The Philisophical Wisdom of Charlie Parker's "Repetition"
Abstract:
On December 21, 1947, jazz alto saxophonist Charlie Parker recorded "Repetition" as a guest soloist with Neal Hefti's orchestra. We know little about Parker’s private practice routines, as he spent countless hours practicing alone, but I suspect that the concept of repetition was central to his development. I believe he most likely practiced difficult pieces at extremely slow speeds, perfecting them slowly and patiently before increasing the tempo. That, I believe, is why he developed a level of technical saxophone mastery far beyond that of his contemporaries.
In this article, I take a broader look at the idea of mastery through repetition. I focus on the repetition of difficult tasks at very slow speeds, with the goal of achieving full control before increasing speed. I explore this idea in contrast to the pressures of our modern world, which often encourages people to do everything quickly, leading many to believe they have mastered something when they never truly learned it the right way.
Concept 1:
Constant time pressure forces people to pretend that they have mastered things that they have not truly mastered.
The human brain needs time and repetition to master any task, especially a task that is complex. However, as our world becomes more complex, people are required to process more and more information, so it becomes tempting to take shortcuts. While this may work in the short run, it does not work in the long run. The result is that a person either needs to have plenty of time to practice, or they must become very skilled at pretending that they have mastered a task at a higher level than they truly have, or they must trick or pressure someone else into doing the actual hard work and then take credit for it. None of these scenarios is optimal. At a societal level, we need to work toward creating a world where every person has the time and the resources to develop themselves.
Strengths should be identified and nurtured from a very young age, and each person should be given the time to work on repetition in order to develop those skills. I began thinking about this in the context of how Charlie Parker became so fluidic in his saxophone playing, but as I have grown older, I find myself thinking about it more in a generalized way. It has led me to this conclusion. The only reason that we do not universally create this kind of society is that people often feel threatened when others are good at something. It is as if we are wired to feel that if someone else is good at a task, and I recognize their skill, then that somehow makes me deficient.
The root of the problem, if we probe more deeply, is a fundamental lack of human confidence. We are trained to pretend that we are confident, but we are not truly confident because we have not been given the proper time and direction to develop real confidence. If someone comes from an extremely wealthy family with nannies, tutors, and other advantages, the situation may be slightly different, but only slightly. Deep down, a person raised in this kind of environment knows that they have had advantages that most people have not had. So, like a pair of shoes that are well shined, the person may look more polished simply because more work has been put into their development.
The potential solution: I believe that humanity recognizes this problem and is trying to address it. Artificial Intelligence has many detractors, and rightly so. It has the potential to make people overly dependent, causing them to lose their natural gifts and skills. However, one possibly powerful gift of AI is that it may give people more time to develop those skills. For example, if AI can eventually reduce the number of hours that the average person spends on mundane tasks from six hours per day to three hours per day, then that person gains an additional three hours per day. That means 1.5 more hours for focused, repetition-based skill building, and 1.5 more hours for relaxation and leisure, which are equally necessary for human development.
Concept 2:
Developing a standardized system of repetition-based human development.
Charlie Parker was the first person I studied deeply in terms of how he became so proficient, but as I have studied others, the same pattern emerges over and over again. Practice the difficult task slowly, over and over again, at a very slow speed, and perfect it. Do not increase the speed at all until you have truly mastered it at the slower speed.
The problem is that the demands of our world force people to consistently skip steps in the development process due to lack of time. As they move further and further along in their development, the gaps in their knowledge and ability become larger, and those gaps may eventually become overwhelming.
The solution is that repetition-based training has to begin very early in life, so that the person has enough time to master these fundamental skills before they are expected to perform them at a professional level. This same repetition-based learning process should be applied broadly within a liberal arts education that includes mathematics, computer science, music, and physical education. All of these disciplines should be treated as equals, and it should be emphasized to the learner that the same basic method is used to master all of them. Repeat the task slowly. Master it at a slow speed. Then increase the speed, and repeat.
Concept 3:
Test in the same way that people learn: slow to fast.
What we currently do is this: we train a person for an extended period of time, and then we test them when we think they are ready to be tested. However, people do not learn that way. A person first does a task slowly, and gradually gets faster as their mastery increases.
A more sustainable method of testing would be to test the person at the slowest speed first, to make sure they have truly mastered the task at that level. Then allow them to increase the speed, and test them again at that higher speed. Continue this process until they can perform the task at the fastest speed that they are physically capable of achieving.
This process, if applied universally, would take longer to complete. But the result would be a much more functional society filled with people who are genuinely confident in their abilities. Social unrest would decrease. Crime would decrease. Incidents of people acting out and misbehaving would decrease. Taking the necessary time to allow people to fully develop inspires confidence, competence, and long-term commitment.
Conclusions
There are no shortcuts. Anything that is truly good takes a great deal of time and commitment. Shortcuts always reveal themselves in the long run, whether at the personal level, the community level, or the level of global society. As the millennia pass, the places where we have taken shortcuts, where we have done things more quickly than we should have, where we have not given enough planning or thought, become more and more evident. Slow is fast.
As difficult as it is, and as much patience as it requires, we must develop the discipline to master tasks slowly, and only then gradually increase the speed. We must do this in everything.