Practice makes perfect? Not so much

Jason Mraz, world famous performer with “perfect pitch”.  

Turns out, that old “practice makes perfect” adage may be overblown.

New research led by Michigan State University’s Zach Hambrick finds that a copious amount of practice is not enough to explain why people differ in level of skill in two widely studied activities, chess and music.

In other words, it takes more than hard work to become an expert. Hambrick, writing in the research journal Intelligence, said natural talent and other factors likely play a role in mastering a complicated activity.

“Practice is indeed important to reach an elite level of performance, but this paper makes an overwhelming case that it isn’t enough,” said Hambrick, associate professor of psychology.

The debate over why and how people become experts has existed for more than a century. Many theorists argue that thousands of hours of focused, deliberate practice is sufficient to achieve elite status.

Hambrick disagrees.

“The evidence is quite clear,” he writes, “that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice.”

Hambrick and colleagues analyzed 14 studies of chess players and musicians, looking specifically at how practice was related to differences in performance. Practice, they found, accounted for only about one-third of the differences in skill in both music and chess.

So what made up the rest of the difference?

Based on existing research, Hambrick said it could be explained by factors such as intelligence or innate ability, and the age at which people start the particular activity. A previous study of Hambrick’s suggested that working memory capacity – which is closely related to general intelligence – may sometimes be the deciding factor between being good and great.

While the conclusion that practice may not make perfect runs counter to the popular view that just about anyone can achieve greatness if they work hard enough, Hambrick said there is a “silver lining” to the research.

“If people are given an accurate assessment of their abilities and the likelihood of achieving certain goals given those abilities,” he said, “they may gravitate toward domains in which they have a realistic chance of becoming an expert through deliberate practice.”

via Practice makes perfect? Not so much.

Damn. No wonder my vocals are improving at a snail’s pace. Just this past weekend I recorded the same short phrase for two straight hours over and over in my home studio trying to get it to sound right. I got better, but I couldn’t pull it all together, the feel, the timing, the pitch…. Then I got mad at myself and erased every take in disgust. I highly doubt Jason Mraz or Michael Buble worked as hard just to not hate recordings of their voices. Natural talent, eh? I may just have to accept that. But I’m a fighter! I’ve gotten so much better at being able to sing a middle C out of the blue with just pure hard work, and I couldn’t do that when I started. So, I may just have to keep struggling until I get my voice to where I enjoy hearing it as much as Jason’s. I know people who took years of voice lessons before finding what worked for them, so that’s another reason to keep chipping away at it.

Learn the Periodic Table of Elements song

Whether you need to brush up on your chemistry, or just love it when someone sets the Periodic Table to music, AsapSCIENCE’s The NEW Periodic Table Song is for you.

This rundown of the elements in numerical order is set to Jacques Offenbach’s Infernal Galop, but was otherwise written, produced, and performed by Mitchell Moffit. Here are the lyrics in case you missed anything:

There’s Hydrogen and Helium Then Lithium, Beryllium Boron, Carbon everywhere Nitrogen all through the air

With Oxygen so you can breathe And Fluorine for your pretty teeth Neon to light up the signs Sodium for salty times

Magnesium, Aluminium, Silicon Phosphorus, then Sulfur, Chlorine and Argon Potassium, and Calcium so you’ll grow strong Scandium, Titanium, Vanadium and Chromium and Manganese

CHORUS This is the Periodic Table Noble gas is stable Halogens and Alkali react agressively Each period will see new outer shells While electrons are added moving to the right

Iron is the 26th Then Cobalt, Nickel coins you get Copper, Zinc and Gallium Germanium and Arsenic

Selenium and Bromine film While Krypton helps light up your room Rubidium and Strontium then Yttrium, Zirconium

Niobium, Molybdenum, Technetium Ruthenium, Rhodium, Palladium Silver-ware then Cadmium and Indium Tin-cans, Antimony then Tellurium and Iodine and Xenon and then Caesium and…

Barium is 56 and this is where the table splits Where Lanthanides have just begun Lanthanum, Cerium and Praseodymium

Neodymium’s next too Promethium, then 62″s Samarium, Europium, Gadolinium and Terbium Dysprosium, Holmium, Erbium, Thulium Ytterbium, Lutetium

Hafnium, Tantalum, Tungsten then we’re on to Rhenium, Osmium and Iridium Platinum, Gold to make you rich till you grow old Mercury to tell you when it’s really cold

Thallium and Lead then Bismuth for your tummy Polonium, Astatine would not be yummy Radon, Francium will last a little time Radium then Actinides at 89

REPEAT CHORUS

Actinium, Thorium, Protactinium Uranium, Neptunium, Plutonium Americium, Curium, Berkelium Californium, Einsteinium, Fermium Mendelevium, Nobelium, Lawrencium Rutherfordium, Dubnium, Seaborgium Bohrium, Hassium then Meitnerium Darmstadtium, Roentgenium, Copernicium

Ununtrium, Flerovium Ununpentium, Livermorium Ununseptium, Ununoctium And then we’re done!!

