Author: musicalitywrld

Have you felt like you just don’t have enough time for learning your instrument and learning new music? Maybe you feel like you’re putting in the time and effort but just don’t seem to be getting much payoff in terms of results.

Have you been frustrated by struggling to memorise things, or finding the things you did work hard to memorise slip away over time?

Or maybe it feels like whatever you try, you’re just spinning in circles, or tripping yourself up, so that you never quite make solid progress towards your musical goals – like there’s something continually sabotaging you – and it might just be all in your head.

If you’ve felt one or more of these frustrations in your musical life you are certainly not alone. And believe it or not, there’s a single solution which can quickly eliminate all of these challenges.

It’s time to re-learn what it means to “learn music”. It’s time to discover the techniques of musical superlearning.

What does that mean, exactly? That’s what we’re talking about in this special episode with Christopher and Andrew from the Musical U team: what does “musical superlearning” look like in practice, and is it right for you?

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Musical Superlearning
• Practice Q&A [1/5] How To Find More Music Practice Time, with Gregg Goodhart
• Practice Q&A [2/5] How To Get Maximum Results In Minimum Time, with Gregg Goodhart
• Practice Q&A [3/5] How To Conquer Tricky Sections And Break Through Plateaus, with Gregg Goodhart
• Practice Q&A [4/5] How To Stay Consistent – Without Discipline, with Gregg Goodhart
• Practice Q&A [5/5] How To Spend Practice Time And Prevent Overwhelm, with Gregg Goodhart

Transcript

Christopher: Hi, my name’s Christopher Sutton, I’m the founder and Director of Musical U, and welcome to Musicality Now. In recent episodes we’ve been sharing a Practice Q&A we did with “The Learning Coach” Gregg Goodhart, in response to a big survey we did on the challenges people face in learning music. And in part five we mentioned a new course called “Musical Superlearning” – which, if you’re watching this episode as it airs, is available now at MusicalSuperlearning.com and there’s just a few days left to enroll.

Christopher: Here’s the thing. As you listened to the Practice Q&A you might well have wondered: What is Musical U doing talking about instrument practice, aren’t they all about “musicality” and those skills that aren’t? “how to play your instrument” and “how to play from notation”? And the answer is “yes”, that is still the core of our mission at Musical U.

Christopher: But of course, for the vast majority of musicians, playing an instrument is how they will express whatever skills of musicality they learn at Musical U – and playing from notation is always going to be a big part of their musical life. And it turns out that exactly the same issues of “talent” and people not coming anywhere near to their true potential as musicians, are at play in that world too.

Christopher: Meaning: almost every music learner is frustrated by their slow progress and thinks that the world’s top virtuosos and the people who seem to learn much faster than them have some innate gift or talent that lets them do it. But the reality is, just like the inner skills of musicality, there is nothing mysterious or mystical going on. When you look closely, as scientists have now for 30-plus years, it turns out there are specific practical things that set the apparently-talented ones apart – and it’s all stuff that literally anyone can learn to do, and get the same rapid results from.

Christopher: So that’s why we’ve teamed up with Gregg Goodhart to try to bring these powerful techniques of musical superlearning into the mainstream. I’m here today with Andrew Bishko from the MU team to share some insights and ideas from the new course we’ve developed, to help you see what this “superlearning” actually looks like in practice. Andrew’s kindly joining us first thing in the morning, I can see the sun’s just coming up with him, so we might have a bit of strange lighting if you’re watching the video version of this episode!

Christopher: Now if you’re among the couple of hundred people who’ve already registered for the course, then I’m excited to see you in there and this episode will be a bit of a sneak peek of what’s coming up for you. And if you haven’t yet decided to join us for this course I hope this conversation will shed some light on what this “musical superlearning” thing is – and whether or not you take the course, it should give you a clearer understanding of what you might be missing out on in your music learning.

Christopher: Because as I’ve been saying in some of our emails to members and email subscribers this week: learning “how to learn” in music and shifting your practice into “high gear” is arguably the most important thing you could invest your time and money in. Because once you acquire these special practice skills, it accelerates and improves every other thing you choose to learn after that.

Christopher: Now this course is like our recent Ear Training For Beginners and Improv Immersion courses, where I was very involved in the planning and design – but then handed over pretty much entirely to the team to create the course itself. Which means I’m as excited as anyone to dive into it next week. And rather than me sit here and talk in the abstract about musical superlearning, or share only my own personal experience, I thought it would be better to get Andrew in to share the inside scoop on what this course, and these techniques in general, involve.

Christopher: So Andrew, thank you so much for being with me for this episode and I’m looking forward to picking your brains on the specifics of what’s in this course. But I wonder before we dive in, if you could tell us just a little bit about A, your background as a musician and B, your experience with Gregg that sets the scene for the fact that you’ve been working with him to develop this course?

Andrew: Absolutely. I’ve been playing, I started taking piano lessons when I was five years old, which was a long time ago, and I played piano and then flute in band when I was growing up. And when I was growing up, especially with piano, music was always, I loved it and I was passionate about it, but it was always difficult and I never really seemed to get there, piano especially. But everything was … but I still, I just plugged away because I loved it. I stopped playing music for about six years and I got back into music as a street musician, so I was making it up as I went along. And then at a certain point I decided, I was in bands and things like that and I wanted to further my music education. And I went to the New England Conservatory of Music, which was a nice jump from being a street musician.

Andrew: So I would consider myself a fairly accomplished musician, but I always had the feeling like, “Gosh, I wish I could be like that person, or that great musician, and how did they get there?” And I practiced a lot, I practiced a lot, I practiced a lot, and where’s it all going? Why aren’t I really getting into these skills? So anyway, fast forward, I’ve been working at Musical U for about three years and I discovered working here, all kinds of skills that I knew existed, but even though I had a background in ear training, it wasn’t like this. And so I started acquiring new skills through working here and through teaching here, and opening my mind to new ways of learning music. But what really clinched it for me is when I met Greg, we did some … sun’s coming up here. We did some work with him and some podcast episodes and I was totally fascinated by his episodes.

Andrew: And then I actually had the opportunity to work with him one on one. And it was amazing because I always thought of myself as being a good practicer, I knew how to practice and I knew how to do … I’ve been teaching for 30 years, I’ve been … And yet I was able to make more progress in just a few weeks and get to the core too of some of the things that were really holding me back. And it was really magical and it helped that Gregg and I were really simpatico with our philosophies and things like that. But he really got to the root of some things for me. And so I’ve been really pumped about this idea that we’re going to do a course with him. So, first of all, just to have a chance to hang out with him for a while is always cool, and then to move ahead and move forward. Because every time I’m learning about this, I’m always learning more about my own practicing and putting these things into play. So it’s been, for very selfish reasons, I’m really enjoying this opportunity to put this class together.

