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PRACTICE TIPS #59: Forget It!
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Brent Hugh
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Mar 16, 2001 14:27 PST
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PRACTICE TIPS is an *occasional* email newsletter with practical
piano practice tips and ideas, by Brent Hugh
You are receiving PRACTICE TIPS because you subscribed to PRACTICE
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PRACTICE TIPS #59: Forget It!
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A recent article by the Associated Press summarizes some interesting
research that has ramifications for piano practicing. First, the research,
then my conclusions.
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Study of Mind's Ability to Repress Backs Freud
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An experiment has found that people can push an unwanted memory out of
their minds, lending credence to Sigmund Freud's theory of repression.
In the study, published yesterday in the journal Nature, college students
who had memorized pairs of words were later shown half of the pair and
asked to either say the corresponding word or try to forget the second word.
The more the participants were asked to put words out of their minds, the
less likely they were to recall the word later, even when paid to remember
the word.
In the second study, which was conducted on rats, researchers found that
the growth of new neurons in a part of the brain known as the hippocampus
area of the brain is necessary to form memories relating two events
separated over time.
. . .
Michael Anderson, who led the study of 32 students, said the participants
were about 10 percent less likely to remember the second word after 16
attempts to repress the memory, a figure he said he expected would climb if
repression continued.
. . .
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How does the research apply to piano practicing?
A. There are LOTS things you want to "forget" or "block out" in music
learning. For instance, you may have learned a passage with the wrong
notes, the wrong rhythm, or the wrong fingering. You may have learned the
wrong physical motions or you may be playing a way that is too tight or
tense.
We often think about "learning" to play the piano or to play a particular
piece, but (to coin a phrase . . . ) it is worth remembering that
FORGETTING is an important part of the learning process. Inevitably as
part of the learning process we learn "wrong" things. Rather than freezing
up at the idea that we might learn something wrong, we simply need to
realize that when learning something new, the learning process goes
something like this:
1. Learn a lot of new material. Some of it will be right,
some wrong, and some partly right and partly wrong.
2. Refine the new learning by "forgetting" some of the
wrong things and replacing them with right things.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 continually for the rest of your life.
More about this next week . . .
An Unrelated Note
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My electronic composition, "Music of the Human Genome", has recently
received some international press coverage and hit the MP3.com Top 40 chart.
You can hear "Music of the Human Genome" at
http://mp3.com/Brent_D_Hugh
or http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/1301/1301401.html
You can read about "Music of the Human Genome" on WiredNews at
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,42306,00.html
or
http://www.stjoenews-press.com/Main.asp?TypeID=1&ArticleID=13916&SectionID=81&SubSectionID=354&S=0&UID=200403
Happy Practicing!
--Brent
MWSC Piano Camp 2001, for students currently in 6th-12th grade, is June
15-20, 2001. Please visit http://www.mwsc.edu/~pianocmp/ for more information.
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PRACTICE TIPS is by pianist, teacher, composer, and internet nerd
Brent Hugh. Brent knows about practicing mostly because he *does*
it, and in fact is toddling off to do some of it just about now . . .
Please remember that this tip is but a small brown hair near the
elephant's left rear knee--it's not even close to the whole
elephant that is "how everyone in the whole world should practice
the piano".
Practice Tips Archives (updated about once a month):
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+++++++++++++++++ Brent Hugh / bhu-@mwsc.edu +++++++++++++++++
+ Missouri Western St College Dept of Music, St. Joseph, MO +
+ Piano Home Page : http://www.mwsc.edu/~bhugh +
+ Music IQ Songs : http://mp3.com/MusicIQ +
++ Music of the Human Genome : http://mp3.com/brent_d_hugh ++++
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