Excellence

On Sunday I reported on how the participants in the June singing practice experiment wrote about their experience of maintaining the habit of five minutes singing practice a day.

Feedback on the effects of the practice regime

By definition there’s less of this, since only those who did much practice were able to feed back on it.

The headline result is that, yes, five minutes a day does seem to make a difference. And the difference is discernible after a week. One respondent who fell by the wayside towards the end of week 2 reported that she was ‘starting to think it was all very helpful’ at the end of the first week. Another noted at the 1-week mark that she:

Noticed at rehearsal that I'd retained odds and ends we worked on the week before (correcting notes, where to breathe etc) because I'd practised it several times. I felt quite virtuous!

So, here are the outcomes from the reports sent in by participants in June’s singing practice experiment. There are a few notable (and gratifying!) overlaps with my predictions, but also some interesting things I wouldn’t have guessed. Which is why it is worth asking people about their experience of course - so as not to fall down the hole between theory and real life!

The first striking thing was actually how few people did send in reports. I don’t think this was because nobody knew about it. For one thing my website stats reassure me that people are at least visiting the site in some numbers, and 154 of those visits were straight to one or other of the two posts about the experiment. For another, I had quite a few people tell me that they were forwarding the links to other people they sang with. This latter point also suggests that at least some people thought the idea worth engaging with.

A cappella group the Magnets performed at the Midlands Arts Centre on Friday night in a show in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. I hadn’t heard them since 2002 or so, and was surprised to recognise many of the faces – apparently they’ve only had one permanent change of line-up in all that time (though they have had one temporary dep recently to cover a paternity leave).

It was an entertaining evening. All the singers create an easy and personably rapport with their audience from the opening, giving you the feeling you are being sung to, not just performed at. The show was also very well crafted, with a pleasing variety of pace, mood and visual impact. Each half of the show built to and away from a major focal point – the beat-box solo in the first half, an A-Z compilation for a game of name-that-band in the second – with fluent transitions throughout. It was striking how little talking they did (note: they didn’t need the padding to fill the programme) and that the few spoken interludes were well-placed and efficient.

This is a post I wrote at the start of June to record in advance what I expected participants to experience. I am publishing it on the day I start analysing results so that everyone who has reported can see just how right or wrong they think my predictions are before I do!

Five minutes is not a significant amount of practice time (polite British understatement there). For context, when I was six years old, I was doing 15 minutes piano practice per day. Of course, when I was six, I had the benefit of a mother who would sit me down and make sure I did the practice. (I still have a mother, but she expects me to be a bit more independent these days.)

So, in answer to my fundamental question of ‘How much difference does ‘just a few minutes’ a day actually make?’, here is what I expect us to discover:

I’ve recently been reading Matthew Crawford’s book The Case For Working With Your Hands, which is an extended critique of modern education and workplace practices. It’s one of those books where the over-riding impression is, ‘a bit ranty, but he’s a got a point’. Specifically, actually, the framing chapters are where it’s most ranty, and the middle is where he develops his more positive and compelling case about the relationship between intellect and ethics manifest in practical tasks. So if you can get past the opening, it’s worth it.

When you listen to a lot of live performances, you start to observe patterns of behaviour that you wouldn’t notice watching only a couple of times. So the recent rash of barbershop quartet contests I’ve had the opportunity to watch, whether as judge or audience member, have given me new insights into how adult amateur musicians operate.

What I have learned is that there is a consistent correlation between how a quartet sings a tune-up chord and how they deliver the song that follows, both vocally and gesturally. There are three possibilities:

My recent reading of Daniel Coyle’s book spawned not only the some arguably rather arcane thoughts about Schenker, but has also had me reflecting on the implications for rehearsal methods. Much of his discussion focuses on what deep practice looks like in individual pursuits such as learning an instrument, and the challenge then becomes how to generate that experience in a group learning environment.

Ensembles offer both advantages and disadvantages in this respect. The advantage is the social nature of learning. People who are more confident in a particular skill can model it for those who are just developing it, keeping the desired result fresh and present in their consciousness. The disadvantage is the possibility of coasting. In an ensemble there are other people to hide ‘behind’, and you can periodically switch off your active learning engagement and just go with the flow without necessarily being called to task.

Warming up on Saturday morningI was back in the Bristol area for the weekend to work with Fascinating Rhythm chorus. Since I last coached them they had had a very successful contest experience, scoring an average of 71.8 at LABBS Prelims in April,* a significant jump in their scores since the previous November. One of the questions that we faced for the weekend was to what extent was a case of out-performing themselves as a fluke and to what extent it represented a leap in standard that was capable of consolidation.

I realised overnight on Saturday that I had been pushing the chorus considerably harder than I had on my last visit, and reflected that it was probably a subliminal response to their new higher scores, and in two dimensions. On one hand, I was responding to assumptions I had about the working methods and levels of discipline and stamina it takes to get to a level that scores in the 70s, so was going in to work at that level of intensity. On the other, I was expecting a certain standard of performance, and anytime I didn’t get it, I worked at getting the quality up to that suggested by their recent success.