This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain On Music

 

          

    

Amir Pinkney-Jengkens, 8, is learning trombone through Harmony Project, a nonprofit that provides musical instruments and instruction to children in low-income communities. Recent research suggests that such musical education may help improve kids' ability to process speech. ( Annie Tritt for NPR hide caption)

 

                           

Musical training doesn't just improve your ear for music — it also helps your ear for speech. That's the takeaway from an unusual new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers found that kids who took music lessons for two years didn't just get better at playing the trombone or violin; they found that playing music also helped kids' brains process language.

And here's something else unusual about the study: where it took place. It wasn't a laboratory, but in the offices of Harmony Project in Los Angeles. It's a nonprofit after-school program that teaches music to children in low-income communities.

Two nights a week, neuroscience and musical learning meet at Harmony's Hollywood headquarters, where some two-dozen children gather to learn how to play flutes, oboes, trombones and trumpets. The program also includes on-site instruction at many public schools across Los Angeles County.
Harmony Project is the brainchild of Margaret Martin, whose life path includes parenting two kids while homeless before earning a doctorate in public health. A few years ago, she noticed something remarkable about the kids who had gone through her program.

"Since 2008, 93 percent of our high school seniors have graduated in four years and have gone on to colleges like Dartmouth, Tulane, NYU," Martin says, "despite dropout rates of 50 percent or more in the neighborhoods where they live and where we intentionally site our programs."

   

There are plenty of possible explanations for that success. Some of the kids and parents the program attracts are clearly driven. Then there's access to instruments the kids couldn't otherwise afford, and the lessons, of course. Perhaps more importantly, Harmony Project gives kids a place to go after the bell rings, and access to adults who will challenge and nurture them. Keep in mind, many of these students come from families or neighborhoods that have been ravaged by substance abuse or violence — or both.

Still, Martin suspected there was something else, too — something about actually playing music — that was helping these kids.

Enter neurobiologist Nina Kraus, who runs the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. When a mutual acquaintance at the National Institutes of Health introduced her to Martin, Kraus jumped at the chance to explore Martin's hunch and to study the Harmony Project kids and their brains.

Breaking Down Brainwaves
Before we get to what, exactly, Kraus' team did or how they did it, here's a quick primer on how the brain works:

The brain depends on neurons. Whenever we take in new information — through our ears, eyes or skin — those neurons talk to each other by firing off electrical pulses. We call these brainwaves. With scalp electrodes, Kraus and her team can both see and hear these brainwaves.


Using some relatively new, expensive and complicated technology, Kraus can also break these brainwaves down into their component parts — to better understand how kids process not only music but speech, too. That's because the two aren't that different. They have three common denominators — pitch, timing and timbre — and the brain uses the same circuitry to make sense of them all.

In other research, Kraus had noticed something about the brains of kids who come from poverty, like many in the Harmony Project. These children often hear fewer words by age 5 than other kids do.
And that's a problem, Kraus says, because "in the absence of stimulation, the nervous system ... hungry for stimulation ... will make things up. So, in the absence of sound, what we saw is that there was just more random background activity, which you might think of as static."

In addition to that "neural noise," as Kraus calls it, ability to process sound — like telling the difference between someone saying "ba" and "ga" — requires microsecond precision in the brain. And many kids raised in poverty, Kraus says, simply have a harder time doing it; individual sounds can seem "blurry" to the brain. (To hear an analogy of this, using an iconic Mister Rogers monologue — giving you some sense of what the brain of a child raised in poverty might hear — be sure to listen to the audio version of this story.)

Improving Your Ear For Music, And Speech

Learning to play an instrument appears to strengthen the brain's ability to capture the depth and richness of speech sounds. These heat maps of brainwaves show how much music lessons improved kids' neurophysiological distinction of consonants.

Credit: LA Johnson and Alyson Hurt/NPR

Working with Harmony Project, Kraus randomly assigned several dozen kids from the program's waitlist into two groups: those who would be studied after one year of music lessons and those who would be studied after two years.

And what she found was that in the two-year kids, the static didn't go away. But their brains got better — more precise — at processing sound. In short: less blur.

Why The Improvement?
It goes back to pitch, timing and timbre. Kraus argues that learning music improves the brain's ability to process all three, which helps kids pick up language, too. Consonants and vowels become clearer, and the brain can make sense of them more quickly.

That's also likely to make life easier at school, not just in music class but in math class, too — and everywhere else.

To be clear, the study has its limits. It was small — roughly 50 kids, ranging in age from 6 to 9. It wasn't conducted in a lab. And it's hard to know if kids doing some other activity could have experienced similar benefits.

But 10th-grader Monica Miranda doesn't need proof that playing violin has helped her. She's one of the first students in the door at a recent Harmony Project re-enrollment event in the auditorium of a nearby elementary school.

"I feel like music really connects with education," she says. "It helps you concentrate more."
Miranda is in her third year with Harmony Project.

"When I do my homework or I'm studying for something and I feel overwhelmed, I usually go to my violin, to start playing it," Miranda says. "I feel like it relaxes my mind. And coming here to play with an orchestra, it's just amazing. I love it."

And, the science says, her brain loves it, too.

by Cory Turner
from "NPR Ed"(September 10, 2014)

Why Does Music Education Matter?

