ThePracticeOfPractice Sample

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THE PRACTICE

OF

PRACTICE

This is an early draft of the first fewpages of the book. Thanks for taking the

time to chek it out.

If you have any suggestions or wouldlike to receive a 30% discount when thebook is published, send an e-mail to: [email protected]

cheers,

Jon Harnum


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THE PRACTICE OF PRACTICE

GET BETTER F ASTER

JONATHAN H ARNUM

Sol Ut Press

sol-ut.com


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THE PRACTICE OF PRACTICE | 1

Prologue

THE R OAD TO HOPE

AND BEYOND

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, author (1850-1894)

WAS DRIVING TO HOPE, ALASKA IN A V OLKSWAGONcamper to play unfamiliar music with strangers when thisbook first seemed necessary, over ten years ago. My gutschurned with a nervousness that was six parts excitement, fourparts fear, or maybe it was the other way around. I looked tothe back of the van for the umpteenth time to be sure I hadmy trumpet, mutes, small percussion instruments, and the all-important microphone Alan Bent—who I had yet to meet inperson—had requested. I was nervous for three reasons: I’dnever met Alan or any of the other players in Jazz Farm, aGypsy jazz combo; I feared my improvisational ability was notup to the level needed to play this challenging music and thatattempting to do so would be an unpleasant publicembarrassment (I was right on both counts); and I was

running late. The information in this book would have helpedme embrace the trepidation I felt then in the van and on stagelater, and allowed me to recognize it for what it was, animportant aspect of learning: failing better.

I


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JONATHAN HARNUM | 3

placidly down at shutter-snapping tourist families below.Much as I wanted to stop to watch the spectacle that issummer in Alaska, I couldn’t. I was late and too nervous to

appreciate it anyway.During the long road trip honeymoon—as happy as I was penniless—I’d rediscovered the joy of playing music,improvising, and most of all, the peculiar frustrating joy of practice. While in Mexico, I practiced for two or three hourseach morning a few hundred yards down the coast in a beachchair with a mute in my horn. Even though I’d been playingtrumpet for over twenty years at that point, and had six orseven years in on guitar, I was still trying to figure out how topractice in the way most of us learn to practice: through trial-and-error, alone, with little to no information.

In the ten years since that trip, I’ve continued to learnmore about practice, and a lot more about music learning ingeneral. My journey to better understand practice led me toChicago where I’ve been incredibly lucky to hear some of the

best musicians on the planet, and talk to some of them aboutpractice, too; you’ll meet some of them in this book.

While in Chicago I earned both a master’s and PhDdegree in music education from Northwestern University, atop-tier music school. I’m incredibly grateful to all the wonderful professors and colleagues I met and learned fromduring my studies.

In the course (and courses) of my quest to understandpractice I’ve read hundreds of research studies and haveconducted formal research of my own into practice. I’vetalked about practice with some of the best musiciansanywhere in many different traditions: jazz, classical, andpop, as well as other genres like West African djembe,Australian didgeridoo, and Brazilian samba, just to name a

few. But all learning is nearly meaningless unless it’s used , andso I’ve been applying and experimenting with my ownpractice in order to discover what strategies, techniques, and


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THE R OAD TO HOPE AND BEYOND4 |

patterns of thought help me get better. Most work, someI’ve had to tweak for my own purposes, and some just don’tmake sense to me yet; and may never make sense, at leastfor a trumpet player.

This is the best way to aproach the information in thisbook yourself: don’t take my word for it. Try these thingsout, change them, adapt them to your particular needs, andabove all, experiment. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanhsaid, “Our own life is the instrument with which weexperiment with truth.” Sage advice.

Over the last ten years of study, I’ve learned a lot about

practice and as with my previous books, it’s my goal toshare what I’ve discovered in a way that I hope you, dearreader, find both useful and engaging. These discoveries areattitudes, strategies and philosophies that musicians of every caliber apply to our pursuit of playing music better,and they work. They can work for you, too.

