhythm need special attention, just like pitch, intonation, etc. - Rhythm, important as it is, sometimes takes a back seat to fingering and hitting the right pitch when practicing. - Small percussion instruments are fun and help you hone your rhythmic skills. Playing a rhythm instrument allows you to forget melody and harmony, and focus on the rhythm. They allow you to embody the rhythm in a way that feels much different than fingering strings or pressing valves. - Learning any new instrument can enhance your relationship with your main instrument. A rhythm instrument will enchance your relationship with time on your main instrument. chap 35 - Playing with Time - Strategy 1: - Play something incredibly slowly BUT incredibly accurately. Increase the speed incrementally as you play something accurately at a particular speed. Take your time; do it right. Use a metronome. Stay relaxed. - Strategy 2: - Alternate between slow tempo and performance speed instead. This produced the best results in a study. - This requires that the final speed isn't too ridiculously fast. - Strategy 3: - Listen to a good example of the thing you're trying to perform. Hearing the passage played correctly at the correct tempo is a huge benefit. chap 36 - Let's Get Physical - Many musicians suffer from some physical ailment which affects their playing. - Musicians need to include their physical well being as part of playing their instruments, not just because of injuries, but the way you hold yourself can affect your playing. - Master classes often have critiques on how the student holds their body and how that affects their sound. - Techniques used by musicians to avoid and recover from injury and create a great sound: - The Alexander technique - Alexander observed himself in multiple mirrors to improve how he held his body to remove constrictions. He recovered from an injury and improved his speaking ability. He began teaching others. Centers around how you hold your head, chest, and hips. - The Feldenkries method - A knee injury caused him to study movement and develop and teach a method to become more aware of movements. Students of the method in which the students learn how to move and take that with them. - Other methods - Qi Gong and yoga. - Exercise - Staying fit can be an important "part of your practice." It can improve playing like nothing else can. chap 37 - Improve with Improv - If you can make a sound, you can improvise. - If all music comes from written music, improv can induce fear. - A fixed mindset about talent can make improv terrifying. - Fear of being judged is a reason for fear of improv. - Longterm (years) of improv appears to cause a brain area associated with self-monitoring to turn off and an area associated with self-expression to turn on during the improv session. - Work to not judge while trying to improv. - Allow anything to come and accept it for what it is. - Judge or assess in recording. - Silence is always a valid answer. - Create some limits in order to focus creativity. - Make sound that expresses something. - There are no "wrong" notes in this style of improv. - This free improv is valid at all levels of play. - Babies don't wait to learn the alphabet before expirementing with language. chap 38 - Compose Yourself - Composition and songwriting is not different. - The process of composition can be a powerful practice technique. - You're actively engaged in making sound and you're being highly critical of the sound you create. - The repetition necessary to get the sound right causes you to hone your technique and gain skill. - It feels so different that music reading, scales, boring repetition. - Composing as pratcice is fun. - Engagement combined with constant assessment makes composition based practice effective. - Compositional prompts -- a suggestion that gets the creative juices flowing. - It's tough to know where to begin with a blank new project. - Examples: - KISS - Keep It Short and Simple. - place - What sounds would you combine to evoke a specific place? - songwriting - Lyrics can inspire sounds, rhythms, and stories. - Start with just a title and see where it goes. - steal - Chord progressions can't be copyrighted, so just take one and go. - sample - Take direct sounds from another recording and compose on top. - loop - Loops, even simple ones, give a basis for creating more material. - repeat - Almost every song has repetition. Analyse repetition structure in a piece you like and copy that. - Composition, like improvisation, does not require you to be a master musician. - To avoid that intimidating feeling, just think of it as "making stuff up." - Composing is a skill to be learned like any other. chap 39 - Plays Well With Others - You can do so much on your own now, but doing it with others is much more fun! - Find locations where you're encouraged to bring your instrument and join in, like campfire jams at a festival. A ton of teaching, learning, and practice takes place. - Practice doesn't always take place alone in a room. - Practice for some is a private issue, but, if not, sharing about practice can be incredible. - Group practice with 2 people can be the most focused. - Working on a specific skill, slowly, and with lots of repetition, and figuring things out. - Questions for others: - How do you practice [fill in the blank]? - What are you working