No, it [excellence] doesn’t start with talent, it starts with love. —Malcolm Gladwell on Jimmy Kimmel Live (1-13-09) Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent. —Langston Coleman The zeitgeist in the world of practice is the 10,000 hour rule, a fact that first appeared in Ericsson’s research into excellence….
Author: Jonathan Harnum
Hi, I'm Jon Harnum, author, publisher, teacher, musician, and scholar. If you'd like to learn more about music or how to publish books, come check out my web sites and online courses. Lots of freebies so you can try before you buy. See you online!
Confusion is Your Friend
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all…
For the Record: The Blame Game
I have two practices: music and writing. In a lot of ways they’re related: they both take focused practice if there is to be improvement. They both arise from the sea of words or sounds in which we’re immersed from birth and from which we drink and somehow make our own. But there is a…
The McGurk Effect
Don’t believe everything you think. –folk wisdom _________________________________ Think you can stump the ear/eye connection? Below is a little test to see if you fall into the 98% of adults who experience the McGurk Effect. It doesn’t relate directly to music practice, but is interesting to think about and it does involve listening. Neuroscience usually…
Ass Power!
Learn what Quincy Jones meant when he said one of the reasons for Michal Jackson’s success was that he had ass power. It’s not what you might think. Ass power will certainly help your own music practice. Learn about it.
Don’t Eat the Marshmallow (yet)!
In another short and funny six minute TED talk called Don’t Eat the Marshnmallow Yet by Joachim de Posada, the advantages of delayed gratification are tested with four year old kids and marshmallows. If the kid could wait 15 minutes without eating a marshmallow in front of them, they got another one. The original Stanford…
8 Secrets of Success
Well, there’s certainly a lot more to be said about the details of how to achieve each of these “secrets,” but this short and sweet TED talk by Richard St. John is a good place to start. It’s no coincidence that “practice, practice, practice” is in there! Check it…. Want to learn more about the…
Mirror, Mirror in the Brain; or Monkey See, Monkey Do
“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.” George Bernard Shaw Pretend that you’re a budding jazz guitar player. You’ve been practicing for a year or two so you’re beginning to have an idea of how it’s done and what you need to do to…
Book Review: The Talent Code
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer (106-43 BCE) Wear the old coat and buy the new book. ~ Austin Phelps Despite what Cicero seemed to think 2,100 years ago, I think it’s great that everyone is writing…
Teach to Learn
When one teaches, two learn. — Robert Heinlein If you really want to learn something you already know more deeply, there is no better way than trying to teach it to someone else. People in the Learning Sciences who study how we come to know what we know say that knowledge is socially constructed. We…
Creative Practice
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. Arthur Koestler Some thinkers about creativity identify two different types: Creativity and creativity, or “Big C” and “Little c.” Some believe that “true” creativity is only that which contributes to changes in the way we think or…
Thoreau Was Right
What do you think they found?
Turns out that the students who read the directions written with the simple font were much more open to exercising and thought the regime would take less time and be more fluid and easy and were willing to make exercise a regular part of the day.
The Practice of Practice 