More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#9 “To Build Soft Skills, Play Like a Skateboarder” As Coyle says: Soft skills catch our eye because they are beautiful. Picture the soccer star Lionel Messi improvising his way to a brilliant goal, or Jimi Hendrix blazing through a guitar solo, or Jon Stewart riffing through a comic […]
Improving Skills 5
More from Daniel Coyle: Tip #8 – To Build Hard Skills, Work Like a Careful Carpenter To develop reliable hard skills, you need to connect the right wires in your brain. In this, it helps to be careful, slow, and keenly attuned to errors. To work like a careful carpenter. . . . Precision […]
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From Daniel Coyle’s The Little Book of Talent: Tip #7 “Before you start, figure out if it’s a hard skill or soft skill.” Coyle divides up the skills we learn into two basic types: “Hard skills are about repeatable precision, and tend to be found in specialized pursuits, particularly physical ones.” He then gives […]
Improving Skills 3
From Daniel Coyle’s The Little Book of Talent: Tip #5 – Be willing to be stupid. The point, of course, isn’t to be stupid, but to be willing to fail, to take risks. Coyle uses the example of Wayne Gretzky falling in practice and says, “As skilled as he was, Gretzky was determined to […]
Improving Skills 2
Daniel Coyle's The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills Tip #3 is, "Steal without apology." This is something I've long believed—it's one of the best ways to acquire new skills. When you see a fine conductor do something—gesture, rehearsal technique, etc.—that works, follow the advice given in the first post, quoting […]
Improving Skills I
This next blog series revolves around several books and their perspectives on increasing our skills. Those skills can range from conducting technique to rehearsal technique to score study, if we think of our own skills as conductors. It can also mean the skills we teach our singers, which are equally important. As you've seen […]