The Laws of Brainjo, Episode 11

How To Build An Improvisational Brain

In the last installment, I introduced the concept of the Timeline of Mastery, the learning sequence through which anyone must pass as they develop expertise in a subject.

The gold standard for this type of thing is the timeline of language learning. It’s the most reliable and efficient model for human learning ever created. And, fortunately for us, the many similarities between language and music means there’s tremendous insight to be pulled from this model for our own learning purposes.

When it comes to language, the ultimate destination, the marker of mastery, is fluency. One way to define fluency is the ability to take ideas in mental space (“thoughts”) and translate them into speech, in a manner that both seems and feels instantaneous.

Fluency can also be described as “improvisational speech”: the ability to take the building blocks of language and connect them in combinations that allow for the expression of ideas that are novel, personal, and specific to a situation.

And this is also about as perfect a definition for fluency on a musical instrument as I can imagine. The fluent musician is able to take musical ideas in mental space and translate those — seemingly instantaneously — into the sounds of an instrument.

With the language learning model as our guide to improvisational fluency with music, what then would be considered the prerequisites for linguistic fluency? What are the neural networks that must be created to support this skill?

Improvisational Networks

The neural networks required for improvisational speech are:

1. A sufficient vocabulary of words, stored as sonic representations, so that mental concepts can be communicated accurately.

2. Knowledge of the rules of language (grammar), so that the words are assembled in ways that others can understand.

3. The ability to emit all the words in that vocabulary via the coordinated contraction of the muscles of articulation.

In the brain, we know that all of this involves the sophisticated and mind-blowingly complex communication amongst billions of neurons distributed across multiple, dynamic neural networks.

Generally, these networks can be represented as follows:

If we wish to create similar neural machinery inside our noggins – machinery that will ultimate support musical fluency — then we’d be wise to pay attention to how these networks are built.

How then do you build a really big vocabulary of words?

By reading, and by listening to others whom you think are good communicators. Much of this happens just by living around other fluent humans.

How do you build a big vocabulary of musical ideas?

Once again, by listening A LOT, especially to the people whose music you enjoy most.

How do you learn the rules of language?

Again, much to your grammar teacher’s dismay, you also did this by listening. You listened, and the master pattern recognizer/decoder inside your skull figured it all out.

Likewise, here again, through copious listening, you’ve already developed a sophisticated grasp of the rules of language, or music theory (regardless of whether you’re consciously aware of or can formally articulate it). In some cases, formal study can enhance that understanding further, expanding the scope of what you can express on your instrument (just as knowing the rules of grammar can, in some cases, make you a better writer)

How do you learn to emit the sounds of language through the muscles of articulation?

By practicing, in logical sequence, the articulation of the sounds of language, beginning with the most basic and simple to produce phonemes (the aahs and oohs of those first cooing sounds of a 3 month old) and moving to ones of increasing complexity, followed by syllables, words, and phrases.

How do you learn to connect music in the mind to movement of the limbs?

Here we have the meat of the learning process for music, the stuff we do when we say we’re “practicing,” and, not coincidentally, largely the focus of this particular series on the Art and Science of practice. And this corresponds to the third network in the summary table below:

A mature network of this nature, the kind that can support the type of fluency described earlier, is one that can map musical ideas onto the motor networks that then send the appropriate output to the muscles of the arms — output that produces the coordinated contractions that result in those musical ideas coming out through the banjo.

Brainjo Law #13 : Musical fluency and improvisation is predicated on the ability to map musical ideas (and the neural networks that represent them) onto motor programs.

Musical, and improvisational, fluency ultimately requires two primary components:

1. The ability to conjure pleasing musical ideas in ones mind.

2. The ability to realize those ideas in realtime on the instrument.

So if developing the neural networks that support fluency primarily involves copious listening and the development of instrument-specific motor skill of increasing complexity, is there still a role in all of this for written music in the learning process?

Find out in Episode 12: Is It Safe To Use Tab?

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The Laws of Brainjo, Episode 10

The Timeline of Mastery (and the roots of improvisation)

Vowel sounds…..3 months

Babbling……6  months

Monosyllabic words (“mama”)….. 9 months

First words….12 months

2-3 word phrases….24 months

Uses tone of voice to add additional meaning…3 years

Carries clear conversations with well developed grammar and articulation…..4 years

Fluent, improvisational speech….5-6 years

If you’re a parent, you probably recognize the above chart. These are the language milestones of childhood, the stages through which a developing child moves on their way to achieving fluency in his or her native tongue.

