TeledyN

Surely I've done 10,000 hours practice? I achieved a standard necessary to play professionally at the top level. Over the years I've been diligent about my practice and assumed that I'd met 10,000 hours. However upon further investigation the reality proved to be a little different.

I did some calculations from memory on the practice and playing that I did between the ages of 11 (when I started playing) and 22 when I was playing at a professional level regularly - around a 10 year time span. I've estimated how many hours I spent practising, playing in groups, having lessons and other associated activities and learning over the given time period.

The Results

You'll notice that I've made a distinction between 'practice' and 'deliberate practice'. The 10,000 hour rule requires deliberate practice, the type that has aims, concentration and results. You'll notice as a beginner I did equal amounts of unproductive and productive practice. As I developed I did increasing amounts of deliberate practice.

It may not be obvious from the graph but my total amount of deliberate practice over the period was in fact only around 5,000 hours - half of what is required to become an 'expert'. Whilst I'm probably over the 10,000 hour mark now I was very surprised to find that I'd done so little.

That's not to say I did not do a lot of playing. If you add in other playing, rehearsals and the like the total becomes nearly 13,000 hours over the 10 year period. Some of these other activities undoubtedly contributed towards my development, despite not being deliberate practice.

Another factor which may not have been considered is the impact of directed learning - lessons. Over the same time period I received 2,500 hours of instrumental and musical tuition. I shall need to re-read the Ericsson study to see if it takes account of external factors such as lessons and group activities.

What does it mean?

So my total musical hours over the 10 years is around 15,500. To put that in some context; the majority of these were during college/university years. During these 6 years I was, on average, musically engaged for 5 hours every single day. 365 days a year for 6 years. This doesn't account for holidays, breaks, illness etc.

It makes you think doesn't it. To get to 10,000 hours is a huge commitment which you'll need to make over probably 15 or more years, day in day out. That's tough. It's also why most people don't make it

What brought this to mind was another item, a video posted by a net friend showing school kids dutifully holding up sound-bite phrases given to them by the marketeers of the New Image Of Childhood and what got me was the frightful resonance in the bite-card that claimed

By the time they graduate, the average child will have spent 10,000 hours playing video games

I kind of blew up at my kids the other day, directed at one more than the other but the other got drawn in, and while we do make a concerted effort to ensure that our kids will not be in the ranks of the 'professional-level' stupid-game players, what sparked my rant was one of them refusing to play a piece of music because ... because ... because it went one semi-tone above his comfort range. I lost it, but tried to be so absurd and animated as to be comic: in a video game you pilot a puppet, a dolly, a pre-school toy pushed around a maze, and oh look golly by gee aren't I amazing? ... I actually picked up a cup. Wow. What skill, what dexterity, what an evolutionary advance for the human species, I can make a doll pick up a cup, or a gun, or spit phlegm at another doll. Even the 'puzzles' in these essentially identical D&D style MUD-room games are not clever deductions, not even on par with second-guessing a 3rd rate mystery novel. They are baby toys and we are creating an entire generation with a professional level of experience not in building them, but in operating them. No species is going to gain the edge in the ecology for having a particularly well-developed thumb, Tom Robbins notwithstanding. To waste the learn-hungry capacity of the young brain on such tripe, however profitable it may be to the vendors, is essentially and practically criminal. We probably deserve extinction for that fact alone.

Which brings me to the above, to his observation that it was between the ages of 10 and 22, the 'school-age' years, where he gained the bulk of the experience that would later show as the competent musician. So far so good, but then he surmisses that there was a particular form of disciplined practice that was requisite so as to make the climb difficult and it was, he says, that very feature of the drudgery that eliminated the vast majority, the majority who apparently then slid into the much easier world of constant Skinner-Box reinforcement for dexterity at pushing phlegm-spitting dollys around a hamster-trail VR world.

I would challenge only one aspect of that: we are all experts at our native tongue, and yet we spent virtually none of our formative years in language engaged in 'deliberate practice'! Quite the opposite: we learned to speak by playing with others, by playing with experts, and playing with experts who were welcoming and forgiving of our baby talk, who even emulated our mistakes so as to draw us in and encourage us to keep at it, because they knew, and they knew we would come to know, that a proficiency in this thing we called langauge was something valuable to know. It has ecological validity, it gives you the edge in the ecosystem. Most parents will tell you that once you get the first concept of the power of the word into the young mind, once they start with mama or bottle or dada or whatever, the problem is not getting their children to learn new modes of expression, but getting them to stop.

