Go to the Practice Resource Center for music practicing companion videos, audio files, articles, charts, and everything you need to be a violin genius (oh, well, except YOUR practice time).
In an interview with Pinchas Zukerman in 1992, the great 20th century violinist, Nathan Milstein confessed that this Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz” arrangement was the absolutely most difficult piece he had ever played.
Here is a video of Milstein’s arrangement of this piece, Alexander Skwortsow playing it (circa 1985):
Congratulations to Alejandro for his Violin Book 3 Graduation. Alejandro is a very dedicated violin student and we’re so proud of him. Congratulations to his mom, as well for helping him with daily home practice. Here he is smiling with his book certificate. Way to go, Alejandro!
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.
Musical training shapes brain anatomy and affects function, says a new study presented this week in San Diego, California at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. The new findings show that training before age 7 has bigger impact on brain anatomy; improvisation can rewire brain.
The new research shows how brain regions communicate during the creation of music and find that extensive musical training affects the structure and function of different brain regions and even how the brain interprets and integrates sensory information.
These insights suggest potential new roles for musical training including fostering plasticity in the brain, an alternative tool in education, and treating a range of learning disabilities.
The new findings say that:
Some of the brain changes that occur with musical training reflect the automation of task (much as one would recite a multiplication table) and the acquisition of highly specific sensorimotor and cognitive skills required for various aspects of musical expertise.
“Playing a musical instrument is a multisensory and motor experience that creates emotions and motions — from finger tapping to dancing — and engages pleasure and reward systems in the brain. It has the potential to change brain function and structure when done over a long period of time,” said press conference moderator Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “As today’s findings show, intense musical training generates new processes within the brain, at different stages of life, and with a range of impacts on creativity, cognition, and learning.”
-Presented at the Neuroscience 2013 annual meeting.
In this video, I explain how to use the free program “Audacity” to change the tempo, speed, and key of any recording for music practicing purposes. This is particularly useful when you want to practice with a “Play-Along” accompaniment track, but you are not ready to play it at the recorded tempo quite yet.
By Rigo Murillo
I just came across an October 2010 Scientific American article, in which neuroscientists examined the benefits of learning and practicing music. They found a direct correlation of music learning to the enhancement of general learning ability. Another confirmation of the fact that music makes people smarter.
The researchers found that “assiduous instrument training from an early age can help the brain to process sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to tensor calculus.” They also discovered that music lessons improves memory and concentration throughout one’s life and boosts the ability to multitask, work in disruptive environments and learning other languages.
This information comes handy at a time when many schools and education administrators are deciding to cut music and arts programs as a first resource. A report mentioned in the article found that, for example, the number of students enrolled in music programs in California dropped 50% from 1999 to 2004.
It seems that it is time for the scientists to educate the educators… just saying. What do you think?
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
