The Amazing SCIENCE Of Licks, Improvisation and Flow
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
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A fascinating read: www.scientific...
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Hi John, thanks for sharing our recent flow project! I've been a big fan of your Helix presets and intro jams for years and I feel honored to see our work being mentioned in your channel. Never expected this to happen!! It's also motivating to see everyone sharing their flow experiences in the comments and our work having an real-world impact :) I'm sharing this video to Dr. Kounios and Dave!!
OH wow really! So cool to see that you've seen this!!
@@johnnathancordy 👏🏻
Excellent study and interesting. I was wondering if you had any other studies that are adjacent to this one, that you could recommend? For example, I once did a presentation in my Doctoral studies for Physical Therapy on “neuroscience and the performing music”. The subject of neuro plasticity is interesting to me because I am rediscovering and “re”learning guitar in my 50’s. I have a great teacher and we work on improv all the time. As an older student, I’ve had to adjust my learning style…rote memory skills are a little slower etc. thanks for the good study! Keep it up! Cheers. 🍻
@@johnnathancordy I'm watching every video of yours, so yes definitely!
@@GuitarsOK Thanks! Please check out the other study from our team based on the same set of participants but looking at neural correlates of improvisation quality: "Dual-process contributions to creativity in jazz improvisations: An SPM-EEG study"
“So 30 guys that still live with their moms.” Thats the funniest thing Ive heard in a while 🤣 the slander!!
That was awesome lmao. Totally straight face didn't miss a beat.
Great lesson John. I'll be baking that lick in over the next few weeks
Hope the kid is doing well Will! I've got another bit to tag on to it, so I'm gonna return to it on Monday and see if I can play it any better ha!
@@johnnathancordy Cheers mate. Yeah Henry is getting fat! Well, you can already play the lick a million times better than I can!
In my playing experience, while improvising may be what I’m doing in a general sense, it’s a bit of an erroneous description. Yes, I’m not playing a written melody constructed just for the backing music. However, I’m mostly pulling bits of things that I’ve played before and sticking those things “together” to try and compliment the music that I’m playing over. To a degree, how well we improvise per se is a byproduct of how much we’ve worked on expanding our individual tool chest (I.e. “vocabulary”). Music is a language. If you only know 50 words, your ability to “communicate” has significant limitations. If you know 500 words, your ability to communicate will be much stronger.
That seems to be the case with many people I’ve asked, and it has been my experience thus far. I’m not sure there is much actual “free improvisation” going on anywhere, especially at higher tempos (I’ve been mostly concerned with bluegrass improv lately).
100%. Muscle memory can lead you to playing the same patterns, but so can your 'headvoice' if you don't keep actually learning new licks/progressions or don't keep listening to new, fresh/unique/weird/different music.
If your musical vocabulary doesn't expand, you can't expect your subconscious(?)/headvoice/flowstate to point you to fresh notes and melodies to play during your improv, especially when you usually have not even half a second before playing the next note (and often a lot less time). I think the brain already goes a certain path based on the key or mode, the previous lick(s) or notes you played, or the next chords you're already calculating or preparing for musically. Not a lot of room for doing something entirely new, if you haven't already recently listened to or practiced something new.
I rarely feel exhausted after a heavy rehearsal, but I always am mentally DRAINED after a few hours of improv jamming with the band.
@@wavewithus4081 Well put! One of the things that seems to really help me from rehashing the same licks and ideas is to take a medium sized lick and spend a lot of time exploring different versions of it. When doing this, to “push” things, I’ll also change tempo, key and chord voicings for the chord progression. Sometimes instead of ending on a note and using vibrato to make it sing, I’ll tremolo pick the note, changing picking dynamics as I play, going from standard volume to picking much harder and vice versa. Sometimes I vary the tremolo picking by playing three notes on beat and two or more off beat. It’s really surprising how you can take a core concept and build it out.
I think of that as "on piste" improv. Do you ever decide in the spur of the moment to try something you've never tried before, unsure how it will even sound? To me that's going "off piste" when there is the greatest sense of danger in the playing and where the artist is drawing upon something unconscious or transcendent rather than stringing together licks.