And remarkably, using that natural method of acquiring the new language beyond grunts and cries, how long does it take baby to learn a proficiency? Precious little. And what is the difference?

The difference is in the reason, in that first word and the power it brings, in the self-realized recognition that this thing, this simple utterance, gets you where you want to go and from there, well, evolution has created this creature that, once it knows where it wants to go, has an astounding propensity and cleverness to get itself there. That cleverness is what draws it into the marketeer's snare of games and diversions of entertrainment.

Now imagine if we structured the music training in the same way, in a friendly welcoming environment where mistakes are irrelevant to the purpose, the purpose being the social reason for the music, what musicians call the groove, and what happens when the child learns that this 'groove' has direct effects, and they learn this early in the game, like when they learned that saying 'Mama' will get the whole room excited and attending.

So why do we start with notes and scales and fingering? Ok, the highly successful Suzuki method doesn't, but I think you know what I mean: Our goal as music educators should be to lead the young mind to recognize first and foremost the reason for playing, and bring them into the real conversation with real and competent conversationalists, and do this as soon as possible so as to get on the leading wave of that precious and fleeting 10-year span where they have both the capacity for voracious learning and the time available to devour it. Once they get in, once they are in the group of Those Who Can Speak This Language, what do you suppose will happen?

Well, we already know the answer. Or rather, we knew the answer. Those of you from third-world nations are already laughing at my gringo ignorance here because you probably grew up knowing the difference between the son and the rumba clave, tasked with playing it at every jump-up. In Great-Grandpa's day everybody had direct experience with the making of music, not consuming a packaged commodity, but having an active and direct participation, in playing inside the music, inside the social architecture of choirs, of bands, of orchestras however rag-tag and ill-equiped. It was the way we did things.

So where is it now? Well, it is there, but maybe you're not seeing it. It is there in the community choirs (no, you needn't join a church though it is still there too) it is in community theatres, and in the many municipal orchestras and city bands who hang on like raggamuffin monks, clinging to dwindling budgets and media indifference, knowing the societal value of what they hold, preserving that vital lifeline back to where we've been from, waiting for their surrounding society to wake up, ditch the dumb dolly games, and come back to life itself.

But that stat, that fact of sociology that says we are spawning an entire generation of pro-gamers, just as many of the other cultures we had disenfranchised fell into various drug/escape depressions only to rebound and reclaim their birthrights, so will we too wake up one day to realize there is no one here responsible other than ourselves, and that the solution is still there, our prince charming, waiting for us to awake.

"Anybody out there looking for music lessons? Or know of anybody who's looking for music lessons?"

Well ... here's the thing: People don't KNOW you offer an enriched learning experience; after now 60 years of being told that music is "just sound" sadly most people in our culture have no direct experience of music at all, and will proudly say,when asked what they play, that they 'play' the radio. They've been sold a lie and even more sadly, we musicians re-inforce that lie every time we hold out a CD as if it was even important. So you can advertise until the cows come home, no one is going to call.

Time was, parents had direct experience of music. These would be the children of the 'tween-war era, those who lived through WWII, every last one of them had heard a real choir, a real organist in their church, they had heard brass bands up close, and their dancehall was a purely acoustic experience of the sonic laser of the Big Band. Most, at least most in the urban areas, had also experienced a full-scale symphony orchestra although in the era since the collapse of Edwardian aristocracy, that experience was, by 1945, rarer and rarer, progressively replaced by the National Radio systems, and by those Infernal Machines, the phonograph. So these parents knew about music, and even the protestants saw value in giving every child possible the opportunity to get in on the musicianship game. It didn't matter if you were poor as churchmice, even the Gershwins and the Blounts could justify the expense; it was a matter of survival.

Today we haven't many parents alive who can remember a world pre-phonograph, precious few remember pre-MTV. Their experience of music is of a commodity that is shrink-wrapped and dazzling, created by mythic heros in the halls of great Olympus, the domain of the gods themselves. Mere mortals do not aspire to challenge the gods of the music industry, they can only pay their tithes and feel priviledged to be allowed to listen in for a fee.

where have all the students gone?

That means no P.A.'s. That means no CDs. That means no electric pianos, no stacks of marshall amps, no 'sound' systems, only the direct brain to body to space to body to brain transmission of musical experience.

And dig: they think it is worthless, so they aren't going to pay a dime for it -- your concerts only preach to the dwindling choir -- if we truly believe music is worth anything, the burden of the proof is ours, it is then left to us to SHOW them what it is worth.