A few days ago, someone asked me for a few quotes about music education for an article he’s writing.  His first question:

“why is music important to the development (both personal and academic) of our students?”

In our everyday lives as teachers, we’re not generally asked to explain why music matters.  We’re busy planning lessons and concerts, attending faculty meetings, and calmly explaining to a pair of arguing children why it doesn’t matter “who started it.”  We rarely stop to examine why we’re doing what we do.  We just love it.  We can’t imagine doing anything else.  Music is everything!   Music is necessary!  But based on how frequently music gets cut from the school curriculum, not everyone sees it that way.  I’m grateful to have an opportunity to sit down and really work out what I believe is the answer to this question.  Here’s what I think:

Because administrators and politicians generally view music as an  “add-on” or “special,” it can be the first program cut from a school facing budget constraints.  As a result, supporters of music education constantly struggle to justify music’s importance.  They might show how music improves math scores and increases school attendance, or they may demonstrate that the focus and discipline required to master an instrument improve students’ overall academic performance.   Proponents of music education may also discuss one of the most compelling effects of music—the fact that creating music requires individual competence (based on practice and discipline) combined with attentiveness to others in an ensemble, and that this balance prepares children for success in any work or personal environment.   They may also point out that learning to lead an ensemble, whether as a conductor, band leader, or first chair in an orchestra, is excellent preparation for leadership of any kind.

They’re right, of course, about all those things.  But the underlying reason that music helps improve nearly every area of a child’s life is that music is a critical and necessary part of the human experience. The more you remove people’s access to creating and listening to music, the more people suffer, both individually and as a part of a culture.

Each of us has a heartbeat that makes us the walking embodiment of music.  Our life force is a steady beat, the foundation for all music.  When we are excited or frightened, the beat accelerates. When we are relaxed or at rest, the beat is slower.  Music has its basis in our very core.   Also, in order to communicate, we vary the pitch of our voices to create language.  Varying pitches are the basis for melody.  In fact, that’s why we can remember language in the form of lyrics to a song more easily than language in the form of a poem or expository prose.  The song organizes the language into memorable pitch and rhythmic patterns, thus tapping into qualities which are inherent to our physical being.

Yet many in the U.S. and some other parts of the world increasingly view music as the exclusive domain of the extraordinarily talented.  Many people will say that they can’t sing, or that they have no musical ability.  The reality, however, is that they simply have had limited exposure to music, particularly at a very young age.   What we think of as being inborn talent or genius is more likely a combination of some natural ability, passion, early exposure, extensive practice, and laser-like dedication.

Those same people who say that they are “not musical” often love listening to music and are deeply affected by it.  That’s because music is a direct line to our emotions.  Everyone from retailers to advertising executives to the person organizing the high school graduation knows this.  Every spa plays slow music during treatments to help you relax, every professional sports event is peppered with music designed to heighten excitement.  Even fans often chant and sing in response to the action. (“Let’s go Yankees,” followed by a rhythmic clapping pattern, is sung to the tune of a minor third.)  Music is an intrinsic part of events where we feel complex or heightened emotions.  Anyone watching a horror movie with his eyes closed can tell you exactly when something bad is about to happen because the dissonant music evokes an immediate visceral response.  Music is power, and people who control the music are in control of people’s emotions.  And those who choose to participate in music gain something deeply satisfying when they tap into that power, often a sense of relief or expression. Consider these examples:


    45, 000 people, many of whom will tell you that they “can’t sing” will nevertheless sing the chorus to “Hey Jude” with joyful abandon at a Paul McCartney concert.

    On 9/11, U.S. politicians spontaneously sang “God Bless America” on the steps of the capital building to express their sense of grief, anger, and patriotism. They didn’t spontaneously speak the pledge of allegiance in a monotone chant.
    For adults, a song from childhood or high school will evoke extraordinarily immediate and tactile memories of that time.
    Parents softly sing to babies to calm them and get them to sleep.  Parents who “don’t sing” will purchase recordings and play them for the babies, knowing the effect they will have.
    Immediately after a disaster, what is done in order to raise money?  A concert!  Not products to purchase, not a performance of comedy sketches, not an art installation, but music.  The music helps people process the pain of the disaster, and also provides a foundation to inspire people to give money to help victims.

Music is unique in that it is both a discipline and an immediate gateway to human emotional life.   Children who participate regularly in music not only hone their abilities to focus, think, analyze, organize, and work with colleagues, but begin to master their own emotional lives.  Many of the people causing harm in the world through violence, wars, intimidation, and corruption could have avoided that path if they had had access to both a better awareness of their own emotional lives and a constructive passion in which to direct their desire for power.   Music provides both.

from "the Singing Classroom" (March 24, 2013)

 

Top 10 skills children learn from the arts

By Valerie Strauss


(by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

You don’t find school reformers talking much about how we need to train more teachers in the arts, given the current obsession with science, math, technology and engineering (STEM), but here’s a list of skills that young people learn from studying the arts. They serve as a reminder that the arts — while important to study for their intrinsic value — also promote skills seen as important in academic and life success. (That’s why some people talk  about changing the current national emphasis on STEM to STEAM.) This was written by Lisa Phillips is an author, blog journalist, arts and leadership educator, speaker and business owner. To learn about Lisa’s book, “The Artistic Edge: 7 Skills Children Need to Succeed in an Increasingly Right Brain World,” . This appeared on the ARTSblog, a program of Americans for the Arts.

