Camryn- Coyle Ch. 1-2

     I was curious to see as to what these first two chapters of the book entailed, and I am honestly intrigued. Chapter 1 discusses deep-practice, and explains that we learn better by making mistakes and learning from them. Chapter 2 then follows by saying deep practice creates myelin–a cell production that wraps around our nerve fibers as we learn. By doing this, our practices are embedded into our brains and build into our talent. 


    I love the chart given on page 16 to further explain deep-practice. In doing the activity, and reading afterwards that most people remembered Column B, I realized that the best way to understand deep-practice is to just do it. The quote on page 18 really made me chuckle to myself. It says, “We think of effortless performance as desirable, but it’s really a terrible way to learn” (Robert Bjork). It’s so true! I am a huge perfectionist, and whether I’m in voice lessons or singing in the car, I NEVER want to make a mistake! For a very long time, and even now, I worry that by making mistakes, I’m a failure and get easily frustrated with myself. In my mind, making mistakes is the worst thing I can do. After reading this first chapter, it has been imprinted once again in my mind that making mistakes, slowly working through troubling sections, and repeating the process is truly the best way to improve and continue to grow as a musician and a person. Including this, I found Ericsson’s formula very fascinating (deep practice x 10,000 hours = world-class skill). From this, it occurred to me that the famous musicians in the world most likely went through deep-practice, and on top of that worked very hard. With these two points from the reading, here is my simple takeaway: it is GOOD to make mistakes. 

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