https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv Real life application of Kines 361 Topics en-us 2019-12-12 15:41:44 UTC 2025-03-30 12:06:35 UTC hello@padlet.com obibor https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423335666  As a lot of people know, I am in an a cappella group. My best friends are in that a cappella group and it makes up one of the largest parts of my life. We perform, educate, and travel together in an effort to share our love of music. The group is semi-professional and has released albums, competed in ICCA, hosted ICCA, and gone on tour. All of this cool stuff that the group gets to do requires a lot of organization and adminstrative work. This is why, like all of RSO's, we have an exec board. Yours truly is the Vice President of the group this year. The Vice President's biggest duty is to plan our annual winter tour. Tour involves visiting our old schools and putting on shows for the public. This winter we have the honor of putting on a show at the Mall of America. 

Organizing tour involves a lot of planning, emails, and meetings with the group to answer questions. There has been many times when multiple group members are asking me questions regarding their school. 

Various theories of attention tells us that one's attention capacity has a limit. When hosting meetings regarding tour, I often receive questions from group members AT THE SAME TIME. If two or three group member's are asking about their school, then I am usually able to keep the school names in my head and then come back to them. If multiple group member's are asking questions, it becomes more difficult to keep all of their questions in my head. It's like the central resource theory. All of the group member's and their questions are stimuli competing for my attention. If there are too many questions, they will exceed my limit and I will be unable to retain all the information being thrown at me. As a result, I will have to contact the members separately to double check the information they wanted to give me. This ends up being a hassle and makes planning tour harder than it needs to be. 

I'm planning tour as I'm writing this, and I'm stressed.

I chose this picture because it displays all the goons that have been making planning tour difficult for me lately. When all of these boys are asking me questions at the same time, my attention capacity is exceeded. ]]> 2019-12-12 15:46:49 UTC https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423335666 obibor https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423374111 In my a cappella group we must perform a wide repertoire of music that must be memorized. Memorizing does not just include notes and lyrics, but dynamics, phrasing, musicality, and other performance cues too. For example, we must memorize when to be loud, and when to be quiet. All of these aspects of musicality are what makes the music interesting to listen to.

It takes on average four rehearsals to perfect a song from start to finish. Some members believe that learning these songs should not take as much time, and we could be learning our music much faster. This is due to the fact that we end up repeating many things over a series of rehearsals. For example, people never remember to come down to a piano at measure 43. The question remains: why doesn't this information transfer into the long-term memory right away. 

Often members remember a cue for the rest of rehearsal, but forget it the next day. Why were they able to do it right that rehearsal and then forget the next day? Information on long-term memory tells us that memory traces are gradually transferred into long term memory. This is called consolidation. It is not the case that the members' brains are incapable of consolidation; it is that consolidation does not happen overnight. Consolidation can take up to 72 hours to transfer a new memory trace into long term memory. This explains why a member may remember the cue for the rest of rehearsal but then forgets the next day. It has only been 24 hours and it can take much longer for information to consolidate into the long term memory. 

The picture below is an example of a piece of music we sing. The piece is complex and took a lot of time to master. I had workshopped the song with the group and made it sound beautiful. A day later the piece sounded like we had never worked on it again. It has now since been mastered. It is titled Evergreen and was arranged by yours truly. ]]> 2019-12-12 16:39:39 UTC https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423374111 obibor https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423432619 Last year, I got my first full-length solo in the group. The song was called "Wisconsin." It is a parody of the song "Massachusetts" by Ylvis. This song was hilarious and become a crowd favorite. It tells the tale of Wisconsin being the greatest place on Earth. It starts off as like this: "Far away across the Great Lakes, an undiscovered paradise..." Because this song was such a hit, it was performed at almost every event we sang at. Because we sang it so much, I had to make sure I had all the words and funny choreography down. Wisconsin never repeats any words so it was challenging to memorize the verses and the associated choreography. 

