Website Launch

This is just a brief note to announce the launch of my website: mandebala.net. It's the barest of bones as yet, but . . . petit à petit.

Not So Work-Like

My brother Toby and I have been involved in an ongoing discussion for well over a decade about the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to and routines for weight training and other forms of exercising. One of the observations to come out of these discussions is highly pertinent (indeed, perhaps central) to bala practice. The bottom line for any exercise regimen is adherence. Boy, this seems almost important enough to repeat: The bottom line for any exercise regimen is adherence. Regardless of how "smart" the practicing is, if you don’t do the damn stuff, you just won’t get no fitter. Well, when the program is designed to emphasize the heavy-ass-ness of the weights, so-to-speak, and you start to dread your workouts, you’ll be far less likely to adhere to the regimen you’ve laid out. But when the program is put together in such a way that you’re not minding (or not noticing) that those weights are as heavy-ass as they are, adherence becomes something of a non-issue.

Now, it is of course important not to let the de-emphasizing of heavy-ass-ness become an excuse for laziness. The work does need to get done. It just need not feel so "work-like." (Remember the question “Does anyone you know play video games because they’ve been told that ‘practice makes perfect?'" Obviously, the answer is supposed to be no. But surely you could name scores [no pun intended] of people you know, who have at one time or other been "addicted" to video-game playing... Well, if I want to adhere to my regimen, I should be addicted to practicing—not cringing at the thought of it.)

For Toby and I, two important features of an exercise program in which work feels less "work-like" include: (a) small, manageable (as well as larger, longer-term) goals and (b) a means to measure incremental progress. (Toby blogs his thoughts on [and charted progress with] fitness, nutrition, and self-quantification here.) Another—and a biggie in the context of musicking—is having others to play/practice with. (I haven't practiced so much in weeks as I did these last few days with Trevor visiting from Montréal. Plus, I enjoyed the practicing immensely and felt that it was quite productive.)

Tom Chatfield touches on some of these ideas in his July, 2010 TED talk. Discussing video game design, he presents "7 lessons from games that can be used outside of games":

1. experience bars measuring progress
2. multiple long and short-term aims
3. rewards for effort
4. rapid, frequent, clear feedback
5. an element of uncertainty
6. windows of enhanced attention
7. other people

I'd like to learn more about the studies, observations, or findings that led Chatfield to these lessons. Has anyone put them to a test? Most of the seven lessons resonate with what we know to be behaviourally true, or with what we probably just sense intuitively, but how do we "know?"

Can anyone help me find scientific support (in the form of published, peer-reviewed studies, for example) for the validity of Chatfield's (or Toby and my) claims that manageable goals and measurement (as well as any of Chatfield's other "lessons") are indeed important features of an effective learning/development program?

"Dear Dr. Chatfield: We can offer the following behavioural explanations for lessons 2, 3, 4 and 7 (or whatever), but how do you account for lessons 5 and 6? (again, or whatever...)."

Two by Noon

It was with myself and fellow treeplanters Kevin Barkman and Myron Seuss, I think, that the phrase "two by noon" started acquiring currency. If we could have two thousand trees in the ground by 12:00 p.m., we knew we were off to a good start and could feel confident that we would come back to camp with an acceptable number that day--usually over 4000.

Inspired by a recent Colbert Report mention of the proverb (credited to Benjamin Franklin), "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," I've been getting myself back on to a night-time sleep schedule, with an alarm set to wake me up at ten minutes before eight o'clock. This year, my goal has been to practice an average of two hours every day, but due to a busy academic schedule (and some unplanned laziness), I've fallen behind and now need to catch up. Well, I'm going to use "two by noon" as my guideline for pulling up the bootstraps. I'll try to get the mandatory two "new" hours done by 12:00 p.m., leaving the rest of the day for backfilling the practice-hours-debt that I'd accrued over the last month and a half.

I'll let you know when the debt's paid off.

Ternary Lamban: LH Leads

Hmm. With most of Alsenï Sylla's* ternary Lamban patterns, it feels like the left hand should lead. I guess with any pattern you might learn to feel it with a RH lead or a LH lead, but some patterns seem to lend themselves to a LH lead more naturally. Note to self, I guess . . .

*I spoke with Reggie about this. He thinks he may have made a mistake, and that Alsenï's last name is in fact Sylla, and not Camara. I'm using Óscar's spelling for Alsenï.

From the World of Bodybuilding

Two inspirational/thought-provoking quotations from the world of bodybuilding:

1. "Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder . . . but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight." - Ronnie Coleman

This quote came to me through fellow bala student, Reggie Ross, who I met in New York. I think its message is obvious, and I agree with it, but juxtaposed with the next quote, it confounds me a bit.

2. "You're not just here lifting weights up and down." - A father to his son at the gym in my brother's apartment building

I might be forgetting or misrepresenting the source and the original wording, but this was the idea--and it's something Bruce spoke with me about years ago: If you practice just to fill your daily quota, and don't pay attention to what you're doing, you may end up doing more harm than good.

