Let's suppose we've got a pair of hypothetical identical twins, Robert and Bobert. Both are creative lads: Robert is a painter, and Bobert is a guitarist, but in all other ways they are identical. Let's suppose further that the two 'berts go to an indoor climbing gym for the first time. Which do you think would be the better climber? If I had been asked this a week ago, I probably wouldn't have been able to come up with an answer. If one were more athletic, I would give him the advantage, but they're physically identical. Similarly, if one used his hands more than the other, I would give him the advantage, but they both have interests which require a high level of dexterity. So who takes this one?
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When learning a new piece of music, there are essentially two different processes one must employ in order to master the challenging sections. The first is to determine an efficient path that can be used to hit each note accurately. This may not apply to instruments for which there is only one fingering or position that can be used to play a given pitch, but stringed instruments, brasses, and percussion all present some degree of choice to the musician: Should I hit the high E with my ring finger or my pinky? Would it be easier to change my lip position before or after this half note? Should I start this tom fill on my right hand or my left?
The second process is to drill the passage over and over again until it can be consistently played at full tempo, error-free, with rhythmic accuracy, and with all the dynamics and flavorings that the artist or composer desires. Sometimes it takes ten tries. Sometimes hundreds. Sometimes it makes you want to smash your instrument into tiny pieces, but (hopefully) you resist this urge and get the piece to sound exactly like what you think it should sound like.
Neither one of these processes is particularly useful without the other. A good plan is meaningless without having put in the effort to be able to execute it, and persistent drilling can go to waste if you're using a path that is impossible to play at full speed. I find that the fastest route to mastery is to alternate between the two phases: determine a basic plan, play through it a few times, make adjustments, play it some more, make more adjustments, and so on and so forth.
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On Monday night, I tagged along with my brother and his chums to go to their favorite climbing gym. On one side of the room were the top rope courses, in which a rope runs from the climber's harness up to the ceiling, then back down to a belayer. On the other side of the room were the bouldering courses, which were shorter, steeper, and didn't use ropes at all. Both walls were covered with handholds and footholds of every shape and size, but the holds were color-coded to create specific courses of varying difficulty levels.
Upon swiftly conquering the first two courses I tried, I felt confident that my childhood days spent clambering around on trees had paid off. However, I quickly found myself getting completely stumped by a pink course with a difficult rating of zero (rather humbling, as you can imagine). I would start climbing, fall, then immediately try again with the same results. Within minutes, my arms were so tired that I could barely hold myself up, and my hands were covered with blisters. After a few embarrassing attempts at the pink course, one of my more experienced cohorts came over and showed me that it was better to grab a particular handhold with my left hand instead of my right. "Sometimes you really have to come up with a good sequence to be able to get to the top."
And then it suddenly clicked, and I knew exactly what to do. I chalked up my hands, implemented the change, and then fell shortly thereafter. I took a step back and looked up at the wall. "Alright, why didn't that work?" Climb. Fall. Rest, adjust. Climb. Fall. Rest, adjust. Climb. Succeed. Smile. I am Bobert, hear me roar!
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Week 26 total: 18 hours
Grand total: 612.5 hours
Required pace: 500 hours (+112.5)
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Curious Abundance of Time
Last night I asked Ninja Queen, a recent female addition to my life, what was the proudest moment of her dancing career. Without any hesitation she chose the piece that she had choreographed this past semester, not because of the number of compliments she received for her work, but for the fact that so many of them came from people she hardly knew. Oddly enough, strangers tend to be much more honest than those we know well.
Ninja Queen went on to explain that the success of her piece was one of the factors that influenced her decision to choreograph again next semester. She said that she was hesitant to make the time commitment since the semester to come is known to be particularly difficult for those in her major. I thought of explaining my somewhat counterintuitive understanding of time management: in high school, I would magically become more diligent about homework during those weeks in which I had to stay late after school to work on our theater productions. When I had nothing to do in the evenings, I would put off homework until the last minute, but when I only had a few hours between coming home and going to bed, I would just crank out everything I needed to do. It seemed reasonable to suggest that she might actually do better next semester if she made a point of filling up her free time with her choreography.