By Lisa Phillips

1. Creativity – Being able to think on your feet, approach tasks from different perspectives and think ‘outside of the box’ will distinguish your child from others. In an arts program, your child will be asked to recite a monologue in 6 different ways, create a painting that represents a memory, or compose a new rhythm to enhance a piece of music. If children have practice thinking creatively, it will come naturally to them now and in their future career.

2. Confidence – The skills developed through theater, not only train you how to convincingly deliver a message, but also build the confidence you need to take command of the stage. Theater training gives children practice stepping out of their comfort zone and allows them to make mistakes and learn from them in rehearsal. This process gives children the confidence to perform in front of large audiences.

3. Problem Solving – Artistic creations are born through the solving of problems. How do I turn this clay into a sculpture? How do I portray a particular emotion through dance? How will my character react in this situation? Without even realizing it kids that participate in the arts are consistently being challenged to solve problems. All this practice problem solving develops children’s skills in reasoning and understanding. This will help develop important problem-solving skills necessary for success in any career.

4. Perseverance – When a child picks up a violin for the first time, she/he knows that playing Bach right away is not an option; however, when that child practices, learns the skills and techniques and doesn’t give up, that Bach concerto is that much closer. In an increasingly competitive world, where people are being asked to continually develop new skills, perseverance is essential to achieving success.

5. Focus – The ability to focus is a key skill developed through ensemble work. Keeping a balance between listening and contributing involves a great deal of concentration and focus. It requires each participant to not only think about their role, but how their role contributes to the big picture of what is being created. Recent research has shown that participation in the arts improves children’s abilities to concentrate and focus in other aspects of their lives.

6. Non-Verbal Communication – Through experiences in theater and dance education, children learn to breakdown the mechanics of body language. They experience different ways of moving and how those movements communicate different emotions. They are then coached in performance skills to ensure they are portraying their character effectively to the audience.

7. Receiving Constructive Feedback – Receiving constructive feedback about a performance or visual art piece is a regular part of any arts instruction. Children learn that feedback is part of learning and it is not something to be offended by or to be taken personally. It is something helpful. The goal is the improvement of skills and evaluation is incorporated at every step of the process. Each arts discipline has built in parameters to ensure that critique is a valuable experience and greatly contributes to the success of the final piece.

8. Collaboration – Most arts disciplines are collaborative in nature. Through the arts, children practice working together, sharing responsibility, and compromising with others to accomplish a common goal. When a child has a part to play in a music ensemble, or a theater or dance production, they begin to understand that their contribution is necessary for the success of the group. Through these experiences children gain confidence and start to learn that their contributions have value even if they don’t have the biggest role.

9. Dedication – When kids get to practice following through with artistic endeavors that result in a finished product or performance, they learn to associate dedication with a feeling of accomplishment. They practice developing healthy work habits of being on time for rehearsals and performances, respecting the contributions of others, and putting effort into the success of the final piece. In the performing arts, the reward for dedication is the warm feeling of an audience’s applause that comes rushing over you, making all your efforts worthwhile.

10. Accountability – When children practice creating something collaboratively they get used to the idea that their actions affect other people. They learn that when they are not prepared or on-time, that other people suffer. Through the arts, children also learn that it is important to admit that you made a mistake and take responsibility for it. Because mistakes are a regular part of the process of learning in the arts, children begin to see that mistakes happen. We acknowledge them, learn from them and move on.

from "The Washington Post"(January 22, 2013)

Why the Progress You Make in the Practice Room Seems to Disappear Overnight

by Dr. Noa Kageyama

Have you ever been frustrated by the fact that you can take a difficult passage, work on it for a bit, get it sounding pretty good, but return to the practice room the next day to discover that you’re back at square 1? That nothing has really changed? And despite how good it sounded yesterday, now it sounds just as bad as it did before you worked on it?
Most of us can live with “two steps forward, one step back.” It’s the “two steps forward, two steps back” that makes us want to tear our hair out.
So what are we to do?
Are we just supposed to keep at it and learn how to be more patient? Or is there a different way to practice that can make these improvements more permanent?

Enter Christine Carter

Dr. Christine Carter is a clarinetist who teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, and did her dissertation on the contextual interference effect – a phenomenon that can help you make your daily progress in the practice room actually stick. In this post, she shares a few suggestions on how we can make the most of our practice time.
Take it away, Christine!

Making the most of your hours in the practice room:

One simple change that could drastically increase your productivity

When it comes to practicing, we often think in terms of time: How many hours are necessary to achieve optimal progress? While this is a valid concern, a more important question is how we can make each hour count. What is the most efficient way to work so that what is practiced today actually sticks tomorrow? There is nothing more frustrating than spending a day hard at work only to return the next day at the starting line. Unfortunately, our current practice model is setting us up for this daily disappointment.

Repetition, babies, and brain scans

Early on in our musical training, we are taught the importance of repetition. How often have we been told to “play each passage ten times perfectly before moving on”? The challenge with this well-intentioned advice is that it is not in line with the way our brains work. We are hardwired to pay attention to change, not repetition. This hardwiring can already be observed in preverbal infants. Show a baby the same object over and over again and they will gradually stop paying attention through a process called habituation. Change the object, and the attention returns full force. The same goes for adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has demonstrated that there is progressively less brain activation when stimuli are repeated. The fact is, repeated information does not receive the same amount of processing as new information. And on some level, we all know this. Constant repetition is boring and our boredom is telling us that our brains are not engaged. But instead of listening to this instinctive voice of reason, we blame ourselves for our lack of attention and yell at ourselves to “focus!” Luckily, there is an alternative.