Music-making Should NotBe Left to the Professoinals

At this very moment across the globe, cases are beingopened, bows are being rosined, mouthpieces inserted,reeds wetted, strings tightened, and drums are being tunedas millions of people of all ages from every walk of life sitdown to make sound with their instruments or with their voice. Millions of households in the U.S. alone have atleast one musical instrument in them, and

Many who start playing an instrument will give up onmaking their own music, and though the reasons for thisare myriad, one main cause is what I call the disease of professionalism. We tend to believe that what one does

should be done well enough that otheres will pay us to do itas a professional. While this might be a good thing inbusiness, it’s a disasterous philosophy when applied to thearts.


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JONATHAN HARNUM | 5

We’ve all heard the lame excuse for why people stoppedplaying music, or painting, or dancing: “I just wasn’t goodenough at doing it.” The benefits of artistic pursuits run

much deeper than doing them well, let alone getting apaycheck for doing it. Both of those things are nice, of course,but not the purpose and sometimes are in opposition to thepursuit itself. But this isn’t the only reason people stop playingmusic.

Another reason people get frustrated with learning toplay music is that they don’t get better, or at least don’t perceive any improvement. This is most definitely not because they don’t have some natural “talent” or “gift.” Both of thesenotions—according to a lot of research I’ll introduce you tolater—appear to be utter bullshit when it comes to beinggood at anything . It takes practice to achieve even the mostbasic level of competence, but not just any kind of practice;it’s got to be the right kind of practice. People aren’t gettingbetter because they don’t know enough about practice. This

can mean many, many things, and you’ll discover many of them in this book.

Even though the principles in this book can be (and are!)pathways toward becoming a professional musician, that isnot my goal in writing it. My goal is to give practicalknowledge to the tens of millions of happy amateurs out there who want to take their music to the next level. This book is

for beginners, comeback players, parents of buddingmusicians, as well as teachers and professionals, too.But this doesn’t exclude those with a burning desire to

make music for a living, whether you dream and work towards being an indie rocker, singer-songwriter, jazz hipster,classical soloist, or the best nose-flautist the world has everheard. This book is for those of us who love to play music and

who want to improve as much and as quickly as possible. If your goal is to be a professional musician, that’s great! But Ilike to keep in mind what Michelle Shocked said: “Music-making should not be left to the professionals.”


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THE R OAD TO HOPE AND BEYOND6 |

Nobody is so good they can’t get better., and nobodyhas such utter lack of ability that it can’t be improved. I’vetalked to world-class musicians, people who have beenplaying phenomenal music for decades in some cases, and

nearly all of them are still working diligently to get betterevery time they pick up their instrument. They’re stilltrying to figure it out, too.

You’ll meet some of them in this book, people like RexMartin, tuba player in the Chicago Symphony Orchestraand veteran of thousands of commercial recordings. You’llmeet Nicholas Barron, singer-songwriter extrordinaire who

has an interesting philosophy about practice, and a not-so-unique challenge to getting better that many share withhim. Bobby Broom is a renowned jazz guiatarist who hasplayed with jazz greats like Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, andMiles Davis. He’s one of my favorite Chicago musiciansand you’ll hear from him, too.

You’ll also hear from my own experience as a

practicing musicain, mostly some of the foolish things I’vedone during my ongoing quest for musical understanding.Foolish, but necessary, I should add. And speaking of which....

Hope Revisited

At the Seaview Inn that night, when Amanda startedin with her solid rhythm guitar, chunking away on 2 and 4 with Luke on upright bass, and when Alan began to play fluid melodic lines, I knew I was in way over my head, butit was too late to back out, even if that had been an option. With ears wide open, I launched into the experience. I’mthankful that attempt is lost to time. At one point anaudience member (one of four) felt inclined to tell me,“You’re not as good as these other three.” Ouch.


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JONATHAN HARNUM | 7

Despite the heckling, that experience was fun, nerve- wracking, and occasionally embarrassing for all the reasons you might imagine. I played many times with Jazz Farm over

the next year, including a tour of Southeast Alaska that was ahighlight of my summer. Later in the book I’ll introduce youto the Zone of Proximal Development, a zone I was in every time I played with Jazz Farm.

One of the goals of this book is to show you effective ways to think about practice, introducing you to strategiesthat work (and why they work). I hope this book helps toprovide you illumination on a piece of the map while younavigate your journey.


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8 |

THE CAPACITY TO BLUNDER

SLIGHTLY IS THE TRUE

MARVEL OF DNA. W ITHOUT

THIS SPECIAL ATTRIBUTE,

WE WOULD STILL BE ANAEROBIC BACTERIA AND

THERE WOULD BE NO MUSIC.

