Can someone with no musical talent learn to play guitar as an adult? That’s what New York University psychology professor Gary Marcus wanted to find out when he turned 40. Along the way, he discovered that the struggle to learn was as rewarding as playing music itself.
作为一个没有音乐天赋的成年人，可以学习弹吉他吗？这是纽约大学心理学教授加里·马库斯（Gary Marcus）在他年满40岁的时候，想找出的答案。在学习的道路上，他发现克服困难的学习经历和演奏音乐的乐趣，都给予他丰厚的回报。
In honor of national Wanna Play Music Week, Healthland spoke with Marcus, author of Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning.
在庆祝全国“玩乐音乐周”，海兰特采访了《零起步学吉他：新的音乐家和学习的科学》一书的作者马库斯。
Why did you start this project?
你怎么想到开始这个研究项目的？
I always wanted to make music but at the same time, thought it was completely out of my reach. I had several very disappointing experiences as a child trying to learn.
我一直想要玩音乐，但在同时，这又是我根本力所不能及的地方。孩提时期，我曾有几次非常失望的经历。
I tried to learn the recorder in 4th grade and my teacher suggested that my talents lay elsewhere when I couldn’t play “Mary had a little lamb.” In graduate school I tried to take something called “miracle piano.” At each point, I got stuck on rhythm. It was no miracle.
在四年级时，我曾努力学习八孔竖笛，但当我演奏“玛丽有只小羊羔”时，我的老师认为我在这方面毫无天赋。在读研究生院时，我曾试着学那个所谓的“奇迹钢琴”（一种类似电子琴的教学用键盘乐器，内置教学软件，可以指导学生弹奏练习——译注）。但我总是弄错了节奏。那个所谓的“奇迹钢琴”，在我身上一丝“奇迹”也没有出现。
Then, I started playing [the video game] “Guitar Hero.” I was terrible. My wife helped me to play. The first time I ever did anything vaguely rhythmic, I got excited. I practiced the game for a while and made it through beginner and medium. I thought, Maybe I should try a real guitar. The video game was a gateway drug that gave me confidence to try the real thing.
后来，我又开始玩“吉他英雄”（一个视频游戏），结果仍然十分糟糕。我的妻子帮我演奏，这是我平生第一次做了点什么似乎隐约有点节奏的事情，我很兴奋。我玩了一段时间的游戏，并通过了初者和中级的关卡。这时我想，也许我应该试着一下弹真正的吉他。视频游戏好像是一个入门良药，给了我尝试真实的家伙的信心。
What was the most fun part of your learning experience?
你最有趣的学习经历是什么？
There were a lot of fun things. The most fun, but also the most scary, was that I went to a summer camp with 11-year-olds and played in a band. On Day One, you had to start writing a song and by Friday, you had to play it on stage. The kids bring their parents to the performance and I brought mine, too. It was frightening but super fun. (Listen to Marcus’ performance here.)
有很多有趣的事情。最好玩的，但也是最可怕的，是我小时候和一帮十一岁的孩子们去参加夏令营，并参加乐队演奏。在夏令营第一天，你要开始计划必须写一首歌，然后，在星期五，你必须在上台表演你写好的这首歌。孩子们带他们的父母一起表演，我也一样。这紧张得要命，但也超级有趣。
What are some of the differences between the way children and adults learn?
马库斯的乐队及作品
Kids and adults are differently able. They bring different skills. Adults are more analytical. One thing I was able to do was understand music theory and comprehend it in a way [that kids couldn’t]. Kids are more patient and willing to practice the same thing over and over. They don’t have the same expectations about being good right away and probably cut themselves more slack and probably have faster fingers.
孩子和成人的学习方法有何不同？
Some people say that music must be an innate human capacity, which evolved the way language did. But you disagree.
儿童和成人的潜能优势是不同的。他们有不同的技能。成人更偏重于分析能力。例如，我能够做到一件事，就是理解音乐理论，并以其应有的方式理解乐曲，而这点在孩子们则难以做到。孩子们有更多的耐心，并愿意把同样的事情一遍又一遍的重复做。他们没有期望马上把事情做好，为自己节省时间的愿望，还有，他们的手指可能更敏捷。
For the better part of our evolutionary history music wasn’t even on the scene. You can engineer a technology that everyone loves like the iPhone, but that doesn’t mean that the thing was itself in [our evolutionary history].
在我们的进化历史中，根本没有音乐的位置。您可以策划一种每个人都喜欢技术，像iPhone，但是，这并不意味着这东西就在我们的进化历程中。
All cultures do have music and it taps into lots of things that our brains come prepared with, like a love of novelty and familiarity. Music has really cool ways of delivering both. There’s a steady drumbeat that makes the brain happy and that it can anticipate, and then you have novelty when you change the melody or lyrics.
