I'm trying to get a better sense of the emotional registers related to music, so I'm enjoying this book. I'm really trying to get a feel for how brain studies might connect with the ineffable flow that bubbles up when writing or grooving on music, but this quotation jumped out and moved my thinking more toward writing instruction and textbook composition. I guess I'll just blockquote it up here.

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. (Levitin, Daniel J. This is Your Brain On Music : The Science of a Human Obsession).

First, I'm really doubting that I'm even close to the necessary 10,000 hour threshold, so that's worrysome--it's not like I've been keeping track. Second, I'm really pushing a low-bridge approach to teaching with technology lately. I'm big on the idea that people can just jump in and get started if you keep the stakes low enough. I guess for now I'll think about what might be gained by not aiming for mastery, but instead looking for engagement.

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