Congratulations to Anna Victoria Lavelle and Alondra Flores for completing their 100 days of practice in a row chart this week!!
They have made tremendous improvements due to their increased practice discipline.
They were awarded their well-deserved Love Nurtured Music “Practice Champion T-shirts.”
If you want your free T-shirt, complete the 100-Day Challenge Chart here.
May 20, 2013 — Turns out, that old “practice makes perfect” adage may be overblown. New research led by Michigan State University’s Zach Hambrick finds that a copious amount of practice is not enough to explain why people differ in level of skill in two widely studied activities, chess and music.
In other words, it takes more than hard work to become an expert. Hambrick, writing in the research journal Intelligence, said natural talent and other factors likely play a role in mastering a complicated activity.
“Practice is indeed important to reach an elite level of performance, but this paper makes an overwhelming case that it isn’t enough,” said Hambrick, associate professor of psychology.
The debate over why and how people become experts has existed for more than a century. Many theorists argue that thousands of hours of focused, deliberate practice is sufficient to achieve elite status.
Hambrick disagrees.
“The evidence is quite clear,” he writes, “that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice.”
Hambrick and colleagues analyzed 14 studies of chess players and musicians, looking specifically at how practice was related to differences in performance. Practice, they found, accounted for only about one-third of the differences in skill in both music and chess.
So what made up the rest of the difference?
Based on existing research, Hambrick said it could be explained by factors such as intelligence or innate ability, and the age at which people start the particular activity. A previous study of Hambrick’s suggested that working memory capacity — which is closely related to general intelligence — may sometimes be the deciding factor between being good and great.
While the conclusion that practice may not make perfect runs counter to the popular view that just about anyone can achieve greatness if they work hard enough, Hambrick said there is a “silver lining” to the research.
“If people are given an accurate assessment of their abilities and the likelihood of achieving certain goals given those abilities,” he said, “they may gravitate toward domains in which they have a realistic chance of becoming an expert through deliberate practice.”
Hambrick’s co-authors are Erik Altmann from MSU; Frederick Oswald from Rice University; Elizabeth Meinz from Southern Illinois University; Fernand Gobet from Brunel University in the United Kingdom; and Guillermo Campitelli from Edith Cowan University in Australia.
The above story is based on materials provided by Michigan State University. Journal Reference: David Z. Hambrick, Frederick L. Oswald, Erik M. Altmann, Elizabeth J. Meinz, Fernand Gobet, Guillermo Campitelli. Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert? Intelligence, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2013.04.001
The Suzuki Association of the Americas Violin Committee announced that the Revised Book 6 of the Suzuki Violin School is finally in print. Included in the mailing of the next SAA Journal is a list of Suggested Repertoire for Books 6, 7 and 8 to accompany those volumes.
By mandate from the 2009 International Teacher Trainers Conference, the ISA Violin Committee was to compile a list of suggested repertoire from different style periods appropriate for each book level to be published in the Revised Books 6-8. It proved a difficult task for all the Regional Association Violin Committees to arrive at consensus over a specific list. As a result, each Regional Association is to assemble its own list for distribution to its members. This is not to create an alternate repertoire but to suggest additional pieces to fill out the depth of the current books, in many instances with pieces Dr. Suzuki himself used in lessons and concerts. There will be a paragraph published in the Revised Books 6, 7 and 8 explaining this procedure. (See pg. 32 of the newly published Revised Book 6 for this paragraph.)
Beginning in 2010, the SAA Violin Committee, in collaboration with the SAA violin Teacher Trainers, began compiling such a list. The Committee appreciates the generous input from the Trainers in that process.
This list is organized by category: Tone pieces, Kreisler pieces, Concertos and Sonatas, Bach, “Show” pieces, and Modern pieces.
The list you have received today does NOT preclude any teacher from using their personal favorites, nor a Trainer from presenting a more comprehensive list for each book or distributing their own list. This list is meant as a guideline for our membership and provide a baseline resource in our training courses. This list is NOT immutable and will be revisited and revised as we work with the list in our teaching and training over the next several years. We look forward to your feedback.
SAA Violin Committee:
Allen Lieb, Chair; Ronda Cole; Lorraine Fink; Karen Kimmett; Sandy Reuning
Aug. 7, 2013 — Listening to music activates large networks in the brain, but different kinds of music are processed differently. A team of researchers from Finland, Denmark and the UK has developed a new method for studying music processing in the brain during a realistic listening situation. Using a combination of brain imaging and computer modeling, they found areas in the auditory, motor, and limbic regions to be activated during free listening to music. They were furthermore able to pinpoint differences in the processing between vocal and instrumental music.
The new method helps us to understand better the complex brain dynamics of brain networks and the processing of lyrics in music. The study was published in the journal NeuroImage.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the research team, led by Dr. Vinoo Alluri from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, recorded the brain responses of individuals while they were listening to music from different genres, including pieces by Antonio Vivaldi, Miles Davis, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, The Shadows, Astor Piazzolla, and The Beatles. Following this, they analyzed the musical content of the pieces using sophisticated computer algorithms to extract musical features related to timbre, rhythm and tonality. Using a novel cross-validation method, they subsequently located activated brain areas that were common across the different musical stimuli.
The study revealed that activations in several areas in the brain belonging to the auditory, limbic, and motor regions were activated by all musical pieces. Notable, areas in the medial orbitofrontal region and the anterior cingulate cortex, which are relevant for self-referential appraisal and aesthetic judgments, were found to be activated during the listening. A further interesting finding was that vocal and instrumental music were processed differently. In particular, the presence of lyrics was found to shift the processing of musical features towards the right auditory cortex, which suggests a left-hemispheric dominance in the processing of the lyrics. This result is in line with previous research, but now for the first time observed during continuous listening to music.
“The new method provides a powerful means to predict brain responses to music, speech, and soundscapes across a variety of contexts,” says Dr. Vinoo Alluri.
The above story is based on materials provided by Suomen Akatemia (Academy of Finland), via AlphaGalileo.
Journal Reference: Vinoo Alluri, Petri Toiviainen, Torben E. Lund, Mikkel Wallentin, Peter Vuust, Asoke K. Nandi, Tapani Ristaniemi, Elvira Brattico. From Vivaldi to Beatles and back: Predicting lateralized brain responses to music. NeuroImage, 2013; 83: 627 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.06.064
Credit: Image courtesy of Suomen Akatemia (Academy of Finland)
