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where it originated:
psychological review
the preamble:
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer
The theoretical framework presented in this article explains expert performance as the end result of individuals' prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. In most domains of expertise, individuals begin in their childhood a regimen of effortful activities (deliberate practice) designed to optimize improvement. Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning.
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07-11-2014 03:19 PM
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Note to "the internet"
It doesn't say 10,000 hours equals greatness.
And neither does Gladwell in "Outliers."
Thanks for posting this.
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^^^^^What he said^^^^^
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I think in jazz it takes about 10,000 hours of quality practice to get really competent.
I don't think any of us non-pros are actually aspiring to greatness - we just want to get really competent.
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There is so much you can achieve with practice and dedication only, the rest is pure talent...or was it the other way around
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True, though Gladwell made a mistake in choosing for his example of the 10,000 hour rule The Beatles.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
One may argue, and many have, that the Beatles were really better than other rock bands made up of people their age, but they were not thought to be "expert" rock musicians even then, let alone now. (Who ever thought that John and George played guitar as well as Scotty Moore or James Burton---and James Burton went semi-pro at 14 and pro at 15---let alone a Chet Atkins or a Jimi Hendrix?) Further, the fame of The Beatles rests more on their songwriting and record making than on their live performing. Gladwell seems to think that 10,000 hours of playing covers in German strip clubs accounts for everything the Beatles did but it doesn't account for their songwriting, which was their main thing.
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I've struggled with the Beatles thing too...but the Beatles played a lot of different stuff in Hamburg...that broader palette may have well influenced that songwriting, which, harmonically--was a good deal more sophisticated than the rock and roll that came before it. Granted, nobody cared if the Beatles were more sophisticated, but they sure were DIFFERENT.
It's why Beatles tunes jazz up so nicely.
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I think the explanation for that is that John and Paul listened to a lot of standards growing up. (What we call standards; I'm not sure what they would have called them.) I'm not sure how much of that music they would have played in sweaty Hamburg clubs.... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Nick Lowe, who has written a good many fine pop songs, has said that starting out playing covers was a good way for young rock musicians to learn about song forms. I agree with that. (This would go as well for people who start out playing country or blues or pop or folk tunes.) But lots of people do that without ever becoming good songwriters themselves. Songwriting is its own skill, and so is making records.
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BBC News - Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? (the More or Less podcast episode discussed on this page is available on itunes)
Ericsson doesn't agree with Gladwell's interpretation (and I've come to the conclusion that Gladwell is a hack). There is probably a selection bias in the research. Someone compelled to complete 10,000 hours of deliberate practice on the violin probably already had some natural musical talent. We shouldn't extrapolate that research to mean that someone with no talent/interest in music can practice for 10,000 hours and become an expert.
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I agree. What I heard from the schools I was involved in was 10 years to go from beginner to musician. You get playing early in that 10 years, but takes a long time to build that library of musical knowledge inside you, your ears, and for so much to become second nature and just happen. Yes, there are exceptions to everything, but even looking at musician you make it young, they tend to of started very young so the 10 years appears over and over. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Thanks for that. Originally Posted by farlow
If Gladwell sees The Beatles as born geniuses----and he does---it seems to defeat the whole purpose of attributing so much to their 10,000 hours of playing in Hamburg strip clubs.
I think that most of us here would accept two propositions as generally true:
1) There is no magic number of hours of practice that will guarantee greatness.
2) All those players you admire most, they practiced a lot.
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It'd be great if one person in the history of the internet actually read Outliers before calling Gladwell a hack.
Man, its hard to have a conversation when everyone has a link that does the talking for them.
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I think the quality of the hours is very important - probably not so much in the early couple thousand when motor skills are being developed, but later the quality of the hours become very important.
Unce upon a time I gave a link to an amateur jazz pianist who is closing in on 9,000 dedicated practice hours in the jazz idiom. He's still quite far from being a competent jazzer IMHO. He works hard, plays a regular gig, practices diligently and has put in like 9,000 hours...but after all that time, all he really does is make the indicated changes, totally diatonically. Which is cool and all...but just diatonically making the changes doesn't make a player a jazz player. Also noteworthy is that listening to his recordings from a year ago and from more recently, I can't hear any improvement. So I think it's important to realistically self-assess from time to time to ensure the path is still taking one to where they want to go.
It seems to me that for "jazz competence", at least a few thousand of those hours have to be spent hearing jazz lines in your head (whether original or transcribed lines or, as happened to me today, recalling a line I'd heard months ago but had never worked out) and trying to get them out on the instrument, applied over tunes, in a way that says something.
But I'm not at 10,000 hours nor do I consider myself a competent jazzer yet, so I could be out to lunch here.
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I've read Gladwell's book and I didn't call him a hack. I think The Beatles were a poor choice of examples to demonstrate the 10,000 hour rule. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Sorry Mark, wasn't directed at you. Was directed at the BBC, who should know better. Horrible journalism.
