How to study music(Letto 25 volte)

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How to study? How much? What to study?

You have an hour and a half, two, or even three hours to spare. You go to a rehearsal room, or to your home studio. You want to transcribe two solos, practice scales, study a dozen licks, learn four new standards, and practice some Aebersold standalones. After a month of this type of practice, however, you don't notice any improvement.

Do you recognize yourself in this type of behavior?

If the answer is yes, then you are part of the 90% of musicians.

How do you get into the 10% of those who are putting their efforts to good use? There are many ways, let's try to tackle one: 

The reason we don't notice improvements is that this kind of studio is too distracting. It's certainly gratifying, and the gratification comes from the fact that playing with standalone instruments gives us the impression we're playing well, in the sense that what we're doing resembles the result we'd like to achieve. Unfortunately, it only resembles the result we'd like to achieve, and this momentary gratification prevents us from delving deeper into things, severely hindering our progress in our studies. So what can we do?

One fundamental thing to keep in mind: our brains aren't capable of memorizing all that information in such a short period of time, and even if we could, it wouldn't last long. Once the study session was over, we'd have nothing left.

The goal should be simple: focus your time on very few things, and by the end of the session, you should have made some progress. Even if it's very small, it's real progress. 

To do this, we apply the four learning levels, but not the ones used (unfortunately) in our schools: advanced, intermediate, basic, and initial acquisition. This is a learning technique that allows us to break down the problem into its most basic components and work on them one by one until it is fully mastered. 

Let's take an example. We want to learn a new song. To do this, we need to:

1. learn and memorize the melody
2. learn and memorize the chord sequence
3. play it in all keys
4. improvise on the harmonic sequence (see below)

1. 1. 1. do we have material to use on major chords?
      2. do we have any material to use on minor chords?
      3. we have material to use on dominant 7th chords
      4. etc.

5. listen to different performances of the piece
6. improvise on the harmonic sequence in different keys
7. play the song with different rhythms (e.g. swing, bossa nova, rock, etc.)

We could go on and on with this list, and it would never be exhaustive.

As you can see, even a simple study topic like learning a new song can take much more than a few hours of work.

Let's start from point 1): learn and memorize the melody.

We have several options for doing so. We can read it from a fake book, perhaps with incorrect or at least inaccurate chords, or (better) listen to it performed by our favorite musicians and transcribe it (meaning we memorize the melodic line without writing it down).

But how do the 4 levels of learning work?

According to the scheme we could call them: 

1. unconscious incompetence, meaning I don't even know what I can't do. Simply acknowledging this status takes us to the next level, which will allow us to work on the topic.
2. conscious incompetence, that is, I know what I don't know how to do. I've become aware of the things I'm ignorant about, and I'm working to gain expertise in them.
3. conscious competence That is, I know what I'm doing and I apply it consciously. I've worked on the topic and am able to apply my knowledge consciously. For example, I play the theme of the piece, I remember the notes, the intervals that make up the melody, the rhythm on which the melody is built, and I can do it in different keys.
4. unconscious competence, that is, I am able to apply the knowledge I have acquired without thinking about it. So, for example, I can play the theme without thinking about the notes it comprises, the rhythm, or the key. All this happens without having to think about intervals, notes, rhythms, etc.

If we apply this scheme to each item in the list we made previously, and we get to all of them (honestly, without bluffing), we can say that we have somehow solved the problem, and made some progress. 

As Bill Evans said, the problem of improvisation is immense, it can't be solved in a lifetime, and we certainly can't solve it by working on it as a whole. That's why we need to break it down into its components and work on them one at a time, and once we've digested each, we move on to the next topic.

This applies to every single thing we want to study, even for example instrumental technique, or harmony, or reading.

The beauty of this system is that by breaking down the problem into its most basic components, we can work on one at a time and make small progress in a short time. This then allows us to imprint what we've learned in our minds, and it won't fade away.