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This
music technique improvement program:
Instrumental music teachers, musicians and students try to get it right the first time but invariably end up spending a time trying to correct errors, misconceptions, technique faults and bad habits that somehow develop.
Because these errors were not corrected early, and were inadvertently repeated over and over, i.e., practiced, many error patterns are actually learned, habitual and automatic and therefore much harder to eradicate.
For example, John always has the wrong posture at the piano and Mary's bowing technique has still not improved despite repeated correction.
We all know that old habits die hard and many habit patterns are resistant to conventional change methods.
These limitations of traditional teaching, coaching and training programs are apparent in all settings including music, sport, workplace training, education, therapy and personal development.
Re-training or re-education, the typical solution to these problems, improves things only slowly, if at all.
Students and performers appear to pay attention during instruction and actually improve. They practice their new, correct, skills and knowledge over and over but the next day, when placed under performance pressure or when unsupervised and left to their own devices, they seem to have forgotten what they’ve learned and the same habit pattern errors, e.g., old entrenched attitudes, misunderstandings and poor techniques, resurface.
A prolonged adjustment period and poor transfer of learning are the typical outcomes of teaching, training and coaching efforts worldwide.
All this wastes talent and resources and makes change and transition programs so much less cost-effective. There has to be a better way.
Fortunately, a cognitive science discovery called Old Way/New Way® Learning offers:
It's not learning the new; it's forgetting (unlearning) the old! Old Way/New Way® offers a new theory and a method for overcoming errors, misconceptions and entrenched old ways so music teachers and their students can achieve continuous improvement.
Persistent errors and misconceptions, known as habit pattern errors, in the learning of music are notoriously resistant to correction by conventional teaching methods. Old Way/New Way® offers a new theory and a user friendly method for quickly correcting these errors, once and for all.
One of the most time consuming, frustrating and costly aspects of music teaching is that, despite quality teaching, expert learning support and advice, caring friends, and the strongest self-determination to improve, music students still improve only slowly and often keep falling back to old ways.
For example:
Because we are not a blank slate, change and improvement is hard. Self-teaching attempts, observation, education, training and practice have given us prior knowledge and skills. Consequently, we all have our own way.
But our "own way" of performing music, developed and practiced over the years, has now become habitual and automated. Like most of the routines we follow in our lives, from the time we get up in the morning to the time we go to bed, music performance skills are soon automated and operate mostly beyond our conscious awareness. Many of these performance routines are not within our direct conscious control. In fact, much of our life is "automatic" and we run many things and respond to many situations as if we were on "automatic pilot."
This has clear advantages for us in our attempts to cope with life's demands. For example, when learning to play the piano we initially have to concentrate on each and every step. Then, with practice comes learning and what took so much concentrated effort and conscious control before now happens almost without thinking. Instead of concentrating on our fingering technique we can now leave that part to the "automatic pilot" and instead direct our mental energy to interpreting the musical piece.
Such automated skilled routines serve as well as long as nothing changes. Try changing to a car without a manual shift or one that has the windscreen wiper control lever on the "wrong" side and you will discover the interference generated by your prior learning.
Automatic, learned skill routines and ways of coping with the world that we have picked up over the years are not always the best ones. Sometimes, for one reason or another, we get it wrong. Our music performance habits may not be the best ones because initially we were not taught properly. Since you learn, i.e., automate, whatever it is that you practice, it is likely that when you practice inferior instrument playing skills then that is what you will end up with as a performance habit.
If not corrected early, those wrong ideas and inferior skills we have will quickly develop into learned errors, technique difficulties, misconceptions and ingrained bad habits.
Habits are automatic, reflex-like acts and behaviours that are not under conscious control - by the time you realise what you've done wrong, its too late to stop
Convinced that it's time to change, you seek help. Your music teacher points out your errors, shows you a better way and you copy and practice it.
While this teacher is alongside and giving you cues for the new, correct performance, you can do the right thing and appear to have improved. During these one-on-one sessions your music performance starts to sound much better.
You can do the right thing afterwards, too but you have to concentrate hard each time on exactly what to do. The new knowledge, action, technique or performance feels strange having done it the other way for so long.
Because the new technique differs from the old there is a conflict or tension between them. Your brain detects this conflict and instantly activates a knowledge protection mechanism called proactive inhibition (PI for short).
PI is a well researched psychological phenomenon. PI protects all your learned knowledge and skills, right and wrong, and strongly resists and slows down any attempt to change or improve your prior knowledge and skills.
We all have this knowledge protection mechanism but it is stronger in some people. It is an unconscious mechanism and we have little or no control over it, as shown in this demonstration.
This simple but intriguing activity is a demonstration of the powerful interference effect caused by prior learning.
Exactly what it means for you personally will become clearer after you have done the two short tasks and you interpret your scores.
Now, please proceed to the activity.
By doing the activity you experienced proactive habit interference, also known as the proactive inhibition (PI) effect and therefore better understand the powerful effects of prior learning on new learning.
From the point of view of the learner who is trying to correct his or her misconceptions, the explanation of how proactive habit interference blocks or slows down learning and adaptation is like this:
All this is known as the transfer of learning problem.
Now you know what the problem is and what it feels like, you are ready for the solution. Being aware of PI and it's effects, however, is not enough to overcome it. Simply re-teaching a music performance skill, action or information, even when supported by specific videotaped feedback to improve awareness, is unlikely to work quickly, if at all. You need an alternative teaching method that bypasses habit interference altogether in order to accelerate learning and skill development. This teaching method is called Old Way/New Way®.
Personal Best Academy uses and teaches Old Way/New Way® to music teachers and their students.
