|
|
|
Can you learn to play an instrument at 40? q&a withpsychologist gary marcus by ferujkll sdff
|
|
|
Can you learn to play an instrument at 40? q&a withpsychologist gary marcus by FERUJKLL SDFF
|
|
Article Posted: 04/10/2013 |
Article Views: 47 |
Articles Written: 2023 - MORE ARTICLES FROM THIS AUTHOR |
Word Count: 1508 |
Article Votes: 0 |
|
Can you learn to play an instrument at 40? q&a withpsychologist gary marcus |
|
|
|
Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
|
|
Can someone with no musical talent learn to play guitar as anadult? That s what New York University psychology professor GaryMarcus wanted to find out when he turned 40. Along the way, hediscovered that the struggle to learn was as rewarding as playingmusic itself. In honor of national Wanna Play Music Week , Healthland spoke with Marcus, author of Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning . Why did you start this project? I always wanted to make music but at the same time, thought it wascompletely out of my reach.
I had several very disappointingexperiences as a child trying to learn. I tried to learn the recorder in 4th grade and my teacher suggestedthat my talents lay elsewhere when I couldn t play Mary had alittle lamb. In graduate school I tried to take something called miracle piano. At each point, I got stuck on rhythm.
It was nomiracle. Then, I started playing [the video game] "Guitar Hero."I was terrible. My wife helped me to play. The first time I everdid anything vaguely rhythmic, I got excited.
I practiced the gamefor a while and made it through beginner and medium. I thought,Maybe I should try a real guitar. The video game was a gateway drugthat gave me confidence to try the real thing. What was the most fun part of your learning experience? There were a lot of fun things. The most fun, but also the mostscary, was that I went to a summer camp with 11-year-olds andplayed in a band.
On Day One, you had to start writing a song andby Friday, you had to play it on stage. The kids bring theirparents to the performance and I brought mine, too. It wasfrightening but super fun. (Listen to Marcus' performance here .) What are some of the differences between the way children andadults learn? Kids and adults are differently able.
They bring different skills.Adults are more analytical. One thing I was able to do wasunderstand music theory and comprehend it in a way [that kidscouldn t]. Kids are more patient and willing to practice the samething over and over. They don t have the same expectations aboutbeing good right away and probably cut themselves more slack andprobably have faster fingers.
Some people say that music must be an innate human capacity, whichevolved the way language did. But you disagree. For the better part of our evolutionary history music wasn t evenon the scene. You can engineer a technology that everyone loveslike the iPhone, but that doesn t mean that the thing was itselfin [our evolutionary history]. All cultures do have music and it taps into lots of things that ourbrains come prepared with, like a love of novelty and familiarity.Music has really cool ways of delivering both.
There s a steadydrumbeat that makes the brain happy and that it can anticipate, and then you have novelty whenyou change the melody or lyrics. Both predictability and novelty [release] dopamine [a brainchemical associated with pleasure and desire]. It s seeminglycontradictory but music packs it all in. ( MORE : Humility: A Quiet, Underappreciated Strength ) Does learning to play music make you smarter? One thing we know is that on average, people who play musicalinstruments are smarter but we don t know if it s causal.
AmongNobel Prize-winners, there are a disproportionately high number ofmusicians, but whether [their music lessons made them smarter orvice versa] is a classic chick-and-egg question. My guess is that at the very least, music teaches youself-discipline and the rewards of working slowly to buildsomething awesome. When you first start, you are lost and after afew years, you can do it. It s a wonderful way of learning thepower of patience. There maybe other things: it makes your earsmore sensitive and that may make you better at picking uplanguages.
There s some suggestive data on that. To the extent that you are thinking about how your instrument fitsin with an ensemble, it might help you [connect with other peopleand empathize]. But it might be that giving acting lessons would dothe same thing even better. I don t want to say that music isnecessarily better than drama.
Do you think playing music makes you healthier? There might be some health benefits. I talk about the idea ofeudaemonia, the pleasure of self-actualization or fulfillment.There s a kind of pleasure from immediate things like food or sex,but [eudaemonia] comes when we ve done all that we can to be thepeople we can be. Part of what keeps me going is that [music]brings a kind of balance into my life that I think is a wonderfulthing. Even though you learned to play after a whole lot of effort, youdon t believe that practice is the only thing that differentiatesexcellent musicians from lesser ones.
