The Importance of Thinking Big to Acting Small

I started On Learning Percussion with the intention of sharing out the pedagogical materials I’ve developed over my years being inspired by mentors, peers, and students. Creating a publicly available database of ideas about learning and practicing percussion is important to me, as I believe there is a significant gap in pedagogy centered on increasing the learning rather than the performance capabilities of percussionists. If you're new, thanks for reading!

Things Behind Things

That said, over the past year of digging into details across a number of disciplines, I’ve simultaneously been exploring the importance of “the thing behind the thing,” the set of unconscious beliefs which drive our behavioral systems. I’m finding that working with my students on larger issues (tackling assumptions, playing with intentionality, planning creative work, and mobilizing design thinking, to name a few) has a transformative downstream effect on the nuts and bolts of practicing and performing.

If you read this or Learn with Mike, you’re tired of my thesis that our musical learning is so much more than life in the practice room. 100% of our professional activities as musicians—score study, research, advocacy, critical listening, name something else—are driven by the fundamental skills of learning, and most of these activities take place outside the practice room. That's why learning about maps is important.

Learning and Performance Goals

I’ve been thinking this week about the necessity for musicians to adopt learning goals in lieu of performance goals. This is a concept Carol Dweck hints at in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. For the most part, Dweck’s work focuses on discipline, “grit,” and growth mindsets, which imbue people with a sense of possibility and persistence needed for higher learning and success. It may may be productive for musicians to transpose mindsets to goals around performing and learning.

• Performance goals validate one’s own ability.
• Learning goals enable one to acquire new knowledge and skills.
• Performance goals can limit one’s growth by focusing on a singular performance at the expense of the skills within those goals.
• Learning goals focus on development, which compounds over time.

In music-making, we are generally focused on results: win an audition, get admitted to a school or festival, take home first prize at a competition. Reframing these performance-based goals as opportunities to learn allows all such experiences to aid one another, linking them in that dynamic circle of learning I won’t shut up about.

(As a corollary point, Dweck found that students who were told they were smart tended to be less resilient than those who were told they worked hard. Powerful!)

Examples

Snare Drum

Person 1

“I need to learn Delécluse etude No. 1. Don't ask why. My mission:

• practice all the licks and phrases
• drill the piece relentlessly until failure is not an option
• become increasingly specific about my interpretation"

Result

• Ability to perform etude No. 1, unless nervous
• Strong sense of what constitutes a “perfect” performance
• Possible anxiety if this perfect performance is not achieved
• Likely muscle fatigue
• Closed ears from repetition

Person 2

“I need to learn Delécluse No. 1. Yay! My mission:”

• Learn about French snare drumming to get a sense of style
• Learn about Delécluse’s works in order to position the piece within his output.
• Practice from Delécluse’s method book, getting to know at an intuitive level the basic tenets of French snare drum playing
• Practice music very similar to the etude but not exactly the same (how about the etudes in Delécluse’s method book!?)
• Approach the etude at hand with a small percentage of available practice time

Result

• Knowledge of Delécluse’s writing, and with it the ability to quickly learn ANY of his etudes
• Increased proficiency on the snare drum
• Increased learning capacity through deliberate critical thinking and listening
• Flexible idea of what constitutes an appropriate interpretation of the piece, and ability to perform the piece in different ways depending on the situation.

One is…better!

“Circling the Wagons”

“I want to perform well in my lessons”

vs.

”I want to learn as well as possible for my life, so I will share my work in lessons along that journey”

You are a student at a music school, and have a private lesson every 7 days. After how many days of note-learning should your attention shift to getting ready to perform something at the lesson? 4? 5? 3/7 or 2/7 of the week might be spent not learning, but preparing to perform for an encounter whose purpose is to help you learn!

To combat this tendency, I recommend plotting out learning over a longer period of time, allowing learning to take place over a longer period of time while still cultivating material (”old growth”) to share each lesson. This is where my repertoire learning chart really shines!!

Download it Here

The Concert Before the Concert

A few weeks ago I wrote about what I call “the concert before the concert,” an event whose goal is to prepare for future events, to emphasize the role of iteration and incubation in musical learning. The concert before the concert takes the quintessential performance goal—a performance—and inverts it into a learning goal. I wrote about how we had our ensemble concerts fairly early in the semester at ASU. We did the same thing with our recitals, with great success (digo yo).

Here they are, by the way!

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What Else is New in Learning Goals?

Summer Festivals!

Approach summer festivals with a learning mindset. The real joy in festivals and conferences and meetings is developing long-term collaborative relationships through the crucibvle of rehearsal, performance, and shared space. Focusing too much on performance, just one leg of the stool, can (in some cases) stifle these ideas.

Speaking of festivals…

I’m grateful to be returning to the Cortona Sessions next June. We’re decamping from Tuscany for the Akoesticum in Ede, the Netherlands. If you’re reading this, you’re an ideal fit for Cortona, a place for curious, community focused musicians with the goal of diving deep into contemporary music. The sessions are full of learning goals, with wonderful shared performances, an awesome faculty and an even more awesome group of fellows. Hope you can join us!

Learn More

Podcasts

The best way to get better at making a podcast is to make podcasts! Mike T and my podcast is coming this month. Looking forward to sharing our thoughts on topics percussive and beyond. To practice, we set a learning goal of practicing our podcast, which we did LIVE a few weeks ago, complete with theme music.

Watch it here

Next time: "Year in Review: The tenets of On Learning Percussion and Learn with Mike"

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