Personality Development

• Pre-school and kindergarten kids want self-confidence, to strengthen their sense of „I“ and feel secure and nurtured.

• Elementary school kids work towards competence and skill mastery, (derive pleasure from solving problems) and taking initiative and becoming independent.

• Middle and high school kids test and experiment, look to reorient themselves as they begin an identity crisis. (Music heard during your teenage years stays with you throughout your life)

• Adults look for self-actualization, oscillate between euphoria and skepticism and learn to live with compromises.

Characteristics of supportive parents

• Interested in music.• At least one person in the household believes in

the child’s potential.• A wide spectrum of music is played in the home. • Parents follow their intuition and integrate music

into their play. • The demands are low and the intrinsic motivation

of the child is emphasized. Play and fun are in the foreground.

More on Supportive Parents

• Parents and siblings sing together and help the child learn new songs. Singing begins before the age of 3.

• Spontaneous singing is encouraged and isn‘t held back by phrases such as „keep it down.“ There is room for fantasy and mistakes are normally not corrected.

• Parents show tolerance to music, even when it is not their preference.

Student-Teacher Relationship

• “70 to 80% of your success as a teacher depends on your relationship with your students”

(Schwarzenbach/Bryner-Kronjäger, 1997, p. 168)

Student-Teacher Relationship

• Good diagnostic ability regarding both sensory-motor and interpretive abilities.

• Modeling excellence in your own performances (formal and informal)

• The model the teacher provides is decisive in the musical development of a student.

Motivation to make music

• Music satisfies our need for play. • Klausmeier: Human beings need play in order to let go of

excessive energy• Piaget sees play as a chance to assimilate our experiences in

reality http://departments.weber.edu/chfam/4990a/Theory&play.html

• http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0102-altman.html• Play with practice (What can I do with my instrument?)• Play with symbols/characters (What can I imitate on my

instrument? As/If play. Expression• Play with rules (mastering and understanding music‘s rules)

What else is learned?

• Cooperation in a musical context• Seeing difficult processes through• Accepting a certain amount of frustration and mistakes• Summoning one‘s own initiative in mastering

challenges• Concentration• Ability to evaluate one‘s own performance and

progress• Inclusion of the arts in the building of one‘s self

concept.

Praise

• Contingent: In context with a behavior

• Specific: Make clear which aspect of the behavior was praiseworthy

• Believable: A sincere compliment and not a psychological trick

• Measured: In proportion to the effort the student made

Classical Conditioning

• A positive atmosphere in lessons influences the learning processes.

• For example, joy is felt when hearing a fragment of a piece that was previously mastered and the joy of mastery was felt for the first time.

• Sight of the practice room can release attitudes and feelings which are associated with music making.

• Connections between movements and emotions can be conditioned.

More classical conditioning

• This works backwards as well.

-The sight of a group of notes can invoke fear

-A room (or a stage) can release feelings of fear

- A person and his/her voice can produce fear

-Connections between movements and emotions can be conditioned.

Classical Conditioning

• Keep your teaching fear-free. • Avoid teaching fear. Avoid situations where fear

is learned or conditioned. -How do you react to their mistakes?-Watch your body-language when correcting mistakes. -Practice slowly for security. Neural representations are stored

in the brain and are very difficult to unlearn. That means, practice slowly. -Be careful in audition preparation.

Pianistic Miracle

• 15 milliseconds before an error, the brain recognizes the error. (Altenmueller)

• Errors are quieter as the brain tries to rescue the error in a plan gone wrong.

• Works also on a mute keyboard.

Theories of Practice from Sports Science and Motor Learning

What do we have in common with sports?

• Optimal activation of mind and body

• Expression is public

• Subject to social influence: norms, rules evaluations and expectations.

• Outcome is uncertain

• (Lewthwaite)

Testing Methods

• Distinguish between acquisition phase (what you did in practice) and the retention or transfer phase (analogous to performance)

• Test methods of learning (Old vs.. New) and test them tomorrow. That means look at the test, not the practice results

• (Schmidt)

Random Practice

• Random beats Blocked Practice

• Jazz musicians do this all the time.

• Athletes do as well.

Repetition without Repetitiveness

• Do not practice one skill of the same type immediately after another of the same type.

• Randomize practice among several skills.

