"Clarissa (thirteen-year-old) possessed no musical gifts, she lacked a good ear, her sense of rhythm was average, her motivation subpar. (In the study's written section, she marked "because I'm supposed to" as her strongest reason for practicing.) Nonetheless, Clarissa had become famous in music-science circles."
"She is working on a new song entitled "Golden Wedding", a 1941 tune by jazz clarinetist Woody Herman. She's listened to the song a few times. She likes it. Now she's going to try to play it.
Clarissa draws a breath and plays two notes. Then she stops. She pulls the clarinet from her lips and stares at the paper. Her eyes narrow. She plays seven notes, the song's opening phrase. She misses the last note and immediately stops, fairly jerking the clarinet from her lips. She squints again at the music and sings the phrase softly. "Dah dah dum dah," she says.
She starts over and plays the riff from the beginning, making it a few notes farther into the song this time, missing the last note, backtracking, patching in the fix. The opening is beginning to snap together - the notes have verve and feeling. When she's finished with this phrase, she stops again for six long seconds, seeming to replay it in her mind, fingering the clarinet as she thinks. She leans forward, takes a breath, and starts again."
"This is how a professional musician would practice on Wednesday for a Saturday performance."
"In six minutes, she accelerate her learning speed by ten times. What was more, she didn't even notice."
"She's got a blueprint in her mind she's constantly comparing herself to. She's working in phrases, complete thoughts. She's not ignoring errors, she's hearing them, fixing them. She's fitting small parts into the whole, drawing the lens in and out all the time, scaffolding herself to a higher level."
- Daniel Coyle, from The Talent Code