Start at the end

Here we go! Another one of Casey's ridiculously counter-intuitive posts. Start at the end. It doesn't get more contrarian than that, does it?

This is the way I was taught to practice, and I continue to do it because it works. Time and time again I share this practice technique with my students, and I can always tell when they follow my directions because their playing sounds smoother and more confident. Learn how and why starting at the end works so well. Don't worry, we won't be going backwards.

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How it's supposed to feel

Most of what you do should feel easy.

If it's not, you're taking on too much. Either your task is too big or you're moving too fast.

Break it down.

Breaking things down is a challenge in itself. It forces you to think critically about what you're doing - looking for the main ideas, sorting priorities. If you make that the hardest part, actually carrying out the tasks won't be such a headache.

This has immediate application if you're learning a piece of music. I'm trying to keep it in mind as I set about writing a book.

Where will it help you most to slow down and break it down?

Be a beginner

Kira, an eighth-grader, has been doing amazingly well learning to play and sing pop songs, to the point where she can do it pretty much on her own now. So, I suggested that she start writing songs.

She said that she had tried to write a song but, "I didn't like it."

I said, "Wouldn't you be surprised if the first song by a beginning songwriter was something you wanted to listen to?"

I have a first song. I wrote it nearly twenty years ago, and I remember it quite affectionately even though I was somewhat embarrassed by it at the time. All in all, there is only a handful of songs from my first five years of songwriting that I would consider performing onstage now. Thankfully, though, I've became a better songwriter, and now there are many songs I've written that I'm actually proud of.

Where's the fun in knowing how to do everything right from the start?I'm still a beginner in other ways, however. Currently, I am trying now to launch a new program that will allow children to explore a variety of musical instruments and games on a drop-in basis. I wish that we had dozens of exotic and expensive instruments and a polished presentation. Instead, it's more like what the above-average kid would own if he were very spoiled by Grandma, with an enthusiastic but not extensively experienced staff member helping out.

But so what? Is it going to be perfect, right out of the box? Hell, no - there isn't even a box. I'm making the whole thing up as I go along. I have to, as Anne Lamott says in Bird By Bird, "write really, really shitty first drafts." I have to just let myself be a beginner, and perhaps Mastery will notice me laboring there in the trenches and bestow a little fairy dust on my endeavors.

I have no reason to think that my project won't work - or at least, evolve into something that will. I have taught many children, and everyone improves. Everyone gets better, even with vanishingly small amounts of effort in some cases. So I feel very confident in telling Kira that her songs will improve. I just won't tell her how long it might take.

In what respect are you a beginner?

Hat tip to E. R. Pidgeon for sharing the Lamott piece.

Beware the Song Machine

Along with learning things in the same spirit in which they were created, I believe in teaching things the way I learned them (while of course allowing for different learning styles). When working in pop music (i.e., anything that is not classical or jazz), this has some counter-intuitive implications.

Most guitar teachers (and those piano teachers who teach in pop/rock styles) learn the drill pretty quickly: student wants to learn Song X, teacher transcribes Song X after having spent a few minutes working it out by ear. Student goes home, dabbles with Song X, brings in Song Y, and the cycle continues.

Some teachers are especially enthusiastic about creating professional transcriptions for their students. They spend their own time outside of the lesson working out every detail of the recording.

This works - to a point. The student is learning songs. However, the teacher is actually the one learning the instrument. How's that for counter-intuitive?

Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture, talks about the "head fake," in which students think they are learning one thing but are actually gaining something deeper. In this case, the teacher has set up his own head fake. He thinks he is teaching the student, but in reality, through the process of working out a song by ear, assimilating it, transcribing it, and then teaching it, the teacher is the one who gets the benefit. The student just gets the by-product!

Through the process of working out song after song, the teacher's musical ear gets ever sharper, his transcription skills get quicker, and his facility on the instrument increases. This, my friends, is how you actually learn how to play an instrument: by teaching yourself songs. That's how the teachers themselves learned (and continue to hone their abilities).

