Episode Two: How to Play “in the Zone”, and Why You Want to be There (Part Two)

 

First, let’s recap.

In part one, we said that:

1. In order to learn how to play the banjo, we must create a dedicated neural network for each of the technical components of banjo playing. This is the purpose of practice.
2. These neural networks take time for our brain to create, and the goal of our individual practice sessions is not to get better right then, but rather to provide our brain the inputs it needs to make those networks.
3. Mistakes happen when we rush this process, when we proceed to learning new skills before the more basic ones they’re rooted in have been solidified – before the foundational neural network has been properly established.
4. We can test whether a network has been properly established by testing for “automaticity”. A learned skill is defined as “automatic” when it can be performed while our conscious attention is directed elsewhere.

Experimentally, in snazzy neuroscience studies, “automaticity” is usually tested for by having a subject perform the learned skill while engaging in some arbitrary task on a computer – counting the number of blue squares that flash by, for example.

But is there a way for us to test automaticity for ourselves without any kind of specially designed digital equipment? Might there be some kind of device that’s tailor-made for the business of banjo learning, inexpensive, and delightfully analog?

Why of course. Here it is:

Now, before you run away screaming, let me explain.

I know the metronome has a dicey reputation. Like eating liver, flossing nightly, or routine colonoscopies, it’s one of those thing you know is probably good for you but you don’t exactly enjoy doing. So you put it off, or avoid it altogether.

But it’s time we changed your relationship to the metronome, because as you’ll soon discover it’s an indispensable tool in your learning arsenal, and using it can actually be great fun.

In my view, the metronome’s largely undeserved reputation is mainly based on two things.

First, playing along with the metronome isn’t something that comes naturally. For most folks, it’s not entirely clear what you’re supposed to be doing amidst all the incessant clicking. Do you only play with the clicks? In between the clicks? And what the heck is “largo” and “allegro”, anyhow?

So, just like you must know how a melody goes before you set about to play it, you must know how whatever you’re playing is supposed to sound along with the metronome before you get started. Otherwise you’ve sabotaged yourself from the start.

This is one reason I bring out the metronome very early in the 8 steps to clawhammer course, and demonstrate exactly where you’re to play in relation to the clicks (click here for an example).

Second, and most relevant to this discussion, is that folks tend to misinterpret the feedback they get from the metronome. Especially if it isn’t positive.

You see, most people think of the metronome as a tool for practicing their timing. And yes, it’s useful for this. But a greater – and often neglected – purpose of the metronome is as a test for automaticity.

Consider this: in order for you to successfully play along and in sync with the metronome, you must listen closely to its clicking while simultaneously making the proper movements of your picking and fretting hand to produce the desired sounds from your banjo.

In other words, when playing with the metronome, you’re performing a learned skill (whatever it is you’re practicing on the banjo that day) while your conscious mind is focused on something else (the metronome). And, to do this successfully, you must perform the learned skill just as well as you would without the metronome clicking away. In other words, the learned skill (your playing) mustn’t degrade even when your attention is directed elsewhere.

This, fellow fans of the five, is priceless feedback. Here we have a simple, inexpensive tool capable of peering into the brain and analyzing the state of our neural networks. We have the perfect litmus test for automaticity.

Unfortunately, this is not how most folks seem to interpret metronome feedback. The most common conclusion when things don’t go so well is “I guess I’m just no good with playing with the metronome” or, worse yet, “I’m a lousy player.”

But both of those conclusions are unjustified. And they stem from a basic misconception of what the metronome is all about, and why it’s useful.

So here’s a better, more productive, way to think about it. If you try playing along with the metronome and it doesn’t go so well, all it means is that the skill has yet to become automatic.  If you have to devote your attention to the movement of your hands when the metronome is clicking, then it is biologically impossible to play in sync with it. The path just isn’t fully formed, and so a little more time is needed in the woodshed.

I should point out here, though it may be obvious to you, that you can use things besides a metronome for this purpose. All you need is some sort of external timekeeping device; something you have to focus your attention on whilst your hands are otherwise engaged in the business of picking.

One option could be another human being tapping their feet, clapping their hands, or banging a drum at a steady beat (provided they’re capable of such things), or, even better, a guitarist with solid rhythm strumming along.

I’m also a big fan of backing tracks (in fact, I’ve found them so helpful I’ve got a whole website full of hundreds of them!), which provide the added advantage of simulating a musical experience. So they’re a wonderful tool if you have access to them (or you can create your own). And, these days there are all sorts of free metronomic devices online, including this metronome playlist I compiled on youtube.

Suffice to say, you don’t have any excuses for not using one!

So this brings us to the 4th law of Brainjo, which is:

Brainjo Law #4: Test for automaticity by playing alongside an external timekeeping device

You can apply to this law to virtually anything new that you’re learning, whether it’s early techniques like hammer ons, pull offs, and basic chord shapes, a difficult bit of fingering in a particular tune, or an entire song.