~ LEWIS THOMAS, BIOLOGY WATCHER (1913-1993)


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Introduct ion

OVERVIEW

or

THE CHAPTER EVERYONE SKIPS

Maps encourage boldness.They’re like cryptic love letters.They make anything seem possible.

~ Mark Jenkins, adventurer, author

USIC PRACTICE IS A BIT OF A BLACK BOX,even for those of us who do it regularly. Inside the box are thesecrets of good practice, but the box is tightly sealed. Not only that, but the box differs from genre to genre and even fromperson to person. Most of us have to figure out what we

should put in this black box on our own.In the many conversations I’ve had with musicians of world-class caliber, nearly all of them said they had to figureout how to practice on their own, especially early on. Asaccomplished adults, few talk to their colleagues aboutpractice, and those who do don’t talk much: a suggestion here,a strategy there. either.

There are lots of reasons that practice remains somethingof a mystery, not least being the fact that practice is a personal, vaguely intimate endeavor. It’s a time during which we faceour shortcomings (if we’re doing it right); it’s a time when we

M


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THE CHAPTER EVERYONE SKIPS10 |

try to fail, and that is necessarily private, for most of us. It isfor me, anyway. In fact, this is one of the memes I—andmany others—hold about practice, a stereotype that I hadto overcome in the course of learning more about what

practice is and can be. One of my favorite musicians,Nicholas Barron, has a comnpletely different philosophy of practice, which I’ll tell you about in Chapter X.

Mysterious though practice can be, there are somegreat teachers out there who talk at length with theirstudents about practice and help them become moreefficient at doing it. A great example of this kind of teacher

is Hans Jensen, a master cello teacher who helped one of his students master a tough cello etude with just twominutes of practice a day! You’ll meet Hans later, too, as well as many other master practicers in these pages.

There is more information that will be helpful to gaina high-resolution picture of what’s in the black box of practice. Part of getting a clearer picture is to look at whatresearchers have discovered about music practice, andhuman learning in general. There are six or eight fine booksavailable on practice (see the bibliography in this book’sindex for a list), but none of these books take a look atpublished research on music practice

The purpose of scientific investigation is to see the world with greater resolution, and there are a lot of excellent research studies that help us understand effective

practice more fully. It’s my goal to share this research in a way that translates the often dense academic researchlanguage into something that’s more enjoyable to read.

So that’s the “why” part of this book. I wrote itprimarily to clarify my own experience with practice and tosynthesize the hundreds of resarch studies I’ve read, as wellas a way to make sense of my own research into music

practice.It is my goal that this book be used to help one think deeply abouut practice, and not just about the obvious “how to do it” stuff. This book also explores other issues


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JONATHAN HARNUM | 11

surrounding music practice, or any endeavor. Many of theseprinciples hold true for getting better at anything, whether it’ssport, art, games, or relationships. Let me take you through

how I’ve organized the book and then we’ll get to how to useit.

Imagine you’re stannding in a stiff summer breeze thatblows off Lake Michigan just north of Chicago. You hold a

brightly colored pinwheel in your hand, each of the six bladesa different color. You hold the pinwheel up into the breezeand the blades spin until the six hues become a blurry rainbow disc. Colors blend and blur as boundaries dissolveuntil it’s impossible to tell where one blade of the pinwheelbegins and another ends.

Trying to see those boundaries while

the pinwheel spins is like trying tounderstand everything about practice: it’simpossible to see anything clearly. Goodpractice is also in motion and just like thepinwheel, we can winnow out a few thingsby looking at it in motion, but not in a lotof detail.

You have to stop the pinwheel in order to see the distinctcolors, the shape of the blades, and how they’re attached tothe central hub of the toy. It’s the same with practice. Youhave to “stop” it in order to perceive how it works.

Freezing practice to examine it is a lot like dissection:practice has to be “killed” in order to take it apart andunderstand it more fully. Living, breathing practice is morecomplex and interesting and magical, just as a movingpinwheel or a happily hopping frog is more interesting andbeautiful and magical than the one sitting there lifelessly, not


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I keep six honest serving men:(they taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Where and When

And How and Why and Who.