Yet, instead of teaching the student how to figure out songs, the teacher functions as the student's Song Machine: bring in a recording and the Song Machine will spit out a transcription, teaching the student nothing but the superficial details of how to play the song. This is the opposite of teaching something the way you learned it.

This whole idea dawned on me when I started getting annoyed at a couple of students who were bringing in songs each week, but never following through by learning them well. I felt taken for granted because they weren't even mastering the songs I was giving them. "I ain't yer Song Machine," I grumbled to myself. "I never had anyone to work out songs for me."

Hey! Wait! That was not a grievance: that was my secret weapon. I'd always been my own Song Machine. And after many years of playing and teaching, it's become a well-oiled machine.

At first, a student doesn't have the skills to work out a song by ear, so we usually start with a few simple songs. But right from the beginning, I'm going to show how those songs were built. As I model the protocol for figuring out a song, I will also explain what I'm doing and why, and get the student doing the heavy lifting as soon as possible. Teach a musician to fish, if you will. 

I hate just being the Song Machine for my students. There's no depth to it. The student gets the song, but the Song Machine gets to keep all the quarters.

To leap across a chasm in several systematic steps

When I was a kid, we had to do the President's Challenge for physical fitness. I failed every time, because I could not do a pull-up. Every year, I would watch the little monkeys in my class who could do a bunch in a row, and then I would get up there and struggle mightily while the P.E. teacher would say something like, "I think you did...one-quarter..." and make a note on my sheet.

I wished to avoid this humiliating display in the future, but I had no idea how. Every so often, I would go out to my swingset int the backyard and hang until my shoulders felt like they were going to pull out of their sockets, but I never could do a single pull-up.

I think of this when I have a student who requests to learn a piece well beyond their ability level. I think an exciting, challenging piece can be a great motivator, but there is a point where a piece can be so difficult it is truly inaccessible for the time being. The student will try and try, like I did with my hopeless backyard strength training, and get no return.

What's the alternative? Systematically breaking it down (yes, sorry, sometimes you have to be a geek if you want to do a thing well). Unfortunately, when I was a kid we did not have the Internet, but if we had, I would have been able to research pull-ups to learn how to do them, including ways to make them easier. I could learn about the muscles used in pull-ups, and create a plan for building strength in those muscles. I might also acknowledge that overall upper body weakness is an issue for me, and create a complete plan for strength training with the help of a personal trainer.

Maybe, after six months of focused, targeted, and carefully sequenced training I would do a pull-up on the first try. From there, I would finally build up the number of reps I could do in a row.

By contrast, I could take those same six months and spend a few minutes every day trying to do a pull-up to no avail. I strongly doubt I would be able to do a pull-up after six months of that, for two reasons: One, I wouldn't even get to the point where the correct muscles were supporting my body weight; and two, I would probably get bored and frustrated and quit three days into it.

So, back to the musical example. Usually, students have great intuition about which pieces are right for them to learn. But occasionally, not. "I want to learn 'Cliffs of Dover' because it's my favorite song on Guitar Hero." Okay, fine. Go ahead and download the bazillion-page tab and set about learning it. Learn a tiny lick every day. If you don't go mad in frustration within the first ten minutes, after six months you might be able to play the whole thing (if I painstakingly show you how to play every note that you can't figure out on your own).

On the other hand, you could spend those same six months learning fifty easier songs that use similar skills and a similar vocabulary. You can build fluency, speed, and technique while improving your musical ear and your reading skills.

After six months have passed, you may well be able to pick up most of "Cliffs of Dover" by yourself in just a week or two. You might not even need the tab for very much of it, because your fingers will "hear" different parts of the song and automatically go where they belong as a result of playing so much. Because in the process, you learned fifty other songs. You learned how to play the guitar, not just "Cliffs of Dover."

They say you must leap across a chasm in a single, dramatic, all-in move. Or you could go to school, become a civil engineer, and design a bridge that will enable you to easily walk across. The first way only works if it works, and most of the time it doesn't. The second way is built to work every time. Not as daring, but you'll get there in the end.

Where are you attempting with no visible progress? Is there an intermediate benchmark you could be striving for, or a more systematic way to achieve your goal?