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Re: Neuroscience and clarinet passagework

Author: jonok
Date: 2022-02-09 06:03

Somewhere in my past learning about learning ...

One way to make the brain think something is important is repetition - if it's continually "seeing", for example, a particular motor skill, it will start to automate it so it doesn't have to spend as much energy on making it happen "consciously". That's the perfect practice route. It works. One trick here is, it takes MORE effort to automate something than not, so we have to keep the repetitions up. I think this is often the impetus for when I get bored with something I'm working on (doesn't only happen with music) ... it's the brain asking me, do you REALLY want to automate this, because it's hard work!

The other way, is related to excitment. The brain doesn't really care about good or bad emotions: all it "cares" about is the level of "excitement". When something happens that causes the excitement levels to go up, it gives more emphasis to what just happened. You make a mistake, get upset, frustrated, angry etc, the brain says, "oh that's important". You go back and, hopefully, repeat without the mistake, and you don't much react to it ... maybe just some relief you got past it. Of those two, the brain is going to like the mistake more.

So when I practice, I try to be completely neutral about mistakes, but celebrate getting it right, especially after a mistake. Celebrating can be anything that's just more excited than doing nothing. Putting on a big silly cheesey smile works.