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Absolutely. I'm a guitarist, and have been for over 30 years. I'm good, but not REALLY good, and I hit a wall in terms of technical ability / speed a long time ago - after about 5 years of playing. Nothing I did improved my speed and I didn't have the accuracy of a Malmsteen or MacAlpine, despite practicing religiously for hours at a time. I thought I had a speed limit and that was that - everyone I consulted felt the same.

It's only been in the last few months and via complete luck on YouTube that I appear to have discovered the missing piece of the jigsaw (two way pick slanting) - had I known this when I was 18 I would have been of a much higher level. Being 45, having old bad habits to overcome and the demands of a family with 4 kids and a chronic bad back means I don't have the time to devote to the improvements I'd love to make, but from my experience, I know that "practice" is not enough, it needs to be the right practice, and sometimes that means a subtle nuance which is not apparent to some, maybe for years. I've helped some of the kids I teach in a similar way, with them then "getting" an idea they've not understood for a long time, so there needs to be more analysis than simply "practice", in my opinion.

Was it just luck, or are you actually not creative enough to figure out new and useful things in your own?

(say, extended guitar playing techniques)

An open question so far.

In the history of skills (guitar playing, mastery of swordplay, music composition, etc), it's not inconceivable that someone could go a long time and not happen to notice the same things that masters of the discipline have been taught. Most human endeavors and learning comes not by independent discovery of everything, but by building on what the people before us have learned. It's a rare genius who can skip that.

Swordmasters in the renaissance studied each others' books and teachings, much as physics students might study the publications of others in their discipline. The insights they each made might not have all been in technique itself, but sometimes in new ways of teaching it, or describing the nuances of what their masters ("no, do it THIS way ...") had told them in a different way which made it easier to teach.

For many physical endeavors, it seems like there are often a few Good ways to do something Right -- shoot a bow, hold a calligraphy pen, etc. You MIGHT stumble upon the best way to do it on your own, but it seems a little ridiculous to scoff that someone is "not creative enough" to figure out what nuance of technique they have been missing.

> Most human endeavors and learning comes not by independent discovery of everything, but by building on what the people before us have learned.

That's correct!

Like Isaac Newton said - if I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants.

Link: http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/o...

No, I've figured out LOADS of stuff on my own and then found others had done so, or had different names for it. I started doing hybrid picking when no-one I knew was doing it, and other techniques. Remember as well, this was in the 80s - there just wasn't the access to information that is available today; the kids I teach now say "how are you so good at working things out?", but it was the only way to play most of the music I liked when I was a kid; good transcriptions were like hen's teeth, and I remember having to negotiate with the guy who owned the paper shop (where I had a paper round - remember I was 14-15 at the time!) to speak to his distributor to order american guitar magazines so I could get the good stuff. I'd go to London once every couple of months and buy a VHS instructional tape. It wasn't like today when you can find an in-depth lesson from a world master within 5 minutes.

But the point is that it was one specific (and subtle) technique that I missed, and everyone else missed, or didn't instruct people to do - that completely stalled my playing. And I know I'm not the only one!

I play double bass, not guitar, but I suspect there are parallels. My answer is: No, I'm not creative enough, or maybe too creative. In my view, most technical experiments are blind alleys. And a problem with musical instruments, perhaps with double bass as an extreme case, is that some experiments can lead to permanent injury.

I have met two fine young bassists who were both crippled by trying unorthodox techniques, to the point where it interfered with their careers: For instance they had to curtail preparation for critical auditions.

Meanwhile, I have consciously stuck with the stodgy classical technique that I learned as a kid, and at age 52, can still play a four hour gig on the one instrument in the band that never gets a break.

This is why having a good coach can make all the difference. It does no good practicing the wrong techniques.

There is an enormous benefit to having a really good teacher or coach to help the students who got something subtle a bit wrong way back up the chain. You need someone who doesn’t only deeply understand how to do the task perfectly, but also has a deep understanding of all the different ways the task can be done improperly, and what the underlying misunderstandings or problems are which cause those mistakes, who knows the best way to nudge the learner back on track, and who has endless empathy and good will and enough time to make sure the correction happens.

