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> Music has a very small elite of people who's brains wired very differently and basically have super powers compared to the rest of us Anders Ericsson, known

> Music has a very small elite of people who's brains wired very differently and basically have super powers compared to the rest of us Anders Ericsson, known for his book Peak on deliberate practice, would probably disagree. He tells the stories of prodigies like Mozart, Shakespeare, and Tiger Woods. Common to all is an immersion with their practice from the early ages. Of course, this is not a proof against some people’s wiring differently, but if one could become Mozart without special wiring maybe we shouldn’t count on the idea too much.

asdffdsa 5y ago
Is "Peak" in the same vein as Malcolm Gladwell or "Good to Great" which preselects a handful of prodigies across all fields then makes broad, definitive (unscientific) conclusions based on some posthoc observations?
- iainctduncan 5y ago
  No, if anything Peak was written as a response to Outliers, which grossly misrepresents Ericsson's work. Peak is his popular science version of his own work, presumably to correct that. It's a good read, and can act as a guide to his actual academic papers. But bear in mind, it is still only as good as his studies, which were done on pre-professional players and athletes, not on the super-elite geniuses. Outliers is a complete piece of shit. No professionals take anything in that book seriously, it's cherry picked extrapolated nonsense by someone who wanted a good story and has no idea what he was talking about.
- laserlight 5y ago
  I haven’t read Good to Great, but have read other Malcolm Gladwell books. They are written to be sensational and popular, not scientific at all. Indeed Gladwell is the one who misrepresented 10000 hours of practice that Anders Ericsson identified as part of his research. Ericsson identifies 10000 hours as a ballpark around which proficient practicers have practiced in their career --- nothing like a prerequisite Gladwell portrayed it to be. To the contrary, Ericsson states that without deliberate practice, the number of hours of practice doesn’t matter. Peak is nothing like Gladwell books. I recommend it to everyone interested in practice and improvement.
  - iainctduncan 5y ago
    A good way to summarize it is: Gladwell implied that if you did 10k hours, you'd become world class, that's it! Ericsson identified that the most significant differentiator between the top performers at conservatories and the rest was how much of their lives they had spent doing rigorous practice. Those are two totally different things. To paraphrase Ericsson in a way that is meaningful for most people, he basically said "10k hours is the average we saw of our top performers" (10+ years, 3 hours a day). He in no way implies that doing that would make you world class, or that all world class performers had done it. He never says it's either necessary or sufficient - just what they observed their top subjects had done relative to their bottom ones, so if you want to get good, start there. There are people out there who are world class after playing half that, and scads and scads who aren't and have done more than double. I took a lot longer than 10 years to do my 10k+ hours, but by now at age 47 I've done them. So have most of my musician friends. We gig around town. lol. 10k is table stakes.
    - laserlight 5y ago
      Thank you for this very good summary.
iainctduncan 5y ago
I have read his work, and also am friends with many university and conservatory music teachers who have know some prodigies. I'm sorry... you're wrong. The world is full of thousands and thousands of musicians who had 10k hours perfect deliberate practice from age 3 with world class teachers and don't become those people. Do they become great musicians? sure! Do they become the Pat Methenies? very very rarely. Even among jazz elite, Metheny is known as special. And there are also has many cases of people who did not have any of that perfect-practice upbringing and and have aural awareness that is on a completely different plane from regular people. I know some of them (I'm doing a Master's in Music Tech right now). I know folks who, without the proper years of deliberate practice, are able to do things I and 99.99% of musicians will never be able to do. That does not mean they will necessarily become famous or have great careers, but they can do shit that is out of this world. One of Canada's best jazz musician's recounted to me chatting after a masterclass about music cognition how he had a college student who came to him for her lesson and could remember EVERY SINGLE NOTE of Keith Jarrett's concert the night before and play it for him. That shit is not normal, it's crazy savant stuff. From what I have read, Metheny was in that category. Music is a funny thing, deliberate perfect practice is obviously the most important thing, but there absolutely are geniuses who do not have the same brains as us, and the top 0.001% or whatever has a lot of them. Savantism occurs (relatively speaking) often in music. If you want a counter balance to Ericsson's "practice is everything" stance (and there is lots of excellent material to take from Ericsson's work), I suggest reading Oliver Sacks, "Musicophelia", about the music related clinical stories from his career as a neuroscientist.
- laserlight 5y ago
  > I'm sorry... you're wrong. > deliberate perfect practice is obviously the most important thing I said that we shouldn't count too much on the idea of brain wiring. As far as I understood, the second quote above agrees with me. I didn't mean to disregard the presence of savants or other phenomena not explained by practice, deliberate or not. If my previous reply suggested so, I would like to correct it here.
  - iainctduncan 5y ago

asdffdsa 5y ago

Is "Peak" in the same vein as Malcolm Gladwell or "Good to Great" which preselects a handful of prodigies across all fields then makes broad, definitive (unscientific) conclusions based on some posthoc observations?