Blocked practice schedules

In the field of sport psychology, the continuous repetition discussed above is called blocked practice. In a blocked practice schedule, all repetitions of one activity are completed before moving on to a second activity. For example, a baseball player who must hit fifteen fastballs, fifteen curve balls, and fifteen change-up pitches in practice would complete all of the fastballs before moving on to the curve balls and so on. This most resembles the way the majority of musicians practice, especially when it comes to challenging passages. We work on one excerpt for a given amount of time and then move on to the next excerpt until all tasks for the day are complete. A blocked approach seems logical.  Muscle memory requires repetition and why wouldn’t we do all of the repetitions in a row? After all, if we are working on a difficult passage, it feels a lot more comfortable 10 minutes into practice than at the beginning. It is precisely this feeling of comfort and improvement that reinforces our reliance on blocked practice. The problem with this kind of practicing, however, is that the positive results we feel in the practice room today do not lead to the best long-term learning tomorrow. Practicing in a way that optimizes performance in the practice room does not optimize learning.

Random practice schedules

What if we took the blocks of practice on particular tasks and broke them down into smaller segments on each task? In the baseball example above, the players could hit the three different types of pitches in an alternating fashion, instead of doing all of one kind in a row. Two breakdown options are a repeating order (e.g., abc abc abc…) or an arbitrary order (e.g., acb cba bca…). In either, the net result will still be 15 practice hits of each of the three types of pitches, exactly the same as the net result in the blocked practice schedule. The only variable that changes is the order in which the pitches are practiced. This type of interspersed schedule is called a random practice schedule (also known as an interleaved practice schedule).
In a random practice schedule, the performer must keep restarting different tasks. Because beginnings are always the hardest part, it will not feel as comfortable as practicing the same thing over and over again. But this challenge lies at the heart of why random practice schedules are more effective. When we come back to a task after an intervening task, our brain must reconstruct the action plan for what we are about to do. And it is at this moment of reconstruction that our brains are the most active. More mental activity leads to greater long-term learning. In the blocked schedule above, the baseball players must only construct the action plan for each type of pitch once, at the beginning of each block. In the random schedule, they must construct and later reconstruct an action plan fifteen times for each pitch. Although a blocked schedule may produce superior performance during practice, study after study has shown that a random practice schedule consistently produces superior retention following practice a day or more later (i.e., the amount actually learned). This phenomenon is called the contextual interference effect.

How much better is a random practice schedule?

It turns out that the hypothetical baseball example used above is not hypothetical.  In a 1994 study by Hall, Domingues, and Cavazos, elite baseball players were assigned to either the blocked or random practice schedules discussed above. After twelve practice sessions, the baseball players in the random practice schedule hit 57% more of the pitches than when they started. The blocked group only hit 25% more of the pitches, meaning that the random practice schedule was almost twice as effective, even though the two groups hit the same number of practice pitches. Similar results have been found across a wide variety of fields. Most pertinent to our interests as musicians, my preliminary research at the Brain and Mind Institute in Canada provides empirical support for the use of a random practice schedule in music. Not only does this research suggest that a random practice schedule is more effective than a blocked schedule for practicing musical passages, participant interviews also reveal that random practice has positive effects on factors such as goal setting and focus.

How to use a random schedule in the practice room

Rather than spending long uninterrupted periods of time woodshedding each excerpt or section of a piece, pick a few passages you would like to work on and alternate between them. If you want to spend a total of 30 minutes on a particular excerpt, practice in shorter segments, continually returning to this excerpt until you have achieved your 30-minute goal. Experiment with lengths of time. If you are practicing excerpts that are very short, you may be able to switch between them at a faster pace than would be required for longer sections. You can use a small alarm clock to time specific intervals or switch after each repetition. At its most basic level, random practice might look like this:

	Length	Material to Practice
	3 minutes	Excerpt A
	3 minutes	Excerpt B
	3 minutes	Excerpt C
	3 minutes	Excerpt A
	3 minutes	Excerpt B
	3 minutes	Excerpt C
		Etc.

Practicing passages in different rhythmic variations is a great way of introducing contextual interference on a smaller scale. But instead of doing all rhythmic variations on a single excerpt before moving onto the next, do one variation on excerpt A, one on excerpt B and then return to excerpt A for a second variation etc. Technique can also be interspersed into the random schedule, instead of doing all of it in one long block. An example of a more complicated random practice session might look something like the following:

	Length	Material to Practice
	2 minutes	Long tone, scale, long tone, scale…
	3 minutes	Excerpt A (using first rhythmic variation)
	2 minutes	Third progression, arpeggio, third progression, arpeggio…
	3 minutes	Excerpt B (using first rhythmic variation)
	2 minutes	Long tone, scale, long tone, scale…
	3 minutes	Excerpt A (using second rhythmic variation)
	2 minutes	Third progression, arpeggio, third progression, arpeggio…
	3 minutes	Excerpt B (using second rhythmic variation)
		Etc.

