I just wanted to pick the DLO brain on some things that have settled deeply into my mind for the last month regarding music and teaching music. Sorry for the terribly long post.

I think there's a massive flaw in how we've been trained/train ourselves in music. Even if we haven't necessarily been taught in this way, I've seen it become something that innately settles into musician's minds, particularly less talented ones.

After reading this article I immediately began thinking about what happens to us while we practice. Typically, (again, especially for the less talented) we focus so heavily on flaws and errors that we rarely notice good things. Good things actually tend to be considered on par with expectations and don't get acknowledged, as though doing something good is too mediocre too receive praise.

In students I've had, I've noticed this probably the most. Several of my private students throughout my teaching life have seemed so bogged down with a lack of success. I have one student in mind that gets so heavily discouraged that he shakes after enough negative stimuli. These stimuli don't come from me by the way - at least not directly. I make quite a point to be positive and encouraging. I certainly point out errors and offer solutions (that's why they pay me) but its to help them improve, and I season what I'm going to say in a way that's encouraging. At least I try. I talked to a couple students in the band that I teach for this evening asking them what they do when they think about between repetitions when they practice. Basically everyone's answer was "I think about what was wrong." I think there's something wrong there.

Then there's myself as a student. As a college student studying music ed, I have quite a share of practicing to do, participating in several ensembles and actively practicing concert percussion and drum set. I find myself practicing in the same way fairly often. Like a mercenary killing errors. That's the only purpose of rehearsals too. Killing errors.

Then there's myself as a teacher and an observer of other teachers (primarily in marching music). The school I currently work at has an EXCELLENT colorguard. And I mean excellent, they are extremely talented. Several of them are extremely unhappy too, again especially the less talented. Notice by less talented, I don't mean those who don't try. I mean the one's who are less talented, as in less natural talent. I told one of them this evening they did a great job. I thought so at least. She said "No, everything was really bad." I asked why and she said "Because it wasn't perfect." After I asked her she had fun her response was "No, it's not fun if its not perfect." Isn't that sad? Basically that's what she's learned from her instructor, "it's only fun if it's perfect." I doubt the instructor has said that, but maybe that's what the rehearsal vibe has taught them. Even in watching the band directors I've had, I've seen a similar problem. They're bogged down with the pursuit of perfection - the improbable pursuit.

This leads me to the conclusion that there's something wrong with an activity where the only goal is to be perfect. The precision and competitiveness of music make it particularly prone to that type of approach.

What's interesting about that is that music didn't start off that way for most people. Most people thought it would be fun. And then the fun and magic get's sucked out with each error.

I'm not saying perfection shouldn't be a goal, but I think the first goal should be to have fun. We "play" music, we don't "work" music.

I think that's enough to inspire discussion. The results of this "research" will eventually go into an article for MusicMajorSource.net, my new collaborative website for music majors so I'm very much thankful for the discussion, thanks!

How do you feel the activity could change?

Some random thoughts from 3 decades of music. Tidbits and things I've heard and realized on my own.

I was in a MENC national convention in-service and a presenter quoted a study where they identified negative professions. Curiously enough education was one of the most negative, and within education, music educators were the most negative. Presenter asked why? Room full of music teachers in audience responded in near unison "we are always fixing whats wrong"

Ever notice that we will grudgingly accept a 70% in algebra and call it passing. But no one would tolerate a music concert where the performers only play 70% of the notes correctly.

In other parts of the world, musicians are not worried as much about making the students "feel good about themselves". They are paid to train successful musicians. (illustration) Years ago Symphony flutist and college professor was asked to judge middle school solo and ensemble. This guy was not from the United states and was trained in Europe. s & E event was meant as a preliminary evaluation for the district s & e. This event had 10 soloist and parents in same room. Soloist had to play for an audience. This guy assigned almost exclusively III's, IV"s, V's all day long to 6th, 7th, 8th graders. One child he stopped in the middle of her solo, stood up and told the audience that "this is an example of how not to play the flute!" I had the opportunity to talk to this man a few days later about this. He said in Europe they don't reward averageness with inflated scores. Needless to say he was never asked to judge again.