I guess I know why people want to believe that, but I don t knowwhy they do. It s manifestly the case that in music some peoplework really hard and do well, and some don t. There s a lot ofdata out there that makes clear that practice is just part of theequation. None of it actually shows that talent doesn t matter.It s bizarre that that idea got as popular as it has.
I d love to learn to play an instrument, but I don t have asabbatical like you did during which I could spend hours at itevery day. Do you think it s still possible? I think it s totally possible. I ve gotten literally hundreds ofemails from older adults who have been learning music for the last10 or 20 years and they really love it. That doesn t mean that if you start at 50, you re going to beplaying with the symphony orchestra at 60. If you only practiceonce a week, you re not going to get anywhere.
If you can do alittle bit every day, almost anybody can make progress. I m someone who doesn t have any natural talent. I m likelycongenitally arrythmic. I m close to tone deaf.
I had almost notalent. I had more time but less talent than most people. If youhave even a little more talent, you might get there faster withless time. Do you think people will stop learning to play instrumentseventually and just do it all with computers? Will something belost if that kind of skill disappears? There s certainly an amount of music you can make with iPhone apps without knowing a lot, but to really put together an ensemble thatworks, you really need to know something.
I don t know what the place of instruments will be. I think somepeople will always love them. There s a kind of physical joy thatcomes from playing that you just don t get from the iPhone, butthere s more than one route to music. ( MORE : What the Jazz Greats Knew About Creativity ) With computers, you don t need to learn a physical skill just tomake the right sounds, so it seems like it would take lesspractice.
You can to some degree cut out some of the practice in terms oflearning where the notes are, but not the practice of learning tounderstand what actually sounds good. What should you look for in a music teacher? I ll tell you what you shouldn t look for: a great musician. Theymight be good, but they might not be. You want someone whounderstands how you learn, who cares about the learning processitself and has a good eye for what you re doing wrong and can in aconstructive way tell you how to practice and get better. A good teacher is a little like a car mechanic who can know whatthings look like when they go wrong and how to fix them, not justwhat they look like if they work correctly.
Should parents make their kids stick with their music lessons andpractice? I think that being a good parent is like being a good guidancecounselor. You have to help people find from within what they liketo do. If they are very young, you probably do need to nudge them,but not everyone has to be a musician. A good music teacher willoften involve the parents and teach parents how to be supportive oftheir kids. [They will] teach parents not to be very critical andto be supportive, but at the end of day it is the child s decisionI think.
See more of Healthland s Mind Reading series . Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com . Find her on Twitter at @maiasz . You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland . I am an expert from Power Supplies, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as china silk carpet , princess sleeping bags.
Related Articles -
china silk carpet, princess sleeping bags,
|
Rate This Article |
|
|
|
Do you Agree or Disagree? Have a Comment? POST IT!
Reader Opinions |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Author Login |
|
|
Advertiser Login
ADVERTISE HERE NOW!
Limited Time $60 Offer!
90 Days-1.5 Million Views
|
|
TIM FAY
After 60-plus years of living, I am just trying to pass down some of the information that I have lea...more
|
|
|
|
|
LAURA JEEVES
At LeadGenerators, we specialise in content-led Online Marketing Strategies for our clients in the t...more
|
|
|
|
|
SUSAN FRIESEN
Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media...more
|
|
|
|
|
STEPHEN BYE
Steve Bye is currently a fiction writer, who published his first novel, ‘Looking Forward Through the...more
|
|
|
|
|
GENE MYERS
Author of four books and two screenplays; frequent magazine contributor. I have four other books "in...more
|
|
|
|
|
SHALINI MITTAL
A postgraduate in Fashion Technology. Shalini is a writer at heart! Writing for her is an expression...more
|
|
|
|
|
ADRIAN JOELE
I have been involved in nutrition and weight management for over 12 years and I like to share my kn...more
|
|
|
|
|
ALEX BELSEY
I am the editor of QUAY Magazine, a B2B publication based in the South West of the UK. I am also the...more
|
|
|
|
|
JAMES KENNY
James is a Research Enthusiast that focuses on the understanding of how things work and can be impro...more
|
|
|
|