The only reason I didn't mention this was because I was still waiting to get my final grades for this semester. If they were good, that would support my ideas about time management, but if they were as atrocious as I expected them to be, that would leave my theory with more holes than Lamarckian inheritance.
Today came the moment of truth. I received my final grades, immediately after which I shouted "What!? How is that even possible? You've got to be fucking kidding me!" I could almost feel tears welling up in my eyes. These were not, however, tears of frustration. Quite the contrary: I was laughing my ass off. Somehow, despite having a difficult course load, a part-time job, the 1000-hour quest, and designing for the dance showcase, my GPA this semester was actually higher than my cumulative average.
What made this even more astonishing was the extent to which I blatantly, repeatedly, and intentionally disregarded my professors' instructions in favor of doing things the way I wanted to. I have always been of the opinion that grades should be reflective of how well the student understands the material, not their ability to complete assignments according to arbitrary guidelines. Perhaps, by some weird cosmic coincidence, all four of my professors shared this philosophy. Perhaps this was the first time I was able to balance my innate rebelliousness with the need to actually demonstrate my knowledge of the material. Maybe my efforts to contemplate, analyze, and connect to the world around me have put me so far ahead of the curve that even when I voluntarily cripple myself academically, I still fare better than my classmates. Maybe, just maybe, my ideas about time management are correct: we need to push ourselves in many different ways in order to realize our full potential in any one area.
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Week 25 total: 22 hours
Grand total: 594.5 hours
Required pace: 481 hours (+113.5)
Ninja Queen went on to explain that the success of her piece was one of the factors that influenced her decision to choreograph again next semester. She said that she was hesitant to make the time commitment since the semester to come is known to be particularly difficult for those in her major. I thought of explaining my somewhat counterintuitive understanding of time management: in high school, I would magically become more diligent about homework during those weeks in which I had to stay late after school to work on our theater productions. When I had nothing to do in the evenings, I would put off homework until the last minute, but when I only had a few hours between coming home and going to bed, I would just crank out everything I needed to do. It seemed reasonable to suggest that she might actually do better next semester if she made a point of filling up her free time with her choreography.
The only reason I didn't mention this was because I was still waiting to get my final grades for this semester. If they were good, that would support my ideas about time management, but if they were as atrocious as I expected them to be, that would leave my theory with more holes than Lamarckian inheritance.
Today came the moment of truth. I received my final grades, immediately after which I shouted "What!? How is that even possible? You've got to be fucking kidding me!" I could almost feel tears welling up in my eyes. These were not, however, tears of frustration. Quite the contrary: I was laughing my ass off. Somehow, despite having a difficult course load, a part-time job, the 1000-hour quest, and designing for the dance showcase, my GPA this semester was actually higher than my cumulative average.
What made this even more astonishing was the extent to which I blatantly, repeatedly, and intentionally disregarded my professors' instructions in favor of doing things the way I wanted to. I have always been of the opinion that grades should be reflective of how well the student understands the material, not their ability to complete assignments according to arbitrary guidelines. Perhaps, by some weird cosmic coincidence, all four of my professors shared this philosophy. Perhaps this was the first time I was able to balance my innate rebelliousness with the need to actually demonstrate my knowledge of the material. Maybe my efforts to contemplate, analyze, and connect to the world around me have put me so far ahead of the curve that even when I voluntarily cripple myself academically, I still fare better than my classmates. Maybe, just maybe, my ideas about time management are correct: we need to push ourselves in many different ways in order to realize our full potential in any one area.
----
Week 25 total: 22 hours
Grand total: 594.5 hours
Required pace: 481 hours (+113.5)
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Beams of Light, Waves of Sound
"Whenever I'm working on something, I break it down into small pieces, and I make exercises out of every little piece... I see kids practicing, and really the way that they practice sometimes isn't going to give them the best results, because if you practice bad habits, you're gonna sound like you have bad habits. So what I recommend you do is that musical meditation, it's really focusing on something until it sounds great to you, until it sounds exactly what you're hoping for. And the way that you get it to sound that way is you imagine it sounding that way, because you can't work towards something that you don't know what the end result is. What you're looking for is every note has to have its own zip code. It has to have its own life, it has to be its own personality."