Retrieval Practice

• Practice the act of obtaining the items from memory

• Blocked practice does not force you to retrieve• Variable Practice-practicing several different

variants of a given skill is beneficial for performance on a novel variant (relative to constant practice at one variant)

• Testing is good for learning (It only needs to be called a test)

Recommendations for random practice

Musical study done on effects of random versus blocked practice was consistent, however, the findings were done with a simple 7 tone pattern. http://jrm.sagepub.com/content/58/4/368.abstract

More complex skills might be better by sticking with the T.O.T.E. method and using random practice once skills have been mastered in order to avoid a learning plateau.

http://mpr-online.net/Issues/Volume%202%20[2008]/Wulf%20and%20Mornell.pdf

page 7

Feedback

• Feedback frequency: the 50% group tested better than the 100% group.

• Concurrent feedback is generally not effective.

• Delayed feedback allows students to develop their own intrinsic feedback (excuses)

Overuse Injuries

• Horst Hildebrandt (head of music physiology in Zurich)

• Overuse injuries are archaeological in nature. Students thought that the instructions given were meant for forever.

Solutions

• Give instruction for a certain time frame. • Replace words like grip with touch. • Avoid given the analyzed problem in the solution

(directly tangible solution) (Hildebrandt)• Sports science tested 4 forms of feedback,

knowledge of results, information about form, transition and cue. The transition and cue groups had better form in test conditions (Schmidt)

Self-Controlled Practice

• Participants chose when they wanted feedback and when they did not as opposed to the control group who got the feedback at unpredictable intervals.

• Self-controlled participants were allowed to chose assistive devices, and out-performed those who were given them at regular intervals. „Self-controlled learners engage in different information-processing activities, such as the search for the optimal movement pattern, and [...] these activities were facilitated by their ability to chose or not to chose the assistive devices.“ (Mornell/Wulf p. 16)

More Self-Controlled Practice

• In another study, participants were allowed to watch a video demonstrating a basketball jump shot. Initially they did not perform as well as the yoked group, but scored better in retention tests, 7 days later.

Observational Practice

• „It is assumed that the observations of an expert model is more beneficial to learning than the observation of another learner. Interestingly, however, the model‘s skill level appears relatively irrelevant“ (Mornell/Wulf p. 8)

• Dyad Practice

Deliberate Practice

• Deliberate Practice (Ericsson) Practicing with clearly defined short term and long term goals in mind.

• Challenging yourself with new skills and repertoire. (watch this during preparation for auditions)

• Goals, in practice and performance, must be specific and alive. Coax your imagination.

Periodization

• From Hans Seyle‘s General Adaptation Syndrome

• Stage of Alarm• Stage of Resistance• Stage of Exhaustion

Periodization

• Alternating work with rest so that the body „peaks“ at the right moment

• Wave patterns allow time for muscles to adapt. Begin with volume, increase intensity while cutting volume back.

• Performances occur in a recovery phase

New Concepts

• Transition or „Active Rest“

• Taper

• Multi-Lateral Training (breaking tasks down into component parts as well as informal practice)

Without Tapering

• Experience of the actual repertoire is negative, or exhausting. (classical conditioning)

• Last minute „panic practice“ doesn‘t promote expressiveness and freedom to follow your intuition.

Tapering

• Allows muscles to rest.

• Allows the mind to rest.

• Gives you time to recover your love of music (and life!)

• You perform prepared and fresh.

Conclusions

• Focus on long-term learning rather than short-term performance.

• Focus on short-term goals in achieving long-term learning. • Error-free blocks of repetition are temporary successes.

Adding up more more blocks of repetitions doesn’t guarantee long-term learning. Too may can lead to decreases in ability.

• You can prevent overuse injuries by practicing smarter, and by prevent them in your students by starting them out on the right foot. (Young kids need good teachers!)

Conclusions

• By becoming aware of your own conditioned fear responses, you can change them.

• Trust your own, and your students own intrinsic feedback. It helps all of us solve our own problems. You know what you need, so do they.

• A „motor skill such as instrumental virtuosity is not a fixed ability, but ‚flex-ability‘, and the more variations explored during practice, the better equipped the instrumentalist/vocalist will be to face the challenges of musical performance.“ (Mornell/Wulf p. 18)

Thank You!

• This presentation is available on my website at http://jenniferborkowski.webs.com as am I for any questions.

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