Christopher: Awesome. Well, I was particularly keen to share your experience with Gregg because I know it will be striking to a lot of people, the idea that someone might have been playing music their whole life, be proficient on several instruments, be teaching for several decades, and still work one on one with this guy and come away thinking, “Oh my gosh, I never knew how to practice.” Or, “Wow, I’m suddenly learning the vihuela so much faster than I was before.” And I think it’s important to make that clear from the outset, this is not stuff that’s just about helping the virtuosos get better, and it’s not just about teaching beginners how to practice. This is really a whole different world of how to teach, and how to learn, and how to practice music, which is fundamentally different I think, than the way almost everybody is doing it.

Andrew: Absolutely. One thing about my experience, and I’m glad you mentioned the vihuela, which is a Mexican guitar. I came at this from two different directions, one, doing some work on an instrument, the accordion, which I’ve been playing for a long time, 25 years or so. And then also doing some work on the vihuela, which is a completely new instrument and a new concept to me because I’ve never played guitar and I’d never played a stringed instrument really. So it was a totally new instrument. So coming at it from both directions as a beginner myself on an instrument and as someone who is breaking through plateaus of songs I’ve been working on for years. So that’s another thing that I, really grateful, it helps me so much as a teacher when I have students and I can help them on a beginner level because I know what it’s like to be a beginner.

Christopher: Yeah, and that’s one of the things I really wanted to unpack a little bit was, what does all of this mean? What does it actually look like when we’re saying Superlearning or we’re saying getting faster results than ever before? I think in a minute we can talk through each of the four major topics we’re covering in this course specifically. But I wonder if you could just give us a little glimpse of maybe what your practice looked like before Gregg and after Greg, just as one little example of what we’re talking about here?

Andrew: Well, absolutely. One of the things is practicing the same thing over, and over, and over again, and then having it-

Christopher: That’s what you’re meant to do, right? You just keep at it until it suddenly works?

Andrew: Yeah. And wondering why it’s not getting better, “It should be easy because I know this, I know the notes, I know where my fingers are going. Why isn’t this getting better? Why isn’t this getting better? I haven’t practiced it enough, so I have to practice it more. I have to practice it a hundred times. I have to practice it this way or that way.” And, it’s not that I had not creative with my practicing, but still not, things were, they weren’t moving. Afterwards, first of all, having a lot more fun because I’m practicing something in so many different ways and from so many different angles and from angles I hadn’t thought of before.

Andrew: And also getting to the bottom of things, a lot of times I wondered why, I thought I knew everything about what I was practicing, I thought I knew it inside out, I’d played it so many times. But learning new things about it, for example, I was thinking that one thing I was working on, I thought it was my left hand technique that was the problem, and I was working, and working, and working on it. And then I just got into the deliberate practice and found out, no, there was one little glitch with my right hand that was affecting this whole passage. And this is something I’ve played over, and over, and over, and over again for how long? And figuring things out like that, that’s just some of the differences.

Christopher: Awesome. And let’s just dive straight in then, you mentioned deliberate practice, but that actually, even though in a sense it’s the biggie in terms of the research science on learning quickly, we’re actually beginning this course with a subset, or a sub-skill, of this overall idea of deliberate practice. So maybe you can talk a bit about what we’re putting in week one of this course and, whether someone takes the course or not, why this is an important thing to know about?

Andrew: Okay, well, the first week we’re talking about something called contextual interference. Okay, so come at this thing, and it sounds really technical, but … And I just want to just say one general thing before I get into it. A lot of the stuff that we’re doing in this course doesn’t make any sense to the way we’ve been doing things, and to what you think you should be doing to learn something. It’s just not the way we usually think of learning things. And so a lot of the stuff goes against what we think we should be.

Andrew: So for example, one of the elements of contextual interference is making things harder. Isn’t our whole goal to make things easier? All right. And another thing that we do when we do contextual interference, so when you do contextual interference, you do something to make things more difficult. You change the rhythm, or you change the way you’re standing, or you change the room that you’re in, or you do something that changes things and makes things more difficult. You change the dynamics, whatever. You do things that make it harder.

Andrew: And the other thing that’s really weird about it is you don’t want to get it perfect. So when you make this change, you stop before it really gets good. And it’s like, that makes no sense. But what’s happening is that the learning, what’s happening in your brain is that the optimum efficiency for your learning comes when you’re struggling. It comes when you’re working really hard.

Andrew: And that’s the deal with contextual interference and what we create with that, which is called desirable difficulty. Is that when we’ve created the struggle, our brain is learning really fast. And then when we’re not practicing, it goes to work trying to figure it all out and sort it all out. And there’s all this neuroscience stuff with myelin sheaths and things like that happening in our brains. But it’s really pretty cool and you come back the next day, it’s like, “Wow, I really did make some progress.”

Christopher: And we’ve been doing our best over the last year or more, I forget when we first interviewed Gregg. But we’ve been putting a fair bit of our weight behind trying to get this stuff mainstream because there’s no doubt in the research world it works. And everyone who tries it, it’s like, “It works.” But still most people don’t know about it.

Christopher: And so we’ve done these interviews with Gregg and we’ve done practical classes of his at Musical U for our members. And recently we had him on to do our practice Q&A where he shared some of these ideas and concepts about what was possible. But I know a lot of people having heard that, they’re not yet getting the benefit. So even the people who’ve heard that this is possible and maybe get the idea, “Oh, I make things a bit harder and then it will be easier.” I’m certain 99% of them are not then going away and doing it in their practice.

Christopher: And what I’d love to share is you and Gregg came up with a really clever way to adapt our normal learn, practice, apply framework at Musical U to help people actually not just spend a week hearing about contextual interference and getting the idea, but to actually get the benefits. So that by the end of the week they are really seeing the difference in their practice. So maybe you can share a bit about how you’ve structured that or what’s going on during that first week.

Andrew: Okay. Yeah. So Musical U, excuse me, we’ve been developing this learn, practice and apply methodology. And in fact when we showed Gregg, when we’re saying, “Okay Gregg, let’s get together and do this course. This is how we do it.” He says, “That’s great. That’s= learning. That’s really sound learning stuff.” So, based on research that we didn’t do, but we figured it out somehow. And he says that this is a really good way to work on things.

Andrew: So another thing we’ve been doing is putting the learn, practice and apply together in modules. So you learn something, you get some information, then you do something to practice that information in a box where it’s like, okay, you’re going to do this exercise in a box and maybe it’s too easy. Maybe it’s too hard. Whatever. You’re learning about how this thing works.

Andrew: And then you go and you take it and you apply it to your own musical life. So for example, in this first lesson with a contextual interference, we’re going to start with learning about a certain method of creating contextual interference through changing the rhythms. We’re going to practice it with a piece of music that you’re working on. And then we’re going to take that and apply it in many different creative ways to this piece of music you’re working on and also give information about many, many other ways that you can come up with contextual interference.

Andrew: Now this is the thing that I think is really important there is that a lot of times people learn, they learn one thing to do, they learn one trick from their teachers or something like that. But after a while, when you learn the trick really good, it’s not as effective anymore because there’s no struggle.