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In Priorities, I made the bold claim that I would keep music at the very top of my priority list no matter what. As is apparent from this week's poor total (the lowest thus far, in fact), this just isn't always possible. My time was absolutely devoured by a dance show for which I volunteered to co-design the lighting. In theory, this was something I could have gotten paid for if I had jumped through all the right hoops ahead of time, but that was of no concern to me whatsoever. When asked by one of the choreographers why I would put so much time into something so close to final exams without getting paid, I responded, "I like putting effort into projects and seeing them come out well. I wasn't getting that excitement from classes."
There were, of course, some rough moments. When I first presented my lighting to Meryl, the choreographer who had gotten me involved in the first place, she told me that it was completely wrong and that I had to start over. Another piece had a nice warm stage wash against an orange cyc, which I thought would look great. Then the dancers came out in brown dresses, and the entire stage suddenly became one giant blob of indistinct earth tones. Timings were off, pieces weren't finished, and instruments had to be swapped out. Somehow we had to make it all work in just two days of rehearsal.
On Friday evening, at some point around midnight, I was 20 feet above the stage in a genie lift re-focusing instruments to fill in dark spots. My co-designer looked around and said "I remember someone telling me that no one little fix will make the show look noticeably better, but a lot of little fixes can make a huge difference." From my perch I called down to him "Absolutely! Even if the audience isn't aware of the individual decisions being made, the collective effect of all of the decisions can completely change the way the performance is perceived."
And then it all came together, and I smiled.
----
Week 24 total: 12.5 hours
Grand total: 572.5 hours
Required pace: 461.5 hours (+111)
-- Steve Vai
----
In Priorities, I made the bold claim that I would keep music at the very top of my priority list no matter what. As is apparent from this week's poor total (the lowest thus far, in fact), this just isn't always possible. My time was absolutely devoured by a dance show for which I volunteered to co-design the lighting. In theory, this was something I could have gotten paid for if I had jumped through all the right hoops ahead of time, but that was of no concern to me whatsoever. When asked by one of the choreographers why I would put so much time into something so close to final exams without getting paid, I responded, "I like putting effort into projects and seeing them come out well. I wasn't getting that excitement from classes."
There were, of course, some rough moments. When I first presented my lighting to Meryl, the choreographer who had gotten me involved in the first place, she told me that it was completely wrong and that I had to start over. Another piece had a nice warm stage wash against an orange cyc, which I thought would look great. Then the dancers came out in brown dresses, and the entire stage suddenly became one giant blob of indistinct earth tones. Timings were off, pieces weren't finished, and instruments had to be swapped out. Somehow we had to make it all work in just two days of rehearsal.
On Friday evening, at some point around midnight, I was 20 feet above the stage in a genie lift re-focusing instruments to fill in dark spots. My co-designer looked around and said "I remember someone telling me that no one little fix will make the show look noticeably better, but a lot of little fixes can make a huge difference." From my perch I called down to him "Absolutely! Even if the audience isn't aware of the individual decisions being made, the collective effect of all of the decisions can completely change the way the performance is perceived."
And then it all came together, and I smiled.
----
Week 24 total: 12.5 hours
Grand total: 572.5 hours
Required pace: 461.5 hours (+111)
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Conservation of Momentum
In high school, my herd of guy friends had an annual tradition of making a pilgrimage to White Castle, a grease-a-licious fast food chain that serves square hamburgers for great justice. There weren't any of these establishments in humble Connecticut, so our quest required us to either take a ferry to Long Island or ride a train into New York City. These trips don't seem nearly as epic now as they felt at the time, but when you've only been driving for a few months, everything qualifies as an adventure.
On one particular journey my buddy Sam came up with the idea of buying extra hamburgers to donate to a local homeless shelter. He brought his camera along, intending to make a documentary about the whole ordeal. The operation ran smoothly and we got plenty of good footage, but in the weeks that followed, Sam confessed that he was having a hard time putting it together into something that he was happy with. He explained that if he ever let the project sit for more than a day, he found it extremely difficult to get back into it once he picked it up again. In order to counter this, he would force himself to do something, anything, even the smallest of changes, every single day until it was finished.
