[Harp-L] Getting Good and Getting Even Better

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I promise that this post is about playing harmonica.

I've always been intrigued by how quickly the people who get good at music 
get good at it.  The best Rock and Roll songwriters, Dylan, Lennon and 
McCartney, Leiber and Stoller, Brian Wilson, for instance, wrote most of 
their most famous and influential material before they were 25, just a few 
years after they started learning to do it.  Robert Johnson is said to have 
been a mediocre musician before going away for a summer of woodshedding, 
and returning with his genius in full flower.

I've also wondered why it is that some people become skilled at playing 
harmonica, while other people become monsters at it.  The notion that 'some 
people have talent'  doesn't explain anything, it just stops the inquiry cold.

There's an article up on the Scientific American website called "The Expert 
Mind" that has some great insight into this question, and on other matters 
of becoming an expert.  Though it examines the notion of becoming a chess 
expert, the answers map over to harmonica playing effortlessly.  If you're 
interested, you can read it at
http://tinyurl.com/p7xot

Here's a relevant portion:
"...Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but 
"effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie 
just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to 
spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical 
instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a 
properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It 
is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, 
appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main 
training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners 
so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But 
having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with 
one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their 
performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further 
improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's 
box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its 
contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields..."