Back during the Great New Year’s Weekend Snowstorm NewMexiKen mentioned This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
I’ve just finished the book, which I found interesting but a struggle. I have a difficult time understanding music theory and an even more difficult time understanding neuroscience. I don’t think my limitations were the main problem, though. I think the real problem was with the author who, in this reader’s mind at least, exhibited no sense of structure or organization in how the material was presented. Well, “no” is too strong; let’s say limited structure. The discussion always left me fuddled.
Nonetheless the book was interesting because the two subjects themselves are so fascinating.
Two factoids:
Apparently EMI (the music conglomerate) invented magnetic resonance imaging, investing their music profits into the research. Next time you get an MRI you have the Beatles to thank.
And this:
The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.