On the Birthday of Bernard Herrmann, The Nature of Learning
Abe Lincoln said, “If I have 8 hours to cut a tree, I spend 6 sharpening the axe.”
This 11:26 film will compress your Music education into questions and perhaps answers. Click here for STORMSummate.
It’s common to think that the number of years that you’ve been doing something impacts your skill level… but study after study in areas of everything from basketball to woodworking proves that's not the case.
If this were the case, we’d see more 90-year-olds in NASCAR, but we don’t. Since I started playing baseball almost 50 years ago…before MBL players were born… I should be better than them, but I’m not. It’s more common to see people in any sport grind out rep after rep for year after year, only to plateau or get worse, instead of getting better.
So, if the number of years that a Musician, for instance, has been playing, teaching, learning, and writing doesn’t matter, what does?
It’s the quality, type, and frequency of the practice.
Perfect technique, frequent sessions, and deliberate practice focusing on specific aspects of your technique will get you quicker, better results than just slugging it out over time.
Practice makes Permanent, not perfect. It does not take decades to become great! With the right tools, you can do it in a few minutes each day and see dramatic changes in weeks.
Focusing on perfect technique lets your brain develop an automatic default where you think of Music rather than “how to make it.”
Practice makes Permanent means that you benefit more from 5-10 minutes of perfect practice per day than you do from hours of swinging at a tree with an unsharpened axe.
The remaining questions are these. What does one practice? And how? Check out that film, share it with colleagues. Ask yourself the questions it will stir with an open mind. Engage the video from concept to completion and imagine what you can bring to your students.
Click here for STORMSummate.
It’s incumbent on us to be the game-changers!
Godspeed! S
© Stephen Melillo, IGNA 29 JUN 2017