The permutations are endless and the exact division of time is not important. What is crucial is that you are keeping your brain engaged by varying the material. More engagement means you will be less bored, more goal-oriented (you have to be if you only have 3 minutes to accomplish something), and substantially more productive. Most importantly, when you return to the practice room the next day, you can start from where you left off. This type of practice sticks.

Additional resources

Dr. Robert Bjork on the benefits of interleaving practice @ Go Cognitive (6-minute video)

About Dr. Christine Carter

Dr. Christine Carter is interested in how musicians can be more effective on stage and in the practice room. She has conducted research at a number of brain imaging and music psychology labs and is currently a visiting scholar at Western University’s Brain and Mind Institute.
Christine is also an active clarinetist. Performances have taken her around the globe, including venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, the ancient cloisters in Avignon France, the Sydney Opera House, the Heritage Theatre in rural Newfoundland, and a Baroque Palace in the South of Germany. She completed her Doctor of Musical Arts at Manhattan School of Music, where she now teaches the Woodwind Lab.
photo credit: fmgbain via photopin cc
from "the Bullet Proof of Musician"
  

不要讓你的孩子學習了一門技術，而恨了一門藝術

中央音樂學院周海宏院長說過一句話：不要讓你的孩子學習了一門技術，而恨了一門藝術。很多家長都有這樣的困惑⋯⋯

1.我們家孩子特別喜歡音樂，為什麼一開始學琴以後就變得對音樂有抵觸心理了呢?
2.為什麼別人家的孩子可以堅持學習鋼琴，我們家的孩子就半途而廢呢?
3.難道孩子不喜...歡音樂了嗎?

其實，答案很簡單》》

1.不是孩子不喜歡音樂了，而是他覺得原本很美的音樂，為什麼突然之間就變成枯燥的手指練習了?
2.為什麼一學習這件樂器，原來可愛的爸爸媽媽就變成兇狠的“大老虎”了?
很多家長認為學習音樂就是簡單的樂器技能學習。其實，如果單單的只是機械的學習樂器，孩子很難真正從樂器的學習中理解到音樂的美，很難感受到音樂帶給生活以及自身氣質的提高。相反，很多孩子會因為這種無聊的樂器學習而排斥原本喜歡的音樂。

》》學習一門樂器確實不是一件簡單的事，為什麼很多孩子放棄了?
1.老師和孩子不合適
這是很重要的一個原因。每個老師有自己的性格，教學特點。在給孩子選老師的時候一定要和老師溝通好，讓老師瞭解孩子的性格，孩子的喜愛。孩子的內心很簡單， 他喜歡你就願意和你說話，即使第一次他有些害羞，但喜歡和厭惡還是能從孩子的臉上看出來。一個孩子喜歡的老師和一個孩子不喜歡的老師，教學成果肯定截然不同。

2.家長輕言放棄
孩子不想練琴，或是嚷嚷著不想學琴的時候，家長便輕易妥協，好吧，不學就不學吧。孩子樂了“我只是這麼一說，爸爸媽媽就真的同意了，哦，原來學習是可以說放棄就放棄的。”這就是大多數孩子的心理。孩子不知道什麼叫堅持，家長難道也不明白嗎？這樣縱容孩子的後果就是孩子一遇到困難就想著放棄。相反，有些家長及時的和老師溝通，及時的調整上課方式上課頻率，多多鼓勵孩子，告訴孩子學習一樣東西就得堅持，遇到困難要勇於面對，努力克服解決，這樣教育出來的孩子一定不會輕言放棄。

3.家長過於心急或功利化，教師魔鬼式突擊拔高
有的家長想很短時間內讓孩子就能演奏很多曲目、或達到幾級幾級，能為考學加分，教師可能會因為家長的執著而改變正常進展的教學方式，易造成揠苗助長的不良後果，很可能導致孩子考完幾級後一輩子也不想碰琴，甚至聽到琴聲在生理上便出現不良反應，恐怕這是家長和教師都不願看到的最壞結果，這對孩子生心理健康成長都造成了很大的負面影響。

自《音樂講堂》(19/9/2014)

A Better Way to Practice

While it may be true that there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going, there certainly are ways of needlessly prolonging the journey. We often waste lots of time because nobody ever taught us the most effective and efficient way to practice. Whether it's learning how to code, improving your writing skills, or playing a musical instrument, practicing the right way can mean the difference between good and great.

 

You have probably heard the old joke about the tourist who asks a cab driver how to get to Carnegie Hall, only to be told: "Practice, practice, practice!"

 

I began playing the violin at age two, and for as long as I can remember, there was one question which haunted me every day.

 

Am I practicing enough?

What Do Performers Say?

I scoured books and interviews with great artists, looking for a consensus on practice time that would ease my conscience. I read an interview with Rubinstein, in which he stated that nobody should have to practice more than four hours a day. He explained that if you needed that much time, you probably weren't doing it right.

 

And then there was violinist Nathan Milstein who once asked his teacher Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. Auer responded by saying "Practice with your fingers and you need all day. Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours."

 

Even Heifetz indicated that he never believed in practicing too much, and that excessive practice is "just as bad as practicing too little!" He claimed that he practiced no more than three hours per day on average, and that he didn't practice at all on Sundays.

It seemed that four hours should be enough. So I breathed easy for a bit. And then I learned about the work of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson.

What Do Psychologists Say?