With this fourth law established, we can create a foolproof and basic template/procedure to guide the pace of our learning anything new on the banjo, which is this:

1. Practice the new thing until it gets easier, then
2. Test for automaticity by playing along with an external timekeeping device

If you fail step 2, you just go back to step 1 and repeat the process. If you pass step 2, then you can move to the next item in your learning agenda, with the confidence that you’ve effectively carved out yet another pathway.

You’re now one step further to building your banjo playing brain.

Go to Episode 3: The Easiest Way to Get Better at Banjo

 

Episode One: The First Law

10,000 hours.

You may have heard mention of this before.

Popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, it’s the average number of hours across disciplines that research shows it takes to become an expert. The average amount of time it takes to master something.

The take home message from the 10,000 hours concept is that, despite the stories we share as part of our cultural mythology, passion and dedication are the key determinants of mastery. From sculpting to picking, humans get really, really good at stuff through hard work, not through some fortuitous genetic gift of talent.

Now, you can read this two ways.

On the one hand, this is a very encouraging notion, as it means that when it comes to your banjo playing goals, virtually anything is possible. With consistent, focused effort, the sky is the limit.

On the other hand, 10,000 hours is nothing to sneeze at. If you can manage 2 hours of picking every day, then you’ll reach your musical Shangri-La in roughly 13 years, 8 months. To someone picking their first note on the 5 string, those kind of numbers might be a little discouraging.

But there’s more to this story.

Specifically, there are a few very important points that are usually overlooked in the “10,000 hours” discussion.

1. Even more important than how much we practice is how we practice.

10,000 hours is an average. If we were to take all the data points and plot them out, we’d get a bell shaped distribution, with the apex of our bell at the 10,000 hour mark. Something like this:

So some folks in this data set have spent a good bit more than 10,000 hours to achieve mastery.

And some have spent a good bit less.

Wouldn’t it be nice to end up on the front end of the distribution, amongst the 5,000 hour crowd (the blue shaded area), not the 20,000 (in the red)?

If some folks can get there in 5,000 hours, there’s no reason to believe anyone can’t do the same. The rate limiting factor here, the primary constraint on the learning process, is the pace at which the brain changes. And that pace is largely defined by our biology – in other words, in properties of our nervous system that are common to all of us.

Those who reached mastery faster were just better at changing their brains. They practiced more effectively, in a manner that fully capitalized on the biological mechanisms that support learning.

2. Most people give up.

Most folks who set about to master anything, musical instruments included, ultimately end up giving up. There are surely more 5 strings collecting dust in closets and attics than being picked lovingly every day by skilled pickers.

And why do the majority give up? If mastery is just about putting in the hours, is it just because they’re lazy?

No.

They don’t give up because of a character flaw. They give up because they stop getting better. Research tells us that the single greatest motivator for learning is progress. Progress is the reward that keeps folks coming back for more. On the flip side, nobody plods on for very long in the face of no progress.

And what causes folks to stop progressing? Ineffective practice.

In this age of information, we are blessed with an overabundance of learning materials. It’s simple to find what we should be learning.

But how we should go about learning that material is seldom, if ever, addressed specifically. In spite of the fact that it’s the single biggest determinant of success or failure, how to practice is rarely considered or communicated.

That needs to change.

3. The greatest proportion of improvements occur early in the learning process.

This concept, which applies to all sorts of various phenomenon, is often referred to as the “80/20 rule” (or the “Pareto Principle”, after the economist who first suggested it).

In this particular instance, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results are achieved through 20% of your efforts. In other words, provided that we’re mindful of our learning process, and that we correctly identify what that 20% is, we can achieve most of our gains in those first 2,000 hours. After that, we start facing diminishing returns on our time investment. The final stages of mastery, which take up a disproportionate amount of time, are about putting in long hours for gains that are often imperceptible to the casual observer.

If we plot this concept out graphically, it looks like this:

Again, this is a very encouraging notion. But, once again, it also highlights just how important it is for us to be mindful of how we learn and practice, and what we stand to gain if we are.

The First Law of Brainjo

Without a doubt, mastering any skill, including the banjo, requires focused, consistent effort. That said, 10,000 hours of any-old practice won’t magically get us where we want to go. Masters don’t become masters through the sheer force of will alone. It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Masters become masters because somehow – be it luck, a great mentor, or natural disposition – they’ve managed to unlock the right process for learning. A process that leads to consistent, rewarding progress.

Replicate this process, and you too can enjoy similar results. Which brings us to the first law of brainjo:

To learn to

play like the masters,

you must

learn to play

like the masters.

Unlocking the secrets of and maximizing the brain’s capacity for growth and change has been an intense area of personal and professional interest of mine for two decades now (I’ve written about some of these principles in the “Your Brain on Banjo” article series for the Banjo Newsletter).

In the upcoming articles in this series, we will continue to extract insights from the fields of learning, mastery, and neuroplasticity to build a set of maxims for effective practice, and in so doing create a roadmap for helping us to mold the best banjo playing brain we can.

Go To Episode 2: How to Play “In the Zone” 

 

About the Author
Dr. Josh Turknett is the creator of the Brainjo Method, the first music teaching system to incorporate the science of learning and neuroplasticity and specifically target the adult learner

 

It’s the first day of the year. Which means it’s time for renewal, reflection, and….resolutions. At this moment, scores of folks are surely busy cataloguing their various goals for the year.

