Embouchure, Affordance and Learning in Risk

The useful part

Kahneman was wrong in suggesting that human enaction was binary, 1 and 2 or 'fast and slow. All educators know that there is no fast and slow in learning (https://safetyrisk.net/what-theory-of-learning-is-embedded-in-your-investigation-methodology/). One thing Teachers know more than others is that learning is a 'wicked problem' and has nothing to do with training.

How it works

• When we understand the nature of learning and how humans learn, we know that learning develops slowly and takes a long time to become proficient.
• Learning how to shape the mouth to the affordance of the instrument takes time, patience, perseverance and hard work.
• We don't just learn with our brain but rather our whole-body coordinates and works together as one being in doing.
• When we observe people at work, we are mostly observing actions of people driven by heuristics, habit and automatic embodied thinking.
• How silly then is it to think that when something goes wrong that the best response is more 'brain work'.

What to take from it

We saw in our discussion on enactivism and music (https://safetyrisk.net/guide-enactivism-risk/), that all learning is Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended. If one understands learning and ditches the nonsense of brain-centrism then new methods of approaches to risk are required. Robert Long (see all) Psychosocial Contexts and Risk Factors.

Example or evidence

• The muscles in the cheeks and the shape of the tongue have to be shaped into a few 'affordance'.
• In this way, all musical instruments are learned by shaping the body to the affordance of the object.
• As my two boys grew up, I asked them if they would also like to learn to play and when they said 'yes', the same process started, as my father had taught me.
• We began with slow making noises, reshaping the mouth and tongue, then learning the fingering, learning correspondence of sound to the notes on as page and then playing different parts against one another.

Details worth keeping

When I was 10, my father taught my brother and I how to play the trumpet. Here is a pic of me playing a cornet at the age of 12 in a band. At the time I was playing in three bands, and it was heaps of fun.

Related coverage

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