When it comes to understanding expertise and expert performance, psychologist Dr. Ericsson is perhaps the world's leading authority. His research is the basis for the "10,000-hour rule" which suggests that it requires at least ten years and/or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve an expert level of performance in any given domain – and in the case of musicians, more like 15-25 years in order to attain an elite international level.

 

Those are some pretty big numbers. So large, that at first I missed the most important factor in the equation.

 

Deliberate practice.

 

Meaning, that there is a specific type of practice that facilitates the attainment of an elite level of performance. And then there's the other kind of practice that most of us are more familiar with.

Mindless Practice

Have you ever observed a musician (or athlete, actor, trial attorney) engage in practice? You'll notice that most practice resembles one of the following distinct patterns.

 

1. Broken record method: This is where we simply repeat the same thing over and over. Same tennis serve. Same passage on the piano. Same powerpoint presentation. From a distance it might look like practice, but much of it is simply mindless repetition.

 

2. Autopilot method: This is where we activate our autopilot system and coast. Recite our sales pitch three times. Play a round of golf. Run through a piece from beginning to end.

 

3. Hybrid method: Then there's the combined approach. For most of my life, practicing meant playing through a piece until I heard something I didn't like, at which point I'd stop, repeat the passage over and over until it started to sound better, and then resume playing until I heard the next thing I wasn't pleased with, at which point I'd repeat the whole process over again.

Three Problems

Unfortunately, there are three problems with practicing this way.

 

1. It's a waste of time: Why? For one, very little productive learning takes place when we practice this way. This is why you can "practice" something for hours, days, or weeks, and still not improve all that much. Even worse, you are actually digging yourself a hole, because what this model of practicing does is strengthen undesirable habits and errors, increasing the likelihood of more consistently inconsistent performances.

 

This also makes it more difficult to clean up these bad habits as time goes on – so you are essentially adding to the amount of future practice time you will need in order to eliminate these undesirable tendencies. To quote a saxophone professor I once worked with: "Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent."

 

2. It makes you less confident: In addition, practicing mindlessly lowers your confidence, as a part of you realizes you don't really know how to produce the results you are looking for. Even if you have a fairly high success rate in the most difficult passages, there's a sense of uncertainty deep down that just won't go away.

 

Real on-stage confidence comes from (a) being able to nail it consistently, (b) knowing that this isn't a coincidence but that you can do it the correct way on demand, because (c) you know precisely why you nail it or miss it – i.e. you have identified the key technical or mechanical factors that are necessary to play the passage perfectly every time.

 

3. It is mind-numbingly dull: Practicing mindlessly is a chore. We've all had well-meaning parents and teachers tell us to go home and practice a certain passage x number of times, or to practice x number of hours, right? But why are we measuring success in units of practice time? What we need are more specific results-oriented outcome goals – such as, practice this passage until it sounds like XYZ, or practice this passage until you can figure out how to make it sound like ABC.

Deliberate Practice

So what is the alternative? Deliberate, or mindful practice is a systematic and highly structured activity, that is, for lack of a better word, more scientific. Instead of mindless trial and error, it is an active and thoughtful process of hypothesis testing where we relentlessly seek solutions to clearly defined problems.

 

Deliberate practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very specific sections of a skill instead of just playing through. For example, if you were a musician, you might work on just the opening note of a solo to make sure that it "speaks" exactly the way you want, instead of playing the entire opening phrase.

 

Deliberate practice also involves monitoring one's performance - in real-time and via recordings - continually looking for new ways to improve. This means being observant and keenly aware of what happens, so that you can tell yourself exactly what went wrong. For instance, was the first note note sharp? Flat? Too loud? Too soft? Too harsh? Too short? Too long?

 

Let's say that the note was too sharp and too long with not enough of an attack to begin the note. Well, how sharp was it? A little? A lot? How much longer was the note than you wanted it to be? How much more of an attack did you want?

 

Ok, the note was a little sharp, just a hair too long, and required a much clearer attack in order to be consistent with the marked articulation and dynamics. So, why was the note sharp? What did you do? What do you need to do instead to make sure the note is perfectly in tune every time? How do you ensure that the length is just as you want it to be, and how do you get a consistently clean and clear attack to begin the note so it begins in the right character?

 

Now, let's imagine you recorded each trial repetition, and could listen back to the last attempt. Does that combination of ingredients give you the desired result? Does that combination of elements convey the mood or character you want to communicate to the listener as effectively as you thought it would? Does it help the listener experience what you want them to feel?

 

If this sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is. Which might explain why few take the time to practice this way. To stop, analyze what went wrong, why it happened, and how they can produce different results the next time.

 

Simple though it may sound, it took me years to figure this out. Yet it remains the most valuable and enduring lesson I learned from my 23 years of training. In the dozen or so years since I put down my violin, the principles of deliberate practice have remained relevant no matter what skill I must learn next. Be it the practice of psychology, building an audience for a blog, parenting, or making the perfect smoothie, how I spend my practice time remains more important than how much time I spend practicing.

How to Accelerate Skill Development

Here are the five principles I would want to share with a younger version of myself. I hope you find something of value on this list as well.

 

1. Focus is everything: 
Keep practice sessions limited to a duration that allows you to stay focused. This may be as short as 10-20 minutes, and as long as 45-60+ minutes.

