Tanner Pruett - Coyle - Ch 3-4

 Chapter 3

This chapter is titled, "The Brontës, the Z-Boys, and the Renaissance," where Coyle discusses examples of people who are considered "born with talent" and how this idea is mostly a myth. One example is his discussion of the Brontë sisters, where Coyle mentions how a recent historian found old manuscripts and drafts from the sisters that "wasn't very good." Instead of being born phenomenal novelists, they developed their abilities from a young age by writing often and writing poorly. This is something that my freshman year English professor tried to implement in his class. He taught the idea of "pancake drafting," where you write multiple drafts for the same prompt and each time you start from scratch. The idea is that you learn about what you want to say in the essay by eliminating what you do not want to say in the pancake drafts. I think this concept can be modified and applied to us as teachers of singing. Especially with our young students, we need to encourage them to try new things and experiment with their voices. One of the best ways for us to help them understand their voice and "good" technique is by giving them a million ways to try and comprehend it. Then, the student experiments with these different ways to understand the voice and they keep using the ways that resonate with them. This is a long and tedious process full of failure, but the process is what will help our students retain and comprehend their voice lessons.

Chapter 4

This is chapter is titled, "Three Rules of Deep Practice," where Coyle claims that organization is the key to higher comprehension and mastery of a skill. In the chapter, he discusses how this organization can be described as "chunking" and is divided (ironically) into three parts, "Chunk It Up," "Repeat It," and "Learn to Feel It." The first step is literally in the title, "Chunk It Up," or break something down into its components. This step involves sitting down and observing the thing you want to do from start to finish first, and then taking the whole and breaking it down into manageable steps. The second step, "Repeat It," is where you continue to practice or study the skill, (ideally on a daily basis). However, repeating "Deep Practice" means to include chunking into the process. In order for this step to be useful, the repetition must be regular, but also useful and intentional (practicing the same thing for more than 5 hours will probably do nothing more than the original 5 hours did). The third step, "Learn to Feel It," is basically what the title implies: Learning the feelings associated with good practice and improvement. When something is going well or not going well in practice, it should feel a certain way. Especially with singing, this step involves understanding the feelings associated proper intonation, technique and musicality. These steps are basically a blueprint for how any musician should approach a new piece of music. I think many of the students at the college level are able to do the "repetition" step relatively well, but usually neglect the 1st and 3rd steps of deep practice. We need to make sure our future students have the right approach to their music and technique and then learn to feel when it is right.