Theory is cool but does it make people think too much??

[markjsmithbass]

I am reminded of Anthony Wellington's excellent "Four Levels of Awareness" clip

Absolutely brilliant clip. Pretty much says it all.

 

[lfmn16]

When was the last time you met an expert in anything that you thought "Well, he's brilliant and all but I think he just knows too much"

Sadly music is one of the few fields where some people attempt to argue ignorance as a plus.

 

[Major Softie]

I am a difficult person for cults or self-help movements to seduce.

Yes, your avatar definitely appears as someone who would never involve themselves with a cult...

 

[Lobster11]

Sadly music is one of the few fields where some people attempt to argue ignorance as a plus.

Interesting thought, but (even more sadly) I'm not sure I agree. I'll bet that within many professions and avocations you could find a sizeable minority of people who believe that their own personal experience and intuition trumps "book learnin'," and who think that formal education is a scam. Even within academia -- my own neighborhood -- you'll find folks in many liberal-arts fields who regard their ignorance of science and mathematics as a kind of badge of honor.

 

[smeet]

Yes, your avatar definitely appears as someone who would never involve themselves with a cult...

I might start a cult, but I would never join one.

 

[smeet]

Interesting thought, but (even more sadly) I'm not sure I agree. I'll bet that within many professions and avocations you could find a sizeable minority of people who believe that their own personal experience and intuition trumps "book learnin'," and who think that formal education is a scam. Even within academia -- my own neighborhood -- you'll find folks in many liberal-arts fields who regard their ignorance of science and mathematics as a kind of badge of honor.

I think you're right. America is developing a strongly anti-intellectual streak, where people don't trust educated authorities, preferring folk/Oprah wisdom instead. Not implicitly trusting the authorities I can understand, but jumping on even less reliable bandwagon is where ignorance turns into stupidity.

 

[KevInDaBassment]

I think you're right. America is developing a strongly anti-intellectual streak, where people don't trust educated authorities, preferring folk/Oprah wisdom instead. Not implicitly trusting the authorities I can understand, but jumping on even less reliable bandwagon is where ignorance turns into stupidity.

I'd say apathy and laziness is a healthy contributor to their anti-intellectual tendencies as well lol

I prefer to educate myself as much as possible on an important topic, but I'm also very wary of "self-proclaimed" experts or who decides someone is an expert. With how many conflicting/convoluting accounts we get on things such as food and what qualifies as "healthy", it makes me very wary unless I can get something more solid than "I have a Ph.D. in 'natural medicine'!".....riiiight lol

 

[since197three]

This might well be true for some people, but I think there's another "real phenomenon" that is probably much more common in contributing to the illusion: When people first start learning some theory, they find themselves thinking about it and analyzing what they're doing (or could be doing) while they're playing instead of listening and feeling; consequently, they lose the groove and blame it on the theoretical knowledge getting in the way. I've certainly fallen into this trap myself, especially when I was first beginning to learn theory: The band would be jamming over an Em chord, say, with me playing some simple pentatonic line, and then I'd start thinking about how I could grab some additional notes from the E Aeolian mode/scale, which is parallel to G Ionian, so maybe it would be cool to play for awhile in B Phyrigian.... and next thing you know I've lost track of the groove and the jam implodes and dies a miserable death. The solution, of course, is to do your studying of and experimenting with theoretical ideas during practice, not while you're playing. If you keep at it (when practicing), the ideas eventually become sufficiently deeply ingrained that they will start coming out in your playing without you needing to actually think about them. The problem is that have to stick with the program long enough for this to happen. But I suspect that many folks give up after falling into this trap the first time, and draw the conclusion that learning theory hurts more than it helps.

Anyway, that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it....

This is pretty much what I meant by my OP. When I first started out I feel I got more out of pressing play and rewind on cassettes learning songs than from "theory".

Granted now after years of playing by ear I think learning scales will fine tune my playing.

Already checked out some sites and actually realized I know a lot of scales but just never "knew" I was playing them. If you know what I mean.

 

[smeet]

One solution as suggested in Anthony's excellent video is to learn fewer things very deeply. For instance, play nothing but C major for a week. Or play nothing but 2nd inversion dominant chords all over the neck. Or REALLY learn Db major in the first 5 frets. Or instead of reading through 50 Real Book tunes, learn one song in all 12 keys. In general I think this is a better way to learn, but it requires some discipline.