[via Geekosystem]

Old school:

This one is my favorite, it doesn’t hit them all, but it rocks out and has great additional information.

Listening to Music Prompts Numerous Brain Changes

… When you listen to music, much more is happening in your body than simple auditory processing. Music triggers activity in the nucleus accumbens, a part of your brain that releases the feel-good chemical dopamine and is involved in forming expectations.

At the same time, the amygdala, which is involved in processing emotion, and the prefrontal cortex, which makes possible abstract decision-making, are also activated, according to new research published in the journal Science.1

Based on the brain activity in certain regions, especially the nucleus accumbens, captured by an fMRI imager while participants listened to music, the researchers could predict how much money the listeners were willing to spend on previously unheard music. As you might suspect, songs that triggered activity in the emotional and intellectual areas of the brain demanded a higher price.

Interestingly, the study’s lead author noted that your brain learns how to predict how different pieces of music will unfold using pattern recognition and prediction, skills that may have been key to our evolutionary progress. Timereported:2

“These predictions are culture-dependent and based on experience: someone raised on rock or Western classical music won’t be able to predict the course of an Indian raga, for example, and vice versa.

But if a piece develops in a way that’s both slightly novel and still in line with our brain’s prediction, we tend to like it a lot. And that, says [lead researcher] Salimpoor, ‘is because we’ve made a kind of intellectual conquest.’

Music may, in other words, tap into a brain mechanism that was key to our evolutionary progress. The ability to recognize patterns and generalize from experience, to predict what’s likely to happen in the future — in short, the ability to imagine — is something humans do far better than any other animals. It’s what allowed us (aided by the far less glamorous opposable thumb) to take over the world.”

Why Music Makes Us Feel United

… music also has an, almost uncanny, ability to connect us to one another.

Separate research published this month showed one reason for why this might be. When listening to four pieces of classical music they had never heard before, study participants’ brains reacted in much the same way. Areas of the brain involved in movement planning, memory and attention all had similar activation patterns when the participants listened to the same music, which suggests we may each experience music in similar ways.

The study’s lead author noted:3

“We spend a lot of time listening to music — often in groups, and often in conjunction with synchronized movement and dance … Here, we’ve shown for the first time that despite our individual differences in musical experiences and preferences, classical music elicits a highly consistent pattern of activity across individuals in several brain structures including those involved in movement planning, memory and attention.”

Co-author Daniel Levitin, PhD, expanded:4

“It’s not our natural tendency to thrust ourselves into a crowd of 20,000 people, but for a Muse concert or a Radiohead concert we’ll do it … There’s this unifying force that comes from the music, and we don’t get that from other things.”

Music Relieves Anxiety Better Than Drugs and Benefits Premature Babies

If you want a more concrete example of music’s powers, a meta-analysis by Levitin and colleagues found some striking benefits of music after reviewing 400 studies.5 Among the data was one study that revealed listening to music resulted in less anxiety and lower cortisol levels among patients about to undergo surgery than taking anti-anxiety drugs. Other evidence showed music has an impact on antibodies linked to immunity and may lead to higher levels of bacteria-fighting immune cells.

Still more research revealed that playing music in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) improved the health of premature babies with respiratory distress or sepsis.6 When parents sang to their babies, or sounds mimicking those in the womb were played, numerous benefits occurred, including changes in heart rates, sucking behavior and parents’ stress levels. The researchers noted:

“Entrained with a premature infant’s observed vital signs, sound and lullaby may improve feeding behaviors and sucking patterns and may increase prolonged periods of quiet–alert states. Parent-preferred lullabies, sung live, can enhance bonding, thus decreasing the stress parents associate with premature infant care.”

Taken together, the latest research makes a strong case for using music as a therapeutic tool for babies and adults alike.

Why Music Should be a Part of Your Workouts, Too

Many people instinctively don a headset linked to their favorite music when hitting the gym, which makes sense since certain types of music can motivate you to run faster, or keep going even though you’re fatigued, giving you a better workout. Additionally, research has shown that listening to music while exercising boosted cognitive levels and verbal fluency skills in people diagnosed with coronary artery disease (coronary artery disease has been linked to a decline in cognitive abilities). Signs of improvement in verbal fluency areas more than doubled after listening to music compared to that of the non-music session.7

Listening to music while exercising can also improve your performance, increasing your endurance by 15 percent,8 and your movement will likely follow the tempo of the song. For instance, in one study when the music’s tempo slowed, the subjects’ exertion level reduced as well.9 And when the tempo was increased, their performance followed suit.