 

2. Timing is everything, too: Keep track of times during the day when you tend to have the most energy. This may be first thing in the morning, or right before lunch. Try to do your practicing during these naturally productive periods, when you are able to focus and think most clearly. What to do in your naturally unproductive times? I say take a guilt-free nap.

 

3. Don't trust your memory: Use a practice notebook. Plan out your practice, and keep track of your practice goals and what you discover during your practice sessions. The key to getting into "flow" when practicing is to constantly strive for clarity of intention. Have a crystal clear idea of what you want (e.g. the sound you want to produce, or particular phrasing you'd like to try, or specific articulation, intonation, etc. that you'd like to be able to execute consistently), and be relentless in your search for ever better solutions.

 

When you stumble onto a new insight or discover a solution to a problem, write it down! As you practice more mindfully, you'll began making so many micro-discoveries that you will need written reminders to remember them all.

 

4. Smarter, not harder: When things aren't working, sometimes we simply have to practice more. And then there are times when it means we have to go in a different direction.

 

I remember struggling with the left-hand pizzicato variation in Paganini's 24th Caprice when I was studying at Juilliard. I kept trying harder and harder to make the notes speak, but all I got was sore fingers, a couple of which actually started to bleed (well, just a tiny bit).

 

Instead of stubbornly persisting with a strategy that clearly wasn't working, I forced myself to stop. I brainstormed solutions to the problem for a day or two, and wrote down ideas as they occurred to me. When I had a list of some promising solutions, I started experimenting.

 

I eventually came up with a solution that worked, and the next time I played for my teacher, he actually asked me to show him how I made the notes speak so clearly!

 

5. Stay on target with a problem-solving model: 
It's extraordinarily easy to drift into mindless practice mode. Keep yourself on task using the 6-step problem solving model below.

• Define the problem. (What result did I just get? What do I want this note/phrase to sound like instead?)
• Analyze the problem. (What is causing it to sound like this?)
• Identify potential solutions. (What can I tweak to make it sound more like I want?)
• Test the potential solutions and select the most effective one. (What tweaks seem to work best?)
• Implement the best solution. (Reinforce these tweaks to make the changes permanent.)
• Monitor implementation. (Do these changes continue to produce the results I'm looking for?

• Make Your Time Count

  It doesn't matter if we are talking about perfecting violin technique, improving your golf game, becoming a better writer, improving your marketing skills, or becoming a more effective surgeon.
•  
  Life is short. Time is our most valuable commodity. If you're going to practice, you might as well do it right.
•  
  The Most Valuable Lesson I Learned From Playing the Violin | Creativity Post

  ---

  Noa Kageyama is a Juilliard-trained violinist turned sport & performance psychologist. He specializes in teaching performing artists how to perform up to their full abilities under pressure.

from 'Life Hacker" (31/8/2012)

音樂課助人突破階級困境：足量才有效

已有許多證據顯示，貧窮造成的持續壓力會阻礙腦部發育，但新的研究也指出，弱勢孩童如果參與「趣味的挑戰」，將能逐漸強化其神經發展，而這種「趣味的挑戰」就是音樂課。

該研究發現，居住在洛杉磯幫派興盛區的6~9歲孩童中，參與自由音樂建構課程達兩年者，處理特定音節的速度比其它較少受到音樂訓練的同儕要快。研究報告的第一作者——美國西北大學Nina Kraus教授認為：「這份研究顯示社區音樂計劃能夠重塑孩童的腦部，優化處理聲音的過程，而這能增進學習與語言使用的技巧」，此報告已見於神經科學學刊 (Journal of Neuroscience) 。

研究團隊追蹤44位洛杉磯公共學校的學生三年，他們都居住在幫派出沒的地區。其中有18位學生在第一年參加了Harmony Project音樂訓練計劃，經過約半年的入門音樂課程 (每週兩次、每次一小時的基礎課) ，再進入分組樂器課程，另外26位學生則在一年之後才開始基礎音樂課程。

每學年終了時，這些學生都要參加神經生理學測試，研究者從中了解他們的腦部能夠多快分辨ba與ga兩種聲音的差異。他們發現：「經過兩年訓練的孩子在分辨音節的神經反應上大有長進。在兩組學生之中，受到較多的音樂訓練者，其神經功能也隨之增強。這顯示音樂訓練能夠轉化到非音樂方面的整體聽覺上，並能自然影響其對聲音的處理過程。」這種進步對日常生活的溝通多有助益。

以往的研究顯示，在群體中比較擅於閱讀及在噪音中聽力較優異者，在神經系統上對於上述音節都有更強的區別能力。這份研究因此也說明了社團及聯課活動中的音樂課程能夠增強神經系統功能。

更值得注意的是，研究者發現，這種效果在受試者接受滿兩年的訓練後才會顯現，如果課上得不夠多，是沒有用的。
自《muzik online》(18/9/2014)

職業音樂家的健康問題

《Help Musicians UK》近期訪問英國552位職業音樂家，了解他們的壓力和困擾。受訪者男女比例相近，其中將近60%在古典音樂領域工作，另有來自爵士和民族音樂工作者，還有從事流行和搖滾樂。

困擾他們最大的問題是：反社會的工作時間。音樂人常常是白天休息，晚上工作（例如：音樂會在晚上開演，晚上的家教課，晚上在俱樂部當伴奏...等），有84%受訪者認因為工作時間和一般人相反，因而影響他們的正常社交，更甚者，或有可能導致心理問題，孤獨和人際關係相處困難。