But most of those goals, despite the best of intentions, will go unmet.

Goals are a tricky thing, all too often sabotaged in the end by unrealistic expectations. Unrealistic expectations about what can be accomplished and how quickly. At the beginning of the year we’re brimming with fire and motivation, filled with it a sense of possibility. Lose 30 pounds in a month? Yeah, no problem!

Yet, motivation fades. And all the more quickly when you realize things are gonna take a lot longer than you anticipated.

The same can be true of your goals with music. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll be able to accomplish and when, and you never know when life might get in the way to derail your efforts.

Fortunately, there’s a better way. A way to ensure that, if you happen to find yourself in the resolution-setting mood this New Year’s day, you don’t end up sabotaging yourself.

That better way is this: commit to a process, not an outcome.

The research is clear on this. Those who commit to a process, or a specific behavior, are far more successful in reaching their goals than those those who commit to an outcome.

For weight loss, for example, it means committing to walking for 20 minutes a day, rather than saying you’ll lose 10 pounds in a month. It’s committing to spending 15 minutes a day practicing your Spanish vocabulary, rather than saying you’ll become fluent in Spanish in a year.

Likewise, for the banjo, it’s committing to the learning process, however you want that to look. Commit to 10 minutes a day working on new material and skills, and 10 minutes a day revisiting your old stuff, for example.

Commit to some behavior that, if repeated daily over time, will ultimately lead to the outcome you desire (which could be as simple as getting a little bit better every week). And whatever it may be, make it something that you can stick to – you can always do more if you want.

This becomes even more powerful if you can ritualize the behavior and turn it into a habit. Set your banjo in a stand next to your favorite chair, for instance, so that after a while it becomes second nature to grab it for 20 minutes when you sit down in the evening. And store any learning materials you’re working from nearby.

With consistent, focused effort you can move mountains. Commit to the right process for 2015, and the desired outcome will naturally follow.

 

One of the challenges that comes with learning a musical instrument or style, particularly one that doesn’t already have a highly formalized built in pedagogical structure (like classical violin, for example), is in finding tunes and arrangements to play that are appropriate for you current level of technical ability.

Learning music is a cumulative process that occurs over an extended period of time. Someone who’s been playing for 3 months won’t have the same body of technical skills to draw from as someone who’s been playing 3 years. But both would still like to make really good music! And there’s no reason they shouldn’t.

(RELATED: Hundreds of tabs and video demonstrations tailored to all abilities can now be found inside the Ultimate Clawhammer Tune Library, one of many resources inside the Breakthrough Banjo course. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE).

But finding music that’s right for you, that you can make sound good with the skills you already possess, isn’t always easy. You may start out to learn a tune and ultimately find that it’s too far outside your comfort zone, or that it utilizes techniques or notation you’re not familiar with or haven’t seen before.

To help you in always choosing music that’s right for you now, I’ve created a level system that will accompany any of the arrangements that I release or tunes that I teach (I’ll also be retroactively labeling some of the materials I’ve already released). You’ll see this denoted at the top right hand side of the tab with “Brainjo Level x” on it.

But before I give you the description for each level, I’d like to insert a word of caution:

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that an arrangement that’s more complicated, or a higher level, is necessarily better. Having a lot of options or knowing a lot of  techniques can be both a blessing and a curse, as it can be tempting to try to make things sound better just by making it fancier or more technically complex.

Remember this: a good melody played simply with good timing and technique will always sound far better than the most technically sophisticated arrangement played sloppily.

Some of the greatest players of all time used a very sparse style, which allowed them to infuse their music with heart and soul. So resist the urge to make your playing more complex just for the sake of it. In the end, it’s your ears that should be the judge. Play what sounds good to you. Nothing else.

And I’ve arranged these so that any level should sound great. I want the music you make to be rewarding regardless of where you’re at.

With that out of the way, here’s a breakdown of what the various levels mean:

• Brainjo Level 1 –  tabs in level one only utilize techniques covered in the “Clawhammer in 8 Essential Steps Series“. Designed for folks getting started out in clawhammer banjo.
• Brainjo Level 2 – tabs in level two also only utilize techniques covered in 8 steps series, but have a higher degree of technical complexity.
• Brainjo Level 3 – tabs in level three utilize techniques covered in the 8 steps series, and may also use additional techniques like drop thumb, syncopated skips, and triplet hammer ons and pull offs, which are all covered as part of the Breakthrough Banjo course.
• Brainjo Level 4 – tabs in level four draw upon the same techniques as level 3, but will typically present more of a challenge.
• Brainjo Level 5 – tabs in level five will be rare, and will generally challenge the limits of any player’s technical skills. They’ll require the full arsenal of techniques, along with perhaps unusual time signatures or other musical oddities. Think of things like playing a Mozart concerto in clawhammer style, or other ill-advised notions.

To learn more about the Breakthrough Banjo course, where you’ll find hundreds of tabs (and video demonstrations) at all Brainjo levels, then click below:

About the AuthorJosh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions