i have trust issues. i don't think it's the lack of people i could trust, but rather my general lack of faith in people as a whole. even now, while writing this, i get these thoughts... "how do i know who ever reads this wont just start ripping on me?" "how do i know if anybody even cares?" well, i suppose i wont know until i find out.
as i try to think back to how i've gotten to this stage, one issue stands out; that of bullying. i wish i could just isolate the one instant in which i possibly lost faith in everybody, but there seem to be so many instances which i'd forgotten about until very recently. these instances, not only date back to pre-school, but stretch all the way through high school too. i still remember most of these instances very clearly although i'd suppressed them and forgotten about them for years now.
over time, from these bad experiences, i've learnt that by withdrawing myself, i'm able more easily to cope with bullies. in addition, though achievements and awards, i've perhaps been able to somewhat gain the respect of peers, making me less of a target for the bullies. this has controlled me for so long such that it's pretty much become who i am.
it's taken a lot out of me to go back this far and to bring back these things, but i suppose these wounds need to be opened up again if i wish to become a more sociable person.
The issue of practice is still something I need to work out. A recent assignment I had to do research for, allowed me to delve into the more depth about this important issue.
The ultimate goal of practice is to develop a skill. According to psychologists Fitts and Posner, this acquisition occurs in three stages. The Cognitive stage - where conscious attention is required for the development of the basics, the Associative stage - where refinement of activity and elimination of errors occurs and finally the Autonomous stage - in which the skill no longer requires conscious attention.
The most obvious way to get through these stages, is with lots of practice hours. The amount of hours required will depend on the ultimate goal of the person. A study by Ericcson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer looked at three groups of student violinists based upon their teachers' assessments of ability and future careers: "best", "good", "music teachers". It was found that the estimated total practice hours were ranked in descending order. Of course, 'very few persons obtain from their practice all the benefit they hope because, in general, they practice badly' (Kalkbrenner).I happen to be one of those who aren't able to fully optimise practice time. Nevertheless, I've been trying to apply some ideas which I've come across. These ideas happen to all be focused towards making better use of our short term memory in transferring the skill to the long term part. They include: Concentrating, chunking the information and slow practice.
Concentration, although perhaps a fairly obvious and dumb suggestion, is nevertheless extremely important as it promotes accuracy and thus efficient practice. Furthermore it allows us to diagnose problems and work out ways of overcoming them. Consequently, care should be taken to choose an environment in which we able to focus well.
"Chunking" just involves the breaking down of the information into smaller and simpler portions for digestion. We're able to process smaller chunks much faster then larger ones. For instance, with a pen, draw a line of 10 fat dots next to each other and see how long it takes for you to count them up. Then try doing the same thing, but grouping the dots in groups of 2 and 3. Should be much easier to count.
Slow practice helps us to simplify things and prevent unnecessary errors, especially in the early stages of practice. A mentality of 'do it right the first time' could be approached in order to aid this.
This is all involves a lot of hard work, but it's not impossible. Hopefully with more time, I'll be able to optimise my practice time with these techniques and other I may come across.
As defined by google, success is the achievement of
something you have been trying to do.
You hear lots about certain traits and ingredients such as:
passion, commitment, knowledge, management of time, focus, persistence, positivity…
the list goes on. But the question remains; how are we going to find this
passion, this commitment, gather this knowledge, manage our time well, focus
properly, develop persistence and positivity…?
I’d like to think that this all boils down to a matter of
motivation, because if you’ve got enough motivation, you’ll be able to work out
and follow through with the next course of action.
The expectancy-value theorem tells us that people do tasks
if they value the activity or product or anticipate being successful. (i.e.
whether or not you do something will depend upon if you’re motivated enough to
do it)
So, let’s have a further look into this issue of motivation.
I read somewhere, that there are 4 types.
1.Extrinsic – i.e. motivation created through
external reward potential
2.Social – i.e. motivation due to our wanting to
fit in or please others
3.Achievement – i.e. motivation to do better than
others; to enhance our own egos
4.Intrinsic – i.e. motivation due to simple
personal enjoyment
As we can see, the first three are considerably easy to
measure and bounded.
Your reward is usually a tangible thing; there’s a limit to
how well you can fit in/please others; there’s only so much you can achieve.
I do not want to under value the first three types of
motivation since the three external sources, often precede and develop into
intrinsic motivation.
I just want to emphasize the fact that intrinsic motivation has
boundless potential and is a powerful driver of success. Perhaps this intrinsic
motivation may even possibly be that “deep connection with the text” that HSC English
wanted us to develop.
I hope I can learn to develop this type of motivation with
whatever it is I wish to pursue.
This idea came to me late one night while I was considering what to do about my bloody barking dog. I had a think about some other dogs around my neighbourhood and how most of them would easily "obey" the English commands given to them by their respective owners. See, my parents picked up on this, and constantly yell profanities at my dog in Mandarin. I suppose they think if other dogs can understand a language, why can't ours? They just don't realize that a dog responds not to the actual words said, but the the tone and pitch (highness/lowness) of the noise, and that it is through many hard years of reinforcing these commands in a CLEAR and LOGICAL fashion, that the dog is able to respond appropriately. You can't be screaming aggressively at a dog to get him to come to you, and then the next moment rage at him in a similar fashion for doing something bad. That doesn't make any sense >____>. Another difference between my parents methods and those of my neighbours is that we got our dog while he was already an adult (3 human years old; he's 8 now) whereas they've had theirs as puppies. The problem for my dog, being inconsistent patterns of commands, due to the 3 years worth of pitch associations go down the drain; and let's not underestimate the lasting effect of your early years to your development. But anyway, hopefully with more time, my dog will learn to at least appreciate the value of MY commands.
This idea of Pitch in communication really intrigues me. I almost sense that it has relevance to our actual development and the way we respond to other auditory stimuli. I've heard, that before we even learn to understand languages, we first learn to differentiate between different pitches. If this is true, perhaps we are more similar to the dogs than we may think. Poorly communicated messages which give mixed signals, cannot be beneficial for a child's development. They leave a child confused and lacking the essential confidence to do most things. Of course, teachers and schooling help to develop these messages later on, but ultimately by that time, it may already be late. Ultimately there is a huge amount of responsibility on the parents to communicate effectively with the child and PITCH may be a good key to keep in your pocket.
This, leads me to the heart of what I initially wanted to write about, Perfect Pitch ("the ability of a person to identify or recreate a musical without the benefit of an external reference") & Social People. However I might leave that for another time after I do some more research and thinking.
When was the last time you stopped to admire nature, not because you were forced to, or you unintentionally did so, but because you WANTED to? Sometimes I think we take our world and everything in it for granted. In the midst of all this human advancement etc, we seem to have lost touch with nature and its wonders. We only have to look within our solar system to reveal how lucky we are to have what we have here on Earth; Heaven, compared to the desolate, inhospitable hells of the other planets. I know this might sound lame, but I think I've developed a love for nature. Sure some of it might look pretty, but that's not the reason why I've found this attraction. Through the simple act of admiring nature, I've found peace, something precious, something worth sharing, something to appreciate for what it is and not what we want it to be. Unfortunately, it is this general lack of appreciation which will be our undoing as we literally destroy this Heaven of ours.
In the face of an auditory stimulus, do you listen to it? or just hear it? Then again, does it really matter if we never listen and only hear? or vice versa?
Listening involves paying close attention to and following the music. A listener concentrates fully on the music itself and tries hard not to let their mind wander off to anything other than the music. This can probably be helped through the aid of a musical score. Hearing involves a wandering attention span and possible day dreaming. While hearing music, one is probably inattentive and have large lapses in concentration as they let their thoughts float off. Even Bernard Shaw - an Irish literary and musical critic; very much a 'listener' - found his mind wander towards Irish funerals when he heard the Eroica [Beethoven] symphony funeral march (Swanwick 1988 pg 27).
I suppose, with this in mind, wandering off isn't such a bad thing to do, as it is through this that we are able to find meaning within the music and create those associations. Conversely, if we only purely hear and never listen, we may not actually learn anything useful. For example, while listening and studying a score, we may hope to discover connections between the music itself and the composer's life. By just hearing music and not actually needing to think critically, we probably will not uncover these important details.
Both listening and hearing are important. Only every doing one or the other can hinder our development and learning. Consequently we should try not to prioritise one over the other.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References Swanwick K, 1988, Music Mind and Education, Routledge, London
Economics has taught us that trade is more efficient and beneficial when parties specialise and seek economies of scale. We can all agree that this is a very simple and useful model to go by. The more attention we focus on a certain area, the quicker we'll be able to reach our maximum potential. But I've been wondering...when is the right time to seek and pursue a specialisation?... to work much harder towards our potential?
I suppose it would have been during high school in which we were supposed to release our passions and establish - what I so truly seek - a satisfying & rewarding career path. Having to pick a degree to take up at university - forces you, or at least pushes you to specialise in an area - and pretty much acts as a chainsaw does to the branches of the tree of choices.
Realistically, there IS time to change degree and to focus on a totally different area of study. But how much time must be used up wandering almost aimlessly below potential? How much time is too much time wasted? What realisations must we go through in order to come to making those un-regrettable, life changing decisions?
I am very easily motivated and influenced, but without the clear path, I'm getting no where. I guess I've just got more thinking and seeking to do before I can go seek my potential.
If life worked linearly, things WOULD be that simple where outcomes produced by set changes in input are always the same. e.g. what make us *this much* happy? Unfortunately there is no simple answer. I read this in a book about music and science. I had to read through 20 pages of technical jargon about instrument making (cellos) before it hit this point. I'm glad I kept reading.
See, it was going on about an instrument maker - Stradivari who lived within the 16 and 1700s. His instruments are considered the finest in the field because of their quality of sound has never been explained or reproduced. According to wiki, to be called "the Stradivari" of any field is to be deemed the finest there is – that's how great his instruments are.
Many over the years have tried to imitate Stradivari’s instruments, copying visible exactly, but yet have still failed to produce an instrument fine enough to match the sound of Stradivari’s. Even with our technologies now, being able to measure sound qualities and quantify the effect of changing small factors relating to the construct of an instrument ..... we still cannot create a Stradivari. Why is this so? It's because the physical phenomena of the sound an instrument creates... is non linear. There are so many factors involved with, and no simple rule law governing what will happen when things are changed. e.g. the quality of the wood; its thickness, strength, its faults...
The point is... how could Stradivari make such remarkable instruments and overcome this problem of non-linearity? Well through experience, experimentation, and a bit of luck.
Why don't people like to hang around awkward people? I guess that reason is fairly obvious.
Well, on the flip side, awkward people probably don't like hanging around at all =.= But what can we do about it? We weren't all brought up as social kids. We haven't had all those social experiences and practice. We can try, but our failures become more and more noticed as people start to see you in a much more critical way than they used to.
Perhaps there just isn't room in this world for awkward people. Natural selection at work. It's sad.
Today I came to realize the striking parallels between friends and pieces of music that I play so I thought it'd be worthwhile to share.
While reading through various different types of music during my practice today, I realized the following…
Some pieces of music are forgotten and never seen again
Others will always be stuck within your memory and can never be forgotten
Some may sound good but are really simple and shallow on the inside
Others will sound like crap upon first hearing, but be truly deep and meaningful
Some are a waste of time and effort
Others just require more of your time and effort
Some can be learnt really easily
Others will take hours of endless practice to perfect
Some take great amounts of effort to tolerate
Others are much more enjoyable to practice and listen to
Regardless of all the bad and good, I've come to the conclusion that knowledge and experience with a wide variety of music is essential to the development of a person.