I recommend Shinichi Suzuki’s lovely little 1969 book about “talent education”, Nurtured by Love, https://amzn.com/0874875846

Indeed. I've been playing the kaval (an end blown flute) for more than 10 years and there have been many times when I'd hit the wall. I also play a bit of guitar, but kaval has been much harder to master. I think that this is because, when compared to guitar, kaval has a lot more independent variables, such as breathing, embouchure(lip shape), throat, how hard you push the instrument to your lips, how your hands take turns pushing the instrument to your lips and also some special kinds of vibrato and articulation. With so many independent variables to control it is really inevitable that you fall victim into this "unspoken context". I realized this a couple of years ago when I had the chance to spend time with some of the greatest masters of the instrument. Since I already had some practice and skills behind me, I asked a lot of questions and tried to get as deep as possible in every single nuance of the techniques. I was really surprised to find out that those great masters can't actually explain a lot of things that they do. As you guys said, maybe they just got it right early enough (e.g. by chance). In the beginning I did not believe it, but when I encountered this with several great performers I changed my approach radically. First, I stopped playing for a few months in order to get rid of some bad baggage that I may have accumulated and to start fresh. Then I started watching videos of these masters with the audio turned off and I would then practice in front of a mirror. At some point I discovered that some of the movements that I do are the same as the ones I've seen on the video and focused on them (recording your sessions also helps). This has helped me progress much better. So how do you get as much of this "unspoken context"? Well it depends on your own strengths and abilities. I'd say that it is crucial to seek close contact with great performers that are way ahead of you. E.g. go to live performances, seminars or if that's not possible, just watch videos of these. I must admit that one of these masters, who is also a teacher has given me some really great advice on things I have to improve. This is because he not only got those unspoken things right, but also fully realized them mentally, so he can turn them into advice. But those teachers are really rare to find.

I have some friends in the dance business. Even (especially!) the top professionals routinely hire various coaches to see if they'll catch something missed. They'll also regularly go right back to the basics of how to take a step. They'll be in the studio just walking back and forth.

What's weird about dance is what looks natural and elegant to the observer is a rather contorted and sometimes painful position for the dancer.

I have been practicing the Japanese martial art of Aikido for 25 years or so, and also kenjutsu from 20. It's really interesting to observe different methods of training, and in my teaching to try and work out how best to pass this on.

As a generalisation (take with pinch of salt), the classic Japanese method does not have lots of explanation - teacher demonstrates, teacher works with student, can be quite hands on with corrections to body posture etc, but not typically lots of explanation. There are also exercises shown to develop body conditioning, and awareness. These include exercises such as standing, or slow deep walking, which initially are not obvious as to what is happening and why. The students who take these on trust and go off and do them in their own time are the ones who make progress. There is also quite a lot of focus on "mitori keiko" - training by watching, so training people to become more observant about what they are seeing and then be able to take that understanding or images and apply it to their own training.

Western students tend to require more explanation. They ask "why should I do this (apparently boring) exercise?". There can be a tendency to pursue acquisition of technique rather than fundamentals. They are less likely to take things on trust and work it out for themselves. Of course there are plenty of great Western practitioners and plenty of poor Japanese ones.

As a teacher I found my tendency was to try and explain too much. I find I get better results when working with people and making them feel things. I have seen my main teacher in Japan work on someone for 5-10 minutes and extract out them very signficiant improvement in that time - and he has done that to me. He can give people a taste for a new level and inspire them, but the challenge then is to go off and do the personal work to really own that new level or those insites. That is a goal for me to be able to do the same for my students.

My main teacher in UK was a contemporary dancer for his working life, and with his contacts etc has inspired quite a few dancers to come to the dojo. It has been interesting for me to work with them over the years, and understand how varied dance training can be. Some dance training seems to be more about the externals - make a move look a certain way, without worrying about the internal mechanics of the body. And yet of course other training is at a deeper level, training awareness. I realised over time the distinct difference between someone who is very flexible, and yet can feel relatively "hard" - just due to their background and the focus of their training to that point.

I found Josh Waitzkin's book on learning about his experiences as a chess prodigy and then learning and competing at Taiji Push Hands to highest levels. He writes about deepening his awareness, and also the sheer time spent in practising and analysing his techniques and failures etc.

There is a saying for vocal coaches that singing before going to see one is mostly useless, and that it's a 10 year journey, starting with their lessons, towards being an adequate singer.

That's the thing - I went to a load, including people who were really, REALLY good technically, but they weren't aware of what they were doing; even people like Malmsteen, etc., didn't really know exactly -how- they were doing what they were doing in many cases, and they certainly weren't explaining it clearly. I remember writing to Guitarist magazine (in the UK) about it, and getting a fairly standard reply of "practice the patterns and notch the metronome up every week", but that was what I'd already been doing for years - and had been told to do that by everyone.