Old Way/New Way® is not like behaviour modification, brainwashing, hypnosis or NLP, nor is it a kind of psychological conditioning.
It is a new learning method that is readily incorporated into what music teachers and students normally do and is well accepted by learners because it is very user-friendly.
Based on a novel interpretation and synthesis of well researched and accepted learning principles, Old Way/New Way® is far superior to conventional approaches to correcting errors and misconceptions, improving understanding, correcting technique problems and developing new skills.
With Old Way/New Way® there is no need for special equipment, although the use of video feedback, stop-motion analysis and kinaesthetic feedback can be helpful with complicated performance skills.
Old Way/New Way® works with the brain, not against it, to accelerate the natural process of change.
A complete list of published research, case studies and school and workplace trials on Old Way/New Way® can be found here.
All kinds of skills, technique difficulties, misconceptions, misunderstandings, actions and behaviours can be corrected, including music performance. This section features some of the many areas of performance improvement where Old Way/New Way® has improved learning. This broad application shows that it is a generic learning method that directly tackles habit pattern errors that are so often a major obstacle to rapid progress.
We have successfully corrected misconceptions, improved understanding, corrected errors and faulty technique, unlearned habits, changed behaviour and developed skills in a wide range of learning activities, for example:
Training in Old Way/New Way® Learning is available in an online course, either with or without email support, or in a training workshop for small groups.
Our Music Performance Improvement course is an advanced music teaching skills course designed for experienced music teachers, students of music and accomplished musicians.
Old Way/New Way® Music Performance Improvement is a teaching and self improvement skill useful to all music teachers, music students and musicians, regardless of instrument, age or ability level.
For music teachers, the Old Way/New Way® method of music performance improvement can enrich your music teaching experience and improve your teaching effectiveness.
Old Way/New Way® teaching is well grounded in learning theory and is verified by published experimental research in refereed professional journals. Furthermore, the record of its success in practical situations involving performance improvement stands unchallenged.
This course will provide you with explanations, demonstrations, and step-by-step instructions so you can quickly start using Old Way/New Way to accelerate your student's learning, overcome technique faults and other bad habits, and resolve performance anxiety and other music performance problems.
You will learn the fascinating theoretical background of Old Way/New Way Learning; discover how it has been used to quickly correct skill development problems; see step-by-step demonstrations of its use with music students; learn to prepare your own skill correction and behaviour change protocols that you can use in many different teaching and live performance situations; and learn how to use Old Way/New Way® to speed up adaptation to things new, and make students and musicians more flexible and adaptable to change.
Here are the four course options:
This Flash-based course provides specific step-by-step examples of how to correct music technique faults. Contains two video segments showing how specific technique problems were corrected. Available for AU$59. Currency conversion | Order form.
Same content as CD course, delivered online. AU$59. Currency conversion | Order form.
Customised online teacher development course includes all the course materials in the online course above, plus step-by-step guidance and email support in a course that is customised just for you. AU$395. Currency conversion | Order form.
One-day rapid technique correction workshop tailor made for groups of music teachers and performing arts teachers. Email us for more information.
"The problem is not learning the new; it's forgetting the old." Flight Instructor
"Old habits die hard." Proverb
"Practice makes permanent, not perfect." Warren Buffett
"Practising differences makes perfect." Harry Lyndon
Trainers, teachers, instructors and sports coaches try to get it right the first time with their students, trainees and athletes but invariably end up spending a lot of time trying to correct errors, misconceptions, non-compliance, technique faults and bad habits that somehow develop.
Because these errors were not corrected early, and were inadvertently repeated over and over (i.e., practised), many error patterns are actually learned, habitual and automatic and therefore much harder to eradicate.
For example, John always writes "recieve" instead of "receive"; Mike always has to be reminded to wear his safety goggles; Mary always slices her golf swing; Susan always follow cars too closely when driving; and Geoff is mentally still following the previous aircraft’s pre-flight checklist even though he's converted to another aircraft.
We all know that old habits die hard and many habit patterns are resistant to conventional change methods.
These limitations of traditional teaching and training programs are apparent in all settings including sport, workplace training, education, therapy and personal development.
Re-training or re-education, the typical solution to these problems, improves things only slowly, if at all.
Although learners may appear to pay attention during instruction and practice their new, correct, skills and knowledge over and over, the next day when placed under pressure or when unsupervised and left to their own devices, they seem to have forgotten what they’ve learned and the same habit pattern errors (old entrenched attitudes, beliefs, misunderstandings, work practices and routines, faulty procedures, poor techniques and unsafe behaviours) resurface.
A prolonged adjustment period and poor transfer of learning are the two most typical outcomes of education, training and coaching efforts worldwide.
All this wastes talent and resources and makes change and transition programs so much less cost-effective. There’s got to be a better way.
Fortunately, a cognitive science discovery called Old Way/New Way Learning offers:
1. A new perspective on the transfer of training problem.
2. A fast and practical method of transition training.
3. A cost-effective and user-friendly method for rapid skill and technique correction, and habit eradication.
This website introduces Old Way/New Way® Learning, including the basic theory underpinning the method, and available training programs in this unique approach to behaviour change and continuous improvement.
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Learning Tools for rapidly improving transfer of learning and skilled performance in sport, workplace safety, work habits, nail biting and other personal habits, manual handling, driving, flight training, music performance, mental maps, spelling and reading.
KEYWORDS: habit patterns | error patterns | habit pattern errors | errors | misconceptions | mental maps | skill transfer | knowledge transfer | skill transitions | conversion training
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Updated Thursday 1 July, 2010