I keep hammering away at the brain’s ability to re-wire itself because 1. It’s so darn fascinating, and 2. To combat the old saw that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” which research is telling us is completely false. Here’s some more evidence of the lifelong plasticity of the brain. To anyone over 18 who is considering doing something new and unfamiliar, the following vid should be required watching.
Category: Links
Huge Chunk of Awesomeness
A wii remote, percussion, a bunch of servos and solenoids, some 12-tone set theory algorhythms (that word’s a joke, not a typo :-), looping functions, machine improvising and you get this huge chunk of awesomeness. First a performance and then how it’s done. This is so cool and amazing I simply don’t know what to say. Watch Patrick and his “band” Jazari and be inspired and flabbergasted. I wonder how he practices…..
Fail Better
In a previous post I spoke of the necessity of failure. I mentioned Buddha’s belief that the obstacle is the path, and when watching an interview with olympic speed skater Apolo Ohno, I’m reminded of it again, but in a different way. Here’s the thing:
After the 1500 meter race in which he won bronze, thereby becoming the most decorated American winter olympic athlete, Ohno said something interesting in an interview after the race. He was clearly happy, but spoke about a little bobble near the end of the race, when the Canadian skater bumped him as they went around a turn and Ohno’s skate stuttered. What did Ohno say in the interview? Did he blame the dastardly Canadian for bumping him? No. He took full responsibility for the stumble and wondered (I’m paraphrasing), “If I hadn’t messed up there I might have placed better.” Ohno is giving a perfect positive example of what researchers have called attribution theory, or what I like to call, The Blame Game. Here’s how it works:
More Freebies
Information wants to be free, and the Internet makes that happen. A good friend teaching music in Pakistan and who is now moving to Manila to continue teaching music turned me on to a wiki for the Petrucci Music Library, a repository of free sheet music that is in the public domain. You can search by composer, by composer nationality, by period, and by type of work. What a great resource! They’ve been online for 4 years now, and I’m wondering how I missed it. I hope you can find something to use there.
Go Gumbo, Go Ya-Ka-May
Michelle and I were in a little bar somewhere in the French quarter of New Orleans, halfway through a 2-year road trip (yes, you heard that right), and the tight Reggae band we’d been listening to took a break and never came back. We stood outside in the drizzle, not ready to go back to the VW camper but we had no idea where to go and had no money for a cab. In the distance, we heard music. It sounded like a brass band, and they sounded smoking hot. We were afraid it was only a recording, but had to find out for sure, so we followed our ears through the drizzle to a little corner bar that was thumping!
Talent No Existe!
“A genius! For 37 years I’ve practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!” –Pablo Sarasate (Spanish violinist)
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Anders Ericsson’s fantastic work on deliberate practice, as well as the work of many other researchers (see below), has shown that talent is merely disguised practice. In the following video, listen closely to how the teacher frames the girl’s typing skill, and how Makensie herself does. The teacher is flabbergasted, but Makensie gives us a lot more information: she practices, has goals, receives support and encouragement from family and friends, and gets self-esteem from the skill she’s acquired.
Time, time, time, is on your side (yes it is)
And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area. Bill Bruford
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If you’re interested in playing music, you’ve gotta have rhythm. If you think you don’t “have it,” consider the words of Taylor, a teacher, djembe-player, and all around good guy. Taylor has students feel their heartbeats. It’s a rhythm we all have. But it’s an internal rhythm, and it’s part of an unconscious rhythmic ability we all receive when we receive a heartbeat from our parents. We may have trouble making that natural rhythm come out consciously under control. But that, too, can be practiced.
Jazz Resources
Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny. ~Frank Zappa
I don’t care too much about music. What I like is sounds. ~Dizzy Gillespie
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This coming weekend I’m hosting at the computer lab at the Evanston Township High School Jazz Festival, a jazz fest for high school jazzers in and around the Chicago area. I’m putting together some resources that the budding jazz musician will find helpful, including listening, blogs, freeware, software, podcasts, and anything else that might be useful. Some of the software I’ve mentioned in one or two earlier posts (Sibelius, Aviary, NoteFlight, Audacity, Band in a Box, etc). I’ll put links to that software here, but won’t go into much detail. If you’re not into playing jazz, you should certainly check out some of the listening opportunities. Great stuff there…. Enjoy!
Tiny Grains of Sand: The Warmup and the Breath
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present. Victor Hugo ——— Want to learn more about the best ways to practice? Get an e-mail with a discount code when The Practice of Practice is published (June, 2014). To learn more about the book,…
Evidence of Motivation
In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Success is the child of audacity. ~Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You…
It IS about you…
Have you ever been out in the world, going somewhere, sure of the direction you’re headed when in a flash you realize that you’re actually headed in the opposite direction? It’s such an odd and sudden shift of perspective, as if the entire world suddenly snaps to a new orientation. But it’s not the world that shifts, it’s you. Every now and then I get that same feeling from something I read. It could be the first time I read a new author (Bradbury, O’Connor, Vonnegut), or some piece of research, like a study by Carol Dweck, the subject of this post.
It’s not about you…
Motivation is the grease and the ball bearings in the wheels of our music practice. Without motivation, absolutely nothing would happen. It’s as essential as the breath you breathe. Thing is, motivation is a slippery notion that tends to slip away when you try to wrap your mind around exactly what it is, where it comes from, and how it works. There are the usual things like listening to great music, going to see musicians live and talking to them if possible, but this is surface stuff. Motivation goes much deeper. There are two important aspects of motivation I’d like to throw out for you to chew on: goals (specifically what researchers call goal orientation), and your implicit theories on both intelligence and “talent.”
The Practice of Practice 