This is why I joined a community band, and this is why I always vote 'YES' when there is even a hint of a potential to play in front of people out where they are, in parks, in parades, on the street, in the shopping malls ...

One concert in the park is worth 10 in the hall. We have to get out there and demonstrate, play not for bucks or sales or awards or acclaim, but play because, very literally, civilization itself depends on our performance. We must rage against the dying of the light, show 'em what we got. If the kids see what you do as the thing they need for their own evolution, you can bet they will line up to learn how its done. But they have to experience it for themselves, they have to feel what it is, they have to SEE the goods,and for that to happen, we have to SHOW the goods.

Or we can sit on our backsides and complain as civilization slides farther and farther into commercialized primitivisms.

Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it! (Vladimir Mayakovsky)

Visitors seeking to develop a program based upon Abreu's philosophy.

A dozen American players, grouped in an organisation called the "Abreu Fellowship" to honour the founding master of the Venezuelan orchestral system (El Sistema), arrived in Venezuela to study closely the FESNOJIV academic programs, to extend the results so successfully applied in Venezuela, in the U.S. and Canada.

The visit is due to an initiative that seeks to reproduce in North America, the Venezuelan model of Nucleos (music schools) as a way to "reconcile our efforts to build structures like those in all of Venezuela," said the head of this program Mark Churchill, Director of the New England Conservatory.

Professor Churchill, who is leading the artistic delegation visiting Venezuela, FESNOJIV has launched a project to promote "Sistema USA" aimed at "sowing the principles of teaching" inspired by the determination to build a gigantic musical movement that constitutes reality and an example in the context of our global world.

In the words of the maestro José Antonio Abreu,

"These wills combine to enable a world framed in progress and prosperity, to become an impassable barrier against drugs and violence."

Canada sends a task force to peek into the Abreu Miracle? hmmm ... something wonderful this way comes?

"The World
Is waiting
For the Sunrise
For the Sunrise
The World
Is waiting ..."

What I’m trying to say is that I’m frustrated. I get frustrated when I read articles about how young people don’t listen to jazz anymore — as an elementary or junior high school student, how on earth was I supposed to find it on my own?

This realization began gnawing at me the moment I was accepted into the upper jazz band at West Ranch High School — I was playing piano for my junior high culmination ceremony and I got a tap on the shoulder from the junior high band director. I’d never spoken to him before. He only had one question for me: “Where were you?” He’d been managing a jazz band at the junior high, but the first time I’d ever heard about it was on the last day I would ever be attending the school. It was as if that jazz band was some secret that only the select few could know about — it was hidden from everyone but the band kids under the cover of football and spirit days and  honors classes at the junior high. Even later, I discovered that the neighbor that I’d been living next door to for eight years was a jazz fanatic — halfway into my sophomore year of high school.

Jazz isn’t supposed to be a secret. It’s intended to be shared — even my jazz teacher sometimes tells me that improvising is a compilation of everything you’ve ever heard. That’s why I smile when I hear about people like Jason Parker combating the whole “jazz is dead” notion by sharing their music with young people like me who didn’t have immediate access to it. Whether you’re a jazz musician, a jazz instructor, or just someone who’s got a penchant for jazz, please don’t give up on us. Please don’t conclude that we’re uninterested; please don’t assume that we’ll think jazz is boring. Granted, it’s probably a better idea to hand us Kind of Blue before you give us Vijay Iyer (even KKJZ’s Leroy Downs told me with a chuckle that “the world’s not ready for Vijay”). But by handing a kid a jazz record or taking him to a jazz show, you’re giving him a chance to discover something he never knew existed. He might not like it, and he might love it. Believe me, coming from my experience with jazz as that teenager who’s supposedly not listening to it anymore — it’s more than worth a shot.

Yes, I'd heard jazz before 1970, lots of it, it was everywhere in the 60's. James Bond movies, Peter Gunn and Pink Panther (or any Mancini soundtracks), my first real inspiration for musicianship probably came as much from a mesmerized pre-school watching of Rhapsody in Blue as from the jacket images on the rockabilly records my mother played, but it wasn't until Kenn played that Benny Goodman LP ... ironic in a way since Benny himself had lived a jazz-deficient existence before hearing the New Orleans sound at about that same age.

But the difference was, in 1970, out in the prairies, there was no obvious path for jazz instruction outside of a few scattered books like the Mickey Baker series, and it's here were I see another issue in Rachel's young-person's quest for jazz literacy: in order to teach jazz, teachers need to have jazz teaching resources.

