How a Billionaire Investor Made Me a Better Musician

This isn't Charlie Munger.
It's only a model.

Charlie Munger never gave me one red cent. He never hired me for a gig. I've never even met the man, but he's given me the secret to become a better musician, and it has nothing to do with money. His real wealth is the wisdom he shares with anyone who'll listen. I listened and got a whole lot smarter about music. 

Our everyday world is complex. Mind-bogglingly so. Your head would explode if you didn't have a way to simplify the massive flow of data your mind receives. That's what mental models are for, and Charlie Munger is darn good at identifying and analyzing them. So what's a mental model? It's just a convenient way to explain to yourself how things work and anticipate what's next. The problem lies in the name. It's mental, and it's only a model, which makes only a partial reflection of reality. Relying on a badly constructed model land you in trouble, but so too will a reliance on too few models. A composite of many viewpoints will give you a better picture of reality. Remember the story of the blind men examining an elephant?

Reading and performing music is complex to say the least. We've all had the experience of being stuck. Maybe you're stumped on a weird rhythm or can't find the right phrasing. It's frustrating because you know the problem isn't physical. You're able to play it, but you haven't figured out how. The way out is to have multiple mental models at your disposal. Attack it from another viewpoint. Reframe the problem, or invert it. Consider alternatives or additional factors that might be causing the problem. Think outside the box, inside the box, or think laterally. 

Shhh!

As an example, I kept chipping a particular note on my horn. In my mind, chipped notes = bad attack, so I tried using different tonguing, faster air, slower air, etc. to fix it. Nothing worked. Turns out it was a tuning issue.  I had my slide too far in (sharp), and I unconsciously tried to lip it flatter, ruining the attack. In its correct slide position, the note came out clean every time. My real problem wasn't articulation or tuning at all. My mental model of how to make clean attacks was wrong. 

You can pick up more mental models by picking the brains of others. Find out how different people approach the same problem. Ask them directly if you can. Use books and videos if you can't. In short, use anything at your disposal. That's much better than hammering away with a familiar but unworkable approach. Or, as the saying goes in my day job, "Six months in the lab can save you an afternoon in the library." 

And don't forget to network, too. I fixed my chipped note problem by asking a fellow trombonist. He passed on the solution from his private teacher whom I've never met. Problem solved, and now have another mental model in my tool box. 

Hate to Practice? Eat a Bicycle Instead!

Monsieur Lotito liked his spokes al dente.

Eating a bicycle is serious business. Eating eighteen of them even more so. Michel Lotito (d. 2007) racked up an astonishing list of gastronomic feats including an entire Cessna 150. It took him two years to consume it! Anything this ambitious requires a good plan and a love of the process of eating bicycles. 

Speaking of processes, Nassim Nicholas Taleb remarks in Antifragile  "A friend who writes books remarked that painters like painting but authors like 'having written'. I suggested he stop writing, for his sake and the sake of his readers." His friend sure didn't like the practice of writing. I'll be it shows, too.

How could anyone like to practice? All those etudes, scales, and exercises over and over again. And don't forget the actual tunes. Are people who like to practice a bunch of obsessive crackpots? What's different about them? 

Answer: Their mindset. They've shifted their mental frame of reference. Practice isn't "fun" in the conventional sense, but there's a choice to make. It can be sheer drudgery, or it can be a reward unto itself. The difference is all in your approach, and it will make or break you in the long term.

Whet your appetite for practicing. Try these:

• Put down the horn and go read a couple books. Start with Carol Dweck's Mindset. Next try Thomas Sterner's The Practicing Mind for something specific to music. 

• Eat a bicycle. Better yet, eat your own horn. But not until you buy a new one first. Lotito never ate a musical instrument, so here's your chance to outshine him!

• Don't bite off more than you can chew. A young Lotito learned this the hard way after choking on the handlebars of his first bicycle.* Musicians don't have that kind of immediate feedback, so we tend to be too ambitious. Keep your practice sessions specific and bite-sized. You won't learn a lot of material this way during a practice session, but you will learn it well. To compensate for this narrow focus, you must...

• Be consistent! Lotito ate nine tons of metal by consuming just two pounds- every day. Likewise, you need to practice every day- don't break the chain! If you miss a practice day, try to limit it to just one. Two days off in a row is worse than two missed days spread out over a week.  

• Embrace repetition. Embrace repetition. Practice something until you're sick to death of it and bored out of your skull, then keep going. Get comfortable with the discomfort of this temporary phase. You'll force your mind to discover the infinite nuance and refinement that lies within. The boredom phase is actually an indicator of progress!

Size doesn't matter... does it?

Most of the time we're try to scale things bigger, overlooking the opposite direction. Like a fractal pattern, we can also go smaller to find ever finer details and nuance. George Leonard notes that people become masters through perfection of the art of practice. Savor the minute details of basic exercises. Be an obsessive perfectionist. Greatness proceeds through smallness. It's a paradox. And like a fractal, there's no way to tell which is 'great' and which is 'small'. Excellence is its own reward no matter the scale. 

*If you believe this, please contact me regarding a fabulous deal on Florida real estate. 