Andrew: So we’re giving you tons of tricks and plus we’ll stimulate you to come up with your own tricks. Because part of the fun for me was once I learned these concepts, is coming up with my own ideas. I’m an improviser. So improvising my practice and improvising like, “Okay, I’m going to try this, I’m going to try this, I’m going to try this.” Where I like, “What if this? What if that?”

Andrew: Where it gets to be a really creative and enjoyable process and then you’re so busy playing around. And the next day you realize, “Hey I learned this thing. I learned this piece. It was supposed to be played originally even though I messed it up totally.” So that’s how we’re going to learn, practice and then apply with some more creativity to designing our practice sessions.

Christopher: And I think it’s been really interesting on both sides collaborating with Gregg on this because he has such extensive experience. And most of his teaching has been presentations or one on one with students, either in person or online.

Christopher: And so he has that kind of teacher-student relationship. And obviously we’re coming in and being like, “We’re going to make a course and people are just going to log on and do the course on the website.” And I remember saying to him in some of the early discussions, “We’ve got to take all this stuff you know how to do step-by-step, one-to-one with the students and structure in a way that every day they’re going to get some teaching from you that they’re going to be able to do.” And it’s structured in a way that it leads them through to getting these skills so you don’t have that kind of back and forth.

Christopher: And I think you guys did a really great job of leveraging that learn, practice apply idea. So that from the student perspective it feels a lot like each day I show up and Gregg helps me take this next step into getting all of these magical benefits in my practice.

Christopher: And I just think it’s hard to know from the outside when you hear this idea like desirable difficulty or contextual interference, it’s really hard to know what should I do tomorrow? What should I do the next day? Okay, I’ve showed up for my practice session. I know I could do this thing that’s good. What do I actually do? And I love that you’ve turned it into something that is very step-by-step and process-oriented while also equipping people to go off into the wilderness afterwards in any number of ways they like.

Andrew: Well, I want to say this, a lot of people think that online teaching or doing something like this is kind of second best. And I teach live all the time, but what we’ve created is something I think that we’re not just doing something that’s a dumbed down version or second best version of something that you would be doing live.

Andrew: Because what happens here is that because you have these modules and you have all this information and you have it all step-by-step, you can come back to it as often as you like. A lot of times we have these experiences in our lessons. We have this inner now experience and it’s so wonderful and it’s so amazing. And then we go home and we’re practicing and it’s like, “What did he say? How did he say it there? What am I supposed to do here?”

Andrew: And here it’s like you don’t have to remember. It’s right there. We are going to increase your memory though. There’s a whole module on your musical memory. But you’re also going to be able to have this as a resource to come back to again and again and again.

Andrew: And of course, with our Musical U courses the other thing is community. Where you have the resources of the community and learning with other people and people talking back and forth. Where it becomes such a rich evergreen resource for you to use over and over and over again. And get down deeper level by level and by level.

Andrew: And for this first time through the course we’re doing live stuff too, live Q&A. And the recordings of that are all there. So there are so many advantages to doing it this way where it really helps it stick rather than having to go back to something to the teacher all the time and do everything live all the time. It really helps it stick to have it in this format.

Christopher: Absolutely. And I know we’ve been learning a lot from Gregg reciprocally. We were sharing some of the learn, practice, apply stuff and he was coming in and saying, “Well, if we really want students to learn during this week, we’re going to have to do the quizzes in this way. And we’re going to have to recommend they do it in this way.” And yeah, it’s really fascinating for us, because as you say, we don’t know the brain science research nearly to the extent he does. And yeah, it’s really cool.

Christopher: Anyway, moving on to the next thing because I think that gives people a good sense of contextual interference is about making things a bit harder on yourself because then it somehow magically makes things easier. And there’s subtlety to it. And there’s a whole process you go through to internalize these skills and make them a part of your practice.

Christopher: But in a nutshell, we’re handing you in week one the power tool. And if someone wants to go off and just learn and master one thing that would give them a taste of this super learning, I think contextual interference is probably it. That being said, in week two, we step back, right. And we go to the bigger picture of, where does this fit in in the world of learning overall? How do you know where to apply it and when and how? So maybe you could give us an idea of what’s going to happen in week two.

Andrew: Well, the title of the module is Deliberate Practice and maybe you’re familiar with that term. It’s certainly been bantered about quite a bit around our world and a lot of times we summarize it by you’re going to really focus on the stuff that’s hard, the stuff that’s difficult, really zero in on things. But what I found, working with Greg, is that I would do things. I would say, “I’m going to do it this way, I’m going to do it that way.” I might do things.

Andrew: But what was really missing for me is the critical step of really reflecting on what I was doing. Like, I play something and then why doesn’t this work? Why didn’t this happen? And not just leave it as, “Okay, well I have to practice this again. I have to play it again. I have to repeat it again.” No, there’s something going on there. There’s some little tweak.

Andrew: When we’re playing music and we’re using our voices or instruments, there are these incredible repertoire of fine motor movements that we develop in order to play an instrument. And it’s these little tiny tweaks, these little tiny position changes. “Oh, if I just move my hand this much or that much,” that can make all the difference in my ability to do something. And so when I really focused in… We get in this zone… We’re going to get. See, it all works together. It’s amazing, because now I’m talking about module four.

Andrew: But I’m coming back to this module, Deliberate Practice. When we get to this ability to focus in on these minute, minute details and some are like, “Aha, that’s what was happening. If I try this, what’s going to happen? If I shift this little thing?”

Andrew: And it’s amazing that rather than just driving through and pumping through it, where I can make a big difference with a very small change and a very small shift. And sometimes the small shift isn’t even in the body, what I’m doing with my body to create this sound, but it’s in my mind. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I realized that part in the music… I have been terrified of that passage for years, and I have to get rid of the fear.” I put a bomb in there. It’s like, I have to… And Deliberate Practice exposes these things. It gets us into the details and then we really start to make the progress we want to make.

Christopher: And I’m going to just play the part of devil’s advocate, or maybe even say what might be on our listeners’ and viewers’ minds, which is, okay, sounds good. I get it. I should reflect more and be a bit more thoughtful about what I work on during practice. Why do you need a whole week of a training course about that? Like, what are you actually going to do in that week that makes this more than just that idea?

Andrew: Well, the things that were really different for me working with Gregg was first, having an organized way to look at my music. To look at my practice sessions. And it wasn’t like it was a regimented system. You do this, this, this, this. Although there were some exercises like that, but just the general principle of looking at my practicing in a much more systematic way made a huge difference. He had me doing spreadsheets and things like that. I don’t know what we’re going to get to in the course. But there was other things where just categorizing and thinking…

Andrew: So, the reflection, it’s not just “Think about what you’re doing,” but there’s a attitude and a step to take, and then to then plan and do my next thing, make the change that I want to make and see how that’s going to do, and then reflect on that. So, a lot about it was slowing down, slowing down the whole process. And there is definitely a method to that. Just like learning an instrument. You know, one of Greg’s thing is that practicing is in itself an art and a science. So, for example, you can learn an instrument and someone can say, “Okay, here’s a scale. Go home and practice it.” Right? And you don’t know how to practice it.

