My series of light bulb master classes are the gateway to finally understanding how to use all of that scientific practice advice we hear about, but nobody can teach well in our minute to minute practice to improve every moment. For instance, we've heard of deliberate practice, right? We've read books about it and still don't know exactly how to do it minute to minute in practice, do we? In fact, the world famous researcher K Anders Ericsson, the one who discovered and named it over thirty years ago, wrote one of those books.
In 2015, I was invited to Florida State University to present on deliberate practice and my discovery of the related areas of the ecosystem of learning, as I had called it. FSU is also where Erickson was doing his research, and he attended one of my lectures. He was kind enough to have several discussions with me afterwards. Even though I had explained the process in a new way and added other important elements to his work, he didn't wanna change a thing.
That is what I do. I explain the complex concepts of the research to everyday people in a way that nobody else can, not even the researchers themselves.
I've invented that learning bridge for parents, teachers, students, you.
I'll teach you more in thirty minutes than you might learn about in thirty years. That is how hard it is to learn and put together all of this information.
My light bulb master classes are a thirty minute quick hit lecture, then thirty minute q and a addressing the elements of what I call the ecosystem of learning that nobody else teaches, and they come with step by step PDFs that are included for your practice.
A lot of times, it's not the difficult things that need work. After all, more advanced practice only works for more advanced players. There's something underneath that complexity that is a sticking point, and that is how to actually get started learning.
That is why in the first light bulb master class series, we did one on deliberate practice. I break this complex concept down into a few steps that work for anyone at any level of learning from beginning to master. Ericsson saw it, and he approved.
The next one is on memorizing music. Were you ever taught to memorize? Were you ever taught about memory at all in school? Yet they gave a lot of tests that required memorization, didn't they? Why wouldn't they teach that to us if that is what they wanted us wanted from us?
Even our teachers don't know about this. How about improvisation? How's that going for you? Do we listen to the pros who are great at it and expect them to teach us?
They can't remember what they did for the first step, then the next beginning step, then the next. And it doesn't matter how advanced you are as a player. If a concept is new to you and you wanna learn it, then you are a beginner with that concept. I'll teach you in less than an hour how to learn creativity and improvisation at the most basic atomic level, and then it progresses quickly once you understand that.
Then we move on to a light bulb master class for sight reading. Are you having trouble keeping up reading charts with your weekly monthly play along group? Whether it's chord charts, tablature, written music, many of us cannot get the notes off the written page without a great deal of effort.
Teachers, do you have a plan to teach your students how to begin sight reading from the very first step then quickly progress? Sight reading is a skill that can be developed with a few minutes of practice every practice session if we do it right. The very first step is a simple physical skill you need to train in your eyes called saccades.
Nobody teaches this in sight reading, if they teach it at all. Much of the advice I've heard from pros is just do it, you'll get better at it. They don't make it easy to get started, do they? Maybe a lot more of us would seem to have talent if we knew how to get started with this stuff.
The next masterclass is about retrieval practice. We hear about muscle memory, but why are we not focused on what goes on in our brain which controls our muscles? Have you followed the advice to do ten, twenty five, fifty, one hundred repetitions of something? I used to do one hundred every day of the things that needed improvement.
Didn't do a whole lot. I'll show you how to ditch the mass repetition and get automatic and strong with, don't laugh, less reps in a week than you used to do every day. Check out the research on the power law of learning and spaced repetition.
Then we turn our attention to contextual interference.
What is that? You may have had a taste of it at some point. Did you ever try to learn a different rhythm or two on something that you were trying to improve? It works great, doesn't it? It's hard, and then everything gets better, then it doesn't work at all. Right? That's because what worked was not the rhythm, but something called desirable difficulty, which can be produced by applying contextual interference.
Why stop doing it?
It can be used for a lifetime of improvement, yet most people stop using it if they even learn it at all. Why don't our teachers tell us this? Then we'll wrap up one of the most overlooked and important elements, mindset.
When I say mindset, I mean the four decades of research by Carol Dweck at Stanford University. I describe it as explaining why most humans can't get out of their own way when it comes to learning. Once we recognize it, we can get past it. If we don't, it always stands in your way. I'll teach you all of this in the Lightbulb Master Class series. I'm Greg Goodheart, the Learning Coach.