In my own experience I have encountered the reverse. I have been told by students and parents alike That I am not tough enough on them. I have had HS kids look me in the eye and say "We know you don't care about us because you don't yell at us and tell us that we're terrible. You don't kick our butts". (I didn't say it was rational)

Also creating music is a very personal intimate thing. We expect a high quality product out of ourselves. In our "mind's ear" we have an idea of what it "should" sound like. When we don't achieve that we feel inadequate. Add to that feeling the teacher telling you what you did wrong, so it is no wonder a musician can feel terrible.

So why do we as musicians do this to ourselves??? Because we all live for those moments of Musical "purity" in our product. We know it when we hear it. And once we achieve it, we are rarely satisfied until we do it again.

This year with my marching band I have done the opposite of what we all have been trained to do. For music I picked an all pop show (pep band music really). I backed off the difficultly level of the music. I told my drill writer to write drill as if none of the students had ever marched a step before. I actually reduced the amount of time we are rehearsing. End result, we are having the best year that we have had in 5 years. The kids feel really good about the product they have produced. We are playing with expression and clarity. Our marching has lot's of clarity (more than we have had in 5 years).

In music and the other arts we have a low tolerance for a less than perfect performance. So the musicians and the people who teach them are not willing to relax and recognize that not every single run through is going to be perfect every time. We don't want the people around us to think that we are not committed to excellence.

I know that my thoughts jumped around. But your posting is more profound than perhaps some musicians would want to admit. Thanks for stirring the pot.

My View from the cheap seats

Just to clarify, I don't mean marching music only, I mean music in general as we're taught in school from middle school onward out of college.

As far as changes I think should be made, I'm still very much in the thinking process of this. So far a couple points are coming to mind however:

eliminate the obsession with perfection
This is particularly with teachers. I think there are a lot of facts that teachers ignore in music. Using HS marching band for example:

There's aren't professional marching bands, there aren't professional drumlines, and there aren't professional colorguards. The miniscule few that do exist may very well not exist for long or may thin out drastically in the future (military bands, Jags DL etc.), and the other ones you have to pay to be a part of, professional in quality, hardly professional by definition (corps). Essentially what this means is the number of people we're preparing for something greater than what they're doing now is very few.

Probably the biggest point is the common denominator in everyone's reasoning for doing marching music is to have fun. It may be for the social aspect, it might be because they want to play music, it might be because they want to get into football games for free. The problem is none of those reasons are "because I want to do everything perfectly." So as opposed to our earlier conclusion, the number of people who do this activity do it because they want to have fun.

As the facilitators of the activity in whatever position we hold, its our job to serve our students. Teachers are servants, we serve our kids the best we can, giving them the best we can hopefully out of love for music and love for them!

They don't do this to be perfect, or to prepare for a future profession. A lot of them do it because the school life needs a supplement of fun! For most people, the majority of school subjects aren't fun. Occasionally there's the kid that absolutely loves math and needs nothing but math, but the average kid needs some extra-curricular joy. For a lot of kids that's marching band. Our job is to insure that the kids have fun, not to insure that they're perfect little musical marching machines.

change the definition of perfection
I think an important part of what I'm getting at is to still strive for exceptional performance and effort. I'm not suggesting we go from high expectations to playing at a low level or accepting whatever we get. I'm saying perfection in performance can't be the primary goal.

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is changing the definition of perfection in teaching music. In recognition that students don't do music to be perfect, but for the fun and joy, I think the definition should be based around the effort that someone puts forth, versus the result. I think if you gave it 100% of your focus and effort, that rep was absolutely perfect. Evaluate things that need improving and aim for the improvements next time around, but if you gave it 100% it was perfect and be happy about it. In fact I would say this approach would exponentially improve the result due to the absence of the bogging down effect that obsession over flaw causes.

fun comes from within
The last change I'm thinking is necessary is for us to cause students to realize that fun doesn't come from teachers, instructors, leaders or peers. They certainly have a massive influence, but the choice to enjoy things comes from within. It can't come from us because our job is to find things that are wrong and assist our students in fixing them (among other things, of course). That's not to say we can't be fun, it'll certainly make their choice to find joy easier if we're enjoyable to around and to learn from.

I think what I'm saying is the gratification of music comes from meeting your own standard, not someone else's. So we need to insure that we're teaching the standard to be met as your best effort at that time. If we teach that, hopefully they'll learn it.

