Posted by Sean Chisham on April 15, 2003 at 17:27:50:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How to stuff a PT-6 posted by Rick Denney on April 15, 2003 at 14:16:50:
Jacobs had a word for this affect. He called it strangeness. For instance switching between two similiar mouthpieces which you like very much. You might play a PT-88 and be happy with it. You try out a PT-50 and suddenly it seems you can do things you could never do before. The instrument sounds better to you and things come so much easier to you that you buy the mouthpiece. After several months or even years, you pull out the dusty PT-88 you used to play and suddenly it seems you can do things you could never do before. The instrument sounds better to you and things come so much easier that you start to use that mouthpiece again.
The strangeness of the new stimuli shook things up in the old noodle enough to effect a real change. With the previous setup you had formed conditioned responses based on repetitive exposure to the same stimuli. In this example the mouthpiece was the variable, but the stimuli could also be the lacquer or lack there of. Some people might call these habits. With the change in the stimuli your brain more easily broke free of the conditioned response and you reacted differently. Sometimes this is perceived as better. Sometimes it is perceived as worse.
After a period of time, with repetitive exposure to this new stimuli you again form conditioned responses. Strip the lacquer off the horn and you may indeed perceive a major advantage. It may even appear, at first, to be dramatic. But, within a period of time you will adjust and unless your mental aural imagery improves you body will drift right back to the sound in your head you had before the horn was stripped. The strangeness will have worn away.
Take that same horn 2 years later and have it relacquered and you will probably again feel those same feelings of perceived improvement. This is again the strangeness of stimuli alteration effecting new responses which are not part of your conditioning.
The circle can go round and round many times in the search for the best equipment, but a more lasting improvement will only come from improving the musical mind through musical studies, practice, listening to increasingly better musicians, and discipline.
These changes in stimuli are not all bad. If you feel that your progress has plateaued or you feel like you have gotten into a rut, it can be very helpful to change the stimuli, therefore more easily effecting changed responses. This is similiar to weight lifting. If you are working on let us say the legs and you do the exact same exercise plan on the same exact equipment for years then you could easily reach a point where development seems to plateau. A better plan is mix up the types of exercises every once in a while to force those muscles to work in slightly different ways to get to areas which would have otherwise gone underdevelped.
In practicing good examples of this would be an equipment change like a mouthpiece change or horn change. Another way could be practice venue changes such as practicing in the basement instead of the living room. Perhaps even schedule changes. Instead of practicing at 3:00pm every day for 45 minutes you could practice at 5:00pm. A common method of effecting strangeness is to practice different material than you standardly do. Maybe even something as simple as changing your warmup could be enough to effect real breakthroughs.
In the end though, I believe, that the single greatest variable which effects real lasting changes for the better is more practice. I know the "smarter, not harder" crowd is going to fry me for this one, but the financially cheapest and strategically quickest way to get better is to just practice more. Those who are successful probably don't need to practice more because they have already found the sweet spot for them. Those who are less successful are almost always lacking in time behind the instrument in concentrated practice. It is true in business, music, theater, sports, you name it. The successful ones almost always work longer and more often than the others.
Nike didn't make Michael Jordan the athlete he is.
sean