Book Review-Guitar Zero by Gary Marcus

This book is an unexpected pleasure. Unexpected because I had known about Gary Marcus through his professional standing as a cognitive psychologist. I had read his recent article in Nautilus magazine on artificial intelligence.

I was looking around in his list of authored books to find some cognition related material to dive into, but then this title: Guitar Zero shows up on that list. I felt compelled to reading this book after reading about the premise, because it stood out from  his much more serious writings. I had endured years of  violin lessons as all good Asian boys will do, I enjoyed the experience, but I was a miserable player, owning short stubby fingers preordained my fate as a terrible fiddler. The music theory and appreciation comes in handy for the rest of my life, but I had always had a desire to play the guitar, some teenage hormonal dreams never die.

This book was curious to me because: what is a serious cognitive scientist doing writing a book like this? I read some of the teasers about the book and I was intrigued because he seemed to be as hopeless at playing an instrument as I was. But he had the gumption, and a year of sabbatical to devote to this project.  

I was also interested in seeing how he, a cognitive scientist, can parlay his knowledge in the cognitive sciences to analyze what he is doing and to improve his playing.

The book was amazing.

It doesn't hurt that the author is has a good, self-deprecating sense of humor and he made copious fun of his own inabilities to “get” rhythm. The sidebars, if you could call them that, are fascinating because in addition to entertaining us with his struggles learning how to play, he regaled us with solid knowledge regarding cognition, how we humans learn how to play instruments and how our brains work in the cognitive context. It helps that what he said lined up with what I had been reading and learning, a big motivational boost for me. The reassurance that I was going down the correct track was very welcomed.

He delves into the literature about learning, and most fortuitously, he is a fine writer, so he is excellent at explaining the main ideas as well as diving into the granularities. He complements his cognition explanations with examples of his struggles in learning to play the guitar. He not only explains what he is experiencing, but he also discusses why he was having problems and how he can ameliorate the difficulties. He always couples the  difficulties that a guitar presents to your average human with the latest cognitive theories.

Yet another bonus with the author is that he is a major fanboy. He talks about musicians that are around my vintage. I think he's a little younger than me, so the musicians he was using as examples are people that I know, and I also like. It all fits in together neatly in a cohesive package.

One thing that he had that was somewhat unique, outside of devoting a full year to this experiment, was that he was able to hire a top-notch guitar teacher to work with him; something that the average person might not be able to afford.

One of the more interesting experiences that he had is that he was able to attend the School of Rock with his teacher’s recommendation and access.

This interlude at a retreat where he ends up being the oldest person in his rock and roll band —he's playing with a bunch of kids and they're just kicking his butt musically. He knew where he stood, and he persevered through the experience enjoying his time there. Most importantly, it seems that he also improved significantly. We, the readers, are fortunate to be present, through his very well written narrative, at this experience.  

In the end, he had a fun playing experience and he did what most middle-aged guys dream of doing: learn to play guitar and getting a chance to perform with a group of great musicians. As of the end of the book, we learn that he still plays, and his rock band of kids had a successful performance.

This is a serious book, as well as a fun book of nice stories about music and how to learn to play music. There is a significant list of endnotes and list of references that he uses to show us all the serious cognitive science papers that is referenced as the basis for his discussions.

In the end, it is the rock and roll experience that I was really drawn to, and I really enjoyed. reading about the applied cognitive concepts that he discussed.

The most significant thing for me though, is his  good fortune of having access to some of my favorite musicians because he is working on the book. He also introduced me to many musicians that I had never heard of, I need to thank him for that, as I'm checking those musicians out.

The fact that he was able to get Tom Morello and my all-time favorite jazz guitarist: Pat Metheny to sit down and answer his questions just blew my mind and made me green with envy.

This book is great fun. I recommend this to anybody who has had any experience trying to learn how to play any musical instruments or trying to learn to play any sport, because you would appreciate the difficulties that he writes about, as well as his patience and stubbornness.

Volleyball Coaching Life-To Be Competitive or To Compete

Having a team that competes have always been a blessing for coaches. Players who know how to compete makes our jobs much easier because we do not have to work hard to motivate, they will do it themselves.

Unfortunately, many people mistake the word “compete” with the word “competitiveness”. Here are the differences:

·       Compete is an intransitive verb and is defined as: to strive consciously or unconsciously for an objective.

·       Competitive is an adjective and is defined as: inclined, desiring, or suited to compete.

·       To Compete is an action that cannot be described or captured statically.

·       To Be Competitive is a description of someone who is competing as seen through the prism of another individual.

·       To Compete is an internal state of being.

·       To Seem Competitive is an external manifestation of someone competing as seen through their words, body language, and emotions.

·       Learning how to compete is hard.

·       Faking being competitive is relatively easy.

In short, to be described as being competitive can only come after the person has been seen competing, there is a time lag involved, however short that time lag is.

