How is long term stress effecting my learning Part 2 of 2
How does constant long term stress effect my learning?
Well to re cap from last month:
Stress has a visible affect
It impairs memory retrieval:
The risk of forgetting information in exams or performances.
Stress may hamper the updating of memories in the light of new information and induce a shift from a flexible, ‘cognitive’ form of learning towards rather rigid, ‘habit’-like behaviour. Together, these stress-induced changes may explain some of the difficulties of learning and remembering under stress in the classroom for adults and children.
It hinders the integration of new information into existing knowledge structures: This can prevent the updating of knowledge by new facts or a deep multidisciplinary understanding of concepts – which is why I broke sight reading into basic concepts (described below) need to be automated into my memory before I can make larger steps with full sight reading piano music at speed.
By altering the balance between memory systems, stress may lead to strong, rigid memories and the retrieval of habits rather than creative and complex solutions to new problems. This is why my usual approach of going down a few levels of sight reading music and back up no longer yielded the same results.
In other words:
If your feeling under constant threat of something bad happening for whatever reason, the current pandemic, finances, job security, wellbeing, health, wellbeing of family etc, it all translates to stress hormones being released.
This will slow down the learning process if we are not aware of it and adapt.
So how do we adapt, when the threat is beyond out control and seems ever present? Some ideas for adapting your musical learning:
Explicit positive verbal reinforcement of students during learning in class – right now I do a quick quiz sharing a screen on zoom at the start of the lesson – this gives the positive reinforcement and helps get the brain firing.
Movie clips might be used which do not only focus on the learning material itself, but place it into an emotional context by making the links to the student and his or her everyday life right in front of them – this is something you can do yourself away from the classroom, there are some excellent you tube channels like sideways, 12tone, Inside the score, Nahre Sol, David Bennet Composer and too many more to mention, Podcasts like That Classical Music Podcast – all have videos or podcasts analyzing music/ talking about the history or context for classical, Film score, pop, rock, jazz and musical theatre. These videos are entertaining, and have clips, visual references, or humor which helps you learn in a calm relaxed manner. You may not understand the theory at first, but it is presented in an accessible way and from there you can progress to more dry music theory weighted analysis if you wish.
In conclusion and a possible plan of attack for those feeling under constant stress:
Long term stress does not only induce a deficit in memory retrieval and memory updating, it also changes the way information is stored and retrieved by multiple memory systems.
Long term stress before learning may make students towards lean toward rigid forms of learning, which may hinder the successful transfer of knowledge and reduce cognitive flexibility and creative solution making in problem solving.
However, the negative effects of stress on memory retrieval may be counteracted to some extent by thoroughly and repeatedly practicing useful routines or doing drills like in the army, which can be recalled automatically. If these procedures are automated, it is much more likely that they can actually be retrieved and translated to behavior. For example, practicing for an exam by doing mock exams and replicating the conditions of the exam.
So how can we apply the above, well unfortunately, these automated responses are great for emergency situation but the lack of creative thinking means that they can be hard to apply correctly to education. I can get you to learn a piece off by heart but if anything goes wrong you are unable to correct it the wheels come off and it all falls apart. You cannot adapt the memory is rigid.
Practice every bar, every phrase, after you have memorized it in all the different ways you could possibly express it or want to. This is done daily different ways for different days starting at different points in the music. The result is that you have memorized little sections in many different variations, so when things don’t happen as predicted when playing you have more selections of memories to choose from that are closer to the current situation. Before this you would have needed less practiced cues, to adapt old memories and to continue playing without interruption.
What if your having issues memorizing the music?
Its fine section by section but altogether there are blanks?
My advice is to write out the sheet music, just the section where there is a blank.
Listen to those sections especially, but also a performance of it daily, multiple times.
Sing the melody line from the sheet music (adjusting for range of course) as you play the left hand or harmony.
Sing the left hand as you play the right hand or melody line.
Play the right hand and ghost play with the left then switch. This should be done everyday for a few minutes until the task becomes easier and the piece is memorized this could take days or weeks, patience and no stress is key. As soon as you are frustrated stop do something else, you aren’t learning in that head space.
The second part of my advice relates to the automated learning:
Learn you scales up to 4 octaves
Learn your arpeggios up to 4 octaves
Play broken chord patterns up and down the piano, all the different chords you can think of in each scale you are in. Then play their inversions.
Play your scales in broken/split octaves, play your arpeggios in broken/split octaves.
The trick with the above is you need to recognize when this pattern arises in music, which you need to cross apply the knowledge to your sight reading.
These scales, arpeggios, broken chords are all over music, learning these responses to a prompt allows you more time to be calm think and adapt if needed on the non automated sections.
As you progress in music you start to see multiple voices or melodies in pieces, not just right hand melody, left hand accompaniment. This can throw the eye at first but fear not, what you need to do is play the different lines of melody one at a time all the way through the piece. As you slowly work through and separate, your eye begins to follow the shape of the different melody lines and they become more obvious to follow. This is the first steps in score reading one line of music, then 2 (duet or piano solo), trio, Quartet to orchestra.
Other practice can be to use a you tube video that puts up the sheet music as a video, that changes in time with the music for you to follow. You will lose your place at first, but pause and find it again and then continue. Your eye will slowly begin to track along with the music and you will get better at it.
Thank you for joining me for part 2 and I hope some of my suggestions help you to continue your musical learning and progress in a relaxed stress free manner!
See you in March and have a musical February.