隨之而來的狀況是，無法定時進食，三餐不正常，且長期缺乏運動，並與家人和伴侶關係緊繃。

82%受訪者坦言有經濟問題。英國生活指數高，物價昂貴，然而，音樂人薪資所得卻不盡理想。超過一半的音樂工作者年薪低於兩萬英鎊（約新台幣100萬）。更糟的是，因為工作不穩定，常是過了這個村就沒那個店，高達80%的音樂人擔心沒有工作。

音樂可以怡養性情、教化人心，但實際情況是，職業音樂家的身心狀態並不健康，多數因經年累月練習患有職業傷害，也有精神抑鬱問題，45%嚴重酗酒，另外14%藥物濫用。

這份調查報告與近期由大提琴演奏家Rachael Lander現身說法的紀錄片《Addicts' Symphony》相呼應。Lander揭露：「（藥物或酒精）成癮問題在古典音樂人之間屢見不鮮，生活方式、工作時間不固定、週末無休、音樂會後的社交活動都是造成這種現象的潛在因素。很多演奏家用酒精或阻斷劑來控制演出的焦慮，但表演的高潮過後，他們就必須與自己的低潮奮戰，於是他們選擇用酒精來放鬆一下，經久成習。」


自《Muzik online》(19/9/2014)

時間到了，必須完成嗎？

前幾天，太太向我訴苦，說每天工作太忙，時間，體力不夠用，以前不是當家長，自己顧自己，沒有這個煩惱，但是，一旦有孩子，時間好像加速似的流過。

最近，一位鋼琴家老師也向我訴說，香港的孩子練琴時間太少，少得讓她驚訝，一年下來，只能仔細完全三，兩首樂曲，教學上充滿困難，但為了質素，只能寧慢保質。

不知道大家家中有沒有這個鐘，我家中便有一個，通常，它是用來告訴參賽者，你可以開始作賽了，或是，你可以停止了！

現代的孩子，一出生就像被放在跑道上，與時間競賽，生怕落後於人，可是，若以學琴為例，並非說快便能快，而是要花大量時間處理基礎問題，且要看孩子是否生，心理有足夠準備。

親身嘗試過做家長，都知道心很急，但是作為長遠培養孩子，要多了解甚麼的學習速度，數量才是適合孩子，而不是跟隨别人的進度，很多時，慢並非即是差，既然每天沒有花足夠的時間，或是本身未有足夠條件，便很難追求學習速度了，速度與質量那個重要？若是苟且學習，早晚會倒下。

所以，在每天追趕時間的同時，多考慮追趕的目的，是質素還是速度，時間一分一秒過去，若是你真是希望在某一方面有成果，便多分配在這方面，用心按方法去做，老老實實下苦工，時間是公平的，每人每天24小時，沒有那人可以例外呢！

自《Calvin's Violin Studio》(23 September 2014)

Conductor Christopher Hogwood dies aged 73

Hogwood founded the Academy of Ancient Music in 1973

British conductor Christopher Hogwood has died aged 73.

He died at his home in Cambridge following an illness lasting several months, a statement on his website said.

It added his funeral will be private, with a memorial service to be held at a later date.

Hogwood worked with many leading orchestras around the world and was considered one of the most influential exponents of the early-music movement.

The conductor founded the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) in 1973 and directed the academy across six continents for some 30 years.

The AAM also made more than 200 CDs, including the first-ever complete cycle of Mozart symphonies on period instruments.

Among his most famous recordings include the 1980 version of Handel's Messiah with Emma Kirkby and Carolyn Watkinson, which was named by BBC Music Magazine as one of the top 20 recordings of all time.

Hogwood studied keyboard at Cambridge University with Rafael Puyana and Mary Potts and later with Zuzana Ruzickova and Gustav Leonhardt.

His first positions were as a keyboard player and musicologist with the Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner, and was a founder member of the Early Music Consort of London.

He was the artistic director of the King's Lynn Festival and Boston's Handel and Haydn Society. He was also a tutor at Harvard University, honorary professor of music at the University of Cambridge and a professor-at-large at Cornell University in the US.

"Christopher had extraordinary generosity of spirit," Christopher Purvis, honorary president of the AAM, said.

"He was a great ambassador for historically informed music, the movement of which he was a founder. And he was happy to see the orchestra he founded develop and grow after he stepped down as director."

The AAM's music director Richard Egarr added: "I am deeply saddened by the news of Christopher's passing. Christopher provided a fantastic legacy for me to build upon when I joined in 2006 and I know he will be greatly missed by all who knew and worked with him."

Speaking to Sean Rafferty on Radio 3's In Tune, soprano Dame Emma Kirkby said: "Some of the best players that now lead orchestras all over the world, they started with him.

"Chris was a natural academic, an incredibly clever man. He had an amazing capacity to absorb information of all kinds and a really sure sense of how things would be if he really tried to reproduce conditions... a very genial person."

David Thomas from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London added: "He always said I want the music to speak for itself because it can, it's good enough, it will… a very pleasant and lovely man."

from BBC News (24 September 2014 Last updated at 16:16)


London: Music under the shadow of Handel - Professor Christopher Hogwood CBE