I'm almost nearly finished with a new book, Guitar Zero: The New Musicians and the Science of Learning, by Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology and cognition at NYU. I initially read it because I was hoping it would give me some special insight into developing a new approach to learning the guitar. My continuing lack of success in achieving a level of accomplishment with the instrument has frustrated me for years. What I have learned has been interesting and I realized the way we learn music can be generalized to almost anything that we attempt in life.
I came to the world of music relatively late in life although I had sung in school choirs for years but hardly with any level of excellence. I basically quit when my voice "changed" in adolescence, and although I have been obsessed with music most of my life, it was primarily as a listener. I began seriously playing the cello as a young adult and played for years, eventually performing in my local college/community orchestra. That experience is one of the real highlights of my life. When my hearing began failing and I could no longer hear distinct sounds in an orchestral setting, I put it down. Not long afterwards and still wanting to make music, I began playing the accoustic guitar which I only intended to do so by myself thinking my hearing, while still a problem, would be manageable. It was, however still a problem, and eventually I began using hearing aides which were a blessing in all ways.
Still my music progress with the guitar compared to my growth with the cello, has been slow and I think much of the difficulty has been the result of being originally trained as a "classical musician" which did not encourage creativity and improvisation. When I choose to play blues/rock/folk guitar, a real shift in my brain use occurred, and I've struggled. Not many musicians today feel reading traditional musical notation is necessary.
One of the major interests of Marcus in his book, since it is subtitled The Science of Learning, is the way in which people learn music cognitively and he explores this through his and other scientists' research. The effect of age on learing is a particular interest and he shows in the research that aging people are quite intellectually capable of learning music. Age still will slow down some aspects of the learning, especially in tasks having some physical component - like fingering a guitar fret or picking the strings - will be effected. But under most circumstances, the brain can adapt and continue to learn late into life. Tom Morello learned to play the guitar in college, well past the time when one is traditionally believed to be in the so-called critical age of learning. Starting music beyond this critical age rarely, it is believed, results in the student achieving great success; and yet Morello has become a virtuoso in the field. The notion of a critical age, for music, languages and sports, seems to be a bit of a myth, it seems. Much recent research has demonstrated this in many fields.
That's the good news. Unfortunately, much of the early learning I acquired playing the cello classically does not generalize to pop music. Brains that are trained to play classical forms appear to develop differently then brains trained to play jazz - and the same is true of the brains of people who play different instruments. Some people can make the adjustment easily but most don't. It's as if I have a default program of sorts that I automatically return to when I pick up an instrument, and it seems to hamper my progress.
The issue of innate music instincts vs. training/practice is carefully explored, as well. Anders Ericsson of FSU is widely recognized as the leading expert on the acquisition of expertise and the notion of "ten-thousand hours" to achieve excellence is part of his research. The idea is that learning works best when one tackles something that is just beyond his or her reach, neither too easy nor too hard; this concept of a "zone of proximal development" is what we should strive for in our practice. It seems that continued practice does indeed rewire the brain. Nobody really knows whether the brains of those blesssed with genius are really different from others, but we do know that practice does help. Clearly genius without hard work and discipline to practice, rarely amounts to much.
An interesting book that, like most, is flawed. Marcus was a student of Stephen Pinker, someone I'm not particularly fond of, but I shouldn't hold that against him. The book is probably a longish essay that got expanded into book form but I'm glad I read it.