Andrew: But you might not even know how to play the scale. You’ll want them to say, “Hey, what’s the scale? What are the fingerings? What’s the system? Which notes are these? How do I finger this note? What do I do here?” You know? So you want more information on that. And the same thing is with deliberate practice. You know, some would say, “Yes, deliberate practice, and you’re going to reflect on it.” But there are steps to deliberate practice. And what was really cool is that we were able to take the steps that Gregg has for getting us to practice deliberately and put them in this learn, practice and apply format.

Andrew: So first we’re going to learn about what deliberate practice is. But of course that’s never enough, to just learn and get all the information. We’re going to put that deliberate practice to work on a piece of music that we’re working on, and we’re going to take these steps. We’re going to slow things down and really take these steps and get a feeling for the flow of how this all works. Because it really is, it’s kind of like a machine that you get into, and it’s a really good feeling. I’m doing this.

Andrew: This is what it feels like to me when I’m doing deliberate practice, and you’re learning these steps one after another. This one leads to this, this one’s to lead this, and this one leads to this, and of course it all leads to our success. And then of course we’ll take it into the apply, where we’re taking this cycle and widening its reach, and applying it to more of our musical experiences and our practice experiences.

Christopher: Yeah. I think if we were to compile taglines for this course, or the concept in general, that were uninspiring but accurate, one of them would definitely be “Musical Superlearning: it’s easier said than done”. I know. I love that you guys have found a way to make it easy done too.

Christopher: Yeah, I really don’t want to be teasing people here, but obviously we can’t cram all of that week’s content into this podcast conversation. The idea is just to really illustrate the fact that yes, these concepts are kind of catchy and inspiring, but there is then a process, and whether you take training with Gregg or you figure it out yourself, but from the research papers or you want to come and take the course with us, there is a way to turn that powerful idea into something that looks very concrete in your music practice.

Andrew: It’s also a very personal experience, just like playing music. You know, when we’re learning an instrument… I mean, one of the things we love about learning an instrument is, it’s just an intimate, very personal experience that we’re having, and very pleasurable and enjoyable.And practicing could be just like that. You know, the art of practicing and art of learning, where you’re really learning, “Oh, this is how I think, this is how I think here. This is what I’m doing here.” Where you’re learning about yourself in the process as well. And you’re learning things about goal setting and about achievement and things that really apply in all areas of life by doing this. And it is a great way of making oneself a more accomplished human being in a way, but being yourself. So, getting really big here, but that’s really how it does for me. That’s why I love music so much.

Christopher: Yeah, and I think again, we’re leaping forwards a bit, because some of that plays definitely into Mindset in week four. But before we go to that, let’s just talk a little bit about memory, because it was very clear from the practice survey we did recently that memorization is a big challenge for people, and a lot of people feel like they have a bad memory, or if they’re a bit older, they feel like they’re getting more forgetful. And obviously that’s really frustrating if you’re trying to memorize repertoire to get it off-book, or if you’re learning scale fingerings for the first time and you just can’t remember and you have to keep going back to your reference. Memorizing is a big part of learning music whether you like it or not. I love that you’ve dedicated a whole week of this course to showing people there is a very different way to approach memorizing things that works a lot better. Maybe you could talk a bit about what comes up in week three in that module.

Andrew: I think I could best describe my experience with memorizing, teaching memorizing, and what we’re going to be doing in this class is that let’s say you are going to drive from one place to another. It’s at night. You’re going on one road and really all you see is these signs and those little flashing white and yellow lines on the road. You get to the place, but that’s all you’re seeing. That’s the way a lot times us approach memorizing. We’re memorizing, we’re trying to memorize those white lines going down the middle of the road, but when you drive there during the day and you’re observing there’s a sign over there, there’s this shop over here, there’s this tree over here, I really like this tree, wow, there’s a cow, there’s a dear. I mean, that’s how it is where we live. There’s things that you’re seeing, there’s all this stimulus from the entire landscape that help you memorize that route, understand that route, and enjoy it so much better.

Andrew: You’re knowing so many things about the context, so a lot of us just approach memorization with a very narrow viewpoint of what the experience is. When we experience the music more fully, which of course is what we all want anyway, when we experience the music more fully, from more different angles, and from more different ways, we are experiencing this whole landscape, and we’re memorizing things better. How that works, we’re building a lot more infrastructure in our brains to hold this memory of this thing, we’re building all kinds of neuro pathways to support that learning rather than being just one skinny little neuron, there’s this whole web of brain that’s involved, so to me, that’s how I summarize the whole memorization thing and why this approach, which is first of all much more fun, and second of all much more … it’s much more useful, practical, and it works a lot fast, and it’s more musical. You really get the idea of the music, the feeling for the music, and your motions get involved, it’s just a much more fulfilling and easy way into memorizing. Not that it’s not a lot of work because you’re looking around at all these things, but it’s a lot … it’s really fun.

Christopher: That’s a much more enjoyable and inspiring answer than I was expecting you to give because it’s all of this cool nitty gritty stuff in that module about spaced repetition and first retrieval factors. That is this cool tool I can apply to get this result. As you’ve illustrated there, these aren’t four topics that we just randomly picked from the scientific literature. These are four topics that are fundamentally interlinked and intertwined, you and Gregg have done a really fantastic job of building up this course in a way that by the time you get to week three on memory, you’ve actually started to explore some of these techniques already through the first two weeks, it all snowballs, and gathers momentum as you go. I think the way you talked about it just there, people get an idea of if I’m practicing in this different, more exploratory, more aware way, of course that would help me memorize because I’m not just trying to internalize random data from a piece of paper, it has a lot more meaning to it.

Andrew: that’s so true and we were really sneaky like that. What happens is that everything in the course is intertwined, so we put little things all over the course that weave it together just the way our brains work. That’s the cool thing about working with Gregg because he knows this stuff and we could structure the whole course like one big brain in this topic. It reflects what’s really going on in there rather than trying to take something that’s external to our biology and cram it onto it where it’s how we work.

Christopher: Yes. In week four, it’s the topic that probably most people are least excited about. When we’re writing things in emails and on the product page about week four, I’m very conscious that people fully don’t realize it will be valuable to them as much as the others where there’s a very clear tangible payoff. In my mind, it’s my favorite because it’s the one that makes all of the rest work and particularly work in the longterm because without it, you’re so prone to self sabotage or losing momentum, or all of this mental junk and psychological stuff that can go on. In week four, we’re spending a whole week talking about mindset and I wonder if you can give people a little taste of why that’s worth spending a week on and what they’re putting in, in that week.