Your body may be simply responding to the beat on a more or less subconscious level, but the type and tempo of the music you choose while working out may also influence your conscious motivation.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/04/27/brain-craves-music.aspx?e_cid=20130505_SNL_MS_1

One thing that can help you as a songwriter is to try to workout to your music. You may find that you need a stronger beat, different tempo, etc.

Divinyls singer Chrissy Amphlett dies at 53

Australian rocker Chrissy Amphlett, the Divinyls lead singer whose group scored an international hit with the sexually charged “I Touch Myself” in the early 1990s, died Sunday after a battle with breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, her husband said.

She was 53.

“Chrissy’s light burns so very brightly,” her husband, former Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton, said in a statement. “Hers was a life of passion and creativity; she always lived it to the fullest. With her force of character and vocal strength, she paved the way for strong, sexy, outspoken women.”

In 1991, the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” reached No. 1 in Australia and No. 4 on the United States’ Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The group, which formed in Australia in the early 1980s, was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association’s hall of fame in 2006.

Amphlett, who lived in New York with her husband, announced in 2010 that she had breast cancer, several years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She said in an interview that her family made the diagnoses easier.

“It’s unfair, but life is not fair — even rock stars get breast cancer,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald. “But there have been many girls before me who have dealt with it successfully. It’s easy to feel sorry for me but I feel sorry for people who are suffering it alone.”

via Divinyls singer Chrissy Amphlett dies at 53 – CNN.com.

Phil Ramone dead at 79; Grammy-winning producer worked with Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, Paul Simon

Phil Ramone, the recording industry pioneer and Grammy-winning producer behind landmark albums for numerous stars — including Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Ray Charles and Tony Bennett — died Saturday morning in a Manhattan hospital. He was 79.

Though his family has not released the cause of death, Ramone had been admitted at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in February after an aortic aneurysm.

“The music world lost a giant today,” Joel said of Ramone in a statement. “So much of my music was shaped by him and brought to fruition by him. I have lost a dear friend — and my greatest mentor.”

Joel and Ramone won a record of the year Grammy in 1978 for Joel’s “Just the Way You Are,” which Ramone produced, and an album of the year Grammy in 1979 for Joel’s “52nd Street.” In 1980, Ramone won the producer of the year Grammy, in part, for his work on Joel’s “Glass Houses” album.

In all, Ramone won 14 Grammy awards, including best album for his work with Paul Simon on “Still Crazy After All These Years” in 1975 and with Ray Charles on “Genius Loves Company” in 2004.

“Our industry has lost an immense talent and a true visionary and genius,” Neil Portnow, president and CEO of The Recording Academy, said in a statement. “Everyone who encountered Phil came away a better person for it, professionally or personally.”

Born in South Africa and raised in Brooklyn, Ramone trained at The Juilliard School as a violinist, but quickly made his name as an engineer, even attracting the attention of President John F. Kennedy‘s White House, where he was charged with improving the sound in the East Room. He handled the sound at Madison Square Garden for Marilyn Monroe‘s historic serenading of Kennedy with “Happy Birthday.”

Ramone’s ability to make people and places sound better led him to become a pioneer in audio technology. He mastered the new compact disc technology to spearhead the effort to turn Joel’s “52nd Street” into the first commercially released CD. He did the same for DVD technology with “Dave GrusinPresents ‘West Side Story,’ ” and won the first best surround-sound Grammy for “Genius Loves Company.”

Ramone also worked with fiber optics technology to allow artists to record tracks in separate locations, which madeSinatra‘s “Duets” albums possible, since Ol’ Blue Eyes was rarely in the same place as his singing partners.

Ramone also became well-known for his ability to spot a great song when he heard it.

“How do I know when we’ve got something special brewing in the room?” Ramone wrote in his 2007 autobiography, “Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music.” “The skin on the back of my neck begins to tingle. The people around me know it when my body starts grooving to the music.”

That was the case when he persuaded Joel to record “Just the Way You Are” and change it from a cha-cha to the soaring ballad that became a classic. …

Pandora makes me need an iPhone mute button

I shouldn’t complain because its free music and Pandora has to support itself somehow, but I hate ads so much that I find myself quitting the app and moving on to some other form of entertainment when the ads start. If I start Pandora later, no ads for a few more songs.

Looking for an instant mute button I did find the button on my iPhone headset microphone that will instantly turn on and off your purchased music.

Currently I have Collin Hay’s solo acoustic album (singer from the band Men at Work) on deck.

A cool discovery is that the microphone button does work to pause Pandora. You can also turn down pandora’s volume step by step with the side of the button during commercial or just pull out your earbuds for a few minutes. Siri can start Pandora for me, but as much as Siri would like to, she can’t close apps.

