I had a dream that I was discussing Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink with Simon Cowell of American idol fame. We were sitting in a large room in very comfortable high-backed chairs discussing what Gladwell calls rapid cognition: the kind of judgements that one makes almost instantaneously. This is the sort of thing that Cowell (or anyone in A&R, for that matter) makes a living doing--judging wannabe pop stars based on as little as a few seconds of singing.
A while ago, when I first read* Blink I devised a little experiment of sorts to prove to my students the value of such rapid decision making. These were second-semester freshmen who were still doubting themselves when it came to key signatures, triads, intervals, etc. They would give one answer (usually the correct one) and then second-guess themselves.
So, using PowerPoint, I developed two sets of slides. The first set consisted of key signatures on a staff (no clef, so as to discourage the "next-to-last flat is the key") approaches; the second set consisted of triad or not-a-triad (some of the triads were in root position; some in inversion; not-a-triads consisted of a variety of three-note harmonic structures). I had a set that was designed to display for five seconds, followed by one second of a blank slide, before changing to the next slide, and I had a set that was designed to display for one second and then display a blank slide for five seconds. Perhaps not surprisingly, the students did slightly better in the latter case (displaying the slide for only one second).
Are there other ways that rapid cognition might play a part in what we do as musicians? Since virtually everything performers do is in real time, it seems to me that this would be an important area to explore.
*I didn't finish reading Blink; I read about half of it. But this shouldn't matter. If the book is about rapid cognition and I don't get the gist of it after a few pages, then has it really done its job? :)
A while ago, when I first read* Blink I devised a little experiment of sorts to prove to my students the value of such rapid decision making. These were second-semester freshmen who were still doubting themselves when it came to key signatures, triads, intervals, etc. They would give one answer (usually the correct one) and then second-guess themselves.
So, using PowerPoint, I developed two sets of slides. The first set consisted of key signatures on a staff (no clef, so as to discourage the "next-to-last flat is the key") approaches; the second set consisted of triad or not-a-triad (some of the triads were in root position; some in inversion; not-a-triads consisted of a variety of three-note harmonic structures). I had a set that was designed to display for five seconds, followed by one second of a blank slide, before changing to the next slide, and I had a set that was designed to display for one second and then display a blank slide for five seconds. Perhaps not surprisingly, the students did slightly better in the latter case (displaying the slide for only one second).
Are there other ways that rapid cognition might play a part in what we do as musicians? Since virtually everything performers do is in real time, it seems to me that this would be an important area to explore.
*I didn't finish reading Blink; I read about half of it. But this shouldn't matter. If the book is about rapid cognition and I don't get the gist of it after a few pages, then has it really done its job? :)