Your Brain on Jazz
By Therese Walsh | March 18, 2008 |
A really interesting set of studies came out of Johns Hopkins recently, showing what happened to jazz performers when improvising music. Are there lessons here for writers, too?
This, from Science Daily:
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… (The research) sheds light on the creative improvisation that artists and non-artists use in everyday life, the investigators say…
“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., assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a trained jazz saxophonist himself. “It’s a remarkable frame of mind,” he adds, “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.”
The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests.
The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.
“Jazz is often described as being an extremely individualistic art form. You can figure out which jazz musician is playing because one person’s improvisation sounds only like him or her,” says Limb. “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.”
So, what do you think? Could improvisational writing, such as flash fiction, or using tricks to shut down the analytical part of the mind (like writing with a dark screen and without an outline), be the best way to tap into individual style? Is it the best way to write, period? What techniques might you try–or have you tried in the past–to shut down The Critic within? And what do you think might be the benefits and shortcomings of such an approach?
Write on, all!
Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.
Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.
Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.
I definitely write by “improvisation”, BUT, I still follow a very basic outline. I don’t really refer to the outline while I’m writing, but it’s in the back of my mind.
To me, it’s like a musician deciding beforehand at least what key they’re going to play in, whether they’re going to play a slow song or a fast one, if they’re going to include a piano and horn section or maybe just a bass and drums. After THAT, all the details (the notes, the riffs) are more intuitive and expressive (and often surprising!)
That’s fascinating…now that I think about it, my writing style is not the same for all my writing. My first draft for a piece of flash fiction, or short, short story tends to be written in a flow. Maybe that’s my brain shutting down that analytical/critical part? But then it comes back on when I’m editing/proofreading and says, “What were you thinking????” :-)
Still, I love it when I’m writing in the zone like that.
For me, it depends on why I’m writing: is this piece just for me? Is it a rough draft? In those cases, I think “riffing” is very helpful – I can discover things about my story that I wouldn’t have come across were I going about it analytically.
But if I’m revising, polishing something to submit, that’s when I have to step back and let the Inner Editor work. Otherwise it’s all chaos that no one else would ever want to read.
I don’t try to shut down the analytical mind. Instead, I let it run loose during my story’s preproduction — the time I spend working on my story before I actually write it.
By fleshing out characters and plotting things out, breaking things into sequences and scenes, I let the analytical part of my mind feast on that process.
When I feel the story is developed enough, letting myself flow with the writing is much easier.
But that’s just me.
I use the Alphasmart to “turn off” the inner critic when I’m starting to hear its chatter too much. I can only see 4 lines in the screen, and it forces me to move forward into the story. After a few minutes, the critic is turned off, and I can let it flow.
The physiological response to the riffing jazz players Therese describes reminds me of The Zone that writers talk about.
I think it depends on what type of elements we’re talking about as spontaneous. For me spontaneity is not with higher level stuff like plot or over-arching story development, but smaller level things like when I’m writing a scene. “How would this character say this?” or “What would be a believable unfolding for the events of this scene?”
Micro-event stuff and dialogue. Actions & Reactions. Stuff happening on that level is where the spontaneity is for me.
I’ve always had a hard time being spontaneous from a blind drafting standpoint of “Just write and don’t think about anything!” Getting in the zone isn’t just about hammering on the keys for me, it’s about getting in the right rhythmic thought process of laying down the story scene by scene.
Another way to think of it is unpacking your scenes. Nitty gritty of character interactions and events, etc.
Good conversation here, thanks for all the comments. In music lingo, I think it’s probably best to have a key for your song and a general feel for the work before charging into something with your horn held high. (And I think most improvisations start after those basics things are established.) What does that mean for writers? Establish the genre, the tone of the scene and then let fly? Having at least a loose outline for my muse to improvise in is probably the best solution for me…at least for novel-length fiction.
That’s fascinating Therese! My teenage son is a jazz bassist and aspires to major in jazz performance and composition in college. I sort of turned him onto jazz, and then he got in the jazz band in school. He’s very creative, and honestly could just play and listen to music all day long. I’ll have to show him this and see what he thinks.
I’d love to be able to “turn off” some parts of my brain that seem to hinder my writing process because they won’t.shut.up. My inner editor is always on duty as well. Writing something with a black screen where I could not see it sounds like bungee jumping or something to me – scary as heck.
Gail
Very cool, I wonder if anything that “short circuits” the established thought processes might do the same thing. I work a lot with horses, and just having communication that is not language-based is wonderful–it seems to free up the “stuck in a rut” framework. I wonder if so many of the writing boondoggles I get into stem from just following the routine connections. Anything that gets me off that, even for a second, has to be beneficial.