Kurt Nilson’s version of Tal Bachman’s “High Above me” is enjoyable, though I like the original just a wee bit more. And now the commercial arrives… the pause button stops it fast. I only had to hear four words… But is it waiting there for me to unpause it? Yes, and switching channels just brings up a different ad. So, I’m back to quitting the app, back to commercial free Collin Hay… whom I discovered on Pandora.

And then back to Pandora. From my Jason Mraz channel Alexi Murdoch’s “All My Days” is teaching me some lessons about songs tonight. Great mix, great performance, great song.

I listen to this then my own music and with a competitive smile I realize that I’m not there yet, not where I want to be yet. I’ll get there. “Even breathing feels alright.” Great line.

Pandora, I don’t want to buy something right now. Really. I’m immune to ads. If you spam me, I will remember that and AVOID your product in the future. The loud volume and high frequency of your messages does not work, it just annoys me. If frequency worked, I would be 100% convinced right now that some Nigerian banker wants to give me a grabizullion “dollars US”.

I’ve never purchased a single thing I’ve heard about on a radio ad, not once in my whole life. If you’d just accept that and let me opt out, I’d hear more music and buy more Music.

You know, the record companies should pay You, Pandora, to play their artists for people like me who are shopping for music (not cars) with a music app.

Unwanted ads are, to me, an infection. When I want to shop, I want details that matter summarized, I want to compare apples to apples, to see the pros and cons of choices, to see real reviews. I want every option in the world at my fingertips. Google Shopping was great until they started taking paid ads that are deceptive.

Damn, that Acura ad is back. I quit Spamdora again and I promise to never buy an Acura. I have a Prius and I want a Tesla. Please tell Acura that so they can leave me alone. Give me one of those thumbs down buttons for the ads. I’m serious, your advertisers would love to know how hated their ads are and eventually why… So allow one line comments as payment to them to remove their ad from your phone.

Acura.. A cure for what? Accurate is not exciting.

Davie Bowie set for fastest selling album of 2013

David Bowie is set to reach number one in Sunday’s charts with his album, The Next Day, making it the fastest selling album of 2013.

The Next Day is Bowie’s first since Reality in 2003, which peaked in the charts at number three. Reports from the Official Charts Company showed that The Next Day had sold 66,000 copies by Wednesday, two days after its release.

Last week London pop band Bastille made number one in the album charts with Bad Blood, but The Next Day is currently outselling it and the number two record, Bon Jovi’s What About Now.

Currently the fastest selling album this year is Opposites, by Biffy Clyro, which sold 71,600 copies during its first week of release.

Bowie’s first single from the album, Where Are We Now, made number one in January in the iTunes download chart on the day it was unexpectantly released, ahead of Rihanna and Taylor Swift. However, due to a technicality in how Bowie made the record available, it was not eligible for the Top 40.

…  After 10 years of reclusive silence, David Bowie has suddenly and dramatically reappeared in the pop firmament. In the small hours of yesterday morning, on his 66th birthday, with no warning, a new Bowie song was released on the internet. Lush, stately, beautifully strange, weaving resonant piano chords, decaying synths and echoing drums around a simple chord progression and a weary, tenderly understated, quietly defiant vocal, the ageing Starman reminisces about days in Berlin, sings of “walking the dead” and wonders “where are we now?”

Accompanied by a strange clip of Bowie as a kind of pensive, melancholic, two-headed puppet, Where Are We Now? may be the most surprising and welcome comeback in rock history.

via Davie Bowie set for fastest selling album of 2013 – Telegraph.

Cool. I’m looking forward to hearing the whole album. I’ve been listening to a lot of other artists lately while working on my own music. David Bowie and I share our January 8th birthday with Elvis.

See and hear more at http://www.davidbowie.com/

The Stars Are Out Tonight.

Playing a record with a paper cone (video)

Don’t try this with a CD.

Metal robot metal band

Did you ever wonder what Danny Carey would sound like if he had 4 arms? How about if Angus Young had 78 fingers? Imagine what Robert Trujillo would sound like if he was actually made of metal? Well, wonder no more, meatbags. Compressorhead is the worlds heaviest metal band. Stickboy, fingers, and bones are guaranteed to shake and rattle the world of meatbag music. Stickboy (drums) was created to exacting specifications. 4 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, no brain. he plays a Pearl 14 piece kit with double kick. stickboy junior, the bastard child of an unknown mother takes control of the hihat shuffle. inception date 2007 Fingers (guitar) joined stickboy in 2009 and brings 78 purpose built fingers, enough to play the entire fret board and pluck.
Bones (bass) is the highest precision bass player in known existence, and the youngest member of the band. inception date 2012.
Standaside meatbags. Oil is thicker than blood.

via – Compresserhead

Here’s a video of the band before they were joined by Bones, showing a better view of Fingers at work.

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