Bringing it all together, I think if we as teachers:

1. get over our obsession with flawlessness in a group of students who didn't do this to be flawless, and start doing what we can to make the activity fun,

2. make our main focus of evaluation effort, and not perfection

3. teach our students to know perfection as 100% effort 100% of the time,

We'll vastly improve the activity. I don't quite know how those apply to individual practice or other musical contexts but this is the direction my mind has gone. Is this crazy? Thoughts?

I rarely speak out on here, but here's what I think:


This activity is ABOUT excellence.

Nothing more.

That's what makes it so special... really, because at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding...in front of a football stadium full of folks who understand what excellence is.

If we get bogged down in the whole "feel good about what you're doing", "it's about effort, but not achievement" movement... this activity dies as we know it.

That's why I fell in love with the activity. that's why the folks I know did too. maybe it's just a few of us.

But, really:

Just think of the first "piss clean" drumline you ever saw. What went through your mind? For me, it was:

How on earth does THAT happen?????

I'll tell you what, it doesn't happen through public education "feel good about yourself" bs. it comes through working hard and achieving your goals.

Marching music isn't about that for everybody, in fact for HS school students, it's very rarely for that. I even bet for some people doing corps it's not all about that. I understand that it's about that for someone who's marched and taught the Bushwackers drumline. I'd be shocked if it wasn't. But the fact still remains that it's not about that for everbody.



I never said achievement wasn't important, in fact hopefully it came across that I was saying quite the opposite. Achievement is an integral part of the activity, but it's not the only part of the activity. By the way, neither is having fun the only part of the activity, but for a lot of people it's the reason they do it. And I think as a teacher, making an effort to insure the activity is enjoyable for the kids we're teaching is something we can afford.

Agreed! And there are plenty of approaches to working hard and achieving you goals. There's the one you see far to often, where the director, staff and section leaders are grasping people by the neck, yelling and screaming where no one's happy. They'll put on a pretty good show, but they'll dread the next rehearsal 'cause they know how it's gonna be. Then there's the approach where kids want to work because working is fun, the working environment is fun, the staff is approachable and there isn't fear, just wanting to put for the greatest effort to do well.

I've seen both produce the same end-result. Just one method is more fun for everyone involved. drumteacherdude seems to have seen this work in his own program.

I don't have a problem with the hard-core do everything right mentality. It's great and it's amazing what a drumline unified around that attitude can do. But every band isn't a BOA band, and HS band isn't drum corps. People join BOA bands and corps because they have that mentality. Your average HS student want to enjoy music, we owe them that as educators.

Wow! All but one person is missing the point!

Paul hit the baby seal on the head with the statement " We serve the child ", not ourselves. Yeah, hard work and practice get the job done, but " a love " is what makes a great musican! It's the kids talent, not yours!

Too much bickering over they are not having fun and not enough on setting the stage for fun. How much time have you spent trying to inspire the student?

"Don't aspire for greatness, inspire greatness" !

I hear everyone hollering " They're not having fun! " . How about asking the student what inspires them. Hey, ask them what would make it fun!

Just an example, but you take any kid at any age, and let's say he's a horn player. Now stand that kid in front of a horn line like Santa Clara Vanguard when they play " Send in the Clowns ". I bet after that the kid is inspired! I don't mean only a corp horn line, if the kid is into jazz or concert, same concept.

Inspiration and the love of music, plus good practice habits make a great musician. If you take all that away and there is no fun then all you have is a cold, gray, check pattern.

isnt it normal for everyone to strive for success in order to get praise? Why not work on something small and create a reward. Create the task slightly larger and Create a bigger reward. It keeps the praise level up without making the student feel "lost" for not seeing as much praise. I used this technique along with creating a weekly prize that's handed down from the student to a student who believe they are working hard. Its handed off in a weekly fashion and creates a tradition.