Embedded in this chart are two very important messages that most of us know to be true, even if we’ve never really given it much thought before:

1. Virtually every child moves through the sequence (and exceptions warrant investigations into nervous system disease or dysfunction) and reaches the end goal of fluency, or “improvisational speech.” In other words, like you, the child is able to effortlessly and nearly instantaneously translate thoughts in their mind into a motor program for the vocal cords, in effect turning thoughts into speech in realtime.

2. Every child follows this exact same sequence.

I’ve said before that there’s no better template than the language learning model when it comes to learning music (though I’d argue it’s the ideal template for learning anything).

Fundamentally, our ultimate goal when learning to speak and learning to play an instrument is the same: to turn thoughts into movement. In the case of language, we’re translating concepts or ideas into the movement of the vocal cords. In the case of an instrument, we’re translating musical ideas into movement of the limbs.

But there’s one big glaring difference between language learning and musical instrument learning….

The failure rate!

Whereas the failure rate for language is extraordinarily small,  the failure rate for learning an instrument is extraordinarily high. Especially when you compare the two.

What’s even more remarkable about this discrepancy is that the ability to speak fluently is, if anything, more cognitively sophisticated a task than playing a musical instrument.

So why the difference?

A FOOLPROOF SCRIPT

Clearly, there is a component to language development that is hardwired in us from the get go. Parents know that their children learn their native tongue not through some formal curriculum they’ve dreamt up, but almost entirely on their own. You just bring your kid out in the world, sit back and watch as magical things happen inside their noggins over the next few years, and then one day they’re talking back to you!

In this respect we can acknowledge that we’re clearly wired up for this language business at birth. Language has been so critical to our success as a species that our DNA has ensured that we get it right, and so we have neural machinery right out of the gate that helps us do so.

Yet, there are several thousand languages throughout the world, and our DNA doesn’t know at conception whether our language will be Spanish or Swahili. The specific language can’t be hardwired by the time we draw our first breath. Rather, it must be learned.

So how has our DNA/brain solved this problem of ensuring that every human learns to speak?

By hardwiring the learning process.

And not just any learning process. A learning process that, in the absence of disease or deliberate attempts to derail it (i.e. depriving a child of sound), is foolproof.

This is what the developmental milestones are telling us. Every child passes through the same milestones in the same order because each step, and the order in which the child moves through them, is absolutely critical to their ultimate success. In a poly-lingual world, this is how the brain ensures that each human reaches fluency.

What’s more, it’s assumed that every healthy child will move through this process and become an effective speaker. There’s no anxiety about whether or not he or she is gifted enough to learn to do it. It’s just a matter of building up one component skill sufficiently, then moving to the next. While the end result is extraordinary, the process itself is matter-of-fact.

And there’s no real urge to rush the process. We know it doesn’t make sense to start teaching a 6 month how to write poetry in iambic pentameter, nor to become discouraged if he or she can’t carry on a conversation on the finer points of securities trading in overseas markets at the age of 1.

A MATTER OF TIME

The most wonderful thing about the human brain is that this capacity to learn, to remold itself in response to environmental demands, remains throughout its life. And this, of course, includes its capacity to learn music.

The only difference is that, unlike in language learning, the script isn’t hard wired. But the principle remains: follow the right path, and success is virtually inevitable. And there’s no skipping ahead, no rushing to the advanced material before the early stuff has been mastered.

Just as every language speaking human passed through the same language milestones, you’ll find the same to be true of musical masters. Though the speed with which they did so may have varied (since the learning script is not hardwired), they all passed through the same sequence in their own pursuit of mastery.

So at this moment eradicate all talk of “bad” and “good” players, musically talented or not, etc. These concepts are useless at best, destructive at worst.

The difference between someone who can play through two tunes at 60 BPM and a master who can play freely in a jam has nothing doing with these sorts of things. It simply has to do with where they currently are on the timeline of musical mastery. One is further along, but the journey can be had by anyone who chooses to walk down the path.

Is the typical 4-year-old child a more talented talker than a babbling infant? Of course not. That’s just outright silly. One is just further along in the timeline of language mastery.

In future episodes, we’ll explore the concept of the timeline of musical mastery in more depth, using the language model as a guide for developing our own set of developmental milestones.

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The Laws of Brainjo, Episode 9

The Meaning of Mastery

Adam Hurt – Tradition Bearer or Innovator?

I recently launched the first installment in the Masters of Clawhammer, a series in which we dissect and analyze the story and style of a master player. For the inaugural episode, I was joined by master banjoist Adam Hurt.

