Bounce

Are high performing music students talented, or do they just practice more than other students?

An answer to this question comes from a surprising source, one-time table tennis champion turned sports journalist Matthew Syed’s book “Bounce”.

Bounce is based on the latest research into performance by cognitive neuro-scientists.

This research, from fields as diverse as tennis, fire fighting and music, points out that practice (or experience) is much more important than any amount of “natural aptitude”.

As music is the field that many believe is dominated by the naturally talented, music was one of the first fields for studies into performance.

The idea that natural talent existed was tested in a key study of violinists at the renowned Music Academy of West Berlin. Researchers divided the students into three groups. One group was of “soloists” i.e. students who were considered to be likely to go on to perform as leading soloists. Group two consisted of “orchestra players” i.e. students likely to go on and play in leading orchestras, and finally, a group designated as likely to be music teachers. All of theses students had been considered “very talented”

This grouping was based on the assessment of their professors, and the student’s performance in open competitions.

A detailed biographical history was taken of each student, and they all showed remarkable symmetry, in all factors but one – time spent practicing.

The top students had without exception practiced for at least 10 000 hours, which was 2000 hours more than the students likely to go into orchestras, and 6000 hours more than students likely to become teachers.

Not a single top performer had practiced less than the 10 000 hours. This lead to the formulation of the ten thousand hour rule, i.e. any one wishing to be world class in any field, would have to practice for 10 000 hours. Research also showed that, as more than about 3 hours practice a day was not productive, this has become the ten-year rule, i.e. roughly a thousand hours practice a year over ten years.

What is more, there was no evidence that in the long run, any of the top performers learned any quicker than anyone else. So top performers were not quicker learners, they just practiced harder.

What this suggests is that the more time teachers spend encouraging, monitoring and rewarding practice, the more successful their students will be.

Musically trained or talented

When my children play at a concert I usually have two comments, the first is something like “so you have five children”. The second is “you are so lucky they are all musically talented.”

Now nothing would please me more to believe that some great genetic deposit of musical genius flows through my veins. But the truth is much more prosaic.

About three years ago a friend who asked us to join her family to make up a small musical theory class introduced me to Zelda Martin.

I was expecting textbooks and reading music but very soon we were learning a very different kind of musical theory as Zelda would flash a little coloured card and children would then suddenly start marching around the room. Then another two cards and they would be stamping out a beat with their feet and then clapping a different rhythm.

Then even more impressively they would have to clap out the rhythm beat from a card they had just been shown while another card was already being displayed.

Shortly after that they would be singing while they made strange hand gestures. Hares, swallows, dollies and witches were all involved.

Zelda made it quite clear that musical theory was not just theoretical but was practical and hands on , perhaps I should say hands, feet and body on or a full bodied development of musicality. Zelda was less impressed by a child who could grasp theoretical rules in a book than by one who could keep a rhythm

What was immediately apparent to me was that the children were learning to see a note, make the sound of a note and make a physical movement that they could identify with the note. What they were getting was multiple sensory inputs for each and every musical concept they were introduced to.

But most importantly they were having to listen to each other. What impressed me is that they were doing this right from the beginning of there musical education. They didn’t have to master an instrument before they could be involved in ensemble work.

These songs moved quickly from being sung to be played on glokenspeillen and then instruments. Four of them went on to study piano using the colourkeys programme and my daughter doing guitar.

Even though my daughter was no longer following a colourstrings approach for her instrumental work she was benefitting from her colourstrings foundation. Within a few short months my daughter was performing at pretty much the same level as students who had been doing guitar for many years more than she had.

While she does practice consistently her ability to play musically and with attention to the rhythm of a piece can be attributed to even the limited formation she got from colourstrings.

What makes this story quite remarkable is that they all started music relatively late. My daughter at 15, her older brother at 13 and even my youngest daughter at 5.

While in general that would be quite old for colourstrings they have all benefitted from the initial colourstrings teaching they have had.

Although some, let us say, innovative lyrics have been developed for songs that are aimed at younger children. Especially by boys, the basic musicality they were learning has given them a good foundation.

Also once they were playing an instrument they were able very quickly to move on to playing more difficult pieces and that kept there interest in music going until they could actually play pieces that they enjoyed.

Now even though one or two say that they would like to be musicians one day I am pleased by the fact that they can make and enjoy music.