Andrew: Well, mindset is really … it’s what you wind up working on anyway this whole time. What’s happening is that we’re working on our mindset, we’re making these shifts as we do these practices. Then week four, we start to really understand, what is this big shift that we’re making? How are we moving from a mindset where we’re critical of ourselves, where we’re putting ourselves down, where we’re frustrated, where we’re angry, where we’re disappointed, and it’s like here we have all this frustration and disappointment on one side, over here we have this incredible love that we have for music on the other side. How do we do that? How do we go from here to there and make that love that we have for music not just something that we’re longing for and reaching for, but something that we’re feeling and able to feel as we’re doing it in the process?

Andrew: We learn to love the process of learning and love this whole process, to enjoy it because it’s working for us, because we’re doing it in the way that is really meant for us to do it. When make that shift in our mindset, it’s so helpful not that all the criticism goes away instantly, but you recognize it. You can go, oh, I don’t want that. I want this. You can make a choice. You have a choice to choose to do what you love with a loving attitude towards what you’re doing and then to really learn because you have the tools to make this work, you have the hardware, you have everything that you need to really make it happen. You feel that sense of accomplishment, the sense of growth, and the sense of I can do this, I’m in power.

Christopher: Fantastic. Honestly, I had jotted down a few more things that I wanted to ask you, but I think just like the course itself, that’s actually a beautiful end to this conversation, so I’m going to wrap things up there and end on that note because, what is more important than bringing that joy and love of music into the process of becoming a musician? I hope that’s given everyone a good taste of what musical superlearning looks like in practice. Again, I’ll underscore, this is not about come take our course. You’re very welcome to, we’d love if you do, but I hope you’ve been able to listen with the appreciation that everything we’re talking about is fundamental, general, you can go off, and study up by yourself if you want to, you can figure out how to do some kind of learn, practice, play.

Christopher: I would really encourage you to explore all four of these topics because as we’ve talked about, they work really well together. If you only do one of them, if you’re like “contextual interference, that’s all I need”, you’re going to be missing out. If you would like to know more about the course, please head to musicalsuperlearning.com. That’s where you’ll find full information. Again, at the moment if you’re watching this when it airs, there’s just a couple of day left to get a spot on this first group of students. We’ll be closing enrollment on Monday evening, so do act fact if you’re intrigued and want to know more. We’ll also have that link in the show notes for this episode, musicallynow.com. Huge thank you to Andrew for joining us for this episode.

Christopher: I personally am so psyched to dive into the course because I love what you and Gregg have put together. It’s time I brushed up on some of this stuff myself, so I’m going to be right in there with the first group of students accelerating my own music learning. You can probably tell from my voice, I couldn’t be more excited about that. If you are joining us for the course, I look forward to seeing you in there, and if you are not, then best of luck. That was rubbish, let’s do that again. We will see you on the next episode of Musicality Now, or if you’re joining us for Musical Superlearning, I will see you in there. Cheers.

The post What is musical “superlearning”? appeared first on Musical U.

To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.

Learn what to focus your music practice on in this episode.

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Learn Music Faster
• Gregg Goodhart – Learning Coach
• What is a Practiclass? Sax, cello, guitar, The Learn Like A Genius Institute
• Learn Like A Genius – Piano Practiclass (Full), Houston, TX with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – How to Learn Like a Genius, with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – The Truth About Talent, with Professor Anders Ericsson
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Carol S. Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Barry J. Zimmerman – Dart Throwing Study

Transcript

Christopher: And one of the things that really came out in the survey was overwhelm. And in the age of the internet more than any other time I’m sure, we feel like there are 17 different things we should be working on, and we should do our scales and arpeggios and our fingering and this passage, and we should prepare for that recital, and we should make sure we do a bit of this and a bit of that.

Christopher: And people are asking again and again, how can I know what to practice? If I’m going to set aside this time and I’m going to give it my goal, should I be doing four things in each session? Three things? Is it better to just work on repertoire for a month? And endless options and combinations. How can they know, how can we all know, how best to spend our practice time?

Gregg: Well, I always call it meeting the student where they’re at. For instance, I use an example. If you write on the board, “To be or not to be.”, and you say, “That’s Shakespeare, and the student looks at the board. “Okay, have you ever heard of Shakespeare?” “No.” “Okay. Can you read this sentence?” “No.” “Okay. Do you know what words are?” “No.” “Okay. Do you know the alphabet?” “Yes.” It’s time to make sure you know the alphabet and start learning how to form words. Stop trying to read Shakespeare.

Gregg: And the thing, and then I know the reaction to that is, “Great, you’re going to tell me I have to do stuff, little teeny things I don’t like so that in a year, maybe, I can play a song.” No. What actually happens is what’s keeping you from playing the songs you want are all the little teeny things that aren’t working for you. When you start taking care of one of them, you will immediately get better at everything you play. So I used to really drill down with kids, “Where’s your finger going? Check that.”, and there’s a process of deliberate practice, which is this plan, do, reflect thing where you reflect every time. How much do we reflect when we’re practicing? Do we really pay attention to where the finger is? Or do we just accept that the sound is good enough to approximate the song and move on. So that’s what’s going on.

Gregg: So what you want to fill your practice with, especially if you’re if you’re trying to build practice time, just a little bit of time working on one or two small technical things. If you’ll do this for about 10 minutes a day for about five days the results will be so significant and your playing will improve so much. No, you will not become a virtuoso in five days, but what will happen is these start to get out of the way between your brain, your heart, and your instrument. I don’t like these, they are my enemy. I’ve fought with them all my life, because I want them to do things that my brain and heart want to come out of the instrument.

Christopher: I’m sorry, Gregg. For the benefit of our audio listeners, I should mention your wiggling your fingers there.

Gregg: These, my hands, I’m sorry. And when you start working on the smallest areas that you think are meaningless, but let’s face it, you know they’re not because your fingers aren’t going where you want them to go, right? So doesn’t it make sense to start training the fine motor skills? When you start to do that, the fingers start to move out of the way, the hands start to move out of the way of your intentions, and they obey your intentions instead of resist them.

Gregg: When that starts to happen, even in the smallest areas, things that you’ve been working on for a long time, I’m not saying you’ll perfect them but they will get much better. And that’s where the whole idea of actually achieving things, creating motivation, when that starts to happen in the smallest way, and I can pretty much guarantee these type of results, if you do it correctly with 10 minutes a day, five days a week.

Gregg: No, you’re not gonna become a virtuoso doing that for years, but that will create the foundation from which you can play things you couldn’t play before, and will create massive motivation. So let’s face it, folks, you’re not motivated because you’re not getting what you want. As soon as you start to get what you want, the motivation will go through the roof. And if you start to get 10 times more, not than you want, but that you thought you could ever do, oh my gosh, you’ll have a hard time staying in bed in the morning.