This is of paramount importance. In the late 1950's, during the lean years for the waning big bands, a group of the old-school players established an innovative teaching project, the Lennox School of Jazz -- most of today's 'stars' in the jazz recording industry are alumni of the Lennox school, and among them one Jamey Aebersold.

Aebersold may not be a household name to the Jazz listeners out there, but in the practice of jazz post-Lennox there are two ubiquitous artifacts of mass production that shaped the landscape of jazz history more than any other, one of them the immortal handwriting of some unknown Berklee student who leaked their book of head charts out across the newly-invented photocopies network (aka The Fakebook, once upon a time sold to us by the same bloke who sold us other contraband) and, a bit later down the timeline, the Aebersold Jazz play-along books.

110 affordable volumes, maybe more by now, each with a play-along record featuring a rhythm-section accompanment, and covering a truly olympian spectrum of styles. This was the shape of jazz to come, the jazz that was to spread out into the world and into pubs, dance halls and venues across the planet.

But that was the thing: the only Jazz method taught was the Aebersold method, and it is a very good method worthy of mastery by anyone of any genre, but it is only a niche and, in many ways it is a snapshot, a freezing in time of the state of the jazz around the Lennox era. Bossa Nova, Swing, modal Bop, even up to exotic scales, it is all about playing the changes.

Miles said to 'Trane one day, "what happens when we can play all the changes?" and its that whole realm of the reality of the space of Jazz that seems exempt in the Aebersold method. It takes you all the way to Giant Steps but does not leap into Ascension; like the Zen saying that says how the reading of the Sutras can inch you up and up and up the pole, but at the end, you still must leap off ... so why not leap off from the start?

Sure there's the old joke about the incumbent roosters, one plays some Parker licks to audition, the next plays an Ornette solo and so forth until the old master Rooster calls them a bunch of young clucks and wakes the day with a simple Cock-a-doodle-doo adding that, before you can get anything going, you gotta know the Standards, but how many of the Standards bearers can play like Kid Ory, or like Mr Jelly Roll, or even care. Thing is, just as the Amish chose the 19th and not the 16th century to freeze their timeline, there is no real reason to base our approach to Jazz in 1955, other than the inertia of material.

There is hope, though, a new hope in the recent goings on at the Banff Centre where we've seen the likes of Darcy Argue and Ethan Iverson as guest instructors in a way very reminiscent of the Lennox School approach. It is a hope that is springing new shoots all over the place and if not revitalizing the jazz (I think the vitality was always there in the underbrush) Banff has been bringing it out and packaging the transmission into forms the kids can take home. Not enough to urge the local pub jazz trios to step beyond the comfort zone of the changes but definately enough to alert the Rachels of the world that there may be intelligent life out beyond Mancini themes and Weather Report.

I've heard too how the Sun Ra House has become a part-time school for the advancement of jazz music; I hope someday to see their method franchised the way the Shao-lin Monks have franchised their path to kung-fu excellence!

And who knows, maybe there's another Jamey Aebersold somewhere outthere, signed up for the next session, inspired to create new and effective packaged methods for teaching the New Thing, using the new media the way Jamey leveraged the old-world cheap/portable LP/Cassette/CD, maybe using real-time connections to bridge that great gap of geographic space between Lennox Avenue and Portage and Main, someday delivering that space fire tone science to the gradeschool!

"The bearer of this certificate, an educator, or one trained in a field of science, is hereby officially entitled to question whether copyright law as currently crafted makes sense for education or science"

In a report to be released on Monday the nonprofit Center for Arts Education found that New York City high schools with the highest graduation rates also offered students the most access to arts education.

The report, which analyzed data collected by the city’s Education Department from more than 200 schools over two years, reported that schools ranked in the top third by graduation rates offered students the most access to arts education and resources, while schools in the bottom third offered the least access and fewest resources. Among other findings, schools in the top third typically hired 40 percent more certified arts teachers and offered 40 percent more classrooms dedicated to coursework in the arts than bottom-ranked schools. They were also more likely to offer students a chance to participate in or attend arts activities and performances.

The full report is at caenyc.org.

it could be true that more economically well-todo high schools would have more financial resources to afford more theatre/music programs and also, just coincidentally, host children who are from more privileged sectors of society and therefore more able and expected to graduate; I haven't read it yet, but I would hope they would take care to balance such factors.