I understand what you're saying by not only this portion of your post, but all of your posts in general, but I'd like to throw this out there. I think the level of success of a performance is determined not by how fun or how strict an instructional staff is. I think it needs a balance of that. Just like everyone pays money to be in drum corps, where the concept of strictness tends outweigh the concept of fun, people do still pay to be a member of a high school marching band as well. When you throw high school members out on the field and say, "Okay, we're going to be as positively supportive as possible; we just want you guys to come out here, have fun, then go home at the end of rehearsal."
I don't think you're going to get a lot done. I know you're not suggesting that as the other alternative, I'm just merely pointing out the purpose behind being strict in a rehearsal setting. You need some sense of drive to get people going, especially when the personal drive isn't just musical excellence.You're right, especially at the high school level, members of a band will have hundreds of different reasons besides "because I want to make perfect music." However, those members to all have a similar goal, which is to take a musical show, complex drill, and lots of time after school to make it as perfect as can be. That's what sets marching band apart from anything else, it's about getting as close to perfect as possible, then indulging in your output at the end of the season, whether you do that in competitions, public shows, or at your organizations' (WGI, DCI, DCA, SAPA, I&E etc.) version of finals. In these atmospheres, it is strictly about musical performance and the level of excellence that you, as a performer or a group, can put out.

With all of this being said, I do agree with a lot of what you have posted. It takes more than just a military mentality to make a successful group. When you make people miserable with the level of strictness, your program is going to fail because there is no enjoyment in the process. On the other side of the spectrum, an organization with NO level of management and superiority will leave that group headed to a dismal path to nowhere, because it's a group with no sense of direction.

I've personally found that groups with a nice mixture of both of these aspects tend to be the most successful. Look at drum corps, for example. The activity is easily one of the most successful musical atmospheres, and it's obviously one of the most strict collaborations, as well. While there are plenty of other factors to include in this, for example, the level of performers' abilities, the staffs, the sheer amount of funding that is available to help ensure musical excellence, etc. there is still something very vital to take into consideration, here. Drum corps is probably the most strict that the marching band world gets (I understand you're using music as a whole, but I think comparing DCI to orchestral performances is like comparing apples to oranges, and isn't very beneficial to do here), however, if you speak to members after the season is over, ask them one question, and one question only, "Did you have fun?" I can tell you that well over 90% of the members would say that they had an absolute blast, despite the strictness, and despite the hard work that went into musical perfection. Is that just because the music was perfect - or as close to perfect as obtainable? Of course not. There are way to many other aspects of corps such as fellowship, touring the country, thousands of fans, etc. that make it all worth it.

I'm now going to play devil's advocate to my own post. These organizations are typically already on the successful side of the musical spectrum. They have talented players, and they have a staff to make things great. What if you're at a high school group that is about 50 strong, and is over 50% high school freshmen that came from a feeder middle school with a terrible band program? When you're in this sort of situation, I think it IS best to turn away from a high level of strictness, and turn more toward making the activity more fun. In a situation like this, there are too many other things to overcome to make a performance "perfect," it's still vital to hold goals and other expectations for the performers to help insure a sense of satisfaction when it's all over with, but I do understand where turning straight to strict instruction to progress can cause a non-desired effect, and would eventually cause the program to somewhat fold.

Anywho, sorry for the ridiculous post, I was trying to cover all aspects that I could possibly think of at once. Just my $0.02.

B

That's a point that we haven't brought up yet. Determining the balance. How?

I especially appreciate what you mentioned at the bottom of your post about teaching to the group. Acknowledging that one shoe doesn't fit every foot is something that needs mentioning.

So what have you done in your teaching career to gauge to the groups needs? How have you measured it and what changes have you made to bridge the gap?

Thanks for posting bcaviness, what a contribution to the discussion!

I personally think that the answer to this question is simple. Set goals.

It doesn't matter whether you're a nobody high school of about 30 kids, or the Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps fresh off of a DCI championship, or a community orchestra trying to land a couple gigs, if you don't set goals for yourself, you're never going to find any sort of balance within an ensemble. I'm going to use someone else's post as an example:


Let me begin this by saying that I am in no way bashing his teaching methods, he has much more experience and know-how than I currently possess, it was just there to use as an example.

In this situation, the expectations and the goals for the season were lowered, and all I mean by that, is that the level of difficulty was toned down, making that high level of excellence lowered, which, in all, lowers your goals. That makes the goals more obtainable. It doesn't matter if you're a member of a marching band because your friends do it, or even if your parents are making you, if you buy into a program's overall goal, which is to make good music by the end of the season, then you'll also buy into these goals. In this situation, because the standard was set a little lower than usual, it was much easier to obtain the ultimate goal, and then from there, it became more about "fun."

