Red Henry
Last night, my instructor Brian and I made a cross-country flight to an airport about 62 miles away. The flight was in the dark, it was over some pretty sparsely-populated Virginia and West Virginia mountains, and it was in a very small single-engined airplane. We navigated visually at night, and we were not flying on instruments. Were we scared? No, not even when one of the radios quit working. We didn’t really need any radios at all. Did we have any trouble getting there and back? No. It was a lot of fun.
The flight went really smoothly, and along with flying the plane I was able to do all the things I’ve been practicing: checking our course on the ground, checking our speed toward our destination, cross-checking our progress using the navigational radio that still worked, and talking when necessary to Air Traffic Control and other airplanes. Then, of course, I had to land the plane when we got where we were going and again when we came back. In the dark. Was all this complicated? Yes, a bit. Could I have done all this right after I started training? No, of course not. Why wasn’t it overwhelming? Because I’d learned it all a step at a time.
I keep finding similarities between learning to fly and learning to play music. Learning to pick is something you need to do a little at a time. Our banjo students, for example, no matter how much they want to, can’t launch right into learning “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”, or playing “Dueling Banjos”, or improvising in jam sessions, right off the bat. Nobody can (except maybe teenagers). Instead, the students need to go through our Beginning Banjo DVDs step-by-step to learn the building blocks– the banjo licks– which they’re going to use. Then they need to go, step-by-step, into more advanced DVDs which teach them how to put those building blocks together, one step at a time.
Taking one step at a time, it all makes sense and becomes easier. You start with one thing and learn another, and then you aren’t overwhelmed and discouraged by not being able to do it all at once! Learn to play step-by-step at your own speed, and after a while you’ll be cruising over the mountains yourself.
Red
Tags: flying, Learning By Ear, red
I think it’s harder for banjo students not to be impatient because if they try something that’s too hard the worst thing that’ll happen is that they may not be able to play it. If you try something that’s too hard when you’re flying, you might die. The stakes are so very different!
That is so true, that the stakes are different. But pilots build in huge safety margins for what they do, and can almost always find a safe way out if things (extremely rarely) go wrong. And you can land almost anywhere. Even in the dark (thanks to millions of dawn-to-dusk lights) you can tell where the houses and roads are, and landing speed is only about 45 miles per hour!
I also teach Isshinryu Karate and have found so many times using the analogy with students that speed is not important in the beginning and even at times with more senior students who are having difficulty with a technique. Learning is learning and although some people learn in different ways breaking things down into small bits is the best way.