The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Ok. I don't have much physics or biology training, however, I've been bantering the following alot in my lessons to explain why practicing is important, and the benefits of it.

I was hoping for a few things here: A spot to talk about what/how/when you practice,to share techniques and ideas, and also, for the brainiacs in the house to possibly explain the biotechnical reasons for some of my smatterings....


..here goes...

The brain is like a computer, in that anything you input into it, it's there. Anything you've seen, heard, smelled, whatever, it's loaded in there. How we access this stuff is one of the purposes of practice. The brain has a sort-off "RAM" , in that most people can retain seven topics of focus at a time... however, we also have things we do that are "automatic"... like sitting in a chair... the spin holds itself erect after we decide to sit... yada yada.

So, I've struggled with practicer's guilt whenever I don't work on things I should, yet sometimes weeks goes by , and if I go back to something, it's better!!

To resolve myself of my guilt, and too improve, I've amalgamated (ikes!) various things about practice I've learned/read/ observed....


1. We practice to first understand.
2. We then practice to make the process automatic.
3. We practice to have endurance.
4. We practice for recall.
5. We practice to then be able to respond to a question with immediate recall... (what's 1 + 1), what chord sounds good with this riff? What's your mom's name?)
6. Finally, practice to be free to create whatever you envision without interference.


So, I no longer practice certain things that I would regularily perform, as I already understand them, they are automatic, blah blah and the other things I work take care of the other elements like endurance.... so my guilt has backed off a tad, as long as I play and practice music in general everyday, I don't freak if my drumming is suffering cause I'm in guitar mode, and visa versa...

I practice at least 1.5 hours a day, although I do take a day off here and there.

Have you read any of Jamey Andreas's works on guitar practice? I think you'll be totally fascinated by it if you haven't. He goes into the nature of practice itself and especially the neuromuscular side of things. He has been teaching for over 20 years or so and has had excellent results with his students. I have actually taken those principles in learning to type and have had very good results. My guitar playing has improved greatly as well. Have a look:

http://www.guitarprinciples.com/

Ok, he's trying to sell his book, but you get an idea of what he's on about from reading the articles.

I have also used the principles to improve my pedal stroke when cycling. It's all about learning to relax, but then isn't everything.

The fourfold process of skill learning I came across went something like this:

Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence

I'm 36 and I've only just learned to drive a car and I found it very interesting to watch the process of learning unfold from complete novice to competent driver.

Very interesting stuff all this, very interesting.

Cool... that's the kind of stuff I'm interested in... I like that four steps of comptentence thing... (I'm at conscious competence on my spelling while typing...I'm alot better in ink... seriously!)

I'm gonna have to check that book out.

There's another reason I practice, and that is simply to get the rush of having learned something new. I will practice a piece for weeks and weeks, and as soon as I have it down, I never play it again. I mean, I WANT to be playing it again, and that, I believe, was the whole reason I practiced so hard on it in the first place, but in reality, once I know it, the appeal to play it completely evaporates. I'm trying to get over this, but I think it's a fact of my being, that I like imagining how cool it will be when I will be able to play something MORE than I like actually being able to play it.

Another thing I've learned about practicing: Our brains learn things in the shortest-term memory they can get away with. You usually can't learn something once and then remember it forever. First time you learn it, your brain doesn't know how long it's going to need it, so it stores it in short-term memory. Then maybe an hour later it gets reminded and it thinks "Oh, here's that thing again, maybe I'd better put it in longer-term memory" but it's still relatively short term at that point. Then as the span of time between remindings increases, our brains slowly transfer the learned things into longer and longer term memory, till eventually it is "permanently" learned. With that in mind, then, the best way to permanently learn something is to review over & over, but each time with a slightly longer amount of time between. Learn that Japanese for cat is "neko". Then remind yourself an hour later, then the next day, then three days later, a week later, a month later, a year later.

I've always thought that some sort of computer application should be made to teach people simple facts like vocabulary words, and then the program reminds you of things you've learned with this theory of increasing time between reviews. Those new-word-every-day calendars and emails don't work because those words only ever get into short-term memory.