所有的文化都有音乐，它令对于我们头脑不断丰富起来，人们的大脑喜欢新奇的东西和熟悉的事务。对此，音乐能以其特别出色的方式满足大脑在这二个方面的需求。例如，音乐中稳定的击鼓声，使你的大脑感到一种可以预见的愉悦，但当你改变旋律或歌词时，又备感新颖而快乐不已。
Both predictability and novelty [release] dopamine [a brain chemical associated with pleasure and desire]. It’s seemingly contradictory but music packs it all in.
这种可预测性和新颖性都促进大脑释放多巴胺（大脑中一种与愉悦和欲望相关的化学物质）。新颖和熟悉，这看似矛盾，但音乐包能同时囊括二者。
(Does learning to play music make you smarter?
学习演奏音乐是否让你更聪明？
One thing we know is that on average, people who play musical instruments are smarter but we don’t know if it’s causal. Among Nobel Prize-winners, there are a disproportionately high number of musicians, but whether [their music lessons made them smarter or vice versa] is a classic chick-and-egg question.
我们知道的是，一般而言，玩乐器的人更聪明，但我们不知道其中的因果关系。诺贝尔奖得主当中，音乐家高得不成比例，但是，是音乐使他们更聪明，还是相反，因为他们更聪明所以能成为音乐家，这是一个典型的“先有鸡还是先有蛋”的问题。
My guess is that at the very least, music teaches you self-discipline and the rewards of working slowly to build something awesome. When you first start, you are lost and after a few years, you can do it. It’s a wonderful way of learning the power of patience. There maybe other things: it makes your ears more sensitive and that may make you better at picking up languages. There’s some suggestive data on that.
我的猜测是，最起码，音乐能使你有比较高的自律，并以一点一滴的努力逐渐积累，直到最后得到真正的巨大回报。刚刚开始学习音乐时，您也许感到迷茫，但几年后，你就可以做得很好了。这是一种认识到耐心之力量的极好方式。学习音乐也许还带来其它的好处：它使您的耳朵更敏锐，可以让你更好的辨识语言。有一些资料认为这种现象的确存在。
To the extent that you are thinking about how your instrument fits in with an ensemble, it might help you [connect with other people and empathize]. But it might be that giving acting lessons would do the same thing even better. I don’t want to say that music is necessarily better than drama.
特别说到，你在练习合奏时，要考虑如何令你的演奏与大家合拍，这就有助于令你在与其他人进行交流、互相理解方面得到训练和帮助。虽然表演课也能让你学会那些，并或许做得更好。我并不是说，在这方面，音乐一定比戏剧更好。
Do you think playing music makes you healthier?
你认为演奏音乐能使你更健康吗？
There might be some health benefits. I talk about the idea of eudaemonia, the pleasure of self-actualization or fulfillment. There’s a kind of pleasure from immediate things like food or sex, but [eudaemonia] comes when we’ve done all that we can to be the people we can be. Part of what keeps me going is that [music] brings a kind of balance into my life that I think is a wonderful thing.
可能有一定的保健功效。我要谈一谈所谓的“eudaemonia”，即因理性而积极生活所带来自我实现的快感或满足。那种及时享乐的愉悦，如食物或性爱的乐趣，是转瞬即逝的。但我们说的eudaemonia，是来自于我们作为“人”，竭尽全力所做的一切努力后得到的乐趣。能让我坚持努力的动力之一，就是音乐给我的生活带来了一种均衡和谐，我认为这是无比美妙的。
Even though you learned to play after a whole lot of effort, you don’t believe that practice is the only thing that differentiates excellent musicians from lesser ones.
即使你为学习演奏付出了很多的努力，你是否仍认为，优秀的音乐家和普通演奏者的区别就是练习时所付出汗水的区别？
I guess I know why people want to believe that, but I don’t know why they do. It’s manifestly the case that in music some people work really hard and do well, and some don’t. There’s a lot of data out there that makes clear that practice is just part of the equation. None of it actually shows that talent doesn’t matter. It’s bizarre that that idea got as popular as it has.
我觉得我知道人们为什么要相信这一点，但我不知道他们为什么这样想。很明显，在音乐界，有的人的确十分努力并且修得正果，但有的人则未及巅峰。有很多的资料说明，刻苦练习只是成为优秀音乐家的一部分因素。这并非是说，天赋不重要。这种想法如此泛滥真是很奇怪。
I’d love to learn to play an instrument, but I don’t have a sabbatical like you did during which I could spend hours at it every day. Do you think it’s still possible?
我很想学习演奏乐器，但我没有条件像你这样，每天固定花几个小时练习。你觉得这样能学会乐器演奏吗？
I think it’s totally possible. I’ve gotten literally hundreds of emails from older adults who have been learning music for the last 10 or 20 years and they really love it.
