Replay Is a Good Thing

With the abundance of smart phones with highly advanced cameras the ability to capture life’s moments is at our fingertips.  When we consider skill development in relationship with this tool, we add value to life’s future moments.

As a learning tool, replaying a performance becomes a huge impetus for growth.  Not only does the performer note their brilliant moments, there are a few cringe moments when the performance could have been improved, and in their minds, the great students are already replaying those moments to perfection.  This is true in sports, music, speaking and any other activity when we watch ourselves perform.

Your younger students will need a gentle guiding hand to fully grasp this idea, and in time, as we look back, we enjoy to growth that have happened.

Replay is a very good think.

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

High Quality Repetition

If you are attempting to be better in any area of life, then I have a great tip for you.  Here it is.

Be sure you do enough high quality repetitions.  Ten high quality repetitions are far better than 100 haphazard ones.  

The old adage “perfect practice makes perfect” is at play in this philosophy. 

It works in sports, music, relationships, and in all other areas of life.

Daniel Coyle says this:  Deep practice is not measured in minutes or hours, but in the number of high-quality reaches and repetitions you make – basically, how many new connections you form in your brain.

~Daniel Coyle – The Little Book of Talent

So, put aside your watch.  You are measuring your effectiveness by how many minutes you practice a skill.

Rather, measure how many times you get it right.  Professional golfers are notorious for being tenacious about perfecting a swing.  They avoid practicing a bad swing.  They want to practice a great swing. 

Your new chant – Perfect practice makes perfect.

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

Everybody Starts Somewhere

Picasso didn't start out being Picasso.  He started small, and was probably not very good at first.  However, he made a start.

Last night Carolyn and I attended a musical show featuring high-school students age 12-18.  They were doing a show featuring the great hits of the Beatles.  For some of those students, this was their first time on a stage performing their brand of music. 

They made a start.  THE MADE A START!

That is significant.  For their first outing I give them all an A+.  I chose to put my music critic ear aside and enjoy the moment for what it was – young and eager talent stretching their collective wings and daring to perform. 

Way to go kids!  So proud of you.

This was their starting place. 

I’m reminded of how the Beatles got their start.  Legend has it that in their early days, before they became the internationally known group, THE BEATLES, they performed in any venue that would invite them.  They played their original songs for 10-12 hours per day, perfecting them writing more songs.  And the songs continue.  They perfected their craft and that is what helped launch them on the Ed Sullivan Show in January 1964.  They were not an overnight sensation.  They practiced and prepared for their moment of glory, and when it came they were ready.

We could name any great individual and the story would be the same.  Their talent was honed in secrecy and obscurity.  They practiced in the quiet of their home, or a drafty studio in some forgotten university music/arts hall. 

Where did you get your start?  Parents, it is a good thing to remind your children of this important aspect to talent development. 

We make a beginning.  We start somewhere. 

And where that takes us is largely up to us and our commitment. 

Michael Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

See a Pro

My friend, Richard, reminded me of this principle this week.  This is for any of us in pursuit of “better”.

Do you want “better”? 

Better skill

Better speech making

Better piano playing

Better drumming

Better selling

Better parenting

Whatever your pursuit might be in the “bettering of your life”, the main idea is this – go and see a professional do what you aspire to do.

Learn from the best.  Buy the best seat you can afford and go see the show. 

Be amazed.  Be wowed.  Be impressed.  Be inspired.

And then mimic what you saw until you make it your own.

As a young drummer, before the days of YouTube, I listened to the Dave Brubeck Quartet often.  I learned some of my best drumming methods from Joe Morello, Dave’s drummer on the Take Five album.

A year ago, thanks to YouTube, I watched Joe play that famous drum solo.  Later, I remarked to Carolyn how much Joe’s playing had influenced my own drumming style and had never realized it until that particular moment.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

And it’s a great way to learn from the best of the best.

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

Small Wins

So often we grow at a snail’s pace.  We experience life one slice at a time in the beginning.

I watched a video clip of a young baby elephant learning to take his first steps.  It looked like an uncoordinated mass of grey.  He stepped on his trunk more than once and finally, with success, he took those first important steps.

In another video I watched a golden retriever Mom teach her young pup how to walk down a set of five steps.  Her first attempts were so tenuous, and then down one step, but oh so quickly she went back up.  Finally, with an amazing dose of encouragement from the mother, the young pup finally took the bold steps and was successful.

The principle is this – what we learn in small steps leads to bigger and bolder steps. 

We gain confidence, we gain balance and we gain skill in those early small wins and it is on those that we build our lives.

This is true in music as well as in all of life.  That is why we encourage going slowly at the beginning of any new skill.  We break the skill into chunks that can be managed, and then we connect the dots for all of the skills until mastery happens. 

In the book The Power of Habits, we find this seed.

“Once a small win has been accomplished,

forces are set in motion

that favors another small win.”

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

Habits

Regular Schedule f 

Musical ability is as much habit formation as it is technically learning note names and positions on the staff.

We attempt to form perfect habits in the early stages to help with later development.  That is one of the reasons we encourage a student to sometimes play a particularly difficult passage at a ridiculously slow speed.  We must first get the notes and fingering right, and then build skill and fingering memory.

The wonderful thing about this skill is that is translates well into other activities – sports for sure, even study habits.

We don’t just want to form habits.

We want to form good habits.

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

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Tell Them How

Students need specific and focused praise to help them grow and understand how life works.  If we use the simple phrase such as “you’re doing great” or “lookin' good” that doesn’t really say much.  It is generic and non-specific. 

A great twist on this idea would be this:  “I love the way you phrased that last set of measures.  You really played with great expression.”

Specific praise leads to an increase in specified behaviors.

Let them know in exact words HOW they are pulling off ‘great’. 

Positive esteem followed up with examples reinforces the behavior and helps us want to do more of that kind of good work.

P Michael Biggs

Up-Words Web Site

Offering Hope

Encouragement Inspiration

One Word at a Time

Positive Thoughts about Failure

In music, in sports, and in all of life, sooner or later we will experience failure in some form or another.  We just went through one of the best experiences of New Year New Tunes, however, I know some students felt they performed at less than their best.  Yet, that too is a strategic part of personal growth.

As you interact with your child about their perspective on being disappointed in the outcome of a performance, I hope you will use the opportunity to talk about the importance of finding the courage to try again.  Here are some thoughts to keep in your conversation tool kit.

~What you have to tell yourself is, “I’m not a failure.  I failed at doing something.”

~Mozart was told that his opera The Marriage of Figaro ‘had too many notes.’

~Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime.

~Thomas Edison was considered un-teachable as a youngster.

~Albert Einstein was once told by a schoolmaster that he would never amount to much.

We simply want to instill a correct mindset about success and failure into the hearts and minds of all our students.  We want them to have the courage to try again.

  

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student