 

[Phil Smith]

One solution as suggested in Anthony's excellent video is to learn fewer things very deeply. For instance, play nothing but C major for a week. Or play nothing but 2nd inversion dominant chords all over the neck. Or REALLY learn Db major in the first 5 frets. Or instead of reading through 50 Real Book tunes, learn one song in all 12 keys. In general I think this is a better way to learn, but it requires some discipline.

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/...e-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/

Early on in our musical training, we are taught the importance of repetition. How often have we been told to “play each passage ten times perfectly before moving on”? The challenge with this well-intentioned advice is that it is not in line with the way our brains work. We are hardwired to pay attention to change, not repetition. This hardwiring can already be observed in preverbal infants. Show a baby the same object over and over again and they will gradually stop paying attention through a process called habituation. Change the object, and the attention returns full force. The same goes for adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has demonstrated that there is progressively less brain activation when stimuli are repeated. The fact is, repeated information does not receive the same amount of processing as new information. And on some level, we all know this. Constant repetition is boring and our boredom is telling us that our brains are not engaged. But instead of listening to this instinctive voice of reason, we blame ourselves for our lack of attention and yell at ourselves to “focus!” Luckily, there is an alternative.

 

[Roy Vogt]

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/...e-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/

I've used this technique with some of my students and it does seem to work.

 

[smeet]

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/...e-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/

I'm familiar with that, and to some extent I agree with it. It can work well for some people. You still have to balance learning one thing well against learning many things at a more shallow level.
"Multitasking" doesn't work for me, and according to studies it also doesn't work for a lot of people that think it's working for them.
It might be the variety of tasks as the article says. But I think it's actually the stopping and starting that is helping. Do one task (scales or whatever) but take frequent breaks to do something completely unrelated (laundry, walking the dog, etc.). For me personally, that seems to work better.

 

[Major Softie]

"Multitasking" doesn't work for me, and according to studies it also doesn't work for a lot of people that think it's working for them.

Wasn't that a wonderful study? It showed that no one is really good at it, but, far more interestingly, it showed that doing it a lot makes you worse at it, and the people who do it a lot are the ones who think they are best at it, so the people who think they are best at it are actually the worst!

 

[Lobster11]

I'm familiar with that, and to some extent I agree with it. It can work well for some people. You still have to balance learning one thing well against learning many things at a more shallow level.
"Multitasking" doesn't work for me, and according to studies it also doesn't work for a lot of people that think it's working for them.
It might be the variety of tasks as the article says. But I think it's actually the stopping and starting that is helping. Do one task (scales or whatever) but take frequent breaks to do something completely unrelated (laundry, walking the dog, etc.). For me personally, that seems to work better.

I agree with this, but I think "multitasking" is a completely different issue than that of how best to maximize learning when practicing. When you have multiple tasks to do, it often will be far more efficient to do them start-to-finish, one at a time. It wouldn't be very efficient to mow the lawn for five minutes, switch to weeding the garden for five minutes, paint the living room for five minutes, and then rotate back through all the tasks until they are all done. (Of course, this depends on how long the tasks will take, how exhausting they are and so forth. If mowing the lawn is going to take two hours, you might well want to take a break mid-way and walk the dog in order to stave off fatigue or boredom.)

When you're practicing something, however, the goal is no longer to simply get the task done; the goal is to maximize learning so that you'll be better at playing the passage the next day and beyond. If your goal were merely to be able to play each of three passages at some criterion level -- say, ten times consecutively without error -- you would accomplish that goal faster by working on them one at a time, like mowing and weeding and painting, by practicing each until you reach the criterion before moving on to the next one. The point of the article, however, is that if your goal is to "learn" how to play the passages, in the sense of being able to play them better the next day, it is generally more efficient to use the "random practice schedule," i.e., work on one passage for a little while, then work on the second passage for a little while, and so forth. That's not the same thing as multitasking. The best way to organize your effort in order to get things done is not necessarily the same as the best way to organize your effort in order to learn and improve.

 

[WashburnAB95]

It dosn't make you think too much, it just gives you something to actually thing about.

 

[lfmn16]

It dosn't make you think too much, it just gives you something to actually thing about.

 

[Lobster11]

 

[Steve]

I prefer the bad that comes out of my amp to be caused me not knowing what in the heck I'm doing rather than me just having lousy taste in which one of my mathematically correct options to choose.