I don't know if this is too new agey for you, but it is all about mind/body control. It has some good stories to illustrate how you should practice things slowly and carefully then speed up. Stuff like that. I haven't read the updated version and haven't read the old version in quite some time either, so take this suggestion with that in mind.

http://www.danmillman.com/store/body_mind_mastery.html

Be well,
Ken

This is pretty much what Jamey Andreas is talking about in his book. He is talking about it specifically in terms of learning the guitar, but I think that it could be applied in any physical skill learning situation. He gets you to practice right at the very beginning, otherwise one is just reinforcing a bad habit. But then aren't you obviously going to get it wrong the first time that you do it? Well that's what you have to avoid. Well that sounds even more absurd. Well it's all about tension and relaxation.

If you are trying to hold down a chord, and put this finger here and that finger there, it's something that the hand has never done before. The muscles have to be able to do that and only that. So you break down the whole process and do it real slow. The whole body should be relaxed so that it's easy to see if any tension builds up and its also to feel what it's like when you do it right. Don't even try to play that chord yet. How hard should the fingers press the strings etc. Examine the whole process, study it, until you can just hold that chord really comfortably. Then your hand just does that and every time you practice, that is what becomes emphasized and entrenched into that neuromuscular pathway. But if you start to learn that chord with tension and grapple at that guitar, that's what your fingers have learned. They don't know it's a guitar or a chord, they just contract and relax. You have to show them exactly how to do it, and I mean exactly, just like programming a computer. Garbage in, garbage out. Perfect practice.

That's very idealistic. What it doesn't take into account is the gratification aspect of it. We AREN'T just like machines. We need constant feedback if we're going to stick to something. I'd hate to try to teach that method to someone and have to explain to them that actually making a sound out of the instrument is bad at this point. Most people will either decide it's no fun at all or else they'll "cheat" and feel bad about it, or else they'll cheat and not feel bad about it, essentially abandoning that way of practice. Sure, that might be the most purely efficient way of practicing, but nobody does it that way in real life.

Bell Green wrote:This is pretty much what Jamey Andreas is talking about in his book. He is talking about it specifically in terms of learning the guitar, but I think that it could be applied in any physical skill learning situation. He gets you to practice right at the very beginning, otherwise one is just reinforcing a bad habit. But then aren't you obviously going to get it wrong the first time that you do it? Well that's what you have to avoid. Well that sounds even more absurd. Well it's all about tension and relaxation.

If you are trying to hold down a chord, and put this finger here and that finger there, it's something that the hand has never done before. The muscles have to be able to do that and only that. So you break down the whole process and do it real slow. The whole body should be relaxed so that it's easy to see if any tension builds up and its also to feel what it's like when you do it right. Don't even try to play that chord yet. How hard should the fingers press the strings etc. Examine the whole process, study it, until you can just hold that chord really comfortably. Then your hand just does that and every time you practice, that is what becomes emphasized and entrenched into that neuromuscular pathway. But if you start to learn that chord with tension and grapple at that guitar, that's what your fingers have learned. They don't know it's a guitar or a chord, they just contract and relax. You have to show them exactly how to do it, and I mean exactly, just like programming a computer. Garbage in, garbage out. Perfect practice.

Yeah that's some bullshit right there. People respond to feedback. You start off sounding like crap, then you sound better, and that's your motivation. Maybe if you become obssessed with the shit, like that dude apparently is, you can turn it into some kind of Zen practice exercise, but then I'm gonna slap you in the face and ask you where the fuck the music went in your music, Mr. Fripp.

Sometimes it is tempting to let music turn into math. Resist this temptation, if you value your soul.

Bell Green wrote:You have to show them exactly how to do it, and I mean exactly, just like programming a computer. Garbage in, garbage out. Perfect practice.

That's absolute poppycock. If there's one thing your neruomuscular system is not like, it's a computer.

Your brain/body does not learn muscle movements, it learns outcomes. Primary motor cortex tells muscles where they need to end up, not how to get there; the dorsal root ganglia in your spine (with feed-forward information from cerebellum and pons) figure that stuff out automatcially, and will react and correct for error without involving your brain at all. Secondary motor areas organize and sequence the outputs of primary motor cortex; all that stuff is beyond consciousness.

There's a good literature about how if you practice a skill under different circumstances (i.e. using different guitars, different guage strings, different tempi, etc.) you'll be better at it than if you only practice it exactly as you want to perform it. Making mistakes is a key to learning, as long as your ear can detect those mistakes.