Sight-Reading: A Loser's Game

Did you know there's actually two different games called 'tennis'? That's what Simon Ramo explains in his Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player. Professional level tennis is a "winner's game", while amateur tennis is a "loser's game"*. Before you get too hot under the collar, let me explain what he means by this...

The outcome of a game is determined one of two ways. A "winner's game" is decided by who makes the greatest number of good moves. For tennis, the best example is an ace- a blistering serve that's virtually impossible to return. By contrast, a "loser's game" is decided by who makes the least number of avoidable, unforced errors. Most amateurs fall into this category, and they do so because:

• They believe themselves to be playing the "winner's game". They watch televised Grand Slam tournaments and try to make the same spectacular moves. 
• They haven't mastered the fundamentals and are generally happy to be what they deem is "good enough". In reality, they're stuck on the OK Plateau.

Ramo aims to transform you into an "ex-ordinary" tennis player. He explains the errors amateurs make and exercises to remedy them. Along the way, he also touches on the psychological meltdowns amateurs are subject to. One avoidable mistake is a botch, but what seals one's fate is a lack of skill to recover from it. Instead, hapless amateurs get flustered and tense. It leads directly to the "son-of-botch", which often perpetuates itself. Thus the meltdown.

Music isn't too different from tennis in this respect. I think there's only two types of music performance: 

• Prepared, thoroughly practiced material for concerts and recitals
• Sight-reading

Preparation of concert material is the result of much careful dissection and fine-grained deliberate practice. It's very specific to the material at hand. Audiences and critics judge these performances by their artistry and musicality. On the other hand, sight reading is what we amateur big band musicians do most of the time. Success is defined by how much we can minimize basic errors along the way. That's the definition of the loser's game. It could be something as basic as "start together, end together, and don't let the tempo drift apart in between". Much like Ramo's tennis players, we musicians confuse one game with the other and wind up all the worse for it. 

For the moment, we should accept that most of our material will be available only during rehearsal. If we can't take it home to practice, we're barely above the level of sight reading no matter how many times we've seen it. The best we can do is remember to take a snapshot of particularly hard parts with our smart phones, listen to recordings of the tune, and practice. It also doesn't hurt to become as familiar as possible with the type of music we're playing. 

*see here for an article about investing as a loser's game. 

How to be a Musical Precog

Sci-fi author Philip Dick often features 'precog' characters who predict the future. Pre-fash consultants in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch see upcoming fashion and decorating trends. In The Minority Report, precogs help apprehend criminals just before they commit their dirty deeds. 

"I have seen the future... it is a C7alt | Fmaj/min."

Precogs exist in real life too. Wayne Gretsky was a hockey precog, able to pass the puck to an empty spot where a teammate would be by the time the puck arrived. And of course we've all sat next to a musical precog. They can sight read anything without breaking a sweat. Their mistakes are few and subtle. It's like they can see the future of the music in just enough time to pull it off. The rest of us flop from one surprise to the next like fish out of water. Too bad for the rest of us that we weren't born with this precious psychic gift! All we can do is watch with awe and envy.

But what if it's not an inborn ability at all? What if musical precogs are good at a few critical skills that others overlook? What if those skills aren't any more difficult to master? Magicians and illusionists are notoriously guarded about divulging their secrets, but there's good news for musicians. You too can be a musical precog! It's a three step process, and you can get started right now. 

Step One: Chunking

Everything's better chunky!

Most of us have pretty average working memories that can hold no more than seven items at a time. You probably can't improve its size, but you can improve its efficiency by chunking. World-class memory champions like Josh Foer (author of Moonwalking with Einstein) get around this built-in limitation. Just use clever, highly personalized system to chunk larger pieces of information together. As musicians, we already have many chunks pre-made for us. We just have to recognize and practice them. Here they are:

• • Scales and arpeggios in every variety, key, and mode.
  • Use publications like this, this, this, this, and this to start chunking everything from common rhythmic patterns, harmonic progressions, and stylistic interpretation. 

When you can chunk a lot of what you're playing, cognitive load lessens. You can pay more attention to reading ahead (e.g., expanding eye-hand span) and improving ensemble playing. 

Step Two: Manage Your Reactions

Disasters don't happen when you make a mistake. They happen when you make a mistake and get upset. That leads to more mistakes, which makes you more upset, etc. This vicious circle is described by Simon Ramo in Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player as the 'botch' and 'son-of-botch'. The latter is by far more dangerous. Josh Waitzkin describes it in The Art of Learning as applied to martial arts and chess. Music is no different! 

...to getting all the notes.

For amateur musicians, the 'botch' is usually trying to get all the notes instead of keeping to the tempo. No amount of chunking can make up for this. Dwelling on missed notes will vaporize any cognitive surplus. You're now a prime target for the 'son-of botch' that comes from feeling pressured, rushed, and jittery. Unless you can quickly snap out it, your mistakes will escalate out of control. Better to avoid it altogether, especially when sight-reading. Gauge your playing instead by how well you keep the tempo and rhythm coordinated to the rest of the ensemble. You don't have a second chance to play a missed note, and trying will only cause problems for everyone.

Step Three: Pre-Flight Checklist

See my previous post on this topic. The pre-flight checklist gives you an added advantage when you can anticipate problem spots. 'Nuff said.