It depends. I have a thick skull, even with the best teacher I probably wouldn't "understood" the advices until my own intuition about things was matching them. I took years to learn some stuff, that I could have found in a one afternoon if I asked the right questions. But I couldn't. Now I know that I am capable of finding them, and that I can also communicate to share point of views and ideas. Also, teachers could be wrong too. There's a lot of stuff in my understanding of music that I find no trace of in theory (except for the "swing it" tag on a score).

That is the thing about (good) teachers: they have a lot of pedagogical content knowledge (Fachdidaktik). They know what questions to ask to what student at what time in her learning process. They know what examples, metaphors, strategies, and so on, might work for certain students or situations. They understand the individual nature of a student's learning process and are able to fit their teaching to best guide a student towards deepening their understanding and reaching a learning goal. That is also what makes teaching hard and it is not easily learned or taught either. A teacher not only needs a good understanding of the topic herself, but she also needs expertise teaching the topic, and manage the students and the classroom pedagogically sound to boot.

This is what I worry about the MOOC's: a lot of the best teachers I've had personally, and observed (with children), drew a vast tree of pedagogical techniques, but used their evaluation of a student's individual personality/psychology to inform them of which node/branch to select next. The most sophisticated MOOC's ever get is to brute-force try one node after another, if they support presenting the same material in a different way at all. And there isn't a classification system that I'm aware of to organize all the branches, especially around annotations that say "this branch appropriate if personality/psychology tends towards <this>" (yet another ontological terra incognita, I'm not aware of any classification system to describe students' pedagogical personality/psychology, which can change even depending upon context like subject matter, mood, etc.).

MOOC's are a step in the right direction, but far, far from a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer idealized vision that I would like to see.

If I may add my 2 cents, I almost never interacted positively with teachers at the College level. Mostly because I became borderline sociophobic tbh. MOOCs removed a big barrier between teacher judgement and politics (they're human, they can be prejudiced). Also gave me way more opportunity to collaborate and exchange with other students (mostly through IRC channels).

Very good point. I strongly suspect as an individual's autodidactic capabilities increase, the need for highly-attuned teachers decreases, and by college-level academics MOOCs may be far more effective in that context. I think ironically however, that the need for high-attuned mentors comes up later, as the academics segues into field practice.

Knowing what good technique is is a bit of a red herring I think--the bugbear of people who aren't that good yet, or the recently-good. I say this because I used to watch out for examples of poor guitar technique and be sort of critical of them but in doing so I noticed something--the moment poor technique got in the way of what they were doing they stopped doing it. Immediately, mid tune, no problem. I've seen this countless times--you can watch someone go from having their thumb on the top of the neck and their pinky on the soundboard and all sorts of little deficiencies and just watch each of them drop away and come back as the music requires it. This kind of malleability in the moment is the common element in the best musicians I think. As a matter of practice you'll certainly waste less time if someone points out poor technique early for you, but beyond the edge cases where poor technique is injurious that's about it (and I'd note, the vast majority of steel string guitar finger-style playing is of the injurious sort, but its just rarely played long and vigorously enough to become so). On the other hand, read this interview with Keith Frazer [1], whose slavish devotion to proper technique has left him irreparably damaged.

The fact is, at a certain level of playing, you stop asking "is this correct technique?" and you start asking, "does this make the music I am playing better? am i bringing attention to what i want to bring out of the piece? does it make it easier to play?" Preoccupation with correct technique as a separate existing thing from external authority becomes a hindrance. You want to learn about your art from those around you, and have them learn from you. If you don't feel ready or capable of being independent in this regard, that's fine. But not everyone is an amateur, and no one claims to ever stop learning, so what are they doing differently?

e: What most interests me about the article is that this comment section is filled entirely with people, like myself, who's opinion on the matter has not been changed one iota by the article

[1] http://www.keithfrazer.com/interview.htm

I loved drumming, after 6 years of banging into walls, this was my most precious lesson: be smart in what you do. Practice slow and simple, but deeply and patiently. Everytime I was hitting a wall, it's because I was blinded by my own false assumptions. It was mostly a journey into the self as much as in music (after that I called her the fair bitch).

Is this the pick slanting technique you're talking about? http://troygrady.com/2015/01/08/the-difference-between-picks...

Do you remember which video it was that made you "get it"? I'd like to watch it too!