on? - Here's what I'm working on. Any thoughts? - I'm having trouble with [fill in the blank]. How do you deal with that? - How do you work on tone? - How do you work on speed? - How do you work on expression? - How do you place your mics and tweak your amps to get the best sound? - What kind of [insert gear here] do you use and why? - Can you show me a favorite song or lick? - Bouncing ideas off of others can go a long way toward clarifying your next steps. - Practicing with other people can be much more enjoyable than practicing alone. chap 40 - Cover Your Assessment - You can't always rely on an audience to give a reliable assessment of how your practice is working. - The best practicers are assessing their practice all the time. - Assessment is necessary to see progress and improvement, identify weaknesses, plan improvement strategies, and realign goals. - Many have personal differences with competiiton as a part of music, but many find musical competitions as a great source of motivation to practice. - What should you be assessing in your practice? (Lionel Hampton Competition rubrick) - In tune - Strong, clear pitch center in tune with other instruments in the group. - In tone - The quality of sound is full and in character with the instrument and genre. - In time - Rhythmic pulse is strong and steady and the rhythmic feel is genre appropriate. - Precision - The playing is technically precise, cohesive, blended, and balanced with the other voices. - Dynamics and Expression - expressive and appropriately dynamically varied - Style and Interpretation - articulations, phrasing, originality, and feel are all genre appropriate. - Soloing - Does the improvisation create melodic material that reflects and enhances the piece? - If ever asking someone for feedback, be sure to suggest what they should be listening for. - Self-assessment: - Record yourself: - For instruments in contact with the body, often the sound produced is different than the sound heard when playing the instrument, due to bone conduction. - The amount of attention one can bring to bear when playing is different than when listening. - You'll hear things when listening you can't notice when making the music. - Equipment: - Audacity recording and playback - Heard app - Coach's Eye - notated video and audio - Garage Band - app or program - Spectre Sound Analysis - The most important aspect of assessment is clear, easily reached goals. - These let you know what to assess. chap 41 - You and the Night and the Music - Many experiments show that sleep helps you learn and prepare to learn. - Sleep helps to empty toxins from the brain so incoming signals can be processed. - Most professional musicians nap in the afternoon after their main practice session. - The stages of sleep can affect what you learn best. - stage 1 - 2-5 min - falling asleep - happens once - linear, rational thought breaks down - The rest of the stages cycle at about a 90 min period. - stage 2 - 20 min - good for - learning physical movements (motor memory) or procedural memory - implicit memory - stage 3 and 4 - varies - delta/slow wave sleep - growth hormone increases to repair body tissus, and brain activity decreases - good for - declarative memory (things consciously learned: scales, melodies, music theory, etc) - stage 5 - increases over the night - REM sleep - blood flow increased - good for - improvement of memory - moving short term memory to long term memory - emotional memory - boost in creativity and sensory perceptions (pitch id, note reading, etc) - evidence that it helps with music learning - types of naps - guilt-free power nap - 5-20 min - too short for stage 2, but can clean out for incoming messages - goldilocks nap - 30-90 min - can get to stage 2 and 3 and if well timed, some REM sleep - the weekend nap - 90-180 min - tips to get the most out of napping - timing - b/w main practice and later sessions - allows sleeping brain to consolidate and also wipes the slate clean - morning naps tend to have more REM - afternoon tend to have more stage 3 - Nap in 90 min increments, though short naps are still helpful (5 min is shortest helpful length). - Delete distractions. - Turn off devices and be in a safe place in a prone position. - Progressively relax starting at the toes and move up. - It is best to wake up slowly. Sleep in a lighter room to wake up easily. chap 42 - Performance Practice - How do you get better? - Performance can be the best way to get better. - Play anywhere, everywhere, and as much as possible. - Play play play. - What about performance is so helpful? - School music makes performance rare and special events with lots of stress. - 3-4 performances a year. - Performance is practice of a special kind. - Demanding performance - Like a test - Retrieving skills from memory - Embrace the nervousness. - Ask your friends to come in and play for them. - Imagine performing while practicing. - Practice performing. Coda - Overthinking practice is easy to do. - Better to think a lot about it than not at all. - Talent is earned by diligence and practice. - Talent is practice in disguise. - Seek out other sources. - Good practice is all about working on something that you can't do. - Practice is often fun, but it's not easy. - Don't label something as difficult, just unfamiliar. - Practice becomes about making the unfamiliar familiar.