There's a lot to be said about relaxing and being deliberate. Practice doesn't work if you're not paying attention. But it has nothing to do with teaching your muscles exactly what to do.

Man. Jim and JB beat me to the punch. Color me redundant.

(Though I'm inclined to be a bit nicer to Fripp because of some lovely stuff he did with The Roaches, but I understand the sentiment.)

It's only bullshit if that's the only way you practice.

I for one think that makes a ton of sense... and of course, JB , you raise the whole debate about "what is music" which I won't bother going into, cause from what I know about you, you've probably already explored that.

Here is the converse to what you are saying though:

I teach 11-15 year olds private lessons. Often a kid (hell, anyone!) will play something to achieve the gratification in their own mind... and in reality they sound like shit. When they finally hear themselves, they are disappointed, because the sound they are getting doesn't match what was in there mind... and the solution to this is to start over, REAL SLOW, and work out the mechanics of the problem until the goal they've set for themselves is reached. This dude is saying to the teachers...try to get them to do that right the first time. This isn't for stuff you already know and express yourself with, it's for the stuff your trying to conquer.

So, in a nutshell, if your seeking some kind of mental reward for your efforts, it's gonna come from when you can do the thing you set out to do the way you set out to do it! And I have found, as PAINFUL as it can be, that slower and relaxed ALWAYS equals faster and more like I wanted something to sound like in the end... also, I've also found that people who work this way, tend to learn faster and perform their ideas sooner than those that stubbornly plod along on an idea.

Hope that all made sense...

Mostess wrote:

Bell Green wrote:You have to show them exactly how to do it, and I mean exactly, just like programming a computer. Garbage in, garbage out. Perfect practice.

That's absolute poppycock. If there's one thing your neruomuscular system is not like, it's a computer.

Your brain/body does not learn muscle movements, it learns outcomes. Primary motor cortex tells muscles where they need to end up, not how to get there; the dorsal root ganglia in your spine (with feed-forward information from cerebellum and pons) figure that stuff out automatcially, and will react and correct for error without involving your brain at all. Secondary motor areas organize and sequence the outputs of primary motor cortex; all that stuff is beyond consciousness.

There's a good literature about how if you practice a skill under different circumstances (i.e. using different guitars, different guage strings, different tempi, etc.) you'll be better at it than if you only practice it exactly as you want to perform it. Making mistakes is a key to learning, as long as your ear can detect those mistakes.

There's a lot to be said about relaxing and being deliberate. Practice doesn't work if you're not paying attention. But it has nothing to do with teaching your muscles exactly what to do.

Now that is some interesting stuff...the kind of stuff I wanted to hear about when I started this thread... inspired by the psycho-babblings in the politics threads.

I did not know that about muscle "memory"...so is "muscle memory" a crock?

You're talking two different things here. Practicing slow and deliberate and all is fine. It's the whole "get your muscles to do it perfectly before you do anything else" that doesn't fly.

Muscle memory is awesome. Of course it's a misnomer, because your muscles aren't remembering anything, it's all in your head. But what a great experience to try and re-learn something you forgot a long time ago, and it comes back in one-twentieth the amount of time it took to learn in the first place.

Leaf wrote:I teach 11-15 year olds private lessons. Often a kid (hell, anyone!) will play something to achieve the gratification in their own mind... and in reality they sound like shit. When they finally hear themselves, they are disappointed, because the sound they are getting doesn't match what was in there mind... and the solution to this is to start over, REAL SLOW, and work out the mechanics of the problem until the goal they've set for themselves is reached. This dude is saying to the teachers...try to get them to do that right the first time. This isn't for stuff you already know and express yourself with, it's for the stuff your trying to conquer.

So, in a nutshell, if your seeking some kind of mental reward for your efforts, it's gonna come from when you can do the thing you set out to do the way you set out to do it! And I have found, as PAINFUL as it can be, that slower and relaxed ALWAYS equals faster and more like I wanted something to sound like in the end... also, I've also found that people who work this way, tend to learn faster and perform their ideas sooner than those that stubbornly plod along on an idea.

