Experts listen for error
Aside from time, attention is perhaps the most precious resource musicians bring into the practice room. Experts allocate attention differently than the rest of us by looking and listening for the important stuff.
Gaze is one of the best indicators currently available to learn how people allocate attention. Because humans can only focus (or foveate) our eyes on a relatively small part of the world, we move them around a lot to get the best information about what’s happening. We then use that information to help inform how we should act.
As it happens, there are parts of the environment that can be quite helpful to attend to when moving about. Humans with a typical central nervous system can usually turn doorknobs successfully (a harder computation than you might think). When grasping a doorknob to open a door, it’s usually a good idea to look at the doorknob as you approach the door. The visual information may contain some data about the size of the doorknob or its location in relation to your hand. Knowing these details can help open the door effectively and efficiently. This is part of why people are pretty good at things like opening doors (yet somehow the push/pull detail is easily missed). We look at the stuff most likely to help us do the thing we want or need to do.
This feature of behavior is also observable in more esoteric movements, like kicking a soccer ball. Professional athletes have been the source of some incredible insight into how experts pay attention (this one’s a favorite, and this one is interesting, too). They pay attention to what goes on in their sport in different ways than non-experts. The takeaway is that experts quickly find the part(s) of their sport environment with the best data, and they extract a lot of meaningful information from it/them in a short period of time.
The following video is a stunning example of how this looks on an expert. In each of the three passes to Ronaldo, the lights are turned out before he makes contact with the ball to score. In the third trial, the lights go out before the ball is even passed.
Here we can see Ronaldo extracting incredibly precise information from…what? He apparently doesn’t need to see the ball moving. Presumably, he’s able to take information from both legs of the passer prior to the pass: likely the location of the planting foot, the speed of the kicking leg swinging back and forth, and the dynamic angles of the hips/knees/ankles in relation to the ball. He gathers what he needs in under a second, plans, then executes a movement to score a goal. This is all possible because he has learned where (and when) to allocate attention on a football pitch.
This feature is also seen in the teaching of music. Thanks to some lovely research by my former colleagues at UT, Dr. Laura Hicken and Dr. Robin Heinsen, there is data to suggest expert music teachers attend to students in more effective and efficient ways than less experienced teacher. They are able to gather meaningful information more quickly than novices and make expert decisions about what they should do next. Thanks to these smart people (and Dr. Bob Duke), there’s a nifty way to conceptualize the discrepancy observed between experts and non-experts:
Non-experts look (or listen) at things,
experts look (or listen) for things.
For anyone looking to practice more like an expert, the question that follows is: what exactly are expert practicers listening for? Asked another way, what is the source of the best information an expert can use to inform what they should do next?
Experts listen for error. They perform expertly because they have improved over many years. Improving expertly is perhaps their most important ability. And error is required for improvement.
Experts listen for discrepancies between what they intend to play and what they actually play. Differences in the sounds intended and the sounds produced can show the practicer which actions need to be refined to perform a passage as beautifully as they’d like.
Like Ronaldo, experts aren’t just searching for obvious information. They extract meaning quickly, by closely monitoring the context around errors, noticing sometimes incredibly subtle perturbations while playing. They also make fast decisions about how best to reliably reduce specific error. For a musician intending to improve during practice, error is the most data-rich feature to listen for.
Sadly, you can’t simply teach a novice where to look or where to listen to accelerate expertise. That’s not how attention works.
Instead, experiences are required. Specifically, experiences that closely resemble performance. Attention spent wisely should be rewarding, and attention spent poorly should be unsatisfying. This affords the practicer opportunities to pair perception, action, and outcomes. Over time on task, experts refine attention allocation by learning where the important stuff usually is. For practicing musicians, the important stuff is usually in the errors we make.
Start practicing today listening for error. If you already do this, listen for more subtle error. Think clearly and precisely about how you intend a passage to sound, then play. Listen for deviations from that. Use what you hear (and feel) to inform what you do next.