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I've read Gladwell's book, and I'll call him a hack. His frames of reference make no sense, whatsoever. He uses the Beatles and great classical piano soloists as examples, as well as programmers. It's totally ridiculous to compare pop stars with performers in a disciplined field. Is John Lenon an expert in the same way Horowitz was? Justin Bieber was famous when he was 14. How many hours do you think he put in? Same with any teen idol.
How many guys have played minor league baseball for decades and never crossed into the bigs? How many musicians are out there playing 6 hour wedding gigs every night?
He totally ignores the importance of quality of instruction, of the fact that innate talent may (as someone said above) encourage someone to continue to dedicate themselves, and the fact that success is often not dependent on skill or talent at all.
Especially in athletics, there are tons of stories of guys who are just total genetic freaks who walk onto teams despite having no real history with the sport because their innate abilities give them an edge. Look at someone like Bo Jackson. Do you really think he had to put in 2x the amount of hours to be good at baseball and football as every other major league athlete?
The suggestion that this kind of edge doesn't exist is, frankly, silly to anyone who has spent time around gifted athletes or people born with perfect pitch or amazing motor control.
Gladwell is notorious for finding really interesting stories, telling you about them in a compelling style, and then drawing totally bizarre, unwarranted conclusions about them.
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10,000 hour "rule" is just a fancy word for experience. There are many people experienced at a lot of things but totally suck at them, be they doctor, carpenter, muscian, policymakers, or whatever else. There are so many factors that create so many level of talent/mastery, not just time put in. And yes innate ability is one of them.
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Regarding Justin Beeber and other young celebrities, all those child miss-es, talent shows ,... it seams to me they are quite in the ball park of 10000 hours in what they are after. They practice for their goal, not for what we may think their goal should. We think musicians should strive for proficiency, however, they strive for a gig, or a contract, ..., and so on. Their parents to. How many collective hours there?
On the other hand, I think 10000 hours will not be enough for me to become competent in melody of Tico Tico.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I have read Outliers, and several of his other books. That is how I came to my conclusions. I just thought the link would be interesting to other forum members. I don't know why you would make the assumption that I hadn't.
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No problem, Jeff. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I read one of the many books based on the 10000 hour principle, "the talent code". I thought it was very interesting and gave great examples, but I wouldn't call it science. Still, it was convincing to me that: A large number of hours of "focussed" practice will give you a good skill set. I know, not earthshaking, but it still is motivating for me. My takeaway is in three parts:
1) you need to put in the time
2) the time needs to be focussed practicing, always thinking, and always solving problems to make your playing better in all ways
3) you can't create talent, but you can optimize what talent you have.
I think about these three items every day, and it has definitely increased the pace of my learning which I needed because I played guitar in college, and then not till I retired at 56. I'm very happy with my progress as an adult. It seems like conventional wisdom is you can only be a plinker if you start an instrument as an older adult, and I don't find that to be true. I would undoubtedly be advancing faster as a teenager with this focus, but would I have had this focus as a teenager? Many don't!
Mike
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That's what keeps me going. With jazz, though, a crucial question is how best to do that? Classical pedagogy is well established but jazz is different because a) not everyone is expected to know the same rep and b) not everyone is expected to play the same things the same way. Originally Posted by Mimbler
Some excel at chord melody while others do little of that; others blaze at fast tempos while still others do little of that; some compose most of the tunes on their recordings while yet others do little of that.
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I make the assumption because folks here, even those who say they've read the book, are attributing ideas to Gladwell that he simply does not write.
The ten thousand hours is a commonality...its a common factor, among several others, that trend among those who achieve greatness.
Its actually very common sense based really...greatness is the sum of aptitude, hard work, a little chance/good luck...
As for Bieber...popularity does not equal greatness.
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I would make one slight change..... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
As for <fill in the blank>...popularity does not equal greatness.
Greatness is earned, popularity is product of marketing.
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Do you not see what I'm saying about how his problem is that there's no frame of reference for what "greatness" is? Why are the Beatles great, but Justin Bieber is not? Both are wildly successful pop artists. Nickelback was the best selling group of the 00s. They've probably put in 10,000 hours of practice and touring. Are they "great" artists? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
10,000 hours may be a commonality of something, but it's not clear what that something is. And I'm not even sure I agree with Gladwell that it's a commonality. It appears to be neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for success or skill.
And then, again, you completely ignored my athletics examples. There are thousands of guys who have put in way more than 10,000 hours of practice and playtime at that sports that will never break into the major leagues. There are countless examples of genetic freaks who had never played a particular sport until college when they were recruited and are now star athletes.
It seems far fetched to me to suggest that some of the genetic traits that comprise "talent" are really as unimportant as Outliers attempts to convey. I've known too many people who had photographic memories, or 36" vertical jumps, or were just totally brilliant to believe that "greatness", whatever that is, is merely the product of dedicated time and luck as Outliers suggests.
Do you really believe that chapter about Bill Gates? That he was the only guy in the country with access to a computer lab? I'm sure there were thousands of people working their asses off to try to do exactly what he did at that time. Not all of them founded Microsoft.
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