My goal is to present this information in a friendly,simple, and engaging way. But beware! Just because theinformation is relatively simple and engaging doesn’t mean it’sall easy. Some of the simplest ideas will still kick your ass.And that’s a good thing.

I agree with Charles Bukowski, who said, “Anintellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says ahard thing in a simple way."

Part 1: What’s Goin’ On?

What is practice, anyway? This section will answer in ageneral sense, how practice has been defined by others, whatpractice it is, why practice matters, why we do it, and how theessential techniques of practice are the same whether yourgoal is to become a world-class Master, or your goal is tosimply improve your ability a notch or three.

This section also takes a look at the effects of practice

and what it can do for you mentally and physically, includingthe astounding ways it can change the very structure and sizeof your brain.

Part 2: Why ? Getting Pumped to Practice

How do people stay motivated to practice? Moreimportantly, how can you stay motivated to practice? Youmight be wondering how to keep your kids motivated topractice.


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This part will introduce you to how motivation works,and how your secretly held beliefs about talent, intelligenceand who is to blame for everything that goes wrong willhave a profound impact on your motivation to practice.

Part 3: Who? You and Them

In this section, first we’ll tackle you. Turns out that thebeliefs and philosophies we hold about ourselves and the ways we think the world works have a profound impact on

our practice and how we approach learning in general. Inthe motivation section, you learned about how your beliefsabout talent and intelligence influences your motivation. Inthis section, you’ll learn who is to blame for the mistakes you make.

The selected others who influence your practiceinclude: teachers, idols, peers, role-models and parents.

Some important others for many of the people I spoke toabout their music practice are people they’ve never evenmet. In this section you’ll learn about people you’re stuck with and many that you can seek out to help you improve.

Part 4: Time, Time, Time, Is On Your Side (Yes, It Is)

What time of day’s best to practice? How long? How much is too much? What’s the minimum I can get away with? How little is too little? Several sessions, or one longone? All of these questions are addressed in this section.But wait, there’s more.

Another when to cogitate on is a developmental when. When is it too early to start and how does practicelook for very young children? When are you too old to startand what is good practice for an adult, or an elder? How long does it take to get good and what are the stages of practice expertise? Find some answers in this section.


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Part 5: Where the Streets Have no Name: PracticeSpace and Place

John Cheever, the suburban Checkov, would wake in themorning, shower and shave, put on his suit and tie and ridethe elevator down to the lobby with the other working stiffsheaded off to the office. When the elevator reached the lobby,Cheever didn’t get off with everyone else. He continued downto a small room in the basement where he would take off hissuit, put it on a hangar and proceed to write in his underwear. This change of place helped Cheever get his mind in the right

place. There’s another important “where” that we have limited

control over, especially those of us who haven’t moved out of the house yet or those of us who can’t change our locationbecause of other obligations. What I’m talking about iscontext. The fact that I live in Chicago and have access to ahuge diversity of great musicians and teachers and

performances is a helpful (to say the least) context for any musician of any level or any aspiration. Learn more aboutother aspects of context and what you can do to improve yourown in this section.

Part 6: How Do You Do the Things You Do?

This is the part everyone talks about. There’s so muchinformation about how to practice that this topic gets its ownsection, but it’s also threaded throughout the book. In here you’ll learn the difference between skill-based practice andstrategy-based practiced, as well as lots of examples andsuggestions of simple things you can do to improve your ownmusic (or anything really) quickly and efficiently.


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So, there you have it. There is something of a narrativein this book, so reading it front to back will work, of course,but it’s also fun to just skip around, open and read atrandom, or go straight to the topics you’re most interested

in learning.


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|15

IF A THING IS

WORTH DOING AT ALL,

IT IS WORTH DOING BADLY .

~ GUSTAV HOLST, COMPOSER (1874-1934)


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P A R T O N E

W HAT ’S GOIN’ ON? What is Practice and Why Does it Matter?

Learning without thought is labor lost;thought without learning is perilous.

CONFUCIUS (551-479 BC)


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THE T ALENT TRAP

No, it [excellence] doesn’t start with talent, it starts with love.

~ Malcolm Gladwell, author (1963 - )

OVE IS BLIND, TRUTH IS STRANGER THANfiction, lol cats, and the notion of talent are all memes. Ameme is a persistent idera that’s been around for a while,sometimes thousands of years, and it’s not necessary for ameme to have roots in truth. Like the idea of talent, forinstance.

