Agreed! The documentation/schema for the systems I support are in five massive binders, full of my notes and information gleaned over the years. I write all queries with pen and paper (Pilot Metropolitan and big orange Rhodia pad at the moment), often completing 90% of coding with my brain and hand. Once I turn on my PC it’s just typing and testing.
I do this for two reasons - my code is portable to any system, since I ignore any special syntax (PL vs T vs MySQL), and writing longhand slows your brain down and allows you time to organize your thoughts.
Sure, it’s possible. And I agree that you don’t need to do the deep dive into all the stuff you described. But when you want to play along with Fell in Love With a Girl knowing that White is playing more than one string at a time is certainly going to help. If you are going to talk with other people who play music, knowing that playing multiple notes at once is called a chord is going to make communication much easier.
I just watched that video again. Love that LEGO animation.
But it is virtually always presented as a barrier by gatekeepers. Every artist recorded by bela Bartok didn’t know what a triad was. Since the 2000’s Shane McGowan has basically played four chords. Tunisian throat singers don’t necessarily know the mode they are in.
None of these prevent beautiful music from being made.
All you need to be a musician is to say, “I want to be a musician”. That’s it. If ya wanna talk fugue construction through the years or the effects of reverse bores on open tubed instruments, or the overtone series of an oboe contrasted to a recorder, I’m game.
But you don’t need to learn theory before you play your opus.
I’m of the opinion that these X # of hrs rules are 100% made up.
For example…
Some people are naturally good dancers right out of the gate, with a little practice they are fantastic dancers.
Some people are horrible dancers and even with a shit ton of practice will only ever be average dancers.
(substitute dance for anything, like math, or yoga, or juggling, or chess, or bread making, or singing, orwhatever.)
sure practice helps you improve any skill, that is obvious, but there is something called NATURAL APTITUDE that has a multiplier effect where someone can be as good at 10hrs as someone else would be at 1000hrs. It also has a natural limiter ceiling effect that determines how good you’ll ever be able to get.
a good percentage of people will never be able to master a number of skills no matter the time they put in because they simply lack the ability to ever reach mastery level, it isn’t a factor of time, their ceiling ability just isn’t at mastery level. also, how and when the time is put in greatly affects the outcome, some skills need regular practice just for flat line maintenance, while others are more naturally cumulative.
These stupid rules are simply concocted to sell self help books, imho. They don’t really apply to real life other then practice makes you better, which is a big fat DUH!
If you love doing something likely you have an aptitude for it and if you put in the time you will get better at it. There is no rule as to how good you will be able to get or how quickly you will get good at it, but if you love it you will enjoy the journey as well as the goal. Isn’t that what it is really all about?
Well, yeah, and think about some skillsets: if you became a master of the Linotype machine years ago, you’re a master of a dead art. And if you had become a master of Photoshop CS2, while you’ll be able to get along fine in Photoshop CC, your skillset is at least partially obsolete.
I have Linotype on the brain because a while back I tried, and failed, to find a list of Linotype limitations, when I was putting together a retro brochure. Never did find it, just stuck to typefaces I knew were common of the era I was going for, and stuck to a plausibly limited set of typesizes. But I digress.
1,000 hours in the darkroom still teaches product if not process. Composing a photo is not any easier because of the new tools, might actually be harder. But at least I know why the tools are called burn and dodge. When I learned them it took both hands and was more like dancing.
Tell that to the first baker, 5 seconds before his first hour.
I did not become a chemist by doing anything other than throwing shit together, in more and more coordinated ways over time. I didn’t invent chemistry. The Wright brothers didn’t invent bicycles.
Applying the Pareto principle, of those 100 hours of practice, 80 of them are essentially useless and 20 are where the real learning takes place. So just practice for 20 hours instead.
…also, is the Pareto principle recursive? If yes, we could get to infinitely short time of infinitely efficient learning. If we could leverage this, it’d revolutionize education!