This may seem to be just an exercise in semantics, but the framing of the competing versus being competitive captures the framework that people view their players.

Since the act of competing is internal and unobservable to everyone, it is difficult to judge whether the team is competing at a moment in time. This is a major concern for coaches because we need to know our team’s state of mind, whether a boost is warranted or whether to bring their overwrought emotions down so that they can compete effectively. It is a black art, more times than not, our coaches are wrong in their guesses. Therefore, the question of competitiveness exists.

A darker and more malignant interpretation is that the idea of having players looking competitive   exposes the unspoken and unconscious coaching ego. The coaching ego wants everyone: the parents, the opposing coaches, the opponents, and every observer who sees “our” players play to have the  impression that the players are competitive because the coach’s ego revels in the perception that the coach is the reason for the team being competitive.

The real question is do we want to teach our players to be competitive or do we want to teach our players to compete. Should we be satisfied with just teaching our players how to behave competitively? Or does competing matter more than seeming competitive?

But what does competitive even look like? There is a preponderance of mythology of what competitive should look like. I would hazard to say that the external behavior of an individual has little or no correlation to how they compete.

My pessimism is partly based on what we perceive to be competitiveness, whether it is visual, emotional, or physical manifestations of competitiveness. Our perception of competitiveness has a legacy based on some old school stereotypes steeped in testosterone fueled mythology from martial fantasies. We perceive, consciously or unconsciously, that competitiveness is swathed in emotional, unsportsmanlike, and many times counter productive behavior. Our sporting society not only condones this behavior but also celebrate it as being “competitive” because we mistake extrinsic expressions of emotions as an accurate reflection of intrinsic ability to compete.  This isn’t to say that our extrinsic expressions are complete devoid of honest emotions, I believe that they are not accurate indicators of how much we strive to compete.

By seeking to teach players to be competitive, we are unconsciously asking for, and teaching the players to act and react according to what our culture dictates to be competitive behavior. Recall that behavior comes behind the act of competing. The players will follow the lead of the coaches and parents, they will willingly mime the accepted competitive behavior so that they can receive the attention, approval, and praises, but does the exhibition of accepted competitive behavior infer that they know how to compete? Is there correlation? Does attitude transfer to acuity in solving problems quickly and making the best decisions under the worst of contexts? I don’t believe so. Indeed, if we were to observe some of the best competitors, their behavior is one of unperturbable equanimity, their disruptive emotions held in check because they know that their working memory is limited, they don’t need extraneous emotional thoughts to clutter up their working memory.

The questions are: how do we know whether our players know how to compete and how do we teach them?

The first answer might seem circular: we know that they know how to compete when we see them competing, but that is not and should not be a steady state of being, it is only true for that level of competition with their level of  experience at that moment.

As they face new situations, play against better or different opponents, deal with unknown uncertainties, play in unfamiliar situations, their ability to compete will diminish; that is our cue to upgrade the stimulus to give them new experiences to store in their long-term memory, to create neural pathways for them to recall and reuse. Note that I said, “to allow the team to discover how to compete”, this is intentional, because we are leading them to water, they need to drink from that water. Each team and player’s thirst for the water is unique.

Some guidelines that I try to use to allow the team to discover how to compete, I will admit that it is difficult to be consistent with these heuristics, but I try.

·       Use the game as the framework because the specifics of the game are necessary scaffoldings to create usable experiences.

·       At the same time, don’t be afraid to break the decision-making sequence down into progressions. This completely depends on the experience and skill levels of the players. Novice players get more progressions, but the fallacy is to keep doing the same progressions until they are completely comfortable before moving on.

·       Use skewed scoring, overspeed the competition, and tweak the rules and structures of the game to place constraints to insert desired difficulties in the competition to create opportunities for the working memory to learn and resolve and to add new experiences into the working memory.

·       Don’t be afraid of stopping the action to give rapid and timely feedback. They will usually not remember that play that you are trying to recreate after a certain number of plays have already occurred.

·       Approach the competition as opportunities to problem solve and make decisions, whether it is in a scrimmage, a drill or in a competition.

o   Give players a chance to problem solve.

o   Give players a chance to reflect and remember.

o   Give the players a chance to make decisions and think without the coach telling them how and without scaffolding.

o   Learn as a coach to frame the language:

§  What did you see that made you make that decision? Rather than: did you see such and such.

§  Was that the right decision for the situation? Rather than: you made the wrong decision.

§  Clearly differentiate between decision making error and execution error.

·       Avoid adding contrived difficulties unrelated to the game into the competition. Adding difficulties that distracts the players attention from competing clutters up the working memory and the learning become limited because the working memory is having to deal with the distractions. The key is determining what constitutes Desired Difficulties for your team, at your level, with their level of experience.

·       Always keep the player’s level of skills and experience in mind. Just because the National Team have a way to do something does not mean that it will work with a middle school team. The coach needs to improvise, adapt, and overcome so that the players can learn to also improvise, adapt, and overcome.