|
 A pair of Johns Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow.
"When jazz musicians are engaged in the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation, a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one's performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviours is highly activated." (Vancouver Sun 01-03-2008)
"When jazz musicians improvise, they often play with eyes closed in a distinctive, personal style that transcends traditional rules of melody and rhythm," says Charles J. Limb, M.D. at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a trained jazz saxophonist himself. "It's a remarkable frame of mind, during which, all of a sudden, the musician is generating music that has never been heard, thought, practiced or played before. What comes out is completely spontaneous."
For the study, he recruited musicians who volunteered to play piano in a specially designed MRI unit that can scan their brains while they're playing.
The results are not that surprising. Ignoring self-criticism while improvising is something that is taught often to jazz students. In Kenny Werner's influential book for jazz musicians, Effortless Mastery he writes,
Love what you play. Only if you love each note that comes out, whatever it is, only then can you concentrate on the next note, rather than spending your focus on judging how well your previous notes were.
If you focus on what you are playing, if you judge your music as you improvise, you will halt the flow of creativity because your attention will be drawn to what you did play, not what you are playing or will play.
"Jazz is often described as being an extremely individualistic art form," says Limb. "You can figure out which jazz musician is playing because one person's improvisation sounds only like him or her. What we think is happening is when you're telling your own musical story, you're shutting down impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas."
Limb says that this type of brain activity may also happen during other types of improvisational behavior in daily life. For example, people are continually improvising words in conversations and improvising solutions to problems. "Without this type of creativity, humans wouldn't have advanced as a species. It's an integral part of who we are."
Additional information:
This is Your Brain on Jazz press release
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed