The Upside of Quiting

[JeffD]

Should you review this exercise until you can play it cleanly again? If not, why did you practice it in the first place?

I am currently looking at over a thousand items that I have practiced over the last two years, trying to determine which to quit, and which to maintain.

This is the kernal of your question, and I don't want it to get sidetracked in the discussion.

As you say, you want to work your way all the way through The Complete Mandolinist. Presumedly not for itself alone, but to acquire certain skills and abilities the book will give you.

Now, looking forward, at what point do you turn the page to the next exercise? Do you turn the page 1- when you have mastered it in the moment. Or 2 -when you have mastered it to the extent that you have it down when ever you try it, or 3 -do you master it to the point that you will never in the future lose it. And which of these three answers contributes most to acquiring the skills you want to acquire?

It is not clear to me that skills aquisition does not occur with answer 1 and/or 2. What I mean is that answer 3 is not always required to get the job done. You could go on playing into the future, comfortable with what you are able to do, tackling new challenges, and yet, if you were to go back to the exercises you might find yourself extremely rusty and that they would require work to get back into shape. Does that mean you haven't learned what you needed to learn from them? Not necessarily. It could mean you have learned, you have incorporated your new skills into your playing, and the specific exercises are nolonger as relevant.

I find this occurs more often than not.

Always shooting for answer 3, it seems to me, will have the tendency to inhibit your ability to generalize from the exercise to your general playing. The exercise is not the performance piece. It is a way to learn and practice a skill to take forward.

I think it could be very easy to nail an exercise so exactly and so deeply that it is nothing more than a perfected exercise, with no more teaching value. Its stale gum, all chewed out.

I am trying to get at your specific question, however awkward my answer is getting.

It seems to me that you want to track your progress toward your goal not by how many exercises you have mastered, but by whether you are learning the skills you want to learn.

[JonZ]

Jeff--That is a well thought out answer. I appreciate you taking the time to consider and explain your take on it.

I think maybe I gave people the impression that I was bothered by this issue of quiting something. But I am really just curious about how other people approach it. A lot of interesting questions come up about what you have practiced, what you should continue to practice, and what you should start practicing. Sometimes you may see you have outgrown an exercise, and are covering the same skills in a different way, with harder material. You might also recognize ill-conceived exercises, and avoid them in the future. Or you might recognize that an exercise was not appropriate for your level, and needs to be rescheduled for later.

Deciding what to quit practicing and what to maintain is a dilemma, but not a Sophie's Choice dilemma. Everyone should be so lucky as to have my dilemmas!

Apparently there was some untended vexation implied in my OP. So, Alex, I apologize for being sarcastic about your response.

[allenhopkins]

Somehow, the little phrase "Play, don't worry," kept coming to mind. What is one's goal in playing music? Is it recreational, self-expressive, commercial, artistic, self-improving?

It has always been instructive to me, that the verb used with music is "play," not "work." Doesn't mean we don't work at it, or that analysis, structure, organization, planning and evaluation shouldn't be part of it. But really, it is possible to intellectualize a fair portion of the joy out of it, if one's not careful.

It would never occur to me to save or access "thousands of items that I've practiced." And I do have admiration for a musician who has thought that seriously about his craft. But isn't there a feel for what's right and what's "less right," what's helped and what hasn't, what paths led to enjoyment and development, and which were dead ends? There's an instinct that takes over when I start playing, and leads me to go in certain directions.

Since my aspirations for my music are largely avocational, and since I love "playing out" and working on performance skills and repertoire, more than technical development of my instrumental technique, I may be a poor source of advice. Part of me is saying "lighten up" and "go with your gut feeling," which may not be of any use. But that's a particular perspective, of one who emphasizes the "play" in "playing music."

[farmerjones]

If nothing else, it's great food for thought: "The Upside of Quitting." Interesting indeed.
If i were a poker player, the term is "pot invested." The smartest/best recognize when the it's statistically correct to fold. But it's based on serveral factors including instinct. Do you suppose instinct is the word that covers all that can't be conveyed? Think about this: Quitting (anything) too early, results in underdeveloped potential. Quitting too late, results in wasted time. We all know personal time is finite, and extremely valuable. But is it more valuable than unfullfillment? There may be a ballance point if neither can be achieved concurrently. But i do think one can quantify deminishing returns. FWIW ima poor poker player. Thanks again.

[JonZ]

There are many areas where instinct suffices. For example, most people can gage their heart rate well enough to get the same benefits as some one using a heart rate monitor.

However, there are also areas where our instincts lead us astray. A good book on the subject is "Predictably Irrational". Also, you do see threads on the Café from people who are "in a rut", so I suppose their instinct has failed them.

I would say that seeing the data on the items I have practiced a lot, but not gotten great results from, was surprising in some cases, and what I expected in others.

[catmandu2]

'll have to look that book up . Both my wife and I are hghly intrigued by erratic compulsions (because they often are behind some of the more interesting human phenomena), while we may come at it from somewhat different angles most of the time (my wife being the clinician). Until we more consistently fathom the depths and apprehend the fugitive phenomena behind the essence, poetry and music can convey the profundity of the expression of our experiences of essence like no other mode and thread of communication.

[Bertram Henze]

I am in the "practise music, not exercises" camp. But then I am a player of ITM, where all technical procedures are frequently reused anyway, so exercises would be sunk costs.

Trying to be a complete musician, OTOH, raises the question if it is possible to really feel every genre. Technique can enable you to mimick, say, an Irish tune, but every fulltime ITM player can tell that it's not coming from the heart. Nature does not endorse completeness, or else there would be only one animal species that can run, swim, fly, dig, eat grass, hunt prey - apparently completeness is sunk costs as well. In other words: who can play everything can play nothing.

[catmandu2]

Nature does not endorse completeness,

Alternatively, nature is complete--music is thte perfect example. If anything is all-encompassing, it is music. It is all around us, beneath and above us. What is not music?

[Bertram Henze]

Nature is complete--music is thte perfect example. If anything is all-encompassing, it is music. It is all around us, beneath and above us. What is not music?

I should have said "Nature does not endorse completeness in one individual". A variety of incomplete individuals is what we find, and music, like language, is a communication medium between them. But like no single person speaks all languages like a native speaker, no single person plays all genres authentically - that would not be "economical" from nature's point of view.

[catmandu2]

Do you mean, in this moment, just now?

[Bertram Henze]

In this one, and the one after the one before.

[JonZ]

How about this one?

[catmandu2]

I should have said "Nature does not endorse completeness in one individual". A variety of incomplete individuals is what we find, and music, like language, is a communication medium between them. But like no single person speaks all languages like a native speaker, no single person plays all genres authentically - that would not be "economical" from nature's point of view.

But what is Nature's "point of view?"--this one, or that one, or the other one, (or all of them)...?

Reality is clear--but for our thoughts we would see it

[JeffD]

Alternatively, nature is complete--music is thte perfect example. If anything is all-encompassing, it is music. It is all around us, beneath and above us. What is not music?

Whoa. That is philosophically lazy. Certainly if you define everything as music, then music is everything. But if not, not. Not everyone is that far out on the John Cage continuum.


Discussion for another thread I would think, but what is music is what is used as music. So the sound of babbling brook is music if you are listening to its beauty and appreciating its aesthetic dimension, but not so if you are using it to locate brook trout.




Two eggs over, bacon, potatoes, rye toast, and coffee. Is that music, or what?

[catmandu2]

Whoa. That is philosophically lazy. Certainly if you define everything as music, then music is everything. But if not, not. Not everyone is that far out on the John Cage continuum.

Okay, if you say so. I do however agree, wholeheartedly, on your last point.

[JeffD]

Okay, if you say so

[catmandu2]

Two eggs over, bacon, potatoes, rye toast, and coffee. Is that music, or what?

Well this seems more like poetry to me.

But in defining "what is music"--you could help me overcome my philosophical laziness. So, how do we "define" music?

[Bertram Henze]

Two eggs over, bacon, potatoes, rye toast, and coffee. Is that music, or what?

Make the eggs sunny side up, add tomatoes and replace the coffee with tea, that'll work for me.