Gregg: And I had this experience when I figured this out. It was a summer and I didn’t have to be at class or work or anything. And I was trying to sleep in in the morning when I started figuring this out and I couldn’t stay in bed because I would be thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m probably a half hour away from finishing this section.”, and I would have to pull myself out of bed to go do it. And that’s how much enthusiasm. And I’ve been through this, even though I have music degrees, I’ve been through this the play and pray not knowing, and boy, when that happened, I was surprised when I couldn’t sleep more when I wanted to, and forced myself out of bed. And that’s how much motivation it provides.

Christopher: Amazing. I’m sure that sounds like a dream come true for a lot of people who are grinding away at that practice, to genuinely feel like that enthusiasm to get back to their instrument on a consistent basis over time. And I want to just underscore something there, because based on everything that was said in the survey, I know a lot of people will have been expecting the answer to that question to sound something like, “Well, spend 10 minutes on scales, and then you must make sure you do bars one through 10 of each of your three pieces, and then you must do this other thing.”, because that’s so much of what we hear. When we have a good teacher they tell us what to practice and it sounds like that minute-by-minute schedule a lot of the time, but your answer wasn’t prescriptive in that way. It was much more generalizable and personalizable than that, I think.

Gregg: Going down to the very basics. What is it your fingers are doing that you don’t want them to do. If every time I go to play a scale passage, several of the notes are muted, then let’s work on that, whatever it is. In fact, if you’re studying with a private teacher of your instrument, my advice would be just go ask them, you said, “I will do anything you want and I don’t care about playing music or anything. What two things would you like me to work on?”, I can almost imagine, “Well, your finger placements a little bit off. We’ve been talking about it every week, but I let it go because you want to play entire songs because you think that that’s the more motivation. Okay, let’s work just on your finger placement for five minutes.

Gregg: And you know what? The way you’re holding the pick or the bow. You have to change your pinky here and you’re not doing that because to do that would take away from learning the whole song, which you’re not learning. So if you fix those two little things, then you can learn the song more easy.” So it’s prescriptive in that you want to break it down to something that you’d like to do a little bit better. But no, it’s not like one of those, you have to play scales for this amount of time and arpeggios for that amount of time.

Christopher: And I think, again, that’s quite liberating, right? Because if you were given that recipe, as it were, you’re always going to be second guessing it a bit and wondering, should I adjust this or do that? Whereas taking this problem solving mentality to it, I think makes everything approachable and you realize it doesn’t really matter if you do it this way or that way or focus more on this this week, and so on.

Gregg: It makes it so simple. That’s the thing, make it simple. And if you think about it, the brain cannot multitask. If anyone thinks they can, read the research on this, I’m not going to go into it, but the brain can’t multitask. And if we’re trying to learn a song before we’ve developed five or 10 skills that we need to do the song, the song isn’t going to happen.

Gregg: So the idea that we just take care of one problem at a time is simple. How hard it is to play an entire song, how easy it is to just check that my finger is in the right place? And then another one, just check my finger is in the right place. Before you know it that five minutes has melted off the clock, because you will be involved in flow, constant problem solving. Before you know it, the timer goes off and the 10 minutes are up.

Gregg: Before you know it five days are up and everything is working better, and now you’re sold on this idea. But to piggyback on what you were saying, it’s incredibly simple to do and it’s not that hard to get going. It will become harder when your motivation is so massive that you want to do two hours a day and hit five different areas. That’s great. We can build up to that.

Gregg: It’s always simple though. It’s always about solving whatever the problem is. And you just drill down until you find what the problem is, and then you build up from there. And once you learn and you say, “Well geez, I don’t know. I don’t know everything about my instrument.” Well, you can get that. That type of instruction is out there. It’s how you go about doing it.

Gregg: And you’ll figure it out on your own, “This doesn’t work, I’ll work on just that. That doesn’t work. I’ll work on just that.” And it’s how you work on it. Pay attention to the small details, you will become engrossed in that because there will always be a question-answer going on in your mind. Before you know it, five days is up, and you’re a lot more motivated because you’re getting results.

The post Practice Q&A [5/5] How To Spend Practice Time And Prevent Overwhelm, with Gregg Goodhart appeared first on Musical U.

To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.

After watching this episode you’ll regain your enthusiasm for learning music.

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Learn Music Faster
• Gregg Goodhart – Learning Coach
• What is a Practiclass? Sax, cello, guitar, The Learn Like A Genius Institute
• Learn Like A Genius – Piano Practiclass (Full), Houston, TX with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – How to Learn Like a Genius, with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – The Truth About Talent, with Professor Anders Ericsson
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Carol S. Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Barry J. Zimmerman – Dart Throwing Study

Transcript

Christopher: Absolutely. One thing that really hit me in the heart reading through these responses was about enthusiasm and motivation. And people who were clearly passionate about their hobby, passionate enough to spend five, 10 minutes writing survey responses for us about their music practice, they would be talking in terms of blaming themselves and getting very down on themselves about not following through with practice. “I should be doing this much, or if only I could keep at it, or I’m lazy, or if I just had the discipline.”, and definitely seeing it as, “I must put in this work every day and I’m not doing it therefore I’m bad.” And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about motivation and what people can do to help themselves feel enthusiasm and eagerness to practice rather than always feeling like this burden that they have to do.

Gregg: Well, it’s very, very hard to continue with the bucket inside of the boat getting the water out when the boat is sinking much faster than you can bucket the water out and you get less and less enthusiastic as the boat goes down. And at some point you say, “I just accept my fate. The boat is going down.” But that’s not what has to happen at all. In fact, there’s a misunderstanding out there that I think many people believe, I think some teachers believe, I’ve heard it expressed as where there is enthusiasm, there is achievement. It’s actually the opposite. Where there is achievement, there is enthusiasm.

Gregg: And small ways, such as applying contextual interference, that’s why I do that, in practiclasses, when you realize in a few minutes, when I say, not three minutes, but 10 or 15, when you realize that in a few minutes, you can become insanely better than you’ve been able to do with months of practice, that provides a whole lot of motivation. I’ll give you an example from the research. There was a researcher, I believe he did this in the UK, Barry J. Zimmerman, and I’d be happy to share this information with anybody, who did a study and he took two groups of women and I believe he went to a pub, and it was dart throwing. And he took one group to throw darts and just said, “Figure it out. Enjoy yourself, figure it out.” I don’t think they were drinking at the pub because not that you shouldn’t have a good time, but that would-

Christopher: I don’t think you know the rules of darts in the UK. If you don’t have a pint in the other hand, it doesn’t count.

Gregg: Yeah, no pints in your hand when you’re practicing. And so anyway, he had one group just try and of course they improved a little and they had an okay time. And he had another group specifically following, and who wants to learn darts that way? Specifically follow instructions, where they were shown by someone who knew what to do and what to teach, “Do this, do that, hold it this way, throw it that way.”