Talent permeates our culture. Take Harry Potter andHermione Granger, for instance. Who usually works harderand smarter; who studies the most and knows the most?Hermione does. Who comes by his notoriety and ability because of accident and serendipity and from a gift from theparents? Who’s the more powerful wizard? Harry, of course.And who is the hero and saves the day? The gifted one. Sorry. The Chosen One.

In a way, Harry and Hermione can also represent what’sknown as declarative and procedural memory, a topic that iscrucuial in fully understanding this book and benefitting from

L


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THE TALENT TRAP20 |

it. It’s crucial to the book, but I’ll only mention it briefly now before getting back to the idea of talent.

If you declare something, you’re showing you can talk about it. If you’re completing a procedure, you’re

demonstrating you know how to do it, even if you can’t talk about it or describe how you do it at all. This is the trap of writing about practice, or doing anything for that matter.It’s a form of declarative knowledge. It’s passive. It doesn’t work or manifest itself fully unless you actually do it, orstrive to understand the doing of it to the best of yourability. Your discoveries may be different than those offered

up here. That’s a good thing.. Talent is a meme for some genetically gifted ability that allows a person to perform above normal ability. Buthere’s the thing: the ability to perform above normal ability has little to do with genetic giftedness and a lot to do withpractice. The role of “talent” in expertise has been eitherentirely dismissed or severely downgraded in its importancein the last decade or two.

Researchers have shown that some “natural” ability issimply not a factor in expert performance whether we’retalking about musicians, chess masters or x-ray analysis. The flag-bearer of this charge against the idea of giftednessis K. Anders Ericsson, a researcher who, with many others,has studied expertise and its acquisition very closely. Many of these researchers are convinced that genetics have

nothing to do with excellnce. It’s all about practice, andmore specifically, a certain kind of practice that Ericssonand his colleagues named deliberate practice. We’ll getdeeper into that in a bit.

It’s hard to believe that talent doesn’t really existnaturally becaue when we hear an amazing musician, it’simpossible to perceive the thousands of hours of work and

circumstance that underpins that person’s ability. When allthat work and circumstance are combined over longperiods, the human animal is capable of astounding feats,


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so incredible and moving that it must be a gift. Right? Wrong. Talent is accumulated expertise. If there is any gift given

to those who do what they do well, it is the gift of the natural

curiosity that we all possess, combined with lots of work, andmost likely some circumstantial serendipity, as MalcolmGladwell reminds us in Outliers . Other excellent books thatdrive this point home are Dan Coyle’s The Talent Code , Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated , and David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us . For more reading than you need (or want) on thetopic, check out the reference list in this book’s appendix.

If talent is anything, it’s curiosity and a willingnes toexplore, a willingness to not know what you’re doing. To wallow in that not knowing, like Picasso, who said, “I amalways trying to do that which I cannot do in order that I may learn how to do it.”

It is in the wallowing of uknknowing that we learn. Thatis the true gift. The good news is that we all have it, and wehave it throughout our lives. Over time, if our natural

curiosity for a subject persists, we begin to show evidence of what so many people call talent; when that natural curiosity turns to love, we begin to see and hear truly magical things.

Talent is a myth. This can be a hard truth to swallow. It’seasier to feel better about ourselves and our missedopportunities if we believe that talent exists as a gift. It’s easierto think that we just weren’t lucky enough to “get” a talent for

music instead of thinking that we just haven’t gotten down todoing the work required to show this thing called talent.Believing in talent as a gift bestowed on a lucky few puts theblame on an external source instead of squarely where itbelongs: with the individual. With our self. With you. Moreon this issue later, in the Who section of the book.

What talent is, if it is anything, is accumulated

experiences, countless numbers of them. One of theseexperiences, the one that incerases our ability in concert withlots of other activities, is practice. But what exactly is practice?In my research into practice, I’ve talked with professional


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this book deals with things you can do to get better playingmusic.


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16 |

W E CANNOT ALL DO GREAT

THINGS, BUT WE CAN ALL

DO SMALL THINGS

WITH GREAT LOVE.

~ BLESSED MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA,

NUN, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER (1910-1997)


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