iainctduncan 5y ago
No, if anything Peak was written as a response to Outliers, which grossly misrepresents Ericsson's work. Peak is his popular science version of his own work, presumably to correct that. It's a good read, and can act as a guide to his actual academic papers. But bear in mind, it is still only as good as his studies, which were done on pre-professional players and athletes, not on the super-elite geniuses. Outliers is a complete piece of shit. No professionals take anything in that book seriously, it's cherry picked extrapolated nonsense by someone who wanted a good story and has no idea what he was talking about.
laserlight 5y ago
I haven’t read Good to Great, but have read other Malcolm Gladwell books. They are written to be sensational and popular, not scientific at all. Indeed Gladwell is the one who misrepresented 10000 hours of practice that Anders Ericsson identified as part of his research. Ericsson identifies 10000 hours as a ballpark around which proficient practicers have practiced in their career --- nothing like a prerequisite Gladwell portrayed it to be. To the contrary, Ericsson states that without deliberate practice, the number of hours of practice doesn’t matter. Peak is nothing like Gladwell books. I recommend it to everyone interested in practice and improvement.
- iainctduncan 5y ago
  A good way to summarize it is: Gladwell implied that if you did 10k hours, you'd become world class, that's it! Ericsson identified that the most significant differentiator between the top performers at conservatories and the rest was how much of their lives they had spent doing rigorous practice. Those are two totally different things. To paraphrase Ericsson in a way that is meaningful for most people, he basically said "10k hours is the average we saw of our top performers" (10+ years, 3 hours a day). He in no way implies that doing that would make you world class, or that all world class performers had done it. He never says it's either necessary or sufficient - just what they observed their top subjects had done relative to their bottom ones, so if you want to get good, start there. There are people out there who are world class after playing half that, and scads and scads who aren't and have done more than double. I took a lot longer than 10 years to do my 10k+ hours, but by now at age 47 I've done them. So have most of my musician friends. We gig around town. lol. 10k is table stakes.
  - laserlight 5y ago
    Thank you for this very good summary.

iainctduncan 5y ago

I have read his work, and also am friends with many university and conservatory music teachers who have know some prodigies. I'm sorry... you're wrong. The world is full of thousands and thousands of musicians who had 10k hours perfect deliberate practice from age 3 with world class teachers and don't become those people. Do they become great musicians? sure! Do they become the Pat Methenies? very very rarely. Even among jazz elite, Metheny is known as special. And there are also has many cases of people who did not have any of that perfect-practice upbringing and and have aural awareness that is on a completely different plane from regular people. I know some of them (I'm doing a Master's in Music Tech right now). I know folks who, without the proper years of deliberate practice, are able to do things I and 99.99% of musicians will never be able to do. That does not mean they will necessarily become famous or have great careers, but they can do shit that is out of this world. One of Canada's best jazz musician's recounted to me chatting after a masterclass about music cognition how he had a college student who came to him for her lesson and could remember EVERY SINGLE NOTE of Keith Jarrett's concert the night before and play it for him. That shit is not normal, it's crazy savant stuff. From what I have read, Metheny was in that category. Music is a funny thing, deliberate perfect practice is obviously the most important thing, but there absolutely are geniuses who do not have the same brains as us, and the top 0.001% or whatever has a lot of them. Savantism occurs (relatively speaking) often in music. If you want a counter balance to Ericsson's "practice is everything" stance (and there is lots of excellent material to take from Ericsson's work), I suggest reading Oliver Sacks, "Musicophelia", about the music related clinical stories from his career as a neuroscientist.

laserlight 5y ago
> I'm sorry... you're wrong. > deliberate perfect practice is obviously the most important thing I said that we shouldn't count too much on the idea of brain wiring. As far as I understood, the second quote above agrees with me. I didn't mean to disregard the presence of savants or other phenomena not explained by practice, deliberate or not. If my previous reply suggested so, I would like to correct it here.
- iainctduncan 5y ago