Blimey,
March already? At this rate I'm going to have to get everyone started
on their Christmas compositions before long..
Now,
in my last post I mentioned the aspect of training your fingers in
the same way that an athlete trains their muscles, and I'd like to
try and expand on that a little this month and talk about the
difference as I see it between teaching and training.
Teaching
is all about introducing the student to new concepts, and helping
them to understand those concepts by connecting them to information
the student already knows. Whether that be a new chord shape, or a
theory idea or a scale pattern – teaching is all about imparting
that information to the conscious, rational part of the brain,
ensuring that the rationale behind the new idea is understood and
makes sense.
Training,
on the other hand, is all about finessing those movements via
repetition and attention to form, until the student is able to call
upon these responses instinctively. Using the same athletics parallel
we looked at last month, this is similar to a training session in the
gym – you may not necessarily learn any new exercises you didn't
know before, but by repetition and attention to the detail of what
you're doing, you're able to make incremental improvements simply by
gradual progressive steps. For example, playing the same scale
sequence, but 1-2 bpm quicker, or with a slightly more defined
dynamic difference between piano and forte, or just
playing the same notes with increased clarity as the pick and fret
hands learn better how to mute out unwanted string noise.
Many
psychologists view the brain on two levels – system 1, the
rational conscious part of our brain that considers things logically
and in depth, and system 2, which is the intuitive
“subconscious” part of the mind. Both parts are necessary – can
you imagine, for example, all the decisions that have to be taken in
order to take a breath, or blink an eye? Without the intuitive system
2 which lets us “just do it”, we'd never be able to cope.
Teaching
places the information we need in system 1. But without the training
aspect, the understanding and the movements we need will never make
it into the instinctive system 2 part which allows us to immediately
call upon the licks, phrases, scale patterns that we need to
improvise in the heat of the moment. Training groups these ideas
together into system 2 which allows us to call on them much more
quickly, without consciously thinking (often referred to as “muscle
memory”).
There
are many everyday examples of this duality in action – driving, for
example. The processes all have to be learned painstakingly at first,
but with experience and practice – training – they become
grouped together in the instinctive realm of system 2. An example I
use with my students – I have no idea how to to my shoelaces. I
just tie them. If I stop to think about it – can't do it. For the
first time in a good long while, one of my schools started requiring
their peripatetic teachers to wear a tie. I haven't worn a tie in
many, many years.. the movements were there, buried deep in system 2,
but in order to access them I had to focus my conscious mind on
something else completely and do it without thinking about it –
effectively taking my own brain by surprise!
Of
course, this makes it extremely important that at the first stages of
training your fingers to accept new movements, chord shapes etc., you
have to pay very close attention to training the right thing into
your fingers. Otherwise all you practice is playing badly, and all
you will get better at is playing badly. So 10-15 minutes spent
focusing intently on your playing can have far greater impact than
four hours splitting concentration between guitar and computer,
guitar and TV, guitar and Xbox...
