Strategies for Learning Music by Carl Seashore

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Strategies for learning Music

From 'Carl E. Seashore - The Psychology of Music'

Learning anything is an act which must be performed by the learner. It cannot be done for him by the teacher. The only thing, a teacher can do is to assist in creating favorable conditions by motivation, supply of materials, and general guidance.

The first essential then in facing any learning problem is to place the responsibility where it belongs, namely, on the pupil."

12 Rules for efficient learning in Music

1. Select your field of interest.
.... If music cannot qualify for you on the three grounds of ... interest, and personal value, you should, perhaps, avoid it...

In music, select first a general field and within this field from stage to stage a specific aspect or content which you desire to master.

Knowing exactly what is to be learned is the first stage of mastery...

2. Intend to learn.

This does not mean an occasional or sporadic intention but a firm decision to give continuity of effort until mastery is attained.

Occasional intention is ruinous because tends to destroy what has been attained.

The intentions that count in life are habitual. ...When the intention to remember has become a habit, you will have the feeling mastery and joy of achievement

3. Trust the first impression.

In wrestling, shooting, photography - in all acts of skill - success comes to the one who most effectively throws his best energies into a single stroke of effort.

In learning something, make a deliberate and deep first impression and then trust that.

Instead of repeating the impression, repeat the recall or memory.

... This principle is opposed to the rote method by which the learner simply grinds away blindly, thinking that something will be ground in.

When you take up a new selection, make a rapid survey of its general characteristics to note what is familiar and what are new features. Observe or perform the first new feature deliberately, intending to make this first impression adequate and permanent, repeating it in recall, or from recall, as often as is necessary to deepen this first impression; but be determined not to go back for a second impression. Then take the successive new features in turn in the same manner until the whole selection is mastered.

This being done, the individual units can be woven together. Again let us say practice each unit, bind the successive units together, but always by recall and not by repeating impression. Such is the practice that counts. Trust the first impression and your memory will serve you well.

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