Gregg: And these were people, these women had no interest in darts whatsoever. They did not like it. They had no desire. And so, they knew they were doing experiments and they participated. What he found that happened consistently was the group that got better through instruction very much wanted, not only to play darts, because they had increased their skill, they wanted to learn more. They didn’t just want to play with the skill they had, they wanted more of the tedious, “Hold your dart this way.”, thing and do it five times in a row. They wanted more of that instruction, because they felt internally the results of that.

Gregg: It’s one thing to practice and practice. Again, I’ve called this the play and pray method, where we go into our practice, and we just aren’t sure what to do. And we hope we get results. And you know what? Sometimes three days later, we can play something. And a lot of times we can’t. I don’t know how anyone… I admire all the people who somehow stay motivated and keep looking when you can’t find the answers. Imagine what happens when you can find the answers. And that’s what the research shows, and as I say, where there’s achievement, there is interest. So once you start to achieve, so it’s a small hump, it just takes a little bit, if you look at my practiclasses, 20 or 25 minutes, a small hump to do that when you realize that every minute of your practice doesn’t have to be a mystery, it can be a problem solved. And you can guarantee that you’ll get to the next place. That creates motivation like crazy.

Gregg: What will happen if you have trouble getting yourself to practice? And I’m sure we may talk about that. If you have problems getting yourself to practice, there are ways to go about doing that, such as working on orienting selective attention. But one of the reasons is because you’re not getting out of it what you want, and the only reason I stayed with it is because I’m stubborn. And I just wouldn’t stop even though, as many of us feel, the universe is telling me, “Sir, you don’t have talent. Any reasonable person would give up by now. Just be happy you can go get a job being a teacher and stop trying to be so good.”

Gregg: And that’s what the universe will tell you. That’s what it feels like. When we flip that feeling to, “Oh my gosh, my capabilities are far more than I thought. And the reason I believe this is because I actually did something I could never do before.” And it looks like there are solutions for everything, and then when that solution runs out it turns out there’s another solution on top of that. Your practice minutes will increase without you knowing it. What happens is you enter into a flow state. We’ve all been there where you work on something, whether it’s practice, or a woodworking project, or working on your free throws in basketball, whatever it may be, where we do it and we think it’s been 10 minutes and we look up and it’s been 50 minutes or an hour.

Gregg: That is the highest state of learning. And there is a researcher, his name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, spelled just like it sounds, his name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and he spent his career figuring out what that is. How do you get into that state where learning is actually you’re wrapped up in it so much? He calls it flow, and what it is is you have to gain some skill first, and then your skill navigates the problems like this. My skill is better, now my skill is worse, not my skill is better. To get there you have to acquire some basic skill where there is achievement, then there is interest you enter into flow. And this is totally creatable if you follow the right process

The post Practice Q&A [4/5] How To Stay Consistent – Without Discipline, with Gregg Goodhart appeared first on Musical U.

To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.

Enjoy this episode and unclock your music learning super powers!

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Learn Music Faster
• Gregg Goodhart – Learning Coach
• What is a Practiclass? Sax, cello, guitar, The Learn Like A Genius Institute
• Learn Like A Genius – Piano Practiclass (Full), Houston, TX with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – How to Learn Like a Genius, with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – The Truth About Talent, with Professor Anders Ericsson
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Carol S. Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Barry J. Zimmerman – Dart Throwing Study

Transcript

Christopher: One thing that came up time and time again in this survey was, “I make progress for a little bit, but then there’s just something I can’t crack or I can never get my fingers around this passage, this technique, I just, no matter what I do, my body doesn’t do the right thing, or my brain can’t keep up.” There’s some kind of plateau or sticking point people hit. What can you do in that situation?

Gregg: Well, once again, the science gives us answers. There’s something in the research called the power law of practice. And this applies to academics and everything else. And what it shows, and I think all of us have experienced this, myself included, and I know the pain of working, and working, and working, and not getting it. I went all the way through graduate school and a performance degree on my instrument before I figured this out. The power law shows that each repetition is slightly less effective than the previous repetition. Now, I don’t think it takes an expert in math, which I am not one at all, to understand that if you keep losing, as it gets up, you’re going to get less, and less, and less and they have a curve. They’ve actually studied this, and it shows this power law curve, as far as improvement, improvement, improvement, less improvement, less improvement, less improvement.

Gregg: And this indeed is the dreaded plateau that most musicians experience. It’s expressed in the literature. Sometime later, there was a paper done called The Power Law Applies to Strategy and Tasks. What that meant is, if you take what you’re doing, and then figure out a way to challenge it to do it slightly different, basically vary the context, which is a little more complex than it sounds, you can reset the power law.:So when you experience this plateau, you can go right back to the beginning and get the same gains again, and again, and again. That particular paper was on contextual interference, which is amazing. I’ve called it the steroids of practicing music with no bad side effects.

Gregg: And once you learn to apply that, which some of the exercises are easier, but it really is a complex thing, a complex, nuanced theory, because the exercises become less effective, then you have to put exercises in, but once you do that, you can break plateaus, left and right. There are other ways to do it besides contextual interference, but the answers are clearly in the science. And that’s what I do, for instance, if you see my practiclasses online, and I’ve done several with Musical U, people show up having struggled with something for a long period of time. And sure enough, in 20 minutes, 25 minutes, we make it so it’s faster, cleaner and easier to play.

Gregg: And that’s really crucial. It’s better faster, and usually we’re struggling, pushing at the edge. Instead, it feels much easier. This is possible for anyone. This is just the way the brain works and it’s in the literature, yet it requires doing something that actually looks like you’re getting worse to get better. And I would encourage people to watch the practiclass videos to see how this works.

Gregg: And then, it’s just a matter of, I want to caution people, it’s not, “Oh, I’ll do that exercise.” Because certain exercises work in certain places for certain situations. It’s where you are in the learning process that you do that exercise. And what is very powerful is understanding the why and how of why these things work, then you don’t just follow the exercise, you actually internalize what the exercise is trying to do and you can make it your own and come up with your own strategies, which is what I always encourage in my teaching, to get rid of me at some point, please, and start doing it on your own.

Gregg: And to do that it’s not enough to drive the car, you need to know how the car is built to have a great car. And in practicing, we’re generally driving the car, doing little bits of maintenance to keep it going down the road hoping, what you really want to learn about is every aspect of how the car is built to then have a great car. Now you can’t do that. The driver can’t be the mechanic. That’s what I do. I’m the mechanic. I give you enough information about the mechanics that you can then drive the car and win the race.

Christopher: I love that metaphor and this is definitely one of those things in music education, where I just wish I could implant in every music learner’s brain, because if you understand that power law of diminishing returns and you realize there is a strategy, there is a set of techniques you can use to bust through that and reset the clock, that’s huge because if you look through these survey responses, the number of people that are just feeling so down on themselves because they can’t crack this thing-

Gregg: I know.

Christopher: … or many saying they’re losing their enthusiasm, or they’re wondering if they should even keep going. And to know that you can bust through that with a very practical step-by-step methodology is killer.