I'll speak from the perspective of teaching 'cello students. I believe there are different techniques for learning (practicing) different things. There are pieces (sonatas, etudes, songs, etc) and then there are exercises (scales, velocity things, chord progressionss, etc.)

If you insist that students always start from the ground up with a piece, you'll ensure that they become inflexible musicians. For one thing, they'll have trouble sightreading. For another, they will have difficulty just picking up and going off with their instrument. Their facility will be impaired, because they'll have a mental block against going off half-cocked. You gotta be able to fake your way through some stuff in this world, without just wiggling your fingers. Mushing a passage is going to happen, and your students MUST be able to handle that without stopping, or indeed without registering any alarm on their faces at all. It's just a clam, forget it and move on.

What students really need to learn is good critical thinking techniques. This includes objectively evaluating their own performance: their intonation, their musical decisions, their own artistry. They need to learn how to set their own expectations correctly, and to understand that they won't be able to do everything perfectly right off the bat. And as a teacher, I make sure they hold nothing back. It won't benefit them to be embarrassed about anything related to practicing. They have to recognize when something sounds horrible and then admit it. And when something sounds awesome! Like writing an essay, their interpretation of a piece will take some revising before it's in a condition to present to other people. I've got to ensure that they have the the chops AND the balls to go through the process of revision. To say to themselves "oh my god that sucked" and then bear down and work out the kinks until they're satisfied. AND I need to set that level of satisfaction at the level *I* want it to be at, in order for them to progress. Not too high, not too low. Everything doesn't need to be perfect all the time.

When I'm teaching, students are required to sightread everything I assign, in front of me. I teach them how to prepare themselves to sightread, you know, figure out the key, scan the pages for key changes, accidentals, time sig changes. And then they just go. And they're not allowed to stop either, goddammit.

Then they must analyze what they just went through. What was easy, what was hard, are there things in there that they just couldn't play because their technique isn't there yet? Of course there always are, because these pieces are specifically chosen for them to learn.

Then they break the piece down into bits. They practice the hard bits as you suggest, slowly building up tempo. If necessary, they break it down further into one single shift. And as they work up sections, they blend it into the whole, gradually playing larger and larger portions of the piece, until they can play the whole page continuously without mistakes.

As this is going on, we are examining the music for decisions that we need to make as artists. Are you going to use fast or slow vibrato on that half note? Or none at all? Are you going to play that note on an open string or in fourth position?

That's how my kids learn a piece. That's what practice is to me. It's the artistic process of creating music, in this case performing it.

Then I give them a pile of stuff to sightread at home. Just play through this stuff, dude, here you go. It'll have 'cello pieces in it, it'll have piano sheet music, popular songs, etc. Younger kids need more watching, or they'll just play through everything. They need to have their practice techniques solid before they can go off and read everything. That takes a lot of reminding and cajoling. But they're required to learn it. Just like they're required to have a pencil at every lesson along with their rosin and rockstop and a rag. This is what good musicians do.

Exercises are different. And I don't mean etudes. I mean like, scales and velocity things. I don't even bother pretending they're fun. Rather, they're a chore. But my kids are prepared for that, and they're dedicated, because I won't allow them not to be. At least while they're in the lesson. I try to impress upon them the need for these things, in whatever terms will make sense to them. Fundamentals, like in baseball or soccer. I guess I'm veering off into teaching stuff rather than practice. But still, it's important. We're not making little automatons, we're making musicians.

In the case of exercises, we do operate a little more like machines in trying to make them perfect. They're to train your fingers and your mind, and you have to use self-discipline order to make yourself learn them properly. Proper position of the body and hands, and proper technique on the string, proper fingerings, etc. They build stamina, and they help you ease your body and mind into a set of patterns that allows the greatest facility when it comes to making the music. The exercises are crafted from issues that appear in the music you'll be making later in the lesson, or a couple lessons from now. Nothing is random.

So maybe I was hasty in calling bullshit. But it would be a giant mistake to apply to learning a piece of music the techniques that are appropriate for working up one technically difficult section of a piece, or an exercise.

If I'm learning a new guitar chord, there are two things I want to accomplish immediately: 1. I want to be able to play the chord cleanly. This doesn't always happen right off the bat, and sometimes only gradually becomes possible as I work on number 2. I want to be able to switch to the new chord quickly from other places on the guitar.