Now, take a complex DCI show, let's say "Machine." There, the goals were set clearly from the beginning. There was a lot to accomplish. Everyone participating ultimately bought into the expectations, and obviously achieved the goals that were set before them.

I'll stop beating around the bush. Your balance of "fun" vs. "strictness" (assuming that they're the two words that we're using to represent each concept) comes from your goals. When you set goals that are more difficult to obtain (i.e. Cavies' "Machine"), then the amount of discipline that has to go into achieving these goals is raised drastically, on the other hand, the more simple a show or more easily obtainable a goal is, the less discipline has to be enforced to achieve the goals that you've set for yourself.

Here, however, is where I feel like the difficult part comes in. How do you set your goals? We're raised in a non-fail society. We're expected to set goals on different levels.




Understand this, this is my own categorization of goals. I don't have any studies to back up what I put into this post, it's merely a compilation of how I personally teach based on my own personal experience.

Now, getting back to it. Figuring out how to set these goals is probably the most important thing to do as an organization. Allow staff to set goals first, then allow the students/members to set goals, as well. It's very important to have members set goals for themselves as well as for the entire ensemble, because it holds a level of accountability to the groups' success, and makes the overall experience of accomplishing those goals much more "fun," if that makes sense. I find that it is beneficial to have some of all of these goals in every setting. Obviously, the less easily-obtainable the goal is, the less of them that you're going to have. You don't want to set a lot of what I call "category 4" goals, because then you are destined for quite a bit of failure within a season, and that can lead to discouragement, but finding the correct balance of these goals within the dynamics of your own ensemble can really help shape a growing organization from the beginning.

Goals are vital to mark progress, and progress is what ultimately helps charter fun to the members and staff alike. How many ensembles have you seen in a great mood because the music just really isn't clicking the way they wanted it to be by that point?

So, there's my long-winded way of saying, the easiest way to find any balance is by including goals. Feel free, anyone, to challenge me on any aspect of my post. I'm still very young in my own teaching career (I'm in my first complete season as an instructor, currently) and I would love to hear any input. The more input I have, the more influence I can have in my own teaching strategies.

I hope that all made sense.
B

This is an amazing thread. There is some serious learning theory in here. SFZ does have a very poignant point in all of this. The teaching (or ensemble) must serve the student. However, BV is also correct that music is a very excellence driven activity. I remember a video where an orchestra played an excerpt as close to perfect as possible and then with the players playing the piece 70% correct. The second run was horrible! I will say that instructors that inspire the do or die mentality make me physically sick because I know those kids won't last as musicians and will grow to resent the activity. But I also see instructors that wish to make their students so happy that they don't push them at all. The topic seems to be balance in this thread and once again it pops up here. But perhaps a different approach can be had.
Why can't both of these concepts be combined so growth, not the result becomes the focus of music education? Instead of teachers striving for perfection, can they not just strive for improvement? Every student can make some improvement each and every run, thus each run would be something the student looks forward too. Also, the student and ensemble will be getting better each run so the impossible perfection an audience so struggles to hear is one step closer. Getting better is fun, ask any student. If you let students know they are improving and phrase comments so as to foster that improvement, I can't see how anyone would be sad.

I am glad my posting is sparking discussion. My strategy for this year's marching band I did not take lightly. But I knew that we were not going to break the cycle of poor performance and poor morale (and the resulting poor quality rehearsals that was creating a self fulfilling prophesy) unless I could generate some marginal success. So let me share our results from this strategy:

The kids are having fun, so they are working harder. As a result of them working harder, the quality of their product is dramatically increasing. They enjoy working in rehearsal, they enjoy the contest, they are having fun BECAUSE they are seeing the fruits of their hard work.

This past saturday's contest were the best result in 5 years. We scored in "box 4" for all captions for the first time in 5 years. We also received the overall award for most spirited performance. I asked the judges in critique about this. On field judge talked about body carriage and that you could see in their eyes that my kids were intent on trying to do their best. They "looked" like they were trying.

This could not be said of our band the previous four years.