我认为这是完全可能的。迄今，我从成人学习者那里收到了数以百计的电子邮件，他们在过去的10年或20年来，一直在学习音乐，他们真的很喜欢玩乐器。
That doesn’t mean that if you start at 50, you’re going to be playing with the symphony orchestra at 60. If you only practice once a week, you’re not going to get anywhere. If you can do a little bit every day, almost anybody can make progress.
但这并不是说，如果你在50岁开始学习乐器，60岁时就可以参加交响乐队的演奏。如果你只是一个星期练一次，你基本上不会有什么进步。如果你能做到每天进步一点点，那么假以时日，几乎任何人都可以取得进步。
I’m someone who doesn’t have any natural talent. I’m likely congenitally arrythmic. I’m close to tone deaf. I had almost no talent. I had more time but less talent than most people. If you have even a little more talent, you might get there faster with less time.
我这个人是没有任何天赋的人。我可能先天就对节拍缺乏感受。我五音不全。我几乎没有任何天赋。但比起大多数人而言，我尽管缺少天赋，但有更多的时间。如果你稍微多一点天赋，你就会在更短的时间内，更快地达到目的。
Do you think people will stop learning to play instruments eventually and just do it all with computers? Will something be lost if that kind of skill disappears?
你认为人们会停止学习演奏乐器，最终只是用电脑做这一切吗？如果人们不再演奏乐器，这样的技能会消失吗？
There’s certainly an amount of music you can make with iPhone apps without knowing a lot, but to really put together an ensemble that works, you really need to know something.
尽管对音乐所知不多，你肯定也可以用iPhone的应用程序制作大量的音乐，但要真正地弄出个音乐艺术的小品来，你非得要懂点什么乐器。
I don’t know what the place of instruments will be. I think some people will always love them. There’s a kind of physical joy that comes from playing that you just don’t get from the iPhone, but there’s more than one route to music.
我不知道会将来乐器演奏会处于什么地位。我想有些人会永远喜爱演奏乐器。因为有一种来自把玩实体东西的快感，而从把玩iPhone中，是不能获得这种感受的。当然，通往音乐的道路还有很多。
(With computers, you don’t need to learn a physical skill just to make the right sounds, so it seems like it would take less practice.
有了电脑，你不需要学习那些为了发出正确的声音的实实在在的技能了，所以你似乎不再需要大量练习了吗？
You can to some degree cut out some of the practice in terms of learning where the notes are, but not the practice of learning to understand what actually sounds good.
如果狭义地说，学习只是找到那个音符位置所在，那么，电脑可以在某种程度上可以为你减少一些练习，但就学习并理解音乐来说，你还是需要努力练习。
What should you look for in a music teacher?
找音乐老师时，实际上你应该看中哪些？
I’ll tell you what you shouldn’t look for: a great musician. They might be good, but they might not be. You want someone who understands how you learn, who cares about the learning process itself and has a good eye for what you’re doing wrong and can in a constructive way tell you how to practice and get better.
我认为，你不需要找什么伟大的音乐家。作为教师他们可能不错的，但他们也可能不咋样。你应该找个人懂得你是如何学习的人，关心学习过程本身，能盯着你知道你做错了什么，并能给你建设性意见，告诉你如何练习会做得更好。
A good teacher is a little like a car mechanic who can know what things look like when they go wrong and how to fix them, not just what they look like if they work correctly.
一个好老师是一个有点像一个汽车修理工，在发生问题时，他知道是关键所在，并能从根本上给予纠正，而不只是使问题从表面上看似解决。
Should parents make their kids stick with their music lessons and practice?
家长是否应该让自己的孩子一直坚持上音乐课以及不断地练习吗？
I think that being a good parent is like being a good guidance counselor. You have to help people find from within what they like to do. If they are very young, you probably do need to nudge them, but not everyone has to be a musician. A good music teacher will often involve the parents and teach parents how to be supportive of their kids. [They will] teach parents not to be very critical and to be supportive, but at the end of day it is the child’s decision I think.
一个好的家长，应该作为好的参谋指导：你须帮助孩子找出他们倒底喜欢什么。如果孩子太小，你可能需要小心地给他们一点外在的推动，但要知道不是每个人都能成为音乐家。好的音乐老师会经常帮助父母，让他们知道如何帮助支持孩子们，并告诉父母不要给孩子太多的批评和压力，而要更多地支持孩子，但最终，我认为是孩子自己最终决定一切。
See more of Healthland’s ‘Mind Reading’ series.
版权声明：
Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.
本译文仅用于学习和交流目的。非商业转载请注明译者、出处，并保留文章在译言的完整链接。
|
