Desirable difficulties

As we continue exploring what helps and what hinders learning, and how we can structure our practices in a way that leads to actual improvements, we'll look here at the concept of desirable difficulties. 

I discussed desirable difficulties a bit in the first blog of the semester. As a reminder, cognitive psychologist Robert Bjork coined the phrase to describe tasks that require a considerable but desirable amount of effort, which improves long-term performance. (Lynn Helding has further explored the concept and applied it to the work musicians do.) In voice, we may consider desirable difficulties as exercises that take you just beyond what you are capable of doing. If we only practice the skills that we have already mastered (those skills which, for us, are in the "automatic stage" of motor learning) then we are not building skill. We are just solidifying those skills, which is also important. 

So, what could desirable difficulties look like in our practice sessions? Here is one example: 

Let's say you are trying to increase your vocal agility in order to sing passages of fast-moving notes, like riffs. First, remove any distractions that may compete for your attention. As discussed in the first two blogs of the semester, effort and undivided attention are needed for learning to occur. 

Second, decide on a pattern and a vowel, like singing a 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 scale on an "ah." Sing through it a few times while giving specific attention to what you feel, noticing where you are physically engaged and where you are released. 

Third, sing the exercise again but following along with a metronome set to a comfortable pace (there are lots of free metronome apps you can download). Gradually, increase the tempo. Sing five or six repetitions at each new tempo. Continue checking in with where you feel engaged and where you feel released. Be intentional about maintaining freedom at the places where you are prone to adding unnecessary tension (the jaw, the neck, etc.). 

Lastly, continue increasing the speed until you get to a point where you can get through some of the repetitions cleanly but others are not as clean. Or maybe some of the passage is clean (maybe just the ascending part) but the whole thing is not yet spot on. Notice the metronome marking where this happens. This is just beyond the edge of your capabilities and is your new "desirable difficulty." 

As you come back to agility work in successive practice sessions, make sure that you work back up to that same metronome marking. If you practice this regularly, with focus and attention, you should start to see some improvement. Once you do, you can increase the speed again to the point where you are sometimes clean and sometimes not. That will then become your new desirable difficulty to work toward. 

Of course, then you can try the same thing on different vowels or on a different pattern (a nine-note scale, a riff pattern like 1-2-3-5-6-5-3-2-1, etc.). Keep a record of how far you get each time so that you can continue to measure your progress. If you do this consistently for a couple of weeks and don't see progress, bring that exercise to your lesson or to class and we can troubleshoot together. 

Since our bodies naturally fluctuate from day to day (and at different times throughout the day), you may feel progress on some days and not feel any progress on other days. By using an external device like a metronome, however, you will get consistent, objective feedback and will be working toward a set standard. This will take the guesswork out of the process since you will know exactly what progress you are making. 

A little creative thought can help you develop your own exercises designed to increase your range, develop greater dynamic capabilities, expand your ability to sustain long breath phrases, or any of the other vocal goals you set for yourselves in week one of the semester. 

For your comments this week, look back at one of your week one goals and discuss how you can introduce systematic desirable difficulties into your practice. 

Now go practice.

Paying attention and spending time

It feels like everyone and everything is vying for our attention these days. Our eyes and ears are constantly barraged with competing signs, signals, and advertisements trying to pull our focus off of what we're intending to do so that we'll engage with something else. Most of the time, it's because a company wants us to notice their product so that we'll throw our hard-earned cash their way. In many ways, then, it can be financially costly to allow our attention to wander. But it may cost us even more than that. 

Professor Lynn Helding reminds us in her book that there is a reason we use the phrase "pay attention." It costs us our focus, our brain space, our time, and our emotional capital. When we "spend" our time paying attention to something, we are essentially investing in that thing. Therefore, when we are attempting to focus on a task and then find ourselves being distracted, we may be inadvertently and complacently investing our attention in something we don't actually value. 

The good news is that the ability to focus our attention is something we can train through practice. And it is crucial that we all practice this skill. One reason is that distractions hinder our ability to learn. Another reason is that we are in a profession that is built on the assumption that people will pay money to sit in a dark room for a few hours at a time in order to watch a play or a musical. If our society loses its collective ability to do this, we're all out of jobs! 

Even though we can train our ability to pay attention, the bad news (once again, a la Lynn Helding) is that our attention is easily hijacked. And guess what tool is able to hijack our attention more than any other? Our phones (big surprise). Those brightly-colored apps, the way the phone is just slightly too big to fit in our pockets (so we have to keep it in our hands), the Pavlovian notification sounds that cause us to unconsciously reach for the device—they're all designed to attract and keep our attention. 

So how on earth are you supposed to get serious practicing done when you have such a distracting little machine on your person at all times? 

Turn it off. 

Don't just silence it. Don't just set it to airplane mode. Turn. It. Off. Give yourself a fighting chance by eliminating the temptation entirely. In the last blog, we identified cognitive effort as one of the prerequisites for learning. Another word for cognitive effort is concentration. Concentration is easily broken by distraction. You will have greater concentration (i.e., greater ability for sustained cognitive effort) (i.e., greater opportunity for true learning to occur) when you eliminate distractions. 

Your attention is valuable. It's not just valuable because lots of people, products, and companies want it. It's valuable because what you choose to give your attention to is an indication of what YOU value. Spend it wisely. 

Now go practice.