What Is Woodshedding? Mastering the Art of Focused Music Practice
audioapartment.com
audioapartment.com
I've always found motor skills very interesting. I'm naturally good at symbolic reasoning but pretty poor at motor learning. For symbolic reasoning tasks, like maths or programming, I just roll stuff around in my head and get better at it. But motor skills I have to physically practice and there is an inaccessible (at least to me) level of unconscious processing where improvement takes place. E.g. performing a handstand is conceptually trivial (stack your weight over your hands) but actually doing it is another matter. In learning to handstand I found I have gradually become more aware of my body's position when upside down but the process of doing so just happens without any conscious oversight. I do handstands and the next day I'm magically better at them.
Anyway, for learning about learning motor skills I've been enjoying the Perception & Action podcast: https://perceptionaction.com/ One key take away is importance of exploring the movement space. In a musical context this would be, I think, jamming. Take a theme and explore. In the context of handstands this would be different entries, movement within the handstand, other related balancing (e.g. headstand).
It's a great and fun mind changer and confidence builder. You learn: You can kinda do something cool. And suddenly technical training isn't something to do for a vague goal of being "a better guitarist" or "a better bassist". Suddenly, I have ideas in my head I cannot express because I'm not good, fast or precise enough. So I need to improve my rhythm counting and improve my precision with 16th notes. Or music theory isn't something to learn "because you're a better musician then", but because that knowledge results in finding more interesting melodies easier and quicker.
The thing about motor learning I like the best is just “getting better with time” despite not practicing. This would be kind of a muscle memory concept over long periods of time. Whereas I don’t feel that really happens for symbolic reasoning
Add repetitive stress injury to that list. Professional pianist here - woodshedding is a necessity under tight deadlines but always involves repetition- and not of the easiest parts of the work being learned. Repetition and difficulty-induced tension are injury-producers.
Part of effective woodshedding in practice involves knowing when to move on to the next section.Any of these signs, move on. Interleaved practice is more effective in terms of long term skill retention than endless blocked practice.
> My buddy and I were just talking about this, how it seems like the art of woodshedding’s taken a backseat these days. Many newbies hitting the live scene, don’t bring that polished vibe.
Gave me an odd vibe (especially that comma after scene).
And of course the author's own description, right next to these sentences:
> Hey there! My name is Andrew, and I'm relatively new to music production, but I've been learning a ton, (...)
A lengthy blog post stating the same basic points in multiple, overly repetitive ways. Very little substance. Maybe instead of music this person is learning about content churn for the modern web.
I'd rather see less of this.