@@intenzityd3181 I think such inspiration is still rooted in past experiences and learned moments. When do you truly go 'off piste' anyway? When you spazz and slap your hand against the fretboard like a madmen? Is even flowstate original improvisation not still a controlled and skilled way of playing that stems from all the techniques and skills learnt (albeit maybe more subconsciously activated, or when other external factors allow your brain to touch itself all over (lol) and is activating neurons in almost all parts of the brain (=how it looks on brainscans when people are 'in the zone) ?
I don't think any originality originates in a vacuum, and I believe nobody ever does something that's completely different from anything done before in any way.
Also, maybe it helps if you define 'off piste' improv a bit more? Sure, sometimes I improv in a 'style' or conform to a stereotypical classic rock solo sound with the bends and double stops etc.. but most of the time (as a proggy player) I try to follow my ear and get weird (and solve the weirdness). To me that's pretty off piste already. Following my ear/headvoice instead of where my fingers want to go/muscle memory/playing traditional sounds. Going more off piste would be to somehow ignore all my skills and comfort on the guitar and to do 'bad' stuff like doing weird jumps or movements, slapping or squeezing the strings, to force some original 'alien/new' sound, which doesn't really work, and isn't useful improvising in any song or jam setting anyway. That's more of a 'sitting alone with a guitar on the couch and making random noises while watching tv' type of guitar playing (which we all do a lot as well lol, but that's not 'improvisation' imo)
Sounds right. I practice so when inspiration strikes, I'm able to play it well enough to not interrupt the flow, and record it if I like. Same thing with improvising. When everything is working well, I've noticed that I can play pretty much whatever I think, and everything sounds cool, usable, and connected seamlessly to everything else. It's really quite a magical experience when it happens.
32 guys who live with their mum aka jazz guitarists. Good stuff sir.
Subbed for the playing. Stayed for the cognitive neurophysiology.
You have to know your instrument totally. You have to develop your physical skills, and you have to sensitize your awareness, and your ear to ALL of the potential harmonic relationships, Then, if you can RELAX, and empty your mind, and make yourself open and AVAILABLE, the UNIVERSE will fill you up with MUSIC. You don't really "do" anything, you can only prepare yourself to realize it, and ALLOW it to happen, it is an EVENT, produced by the ultimate indivisibility of ALL material and energetic processes. The universe does it, you ( like everyone and everything ) are just along for the ride. THIS is the REAL DEAL.
I don't know the guitar very well and still sometimes I go in the state of flow. Yes I agree if you know the guitar very well you will go more often.
2:20 one of best guitar solos i heard this year ....very nice flow .....under 5K? ...you should make full song and video and promote this is good stuff
Fascinating John (and SCI-AM). It's true, thank you!
I accidently discovered being in the "flow" state (or "in the zone") after a long hiatus. It is a wonderful and fulfilling state of expression. There's many great players these days, but CZcams has endless mechanical players with no feel. You hit the nail on the head, anchoring composed licks to a flow state of playing can become really fun. It's what the guitar community needs for more enjoyable playing ~ Now back to my 40 year long jam lol.
Stunning progression J.. Thanks so much!
I find closing my eyes helps. I think when I'm looking at the frets I'm always visualising the scale at my fingertips, but when I close my eyes I just see it in my head and sort of forget about the fingers. I dunno .. it's weird. What do you see when you close your eyes?
I get the same feeling. When I close my eyes I feel more in the moment. This is either playing a solo I know off by heart or doing my best to improvise.
I also got to see Chris Buck live and he barely looks at the guitar and has amazing feel
I don't close my eyes but after a lot of practice, my focus now is more 'in my head' than on what I'm actually seeing (fingers on fretboard).
It's a lot like active listening and almost a bit like DJ-ing, where I'm constantly 'listening ahead' and hearing possible notes to play in my head before I play them. This all happens in tenths of a second but it's a continuous process. My fingers are guided by this process and thanks to experience, kinda 'know' where to go based on what notes I'm hearing in my head.
That said, even that process gets stale in a while if I don't keep learning new tech/