As soon as he described this process to me, I realized that it closely matched the way that I went about all of my long-term projects -- learning songs on guitar, writing articles on Wikipedia, and putting together an online Rubik's Cube tutorial. I instinctively avoided long periods of inactivity, though it wasn't until my conversation with Sam that I put any thought into the matter. Once I became fully aware of it, this became my main strategy for avoiding demotivation, and I've stuck with it for years.
Last week, however, a brand new strategy mysteriously popped into my head, as though my brain had grown bored and wanted me to come up with a new way of doing things. I was writing out a tab for a song that I had been working on, and when I got close to the end of the song, I stopped and thought "Well, you've just finished an hour, why not leave the tab like it is and finish tomorrow?" followed shortly thereafter by "Golly, self, that's a great idea!" There are some days when I don't have a clear idea of what I want to work on, which causes practicing to descend into pointless noodling that quickly grows boring, but not this time! By leaving the tab unfinished, I gave myself something to be excited about completing the next time I practiced.
I quickly began applying this idea to other areas. On Friday night I was working on my final computer science project, a Java version of the Othello board game. I was working on the move validation code when I ran into a stupid little error that I knew I would be able to troubleshoot in a few minutes of tinkering. I knew that if I fixed the problem and finished that chunk of code, I would start the next day thinking "Ah, shit, now I have to start writing methods for enemy capture. I think I'll just procrastinate instead." Instead, I left the bug just as it was and went to bed. Sure enough, the next day I found myself excited to fix the issue, and with that momentum I went on to write all of the enemy capture code in under an hour.
Stopping at a natural stopping point may feel natural, but stopping just short of one is a much better way of preserving your constructive energy for later on. In fact, I'm such a firm believer of this idea that I'm not even going to finish writing this sente
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Week 23 total: 23.5 hours
Grand total: 560 hours
Required pace: 442.5 hours (+117.5)
On one particular journey my buddy Sam came up with the idea of buying extra hamburgers to donate to a local homeless shelter. He brought his camera along, intending to make a documentary about the whole ordeal. The operation ran smoothly and we got plenty of good footage, but in the weeks that followed, Sam confessed that he was having a hard time putting it together into something that he was happy with. He explained that if he ever let the project sit for more than a day, he found it extremely difficult to get back into it once he picked it up again. In order to counter this, he would force himself to do something, anything, even the smallest of changes, every single day until it was finished.
As soon as he described this process to me, I realized that it closely matched the way that I went about all of my long-term projects -- learning songs on guitar, writing articles on Wikipedia, and putting together an online Rubik's Cube tutorial. I instinctively avoided long periods of inactivity, though it wasn't until my conversation with Sam that I put any thought into the matter. Once I became fully aware of it, this became my main strategy for avoiding demotivation, and I've stuck with it for years.
Last week, however, a brand new strategy mysteriously popped into my head, as though my brain had grown bored and wanted me to come up with a new way of doing things. I was writing out a tab for a song that I had been working on, and when I got close to the end of the song, I stopped and thought "Well, you've just finished an hour, why not leave the tab like it is and finish tomorrow?" followed shortly thereafter by "Golly, self, that's a great idea!" There are some days when I don't have a clear idea of what I want to work on, which causes practicing to descend into pointless noodling that quickly grows boring, but not this time! By leaving the tab unfinished, I gave myself something to be excited about completing the next time I practiced.
I quickly began applying this idea to other areas. On Friday night I was working on my final computer science project, a Java version of the Othello board game. I was working on the move validation code when I ran into a stupid little error that I knew I would be able to troubleshoot in a few minutes of tinkering. I knew that if I fixed the problem and finished that chunk of code, I would start the next day thinking "Ah, shit, now I have to start writing methods for enemy capture. I think I'll just procrastinate instead." Instead, I left the bug just as it was and went to bed. Sure enough, the next day I found myself excited to fix the issue, and with that momentum I went on to write all of the enemy capture code in under an hour.
Stopping at a natural stopping point may feel natural, but stopping just short of one is a much better way of preserving your constructive energy for later on. In fact, I'm such a firm believer of this idea that I'm not even going to finish writing this sente
----
Week 23 total: 23.5 hours
Grand total: 560 hours
Required pace: 442.5 hours (+117.5)
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