Producing the course was a thought provoking experience in many ways, and a topic that I’ve continued to dwell on since the project began has been the notion of mastery itself.

Given that this “Laws of Brainjo” series on the art and science of effective practice is all about how to carve a path to mastery, and given that I just launched a series all about banjo masters, I thought it may be time to address the concept head on!

Which brings me to the question of the day:

Just what exactly does it mean to be a master of banjo?

To start this discussion, take a listen to this tune by Adam, one of ten he played as part of the concert:

I think you’ll agree that this tune is gorgeously played and arranged.

And I think you’ll also agree that this isn’t your great grandfather’s clawhammer. Had someone played this recording while you were blindfolded, I doubt you’d guess that it was a mid-20th century field recording snagged in the foothills of North Carolina.

Many would describe Adam’s playing as “innovative”, that his approach is one that pushes the boundaries of clawhammer banjo.

So it may surprise you to learn that, as Adam reveals in the interview, he is very much a student of tradition. Here’s Adam’s in his own words:

“What I think I do different from a lot of people in the melodic clawhammer banjo camp is I use more traditional banjo techniques to create the melodic turns of phrase that I want.“

Adam is often lumped into the “melodic” camp of banjo players (“melodic” meaning he likes to play as many notes from the fiddle as possible), which most folks would consider to be a more “modern” approach to clawhammer. And his playing clearly fits the bill.

Yet, his style has always been uniquely identifiable amongst other melodic players. A few notes into any tune leaves no doubt it’s him.

Yes, this is due in part to an almost inhuman precision of tone and technique. But there had always been something else different about it that previously I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Now I realize what that was, which is the deliberate, thoughtful, and….innovative use of traditional 5-string banjo techniques in the service of a melodic approach. This is the thing that made his playing stand out most from the melodic crowd.

Lessons From Banjo Camp

Back in 2005, back when I was first getting into clawhammer banjo, I attended Suwannee Old-Time Banjo Camp in North Florida. It was an incredible experience in so many ways,  and in retrospect a real inflection point in my life.

If you’ve never been to a banjo camp before, I highly recommend it. There’s something special that happens when people get to geek out in the woods for days around a common interest. Especially when there are banjos involved.

And they’re an amazing – and often overwhelming – learning experience. The focal point of the learning are the courses, but for me, some of the best lessons are learned outside of the classroom.

One of the unique aspects of the experience is that, over the course of the camp, you have the chance to get know the instructors a bit, to get a sense of their distinct personalities.

It was during the faculty concert the final night, after having had the chance to get a least a little sense of who these folks were, that I observed something that would ultimately influence my own concept of mastery, and that would provide a guiding beacon for my own journey as a player from that point on.

Yes, the concert was fantastic. The music was terrific and inspiring, as you’d expect given the lineup of players like Mike Seeger, Brad Leftwich, and Mac Benford.

But the thing that stood out most for me about the playing of these master banjoists wasn’t their impeccable rhythm and timing. Nor was it their purity of tone or technical sophistication.

The thing that stood out was that, in spite of the fact that they were all playing essentially the same style and drawing from the same cannon of tunes, they all sounded very different. More than just different.

They all sounded like themselves.

No, I’m not just stating the obvious. What I mean is that their own unique personalities that I’d come to know a bit of over that weekend were now coming out, loud and clear, through their banjos. They’d somehow managed to take a piece of themselves, funnel it through their instrument, and transmit it out into the world.

It’s natural I think to view mastery as simply the accumulation of technical skill. It’s also the easiest thing to measure and quantify.

Yet, there are masters musicians whose playing is technically straightforward but moving, and there are musicians whose playing is technically advanced but forgettable.

Eddie Van Halen can surely navigate the guitar fretboard with greater speed and dexterity than Bob Dylan, yet both are viewed by many as masters. Why? Because they both know what they want to say on their instrument, and have the technical skill needed to say it.

And the same is true of Adam Hurt. Get to know him a bit, and you’ll hear him loud and clear in the music he plays. His playing is undeniably rooted in tradition, yet also undeniably delivered in his own voice.

Technical skill, then, is a necessary but insufficient condition of mastery.

It’s not about whether you know 300 tunes by heart, or how many notes per second you can play, or if you can solo between the 17th and 20th fret.

It’s about whether you’ve reached the point where you know what you want to say, and you have the chops needed to say it.

With these definitions out of the way, in the episodes to come we’ll get back to the business of how to build a brain that moves us toward the mastery we seek!

For more about the “Masters of Clawhammer Banjo” course with Adam Hurt, go here.

— Go to Episode 10 —

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