But still, I'm never going to not make a noise. That's the way to know if I did it right. I'll not make noise later, when I want to run quietly through something I already know. But even then I'm hammer-oning and stuff to hear a little something.

Holy cow I rambled for a long time. Too long. Feel free to skim or ignore. Basically I'm just saying one long FUCK YOU to Erik. Oh, he knows why. And Hoblit too. FUCK YOU HOBLIT.

Blimey 8)

Leaf wrote:...so is "muscle memory" a crock?

Not entirely. I think when people say "muscle memory," they're talking about automaticity, which is certainly something real. Because it feels automatic, people assume their brains are not doing it; it must be in their muscles. But most of what your brain does is completely invisible to you. So automaticity feels like its outside of you, but it is usually definitely a central brain process.

The motor system is bizarrely complicated, and no one really understand how it all works. Roughly, though, it's wired as a feed-forward loop: command goes from brain to muscle, but gets cc'ed to cerebellum which listens to the body and makes quick corrections based on perceived or predicted error. Decerebrated (top brain removed) rodents can walk on a treadmill, and will "catch" themselves if you trip them; but that's all spinal cord and cerebellum at work, not muscles. It won't happen if you break the loop by removing cerebellum, or cutting part of the spinal cord. And it seems specific to walking, not (necessarily) learned behaviors. Frogs raised tied down so they have never hopped will still hop when decerebrated and electrically stimulated; some movements are "hard wired."

Automaticity is fascinating and strange. The theory I was steeped in in grad school is that the two distinct types of memory ("declarative" which is like what you know, and "procedural" which is like what you know how to do) use two different brain systems (call them "D" and "P" respectively). Practicing a new skill necessarily involves the "D" system at first, but through repetition and attention to feedback, the "P" system becomes more and more involved, and the "D" system less and less. Since the "D" system is down with the more "talky" parts of cortex, like language processing and the storage of categories of things, it's more accessable to consciousness (whatever that is). But the "P" system is higher up, closer to the primary motor area, and isn't so accessable to consciousness.

Why this is, I can't say. Why do you suddenly become clumsy if you start thinking about how you're doing something you're pretty good at? Does your "D" system somehow "trump" your "P" system? Why are something harder to learn than others? No idea. I stopped studying this stuff a while ago, but I'm pretty sure none of the big questions are much closer to being answered.

I'm babbling. To sum up:
1) Motor memory is bizarre.
2) Not like a computer.

When I was first starting out on bass and guitar, all I wanted to do was play fast. Well, and sound good doing it, but speed was key. Learning something slow and then speeding it up has never worked for me because there are subtle temporal shifts that you unconsciously make as you speed something up or down, like wanting to hold a note slightly longer (percentage-wise) during a slower version. If you make a recording at 1/2 speed, and then speed it up, it will not sound exactly like a recording at full speed.


I think for someone who is starting out new to something, the whole "practice slowly and carefully at first" I think is just as valid as the "jump right in and do what you can", since you're learning and practicing different things with either method. I think I was about 15 when I first touched a bass guitar, at my best friend's request. He had been taking guitar lessons, and I was to learn to play this bass, in order to start a band. We weren't even playing fast songs, but the midtempo numbers were still too fast for me. Instead of saying that the songs were too fast for me, I decided to try and keep up. Playing all the notes I wanted to was too hard, so I dropped out some of the notes to play along. I eventually got fast enough for my own liking, and I also learned a bit about improvising in the process.

jb wrote: If you insist that students always start from the ground up with a piece, you'll ensure that they become inflexible musicians.

Absolutely not! However, if some kid is trying to nail something, slow and relaxed always works. Please don't intrepret one thing I'm talking about as if it's the whole of my method... I have many! All the things you say, I agree with for the most part. Especially:

jb wrote: What students really need to learn is good critical thinking techniques. This includes objectively evaluating their own performance: their intonation, their musical decisions, their own artistry. They need to learn how to set their own expectations correctly, and to understand that they won't be able to do everything perfectly right off the bat. And as a teacher, I make sure they hold nothing back......

Teaching and practicing are as seperate as they are connected, although I always teach better when I'm practicing regularly.

jb wrote: We're not making little automatons, we're making musicians.