Gregg: And it’s 100% effective. That’s why I feel comfortable walking on stage, whether I’m at a great school like the performance program at Florida State University. There’s videos of that, or Indiana University, or whether I’m in an inner city school with kids who don’t get that much attention, I’m never afraid. I never know what instrument I’m going to see. I never know what music I’m going to see. Sometimes it’s fiddle tunes. Sometimes it’s someone playing Rush or The Beatles on guitar, many times it’s people doing the Elgar concerto, or the Haydn Trumpet Concerto. It doesn’t matter. It’s 100% effective in skill development all the time and it always works. To know that’s out there is very liberating.

The post Practice Q&A [3/5] How To Conquer Tricky Sections And Break Through Plateaus, with Gregg Goodhart appeared first on Musical U.

To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.

In this episode you’ll learn a 3-step process you can use to get the most out of every minute of your practice. Start supercharging your learning today!

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• Learn Music Faster
• Gregg Goodhart – Learning Coach
• What is a Practiclass? Sax, cello, guitar, The Learn Like A Genius Institute
• Learn Like A Genius – Piano Practiclass (Full), Houston, TX with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – How to Learn Like a Genius, with Gregg Goodhart
• Musicality Now – The Truth About Talent, with Professor Anders Ericsson
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Carol S. Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Barry J. Zimmerman – Dart Throwing Study

Transcript

Christopher: So, if it’s not a matter of just having enough time, what are we meant to be doing in that time, if it’s true that we can make progress in just 10 or 15 minutes a day, how do you spend that 10 or 15 minutes in order to get the results we’re talking about?

Gregg: Well, the good news is, and this is especially true when working in small periods of time, is that learning is simple, it’s just not easy. The simple part is a three-step process I used to represent the idea of deliberate practice which is the way all high efficiency learning works, and please, I encourage people to just look up deliberate practice and read about K. Anders Ericcson’s works since his first publication on the process in 1993.

Gregg: It’s a three-step process. You make a plan, think about it, of doing repetitions, you make a plan, “I’m going to work on this measure.” You do it, and then you reflect, “What could I do better?” It is that simple. “Well, maybe my finger went to the wrong place, it went too far to the left. Next time I’ll go try too far to the right.” It’s like watching a child learn to walk. And then the next time I went to far. And eventually, you end up where you are.

Gregg: However, it does become a little bit more labor intensive when the reflect piece is, “I’m not sure what to do there.”, and I think that’s where a lot of people end up. You get to a point where you plateau and you don’t know what to do next.

Gregg: In this area, cognitive science is extremely helpful. The answer is very varied depending on the situation and the student in any given time. It could be we need to apply contextual interference, which is the miracle plateau-breaker. It could be an issue of mindset, Carol Dweck’s work on what I call, why humans can’t get out of their own way when it comes to learning.

Gregg: Once you start to see, “Oh, it’s because of how I felt about doing this.”, and you put it in perspective. It could simply be understanding why accuracy is important in how neural networks are built in the brain. It could be building certain bits off self control in your pre-frontal cortex. And even any of those, for instance, when I say contextual interference, that has a good 30, 40 strategies underneath that heading too, which then need to be taught in their own right.

Gregg: So yes, it is very simple, Apply deliberate practice, but it is not easy because you will have to go looking for answers and that’s why I’ve gotten into what I am doing. The art of teaching really is, where and when, with people, do you apply what? And the art of that is putting everything in the right place at the right time so that progression happens, so that as deliberate practice continues, you are never left without an answer in the reflect stage because becoming good or great is simply about solving the problem in front of you.

Gregg: Don’t worry about 16 problems or where I’m going to be. Can I perform? As the great jazz pianist Bill Evans says, “Approximating the product.” Don’t worry about approximating the product. You’re learning. The person you see doing the product was there right with you at one time. The exact same place. They had to go through it, there was no miracle jump. So don’t worry about approximating the product, find the solution to the problem in front of you and that happens by using deliberate practice and having access to the best science-based information.

Christopher: Tremendous. I feel like I should go back and record an extra segment for our interview with Professor Anders Ericcson and our episode about deliberate practice to point out, it’s not your fault if you try doing deliberate practice and you struggle. As you say, it really came through in the survey results. People have heard of this, they get the idea, but then they just get stuck trying to apply it and they don’t know how to do that reflect stage or they can’t figure out how to do the next iteration of the loop. So I think it’s going to be valuable to them to know that there are specific strategies to apply in that situation.

Gregg: If I may, there is a huge gap between the research and the actual practice and there is enough Dunning Kruger to go around on both sides. The Dunning Kruger effect, which says the less you know about something, the less you’ll realize you’re doing it wrong. People, and I want to say this correctly, people in the research field are very proud of their work and should be. It’s amazing. But they think it’s the be all, end all. Sure. Deliberate practice is everything if you have all the right information.

Gregg: He’s studying people who are going to the best music conservatories, going to lessons with some of the best teachers, so when he finds deliberate practice, of course it works with all that information. There is a great gap in researchers explaining what needs to be done in a way people understand and understanding the other elements besides their research that’s necessary.

Gregg: On the other side, teachers are not trained, our schools of education are separated from cognitive science, teachers are not trained in this, the best most teachers do is they see some report on the news about, try this or that and we try a little bit of it. But we don’t do enough. And we don’t know the big picture of learning how it works. A great example of this is Carol Dweck’s Mindset work, which I think is crucial. And hers is one of the top three books I recommend for people to read about learning. I will say I’m aware that there are issues with replication going on now. I’ve read the divergent opinions. I’m very comfortable recommending Mindset still at this point.

Gregg: Anyway, she has this, if you’ll just stick with it, if you won’t get frustrated, you’ll get it. And one of the complaints is, “Well, she’s not accounting for what it is you’re doing during that time.” She takes for granted and doesn’t realize, and I love her work, and doesn’t realize that that’s not enough. It’s not. You need to be doing deliberate practice. You need to have the right information, you need to know what contextual interference is.

Gregg: And this is a wide, wide gap, and I’m now in it, and I can’t find anyone else here because I’ve been looking. I’m looking for friends in this area. And it’s something that I think is the great revolution in teaching now. This idea that some people can study music and get good and some can’t. Some people can study math and get As and some get Cs and bless their heart, they all tried.

Gregg: No, they didn’t all do it the same way. And this is very nuanced. So a lot of this if is you say, “I found deliberate practice and I am trying it.”, for instance, did you know the plan, do, reflect model? Erickson never talks about that. I came up with that to explain it. And I’ll tell you, when I went to Florida State and did a residency there, he showed up at one of my lectures. And as I got to that slide, I realized, he didn’t do this. I did. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I hope he…” Anyway, we talked later and he said it was a fine representation and he endorsed it. He was fine with it.

Gregg: But it’s this explaining of it. It never occurred to him to explain it in a simple three-step process. And it’s that where there is a great lack and need and education. And it is in there that people experience working, but not making progress.

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