Sue Hunt • Janet, have you read "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle? In it, he describes how practice develops the nervous system. Essentially, the fatty myelin sheath round a nerve becomes thicker with every firing, making it a faster and more efficient connection. Suzuki is known to have said, “Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.” That's a lot of practising. Playing a musical instrument is an extraordinarily complicated activity. The brain is coping with many precise tasks at the same time. A child who learns an instrument early in life, when myelin production is at it's height, will develop a superbly enriched neural network. It's all about practice. www.musicinpractice.com |
