Strategies for Learning Music by Carl Seashore

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Strategies for learning Music

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

4. Classify: learn by thinking.

Thinking is meeting new difficulties with deliberation and solving them.

If it is a new fact, a stroke, a phrase, a difficult fingering, note it's relation to what you already know or can do.

Recognition of this relationship is the bond that ties the new to the old, which is the act of learning. Intelligent learning consists largely in effective classification. Therefore, fit each new experience into its relationships to what you already have; that is, classify it deliberately with great precision and with as full meaning as possible.

The botanist can recognize and recall thousands of plants be-cause he has the habit of seeing relationships. One plant is like another in this and that respect; therefore, it belongs to the same class. Instead of remembering the thousands of individual plants, the botanist remembers them by types and relationships, each within the class to which it belongs. So it is in music. Note the relationship of the new experience, classify it in the first impression, and it will be yours.

For this reason, the first impression should be very deliberate and should be lingered upon until the details and character of its meaning are adequately recognized. To the student who is accustomed merely to grind away, it is difficult to realize what a short cut to learning this principle furnishes. It is the key to most of the systems of memory training which have been famous from time to time in the past.

5. Cultivate concrete imagery.

We see, hear, taste, touch, or smell an object in its presence; we may recall it and see, hear, taste, touch, or smell it in mental image. For example, last night I heard a song; at this moment I can close my eyes and hear it, noting in great detail the characteristics of the rendition.

Full, vivid, and accurate mental imagery is one of the most outstanding characteristics of a musical mind.

It is this that enables the musician to live in a tonal world. He occasionally hears or performs music, but far more frequently images it either in recall or in anticipation.

Now our rule in making the first impression is to note details that aid in classification so that they come back faithfully reproduced in the mental image.

This concrete and faithful imagery is most essential in the first recall, immediately after the first impres-sion, but imagery is closely related to fantasy and fantasy is one of the best aids to memory in that it gives us striking, interesting, odd, and lasting impressions which aid in recall.

6. Build larger and larger units.

At certain advanced stages we learn by wholes, but the best rule for learning in general is to learn one specific small thing at a time: then weave these larger units...

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