Yeah, it's all Troy Grady; If you've watched "Cracking The Code" - the entire series, then basically, that was me, aside from me not getting the idea. I'm about the same age as Troy, FTR. The problems I had (particularly playing things such as from Tony MacAlpine's first album) all stem from not being able to get out from "beneath" the strings, and Troy's clear marshalling of all those ideas into a coherent method have opened the door to at least having another go. When I get time to practice - and that shouldn't be underestimated in terms of time - I can make progress, having already been able to play things I couldn't manage in the last 30 despite my lack of time and physical ability to play for long periods now.

I'm curious what the new technique did to your speed. Can you quantify?

Malmsteen plays mostly a single pattern of triplets that he moves around the fretboard. It's a very well-rehearsed parlour trick, that he can use for good effect in real tunes (in combination with his good tone and confident presentation), but that's all it is in the end. It doesn't compare to the labyrinthine gymnastics demanded by actual classical pieces, many of which have passages with unique fingering challenges: no one-size-fits-all fits all shred pattern.

Malmsteen himself is better when he slows down; he really should keep the triplet cheese grating to a minimum. Its effectiveness is inversely proportional to the size. A good example is the "I'm a Viking" guitar solo; there is heap of shred notes at the beginning as an intro, but then it goes slow, with just some connecting speedy bits here and there.

I've been playing mandolin for a few years and discovered the importance of pick angles while improving my tremolo. I realized that you cannot just keep the pick in the same orientation all the time so, nerd that I am, I started thinking about each stroke as a vector in six dimensional space (position and orientation in 3D). The trick for me is to simplify that to the point where I get the results I need.

Most of the material I saw online just had some basic recipes to improve right hand technique, there are very few systematic and rigorous explanations. I think that's where a good teacher can make a massive difference.

On the other hand I also have first-hand experience with nature vs. nurture - I play music with my wife and kids and I'm clearly the least talented although everyone brings something unique to the family band.

As always, the truth is a combination x * talent + y * nurture so I'm glad to see the discussion turning that direction.

Absolutely, and this is right at the center of Ericsson's theory of excellence, learning and deliberate practice [1]. He calls this 'mental representations', and together with the 'brain's flexibility' they form the 2 pillars of his theory. The rest of the theory (e.g., deliberate practice) stems from these 2, that is, how can we actually change our brain to record in our long-term memory the most and best (pre-computed) mental representations. That's what distinguishes an expert: the quantity and quality of the mental representations.

The method involves 6 factors that have to be adapted to the specific skill:

* 1. having specific goals

* 2. getting slightly out of your comfort zone

* 3. focus and concentration during practice (ideally close to 1 hour)

* 4. feedback

* 5. practising a sufficiently developed human activity

* 6. having a teacher/coach (and keep getting a better one, adjusted to your current level)

* 7. (additional point: starting early in life)

Point 5 is the difference between practising, say, the violin (for which we have literally centuries of the best performers teaching the following generations, always improving, up to a near threshold) to practising say skateboard which is a few decades old of serious practice or any recent boardgame, say. No one knows what are the best tactics and strategies. Even sports: consider how many world records from some years ago would not qualify you for the olympics today. Naturally if you're not learning the violin but something else less developed, you just try to find the best current method and mental representations, and discover better ones to gain a decisive edge on your competion (with perhaps less practice time or talent (eg, height)).

I also agree with your point on metacognition, but that's an even broader subject to discuss.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/...

I think in a similar way, and one of the nice consequences of this is, as you mention, that there's hope: you can try to attack your problem in as many ways as possible from as many angles as possible and find the "tiny unspoken thing" in a context one might not normally expect it.

Might be that creativity is a heritable part of talent too. Generating multiple contexts, finding those tiny inspirations.

An interesting counterpart is that our current education systems are trying their best to suppress creativity and give fish instead of a fishing rod.

I encountered this in real life in a completely different field.

As a schoolboy I studied the trumpet. My teacher was an excellent trumpeter. He gave me exercises every week and said "Just play these for an hour a day and you'll have no problems".

I would go away and put in my hour a day practice and get no where. I wanted to play the high notes like those jazz bands but I would get no where.

I'd go back to my teacher and he'd give me another set of exercises. Diligently I go away and repeat the same process.

Other students of his seemed to do well, but not everyone. It seemed really rather random.

He was a great player but I believe he had very little introspection and didn't really know what made him great in a pedagogical sense. He was likely making minute movements with the muscles of his mouth that he had no idea about but he just stumbled across with his hours of practice.

