I heard this story on NPR the other morning. It's about some really fun studies on something called "inattentional blindness" which occurs when you are really focused on something challenging. During this state, it is very easy to miss even really obvious things that are going on but are not part of what you are paying attention to. The NPR story discusses a study in which radiologists (highly trained and practiced at finding cancer in scans) do not see a picture of a gorilla waving at them from within a scan because they are looking for hard-to-find signs of cancer.
Many musicians will be familiar with the feeling disbelief one sometimes experiences when listening to recordings of oneself. "How did I not hear that?!!"
As we practice, we necessarily narrow our focus as we work to improve intonation or articulation or whatever. We need to be aware that as we do this, there may be some "gorillas" dancing around unnoticed. Our normal mode of correction is to play, waiting to notice a problem, then addressing it. After all, we can't address a problem we are unaware of. Perhaps after any especially intense work of a narrow focus, we should broaden our focus, and search for other areas that may need attention rather than assume that since we've not noticed anything that it is safe to move on. After working on intonation, for example, go over the same passage with a focus on making your best sound, or making sure you are physically releasing. My favorite one is to shift the focus to playing expressively.
Recording oneself often is also a good gorilla check, of course, and is so easy to do these days with the technology in regular smart phones, computers, tablets, and so on.
Anyone have other suggestions for catching the gorillas?
This post was on a similar subject.
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