Moving On
With regards to my last post, the truth is, one reason people treat me as a boy these days is that waxing my beard has been long overdue...
I 've been sort of busy. Next month I have my drums exams and I have some studying to do, although I 'm done catching up with the loose ends I 'd left from last year and this Christmas vacations. I 'm not pushing myself too much, I only study two hours a day, which is to say, marginally. So that you know what I 'm talking about, I 'm now in the fourth level (by no means am I aware wehter this is an international thing or not). There's eight levels to the first certificate you can get, so I 'm now at, let's say "intermediate" and moving on to "advanced". The stuff we do is not exactly the kinda stuff that interests me, musically... I mean, there's some semi-modern funky rock beats to learn, but I hate funky... mostly it's band marches, jazz and latin we do. I never thought I 'd say that, but I like the jazz... I always knew I like the latin, though, and the marches...
Anyway, yesterday I played a very satisfying solo, which I hadn't done for quite some time. It's like, I was starting to play, but I couldn't get off the ground. Well, I did yesterday. I 'm happy.
I noticed a weird thing too. A week ago I started studying some beats I found excruciatingly difficult to play, even very slowly. Then, partly because I was exasperated, I didn't study for a few days. Next time I played, it was as if I had been studying them all week. Well, I 've noticed before- it's almost as if, when I take a break from studying something I find difficult, I learn it easier afterwards... huh...! Of course, there's always something to study and there's no reason why not to keep practicing the stuff you already know, so I got no excuse to take long breaks, you know what I mean...
I 've been sort of busy. Next month I have my drums exams and I have some studying to do, although I 'm done catching up with the loose ends I 'd left from last year and this Christmas vacations. I 'm not pushing myself too much, I only study two hours a day, which is to say, marginally. So that you know what I 'm talking about, I 'm now in the fourth level (by no means am I aware wehter this is an international thing or not). There's eight levels to the first certificate you can get, so I 'm now at, let's say "intermediate" and moving on to "advanced". The stuff we do is not exactly the kinda stuff that interests me, musically... I mean, there's some semi-modern funky rock beats to learn, but I hate funky... mostly it's band marches, jazz and latin we do. I never thought I 'd say that, but I like the jazz... I always knew I like the latin, though, and the marches...
Anyway, yesterday I played a very satisfying solo, which I hadn't done for quite some time. It's like, I was starting to play, but I couldn't get off the ground. Well, I did yesterday. I 'm happy.
I noticed a weird thing too. A week ago I started studying some beats I found excruciatingly difficult to play, even very slowly. Then, partly because I was exasperated, I didn't study for a few days. Next time I played, it was as if I had been studying them all week. Well, I 've noticed before- it's almost as if, when I take a break from studying something I find difficult, I learn it easier afterwards... huh...! Of course, there's always something to study and there's no reason why not to keep practicing the stuff you already know, so I got no excuse to take long breaks, you know what I mean...
posted by Stassa at 1/20/2005 05:56:00 PM
2 Comments:
the experience you describe here - of stepping away from some kind of physical or mental practice for a while, then coming back to find yourself much improved, as if you had been practicing all along - is actually a known phenomenon, from what i understand. continual practice has a tendency to reinforce patterns defined by limitations... one can only go so far, until one begins to do nothing but train in the errors. turning away for a short while allows the subconscious to step in where it might have been repressed during normal practice, and go to work processing patterns on a deeper level. then, when you start back up again, those patterns that weren't available to you before, become integrated into higher-level cognition and coordination. it's why pre-visualization is so important in things like racing.
- gwyneth
Aha! I knew it! I was thinking about that repeating mistakes thing too...
Sometimes I can tell when I 'm not making any progress, because practicing then becomes a bore... normally, when I 'm struggling to learn something, but making progress, I feel tired but good. When I 'm trying, hard, but not going anywhere, I feel sorta drowsy, like I 'm staring at a pendulum, or something...
In a weird way, what you say about visualisation also makes plenty of sense. Sometimes I have dreams about playing the drums and I know it's part of the learning process and I 'm trying to make them more frequent because I 'm convinced they 're gonna help me lots.
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