It is true that I may have lowered skill expectations, BUT the end result is that the kids are giving me a better quality of effort and in the end a better quality performance which will spill over into our concert band later this year.

But as to expectations, I also moved my kids up contest classification 3 levels to compete against our peers from our district. meaning we are competing against bands 2 and 3 times larger than us. My kids are friends with the students in these bands. go to church with them, are in youth sports and clubs with them. They are also trying harder because they do not want to look "stupid" (a kid's choice of words) in front of their friends. We have actually out scored in one sub-caption one of our sister schools who's band is almost 2 1/2 times larger than us.

You have to know your kids to get the best product out of them.

My view from the cheap seats

This is a great discussion, very beneficial.

The other focus I was hoping we'd hit was the individual side of things. We've hit the teacher role quite well and I'd love to continue down that path, but how do we train our students to enjoy what they're doing when they're practicing, and how should we train them to evaluate themselves, particularly in performance?

I'm remembering what I said about the color guard girl in the original post, and my shaky student for instance.

I'm still at this point thinking that a performance by a student (really, by anyone) where 100% of the possible effort at that time is given is a perfect performance. Regardless of whether parts were technically precise or not, you literally can't ask for more than a students greatest effort at that time. Not to say you can't expect improvement as warboy mentioned, or to say you can't strive for the greatest excellence as bcaviness has said, just that there literally isn't anything left after 100%.

I guess to explain it better,

We're repping a dirty long roll passage on the field. I mention a stick height issue in one student, he fixes it the next rep but misses his dot by a couple inches. He probably gave his best effort there, so I won't get on his case. I will expect the next rep an improvement in finding his dot. After that I'll probably give him a couple tries before I question his effort. That make sense? Does it sound like a sensible approach?

I'm also wondering if the way students are taught translates to the practice room (or pad) as far evaluation. I have a dear friend, an excellent marimbist, who is never happy with anything she ever does musically due to her exponential expectations. I've seen this cause a cycle in her playing. She practices, it doesn't sound good (to her, mind you - sounds great to me), she gets excessively discouraged, she either quits right there or tries again still discouraged. Of course it sounds worse now because she's emotionally torn because it wasn't perfect before. I think this is probably the poster-child example of what I'm trying to eliminate in students. Even the much less extreme example of the colorguard girl to me is unacceptable and is something teachers need to be aware of.

What do you guys think?

Feel very free to continue talking about the teacher perspective and group dynamic, but try to think about training the individual to enjoy their individual practice and evaluate themselves.

To begin, I guess we need to point out the issue with looking at the individual process on a discipline-to-relaxed basis. The reason why, is because when you're in an individual rehearsal, you ARE striving for perfection. If you don't believe me, then check out the coined phrase that is nearly un-American to be ignorant to: "Practice makes perfect."

Because of this, my post is going to be more about how to practice successfully, and how to practice efficiently. It may not be the most enjoyable way of going about things, but it does work very well, at least with my style of learning, and I think it's always nice to expand on your own ways of practicing.

I think in order to enjoy practicing, on the other hand, you're going to have to gauge what a successful individual rehearsal looks like, which takes me right back to setting goals. Before you even walk into a practice room, I feel like you should have a clear understanding of what your goals are by the end of the practice time. If you don't, it's very easy to just somewhat wander aimlessly in the same section of music for 30-45 minutes, then realize that you're not getting a whole lot done.

How do I set this schedule? Well, it obviously depends on what kind of music I'm looking at, how far along I am on the music, what elements are IN the music, obviously, and most importantly, how long I'm going to be rehearsing.

So, for the sake of putting things on an even playing area, let's say that I'm looking at "Yellow After the Rain" for the first time, and I have 3 hours blocked off for rehearsal.

Before I do any of my rehearsing, I spend my free time preparing for the piece as a whole, not just preparing for this one rehearsal, looking for the following elements:

• Main Melody - How is it shaped? What kind of motifs are repeated throughout the piece? Where is the melody played. (This also would include the format of the entire piece, I would be checking for the key signatures/changes time signatures/changes, etc.)
  
• Difficult Passages - Are there any elements that you're not accustomed to, using "Yellow" as the example, are you familiar with the 1-3-2-4 mallet pattern throughout the sixteenth note passages? Is the 4 mallet melody at the end too much for you to comprehend at that point in time?
• How to Relate Difficult Passages to Prior Knowledge - This is probably the most important step to my rehearsals. I'm going to break off for a bit to explain why, then come back to it.
  
