(This article originally appeared in Saxophone Today, March/April 2015.)
Around four years ago, I developed an interest in the neuroscience of effective practicing. I was searching for ways of improving my overall musicianship, and in creating a more powerful learning environment for my students. In my blog Practice Monster, I have written about many of these techniques, but the most important piece of understanding revolves around the function of ogliodendrocytes in the brain and the production of myelin along the axons. A quick and dirty explanation is as follows: The brain is a network of neurons, connected by axons. The axons are like tiny little wires that transmit electrical signals between the individual “switches” of the brain. (There are around 100 billion neurons in your brain!) Ogliodendrocytes are cells that manufacture a white, fatty insulation that gets secreted onto the axons. Just like a poorly insulated wire, an axon without much myelin will be a slow and leaky conductor. More myelin yields a faster, more precise connection between neurons. Ogliodendrocytes start producing myelin when they are used repetitively; in a very real way, they speak the language of practice. More practice = more myelin.
Technique = Neural Circuitry
For a classic example of how neural circuitry builds technique, consider which hand you use to brush your teeth. The next time you are at the sink, try brushing with the opposite hand. Be careful, as you are likely to find this to be quite clumsy and awkward! Over the years, the neurons involved in the motions related to teeth brushing become heavily insulated, resulting in a technique that almost runs automatically. As a saxophonist, I relate this to the ease with which I can execute passages that I have been practicing for many years. This is why we practice scales and melodic patterns, so that we can access them on command and with minimal conscious effort. There is a lot more to it than just this grossly simplified narrative, but at the core, technique is all about mastering the myelin game.
As a university saxophone professor, I have the duty of listening to dozens of woodwind examinations every semester. I might need to write seventy-five comment sheets over the course of three days, which really kills my left hand! Last spring, as I was icing my sore hand from a long day of writing, I wondered if it would be possible for a person in his early forties to learn to write with the “other” hand – and the adventure began! Some necessary background information: I am a left-handed over-writer, meaning that my left hand curls awkwardly over the pen. When I was in grade school, my cursive was hardly legible. I was frequently shamed by my teachers, and as soon as possible, I gave up cursive and adopted a block printing style. My printing is quite readable, until I get tired and my hand starts to cramp up, and this doesn’t take very long, considering the awkward position of my curled up hand. My first priority with right-handed penmanship was holding the pen properly, in a relaxed manner, from beneath the text. Initial attempts were completely illegible, and I was disheartened by a lack of progress over a series of days. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I was trying to copy a style of writing that had nothing to do with my new hand position. In that moment, I decided to do something radical. I reinvented my handwriting.
Reinventing Technique
Using google image, I started by looking at different types of handwriting: gothic, copperplate, Spencerian, and various forms of modern cursive. As a matter of preference, I was attracted to the style of great Americans of the 18th century, such as Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock. I also discovered a gentleman’s manual from that time period called THE INSTRUCTOR, by George Fisher. The book contained several templates for different styles of writing, known as “hands.” I liked the “Italian Hand,” but I saw lots of room for creativity with different letters, especially in the ornate uppercase. I started copying the template (over and over), and I set aside time each day to focus on a particular letter, settling on a style and perfecting the technique.
In six months of almost daily practice, I am now proudly writing with a beautiful and individual form of penmanship that I never could have imagined. The daily practice of writing alphabets, combined with intense sessions on individual letters, has resulted in an astoundingly quick improvement in technique and speed. I actually prefer writing with my right hand, although I still find it more mentally tiring, even if it is less physically stressful than my hardened habits with the left hand.
Unintended Benefits
If you are still reading, you must be waiting to hear how his relates to the saxophone, or to creativity. In addition to the expected benefit of being able to write for longer by switching hands, and the unexpected bonus of developing beautiful penmanship with the previously untrained hand, I began to notice something happening when I played the saxophone. As a lefty, my right hand was always noticeably weaker and less coordinated. I struggled with the awkward combinations in the lower stack, such as thirds in D# minor. Without a doubt, I felt stronger in the hand, and the technique was cleaner and less labored. By exercising the muscles and related neural pathways of the right hand in learning to write, I had taken a leap forward on the saxophone that I had never thought possible.
Learning Something New Requires Presence of Mind
This experience highlights the power of learning something new, and how it can boost progress. After a certain amount of attainment in a particular action, it becomes difficult to make large amounts of improvement. The practice becomes mindless and robotic, and that kind of practice can eventually become ineffective. We end up stuck in what seems like an inevitable plateau. We get depressed because, no matter how hard we push forward, that relatively fast progress that came earlier in the curve has become elusive. This is where “changing things up” turns out to be a vital part of a long-term learning strategy. I would never have expected it, but progress in my right hand technique had been slowed to a standstill by a lack of mentally focused practicing. That feeling of struggling to learn something new is very important, as it sends a strong message to the brain: “This is important and it requires immediate attention.” In other words, “Make more myelin!” Mindfully working on the fine motor dexterity required for learning penmanship activated neural circuits that also strengthened my saxophone technique. You cannot learn something difficult without being totally present, and that mental presence has a big payoff.
While we are on the subject of mindfulness, I generally like to start very rough drafts of articles and musical compositions by hand, only moving to the computer when I am organized and the ideas are starting to flow in a linear way. I tend to write outlines, lists, or small blocks of music and text. I have stacks of notebooks, and I keep several old cigar boxes filled with fountain pens and bottles of ink. I am convinced that the presence that is required when writing by hand activates a more conscious part of the brain, and that the mindless ease and speed of typing at a computer has the opposite effect, replacing creative channels with those of robotic repetition. Simply put, I can type faster than I can think, but the pen forces me to slow down and reflect on what I am writing. Being deliberately in the moment is a good thing, for any artist.
I have never liked composing directly on the computer, and lately, I have become totally exasperated with the endless upgrading of a certain computer program. The moving-target learning curve that comes with each upgrade means wasting precious time when I could be busy creating. Back in the 90s, we began an industry-wide shift from using professional copyists to composers and arrangers doing their own computer production, often of the final product for reproduction. This has fundamentally changed the way we compose and arrange. The simplicity of copy-and-paste has given way to a form of composing that, at its worst, is predictable and boring. Long compositions with excessively difficult passages and (oftentimes) lazy repetition are becoming quite the norm. Music that is richly varied and through-composed is becoming more and more rare. When I write music by hand, I only write the notes that actually matter. I can’t afford to waste time and effort on anything unnecessary, and the idea of simply repeating a large chunk of material almost goes out the window. The computer can easily transpose entire movements with a few clicks, but doing so by hand is hard work. Using the computer, it is easy to be more focused on the interface than the music. I find that working in ink from the very first draft heightens my mental focus, as it requires slowing down and acting in a very deliberate manner. That focused and careful mode of operation is analogous to the mental struggling that kick-starts the brain into deep learning. (Note: I know many fine composers that work directly on the computer, so this doesn’t necessarily hold true for everyone. This is only my experience, having worked extensively using both methods.)
Plateau Busting
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