Sarah Brenay - SOHH ch.4
Summary: Ristad describes the role humor plays in life and musicianship. Being open to our "inner clowns" releases tension, helps us feel more adventurous, and makes practicing more enjoyable. Many students feel like they need to suffer to improve, forcing themselves to practice longer and harder than is healthy or necessary. Ristad goes into detail about two such students who were going through the motions of practice, spending hours on end in the practice room, but were not using deep practice. They were unaware of their physical or mental state while they worked. Ristad helped them improve awareness and error detection through various inventive techniques, and also helped them laugh it off and remember to enjoy music instead of enduring it.
Key Concepts: Humor makes everything more enjoyable and less uncomfortable, including music. Playing a chunk of music again and again without finding ways to self correct is useless. Sometimes you have to trick your mind out of controlling results.
Key Terms:
grinding practice - hours on end of unproductive, unfocused practice
addiction - students addicted to torturous practice that they think makes them impressive
saturation point - the point at which the brain and body can't take any more and has to go to the artist's block for a cookie.
No comments:
Post a Comment