  
  Our brain functions in a very peculiar way. There is 3-step process to committing things to long-term memory, whether you consider this memorization, or full-scale application. Here are the three steps:
• Sensory Application - Pretty self explanatory. This is the sensing of whatever it is that you're learning, whether you're executing for the first time, hearing things for the first time, seeing them, etc.
• Active Registry (Short-Term memory) - Remember the following notes - D, F, Eb, G, F, A, G, Bb, A, C, Bb, D. Now close your eyes, and say the first 5 notes back. Those notes were committed to short-term memory, considering that you don't already know the scale that is there. Assuming that you had no prior knowledge of what those notes were, if I asked you to repeat those notes in 10 minutes, you would likely forget. The connection between active registry and sensory application is pretty simple. After sensory application, objects are committed to Active Registry. Simple enough, but this is where things get complicated.
• Long-Term Memory - Say your alphabet. Using the exact same melody, sing twinkle-twinkle little star. These things have been committed to your long-term memory. Why? It's a simple as this - prior knowledge. You probably knew your alphabet before you knew twinkle twinkle little star. If someone told you the words to that song, but gave you no melody to learn it with, it would much more difficult for you to memorize those lyrics. Now, place a familiar melody behind it, and you'll learn it for the rest of your life. Same goes for other concepts of our life. Go back to my example of the notes from before. Looking at those notes, I can tell you that there are 2 flats, that you would associate with Bb major. Now notice that you're beginning on the third of the scale, making it a Phrygian scale, however, instead of just going up the phrygian scale beginning on the final and going up in order of the scale, do so in a 1-3-2-4-3-5-4-6-5-7-6-8 pattern. Assuming that none of these terms, or the key signature of Bb major is new to you, then you should now have some prior knowledge to associate with what was recently committed to short-term memory. Now, name all 12 notes that I mentioned before, without looking up the first paragraph. If you didn't get all of them, it was at least easier, right?

I have been rereading this thread because it is so good. I didn't notice this the first time...


"Paul hit the baby seal on the head with the statement"

Really??? I'm just saying

My view from the cheap seats

I would personally like to vote to get this thread stickied for the sake of keeping the conversation going.

Hey B,
Your wish is my command, topic has been stuck!

I guess to be more specific about individual practice,

Today I was practicing marimba (happily by the way) when suddenly across the hall I hear a friend practicing timpani scream several expletives. I asked him what the deal was (almost more out curiosity in the purpose of this thread than concern) and it was because he miscounted a rest while playing with a recording of a Beethoven symphony or something.

He's typically a smooth guy, but for whatever reason some sort of pressure ignites when he's practicing that causes that kind of frustration. This is just another version of the extravagant reactions to mistakes/failure that I see in students, colleagues and in teachers in relation to their students success.

Any idea where this comes from? I just don't understand why practice should be such a stress-ridden thing. I also know some people for whom practice doesn't drip stress and dissatisfaction, why are they different? What's different in their attitudes that causes some consistently to leave the practice room smiling while another typically is never satisfied with the work they did?

I'm certain it has a lot to do with what bcaviness wrote about a nicely organized practice session, but I think there's an attitude or something that causes that type of stress. How do we try to prevent that in students and ourselves? Is it inevitable?

I just wanted to apologize for my in-activeness on this thread. I've been so swamped with midterms and the school I teach is in competition mode.

Things should be dying down after this weekend, so expect to see yet another long-winded post in the near future. haha.

Well here is an example. As mentioned earlier, this year I made 3 important program decisions:

1) program pep band music for for a small competitive band
2) have the drill written as if no one had ever danced before
3) intentionally compete up 3 classes

End result drastically improved student motivation. The students truly enjoyed the entire process. Seniors telling their parents that this year has been the best year of marching band, Freshman telling their 8th grade friends in MS how much fun band is.

Took this product to huge local contest that "everybody goes to". (community expectation to go) Did our best in marching, our music had been better. Got hammered for those choices. So you do what you have to. The kids feel good about this year, and that is the single biggest award we have had.

My view from the cheap seat.