Day 8 - The start of Week 2

I spent two years in the academic world, following an MA is music psychology through Sheffield University. It was one of the most fulfilling things I have done so far and opened my mind to lots of new possibilities and interests. Having taught before this for a few years I had no idea of the masses of research carried out each year by teams who devise and carry out the experiments and surveys investigating musical development, motivation, memorisation, performance practise and many, many other interesting features of music. My favourite bit of research that I like to quote is that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. That means if I were to practise three to four hours every day for the next ten years I might actually reach this status! I also delved a little into neurology and learnt that it is possible for the previously unmusical adult brain to learn to read music. After a month or so of learning there are changes in the brain that can be observed using high-tech scanners. (We weren't allowed to play with the scanners at Sheffield so I had to get this information from a book.) It seems that the adult brain is capable of learning new tricks but attitude and obstacles such as family or work get in the way. Much of the material I read for my own research focussed on adult learners and there have been many examples of adults coming to music either to learn an instrument or as a serious hobby. I'll compile a book list over the next few weeks. The first to be included will be Valuing Musical Participation by Dr Stephanie Pitts, one of the fabulous professors at Sheffield. It explores musical experiences in a wide range of settings, from performer to audience, individual to group and education to everyday experience. Given that there are continual threats of cuts to the arts in general this is another example of how music is beneficial to so many and at so many levels.

Stephanie had recently been in touch about her forthcoming book Chances and Choices: Exploring the Impact of Music Education, which will be out later this year. I am delighted to be able to give the book a mention and have dedicated this evening's practise to Stephanie, thanks to her donation earlier today. I am sure she will be delighted to know that my 30 minutes were spent working through my new piece exploring issues of practise motivation, achieving optimal experience in performance and remembering to include my references. Ok, so I just managed the first two today! Today's task was to practise two notes at a time and make a start on Rondo. The two notes, played with thumb and first finger (1 and 2) was managed with both hands and was together most of the time. I only need this technique in the left hand and spent a bit of time on the right hand skill of going round and round with 1, 2, 3, 2 and replacing the fingers as there are several bars of the same pattern. Hands individually were fine but putting them together was a disaster! It's so simple yet won't work as easily as it should. I spent a good twenty minutes slowing down, thinking before placing and working out what's going wrong. I looked at four bars in Fenland Fantasy which have chords and that's not too bad. The rest looks hard so I'll save that for another day. I finished with a run through of Gymnopedie, Sound the Trumpets and Azaleas. They weren't as good as yesterday but I'd had a full day's teaching and was feeling the difference being back full time. Maybe an early night would be good.