In fact, Ciaran Carson dedicates a whole chapter ("Boil the Breakfast Early") to , as he calls it, "The Fry", in his book on Irish music "Last Night's Fun".

[JeffD]

If i were a poker player, the term is "pot invested."

This is another interesting way to look at it. Jon's original conception was the "sunk cost" aspect. This became very real to me and my company recently, where we had two alternatives: one where we had invested a lot of dollars to develop something we really need. We had not yet completed the project, when all of a sudden what we need is available commercially off the shelf. And yep, the off the shelf cost is cheaper than how much it will take to finish what we started, and the results are essentially the same. The correct decision was to abandon the development and purchase off the shelf, and the sunk cost goes in the "spilt milk" file, where we try not to cry about it.

But your analogy is along the lines of a pay to play, and at what point does it not make sense to play anymore.


Coming all the way around this subject I think the real answser is that these analogies don't apply, at least not enough to guide our (Jon's) decisions. The real truth is that mastering this or that exercise was important at one time, because the skills promised were not yet acquired, and now, after we are in a different place, and either through accomplishement or through changing tastes, the importance of keeping the mastery of those execises is brought into doubt.

I used to be a bit of a whiz at multiplication tables. It was an excellent stepping stone to the further reaches of mathematics. Now I find that, through lack of constant drilling, I have to think a beat or two on some of them. But I am not going to go back and drill multiplication tables, because so many things are different, and that activity serves no purpose to me in my present configuration.

Except that, darn it all, it does feel like quitting.

[catmandu2]

... what is music is what is used as music. So the sound of babbling brook is music if you are listening to its beauty and appreciating its aesthetic dimension, but not so if you are using it to locate brook trout.

I see. But, why not?

I experience the locating of trout like a dance -- these days. Come to think of it, I've been seeing the trout dancing in the river more like music, too, these days..

[JeffD]

Even Schubert's "La Morte e la Fanciulla" ceases to be music and becomes noise if it is on too loud and you are trying to telephone your nephew, deployed 4000 miles away.

[catmandu2]

Even Schubert's "La Morte e la Fanciulla" ceases to be music and becomes noise if it is on too loud and you are trying to telephone your nephew, deployed 4000 miles away.

You are funny. Clearly, this is a dance too! Do we dance to noise, or music?

[catmandu2]

Before anyone becomes overly upset with my "oppositionalism," I just wanted to repsond to Bertram's point that, "no single person plays all genres authentically"--as of course we mostly can agree that we all do see and experience things partially, incompletely, discretely, and compartmentally, usually. Which of course gives rise to a viewpoint (not that anyone here necessarily holds) like, "music is only like this, but not like that," etc.

However, with music, I find it touches, for me, upon many more things--many things that I do not "know." Bernstein's statement, that--"music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable"--addresses some of this aspect. I do not "know" a great many things--but I connect with, feel, and intuit a great deal beyond that of which I do not "know." If I do not really "know" all things around me, above me and inside me, how would I know that any of these things--many of which compel me to dance, sing, and experience beauty--are not music?


And I do apologize Jon for carrying on, however interesting I find the matter to be...it's just the first thing that occurred to me last evening after Bertram's post. I hope it doesn't make anyone angry, as it's only another perspective..

[jlavkuli]

If I taught philosophy I would have my students read this thread as an assignment.

[catmandu2]

Oh, I forgot to say my response to Bertram! Ha.

Of course, as Beteram says, none of us are likely to have an authentic relationship to all the cultural and biological expressions on the planet. But, thinking from a more, perhaps primordial, view, there is a part of me that feels music -- Latin clave, African m'bira, flamenco duende, blues soul, Irish craic -- and does not so much consciously differentiate among these. There is an aspect--where music, poetry, and beauty dwell--that we may apprehend through exploring the senses and beyond. We may be unversed and untrained in specific vocabulary, naturally, but there may be an aspect--even an essence--beneath this that we may access, and may not yet "know." This is particularly strong, for me, in rhythmic forms.

Mingus said (probably more in a political context) we spend too much time and thought with "who" we are (personality, ego) and "where" we come from (nationalism, ethnicity). A better question might be "what" we are...