Ted Greene<\/a>, and will offer a clear vision for learning.<\/p>The music that we\u2019re working on is something more like a lab, it\u2019s an application of the theoretical knowledge to specific problems so that we can prove our learning, yes, but also become very comfortable with the attributes that it takes to prove your learning. In a lab, you become very comfortable with reading and interpreting evidence, setting things up, manipulating the equipment, etc. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. But, even with a lab, you will spend the time reading the materials, familiarising yourself with equipment, etc. <\/p>
The analogy breaks down a bit because reading music has cognitive benefits unto itself that illuminate the theory from the method books, but it\u2019s still a useful comparison.<\/p>
How to Read<\/strong><\/p>When I first arrived at the university, they taught us a few strategies for study, all of which assumed that we were full time students with only the responsibility of study. My life wasn\u2019t like that then and it isn\u2019t like that now. Maybe yours is, so I\u2019ll tell you how to read in the way I was taught and then how to read in the way that I actually do it.<\/p>
1: Prepare your environment<\/em><\/p>Reading for study and reading for pleasure may seem like the same thing, but they are different. In the case of reading for pleasure, perhaps we are on a couch, we are in bed, we are in a restaurant, waiting for a table at a restaurant. When we are reading for study, the stakes are very different because the goals are very different. Reading for pleasure is not necessarily about creating new mental structures, conceptual structures and associations, but reading for study is very much so about those things. <\/p>
As such, have an environment conducive to these things. If you can, be in a clean, quiet and tidy place. Sit at your table or desk with seriousness and purpose. Have your supplies with you, such as notebooks, pens and pencils, bookmarks, etc. If you want to be near a guitar or piano, that\u2019s not a bad idea, but in an ideal case, you\u2019ll be at a library or a place as much like a library as possible. Practice rooms are great for this, if one is available to you.<\/p>
Now, with my life, study time is after my son has gone to bed, so libraries are out, and my house is very much so a parent\u2019s house. I read at the dining room table and have a guitar stand near me. The guitar stand gets moved to its normal spot after.<\/p>
Step 2: Clean Read<\/em><\/p>Read through the section for comprehension. Read every word, read every sentence, read every paragraph, read every chart or table. Keep reading till you come across something you don\u2019t understand. Pause your reading. Do not skip this. You have come across your first gap. Pull out your notebook, write down the date and time, and what it is that you don\u2019t understand. Your next step is to start investigating this. Once you have found an answer, write down what the answer is and where you found it. If you do not find an answer, write down where you looked and what you tried. Stop on this step for this material and proceed to summary reading.<\/p>
The reason that you keep logs of your problems is that the act of writing something down helps inscribe it in your memory, and what we want to build is an archive of memories of what the problems were and how we solved them. In case you are not able to solve it on your own, the log prepares you to ask an informed question to a teaching assistant, friend, etc. Once you have the answer to the question from a friend, annotate it in the same notebook.<\/p>
Go back and resume the clean read. Repeat as necessary.<\/p>
The clean read forms an image in your mind, unencumbered by any task. There\u2019s a great quote from Robert Anton Wilson, \u201cNever whistle while you\u2019re pissing.\u201d The idea is to be aware of what you\u2019re doing as you do it, don\u2019t distract yourself from the task, focus on the task. Absorb it. When you do a clean read, you are reading to see how much of it will stick in your mind without any other mnemonic technique. Read it, try to absorb it and understand it. <\/p>
The benefit of stopping when you get a problem is that you don\u2019t gloss over things as if they don\u2019t exist, you acknowledge a problem and train strategies for overcoming them. When you come across a solution to a problem, you try to internalise it and go back to read cleanly. The idea is to be able to have a level of fluency in the material that you are not impeded by lack of comprehension. You may not entirely understand all of what you reading, there are depths, implications, etc., that will only come out from deeper study, but the ability to clean read will prove that you are ready to move on to the next step.<\/p>
Step 3: Summary Read <\/em>OR Annotation Read<\/em><\/p>You now have two options, Summary or Annotation. Whichever one you don\u2019t do in Step 3, do in Step 4. <\/p>
The Summary read is pretty straightforward. In your notebook, keep a dated entry for reading. As you read the material, build what looks like an outline, maintaining sections partitions, etc. Bit by bit, as you read, summarise what you have read. Find the important points that each sentence, each paragraph, is telling you and write it down. You should wind up repeating things quite a bit and abstracting them.<\/p>
The Annotation read is slightly more interesting. Do the same thing as before, make a dated entry in your notebook. You will once again maintain the partition structure of what you read, section by section, chapter by chapter, etc. This time, though, instead of summarising what you read, make reference to the sections and write down observations that you have, questions that are raised and other such thoughts. For example, if you recognise a reference to something else, write it down. <\/p>
Step 4: Combining your notes<\/em><\/p>You may wish to have what you are studying handy for this, but it\u2019s not necessary. What you are going to do now is recreate an understanding of what you read by combining your summaries and annotations into a format that is legible and clear to you. By this time, you will have been over the material at least three times, probably more. You should have a fairly vivid recollection of the material from your reading notes, but, if not, the book is right there. I generally enjoyed doing this without the book and then confirming later, but that\u2019s an extra step, and not always worth the time.<\/p>
Consolidating your notes is a great way to see what you noticed and how it related to your understanding of the subject.<\/p>
Step 5: Beautify your notes<\/em><\/p>This is a step that you are doing to make things easier for yourself and for everyone else: take your hand-written notes that you have kept in. your notebook and transcribe them. There is an optional step that I rarely did before and even more rarely do now<\/p>
Create a clean, beautiful handwritten version of the notes<\/p><\/li>
Type the notes up and file them<\/p><\/li><\/ol>
I rarely did #1. It just seemed like something I didn\u2019t want to do, but it was recommended by the university tutors. For step 2, however, you will want to do this, as it makes your notes portable<\/em>, they can be carried and transferred to others, because they become legible<\/em>. When we write for ourselves, we use all manner of shorthand and idioms. Writing for others takes our personal understandings and makes them universal. I always wrote up all my notes, as well as keeping a calendar of words and concepts I didn\u2019t understand. You should consider doing the same.<\/p>Why All This Work?<\/strong><\/p>As I keep saying, it\u2019s all work and the work is good for you. At a very high level, what this process accomplishes is giving you the ability to read something with fluency. You gain this ability by retraining your brain to pause, learn and try again when confronted with obstacles. At a lower level, the way that this is accomplished is by using repetition to take knowledge into your mind and show that you can bring it out again. The hand-written notes are just for you, the internalization, the typed up notes are for others, the externalization.<\/p>
It\u2019s a lot of fun to do this. You can almost always do it, too. It\u2019s not hard to carry a text, a notebook and a pen with you wherever you go, and it can be a lot of fun, too. Some people get really into this kind of thing, with different inks, paper types, journal styles, etc. <\/p>
Would it be helpful if I showed an example of how to do reading notes on a lead sheet?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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