I guess the lesson to be learned from the two quotes taken together then is: work hard, practice often, but be thoughtful about what you do.

Practice-meme #2 Revisited

Effortless Mastery, a book by pianist Kenny Werner, advocates among many other things, an approach which seems to resonate with practice-meme #2. Werner states: "I don't get my technique from studying technique. I get it from letting my hands and arms find their way without interference." I wish I could remember that. The practice-memes themselves should be keywords.

Actually, practice-meme #2 was derived from a tree-planting technique that I developed in which, instead of pushing harder, trying more, and indeed, fighting against the trees and the land, sometimes slowing down just a bit, concentrating on form, on relaxing, and on breathing are exactly what one needs to get back up to speed. As I was stretching today I was reminded of the same idea. Simply relaxing and "breathing into the stretch" was (I think) far more effective (and so, more enjoyable) than stretching with a frantic "Gotta stretch harder; Gotta be more flexible; Must get there!" approach. Not always clear when to apply practice-meme #2, mind you, since "Hurry hard!" does actually work sometimes. Hmmm . . .

(More on tree-planting xylo-analogies another time, by the way. More also on Effortless Mastery.)

A Self-Taught "Big Moussa?"

Take a look at this clip, and especially, at the information that the poster (xylophonist, Mamadou Diabate) has prepared.

Diabate describes that for the Sambla, practicing means “playing, making music and having fun together.” He explains that: “a goal of this exercise is that Small Moussa Diabate (here 5 years old) learns different ostinati so firmly that he, in spite of the rhythmically free-flying solo and the capricious beat-changes of Big Moussa Diabate [...], can't be thrown out of the beat any more.”

Well, a fundamental component to a more traditional apprenticeship is the presence of someone who would play the role of a “Big Moussa”—i.e. someone who already knows the accompaniment patterns quite well and who has a ready stock of embellishment possibilities in the hands, mind, and body. Without a Big Moussa accentuating and highlighting the various feels of given ostinati, and especially without the social interaction that makes the exercises “fun,” (see all the other children just hanging out, dancing, and clowning around?), practising becomes much more like work, and much less like play—or at the very least, like communication. Now granted, Little Moussa does have his fair share of work to do. He does have the accompaniment patterns to learn before he can even play the game with Big Moussa. And whenever one is learning new “vocabulary,” there’s a certain amount of struggle to undergo before appropriate application of that vocabulary becomes second nature.* But even still, when there is a Big Moussa involved, the rewards of the struggle are immediate. Patterns learned are applied directly to musical, communicative situations and learning becomes much more intrinsically rewarding. (My guess is that, unless the game were fun for both of the Moussas, they just wouldn't bother doing it. Does anyone you know play video games because they've been told that "practice makes perfect?")

Unfortunately, apart from my month in New York, I’ve never really had a “Big Moussa” to accompany, with whom to simply “play music,” nor from whom to learn about how to generate variation in the patterns acquired. The fact is, save for my month with Famoro, I’ve simply never been in the same city as a teacher for more than a few days at a time, and so, have had to video-mediate nearly all of my bala lessons. Even in New York (much to my dismay), I rarely played together with Famoro. (I alluded to this in an earlier post.) Instead of playing with me (letting me accompany him), Famoro would spend most of our lesson time just showing me some new accompaniment pattern or variation. Then he would leave me alone to figure out (usually via transcription of the video I had taken) the patterns shown and to practice them by myself.

Well . . . a new semester has begun at school and I find myself taking on the role of bala teacher. (Several people have expressed interest and I’ve finally decided to accept, and indeed, am excited to have a few students.) Naturally, I want the students to enjoy their studies. I’d rather that they had the opportunity to learn like Little Moussa, which is to say, communicatively, and high surrender. But I’ve had very little opportunity to learn with a Big Moussa myself, and so, it is difficult for me to “draw different feels out of the time” in just that way that would expand the students’ understanding of how they can learn the instrument without having to simply memorize a lot of lengthy phrases and then cut and paste them together—which, again unfortunately is how I’ve had to learn to play.

Now the purpose of this post is not to complain, but rather to try to articulate the dilemma (and perhaps even consider a solution.) I feel that if I had gone through (or could go through at some point during the course of my PhD program) a traditional-type apprenticeship, learning with a Big Moussa, then assuming the role of Big Moussa myself when I have students of my own would not only be easier for me, but would, I bet, also make learning more enjoyable for them.

*One hallmark of a good teacher is, of course, the ability to make the acquisition of new material as quick and as painless as possible, given the particular characteristics of the individual learner. With a good teacher, and perhaps a certain amount of focus, Little Moussa could no doubt learn the parts very quickly, but would still need at least some amount of time to memorize and allow patterns to sink in.