After this experience I realised how skill in a topic and teaching ability are quite different. Sometimes a person has both at a high level and is really an excellent teacher, but often there are times where someone is a player, not a teacher.

Coming from the world of classical ballet, this is a very familiar issue.

In ballet, it is often said that the best dancers are the worst teachers.

The very best teachers are the ones who had no talent and spent insane hours trying to figure out which muscles to use, at what moment and with what intensity. They are the ones who will tell you that you need to push the opposing arm in the turn in order to have enough force for multiple turns without falling over.

The best dancers will tell you to "just turn". They have a natural sense for balance in turns and don't understand why you keep falling over.

Very Thoughtful comment. Some things we knew intuitively but have never spoken out in words to oneself and those kind of thoughts kind of fades away or lies in very deep in the memory. This comment is one of those kind of Things. Thanks for putting it in words.

By coincidence, I just finished Anders Ericsson's (the person mentioned in the article as arguing in favour of practice) book and he mentions pretty much exactly this. It's not that it's just about practice, but it's about practicing in the right way and having the correct mental models of what you're doing in order to improve. He believes that if you practice without focusing on the correct things and without knowing how to get better (usually by having a good coach who knows what it will take and what techniques you need to learn) then you can't expect to get as good as other people.

Great comment. One thing I believe is worth mentioning is that even if a person practices to find this "tiny thing" in their heads and fix it, they may not find it for a very long time. Some people can practice something for decades and still not be professional with whatever they are doing. They could also figure one "tiny thing" out but their may be many more "tiny things" to uncover after that.

In my opinion, this is why dyslexic folks think differently and neurodiversity is real.

Anders Ericsson (mentioned in the story) wrote an accessible book ("Peak") about his research.*

He says that the route to optimal performance is "deliberate practice" and that one of the components of deliberate practice is supervision by a coach who can provide feedback and personalized challenges.

I think that kind of fits with your idea, except that he suggests that the source of feedback should be another person.

* Incidentally, he also debunks the whole "20000 hours" thing and seems not too keen on Malcolm Gladwell.

While I agree with your overall point, that's not the way I would express it. Mistakes that make a big difference are by definition not tiny. It's just that a less sophisticated practitioners don't realize that it matters. Being better at something is often realizing what does and what doesn't matter.

I like this view, that there are many subtle things that one person got right and another didn't - couldn't you say that person A was just naturally (genetically advantaged) to discovering those things in their field of mastery?

I would also add to that curiosity, which leads to desire, which makes mastery that much easier.

You could settle for a genetics explanation, but why would you?

Other hypotheses are much more easily testable, and certainly more inspiring to the newcomer, and haven't been scientifically exhausted yet.

If everyone just said "it's probably not in my genes" they wouldn't even try, disregarding tons of historical factors that may have stopped their ancestors from creating a record.

This is basically how I feel about dating.

Your theory suggests all people are equivalent, but learn by happenstance. To further your theory, would people in a set of skills have random attributes? It would be interesting to see if all chess grandmasters share any common traits, or not.

My theory doesn't suggest that all people are equivalent. As I stated pure intellect lies in metacognition.

I also think that learning or solving problems is not deterministic algorithm, it's a heuristic. If it's heuristic there are lots of random elements and tuning.

Obviously, everybody have their own "hardware" limit determined by genes but often people make big mistake thinking they already reached their limit by simply getting stuck in some topic without seriously and very fundamentally reconsider their whole approach to the problem or learning process itself.

I think often in these situations, possible limit is much, much, much higher than one might think.

I'm not OP, but I don't think that was an intended implication. It is my understanding that the genetic component of intelligence is widely acknowledged. I think the OP's model is still valid and useful, despite genetically-driven differences.

True. Gene matters. But that does not mean we should give up hope. This is not being stubborn. This is just logical. Its like running two operating systems on a same hardware. One of them must be really faster than the other just because it has the instructions in different order and that's meta cognition. Keep changing the order of instructions, because we don't have a proof for the limit on the hardware.

Absolutely. I think you just described what in short hand is normally called talent.

There's a term for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge

here are lots, lots and lots of tiny unspoken things which could make huge difference in long run

The technical term for these tiny unspoken things is, I believe, "alleles."

Yup. Best thing I ever did for my dancing was reading "The Inner Game of Tennis".

That's why it's important to work hard AND work smart.