On this, I'm gonna say... depends on your perspective, and the student's desires. Teaching drums is a lot different than teaching sightreading cello pieces, in that a very good drummer does play well automatically, leaving room to think and listen and respond to the environment rather than thinking only about what you are doing. So... the automaton musician can be a really ideal frame of mind... if you don't take the word automaton as deragotory....(I spell like the best.)


And of course, I see that you awknowledge that! Just my own ramblings I suppose....

You are correct that applying just the one method would be a mistake, but so would using any ONE method of practice (or teaching) or not being open to other ideas and techniques that may seem new... I for one, right now, am spending all my practice time on guitar, and building repetoire, knowing full well that I don't know what scael or chord base some of the riffs I'm playing are based off, or "proper" technique... simply cause I wanna play these songs now dammit!!

I do know though, that no matter which direction you approach music from, and no matter how random the information goes in, no matter how disjointed it may be... eventually all the ideas and concepts "marry"...


Now who's rambling eh???

I appreciated your thoughts.

Leaf wrote:
I appreciated your thoughts.

That sounded (read) retarded.... just meant I wasn't taking anbything you wrote as offensive, just constructive towards the conversation, and I had no idea you were a cello teacher!! (JB) So, your perspective and insights are helpful to me.

Yeah Erik, I'vre noticed that too... where do you draw the line between mastering something slow, and working on the actual speed? I just flip between both myself... but ..yeah.


Mostess.. thanks.... that was cool.... in fact everything everyone has said so far is super cool... very helpful.
I LIKE TO LEARN.

jb wrote:Mushing a passage is going to happen, and your students MUST be able to handle that without stopping, or indeed without registering any alarm on their faces at all. It's just a clam, forget it and move on.

I can add a bit to this as a scientist:

My first psychology research experience was in a lab that studied children learning the piano. The most robust finding was that they reached some categorical breaking point after about 3-4 years of lessons and practice: before, when they made a mistake, they'd stop, backup, and try again. After, they'd keep going. The stopping and correcting seemed almost pathological, like obsessive-compulsive or something (of course, these were terrified 6-9 year olds brought into a laboratory to perform for a few nerds) but I'm pretty sure it's normative behavior.

The really interesting stuff, was that when they reached the point where they could keep going, they started making anticipatory errors---playing notes that were coming up. It's like some buffering system kicked in and let them think about the future while playing in the present. Kids before the break point almost never made anticipatory errors.

Older, wiser musicians tend to make "smart" errors, where fingers hit the wrong keys, but keys that sound fine; in the correct key, in the correct chord, etc. So it seems some meta-buffering is going on, some online paraphrasing or translating; a condensation and expansion of the information on the page into the head and to the body that follows some music-theory-like rules. Also, wiser musicians' anticipatory errors come from notes in the current phrase (i.e. anticipatory errors become less likely as they near the end of a phrase, and more likely at the start of the next) indicating that the buffer is sensitive to musical structure.

So it doesn't surprise me that kids need to learn meta-level stuff in order to stay motivated and in order to grow. I've never taught music to anyone, so I'm interested in JB's and Leaf's perspectives.

What I find very interesting is that it was downright painful to listen to the playbacks of those kids stopping and correcting. Horribly painful. And knowing by heart the snippets we played most often did not make them less painful. Something deep inside needs the music to keep going, and revolts when it doesn't. I don't know if the kids would have thought the same, but that's an interesting empirical question now that I think of it.

Who's Erik?

Leaf wrote:

jb wrote: We're not making little automatons, we're making musicians.

On this, I'm gonna say... depends on your perspective, and the student's desires. Teaching drums is a lot different than teaching sightreading cello pieces, in that a very good drummer does play well automatically, leaving room to think and listen and respond to the environment rather than thinking only about what you are doing. So... the automaton musician can be a really ideal frame of mind... if you don't take the word automaton as deragotory....(I spell like the best.)

There's a difference between "automatic" and "automaton". I want my 'cellists to be able to find fourth position or breeze through an E major scale automatically. You want your drummers to be able to keep 8th notes on a hihat and off-beats on the kick automatically.

This frees them to make musical decisions. These are the tools they use to make those decisions. Or just to survive when thrown into deep water.