Before every performance, I would sit backstage and actively/cognitively rehearse the song in my head. This included imagining running to different spots on stage and doing the choreography for the different spots of the song. This method of practice is called "mental practice." Like a gymnast running through his/her routine in his/her head, I use mental practice and imagery to practice my performance immediately before I am about to go on.

The picture below shows me singing and doing the choreography of Wisconsin. This specific part was "come on down to Lake Geneva," so the choreography was me pretending to drive a boat. This is part of the song that I mentally practice offstage before performing. ]]> 2019-12-12 17:59:16 UTC https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423432619 obibor https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423497198 I bought my first cruiser board when I was 15. It was a Globe board that I got in California, so you know it was the real deal. Borna Riazi was about to become mobile and there was going to be no way of stopping him. Then it happened... I could not stay on the board for more than 10 seconds without falling off. I tried over and over again, but could not get it. I couldn't understand why I wasn't a master of the board. I had been practicing for 30 minutes! How much practice could it possibly take? 

Two years later: 
I didn't pick the board up again until my senior year of high school. The summer before college I decided I was going to master the board, so I could be one of the coolest cats on campus that boards around campus. One liter of blood and 3 scars later, I had become a master of the board. It was time for an upgrade. I purchased a longboard. I was now ready to tear apart the streets of our fabled campus, but was it ready for me? 

Three years later: 
I am now a junior on campus, and break out the board whenever weather is permitting. I ride a rare 40" arbor longboard crafted from bamboo. The shark wheels have a unique spiral pattern permitted for use by only one person on campus: yours truly. 

Rewind two years:
The summer after my freshman year of college my brother and I found ourselves on the sandy beaches of San Diego, California. I had mastered the land, and now it was time to master the sea. I found myself a surfboard and hit the waves. Surfing came naturally to me, but my brother found himself in the water more than he was on the board. I remember asking myself, "why am I able to surf so well, and my brother is not?" Then it hit me. My brother does not longboard, but I do. Longboarding and surfing both use the same GMP. The same group of muscles are used to maintain your stance on the board and stay balanced. Longboarding and surfing felt almost exactly the same, so I was naturally pretty okay. Having now taken Kines 361, it is clear that my simple transition from longboarding to surfing was the result of the positive transfer I possessed between the two skills. The theory of GMPs and the Identical Elements theory lends itself to giving me positive transfer due to the similarities between the two skills: stance and steering. The only clear difference between the skills was the source of movement and the element I was traveling on. 

The picture below shows my longboard and its legendary shark wheels. My skills from riding this longboard successfully transferred to surfing. Disclaimer: Don't ride and photograph at the same time. ]]> 2019-12-12 19:26:40 UTC https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423497198 obibor https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423524378 Performing with Fundamentally Sound involves singing at some high stakes events. In recent history, FS opened for Jesse McCartney and performed in front of over 1100 people. It is events like these that we must be looking out absolute best. Personally, I need to make sure I am showered, my teeth are brushed, my hair is styled, my eyebrows have been threaded in at least the past two weeks, my neck is shaved, and my beard is trimmed. This is a lot of stuff to get done, and sometimes a trade-off has to be made. When it's close to showtime and there isn't enough time to accurately groom myself, I must trade-off accuracy for speed so I can be ready for the show. Unfortunately, this ends up meaning by beard isn't trimmed accurately. Rushing to trim my beard before the show makes it uneven and decreases my confidence to even lower than if I hadn't trimmed it at all. I've learned from these experiences that if I'm going to rush to get ready, I should bypass the tasks  that could be done incorrectly like trimming my beard. 

The picture below shows a close up of me singing. This picture represents a time when I had enough time to get ready and didn't need to trade-off accuracy for speed. This is why my beard looks decent in the photo below. Believe it or not, I didn't even know this picture was being taken. Yes, that's how seriously I take getting my show face ready. ]]> 2019-12-12 20:12:03 UTC https://padlet.com/obibor/jdprmvl837gv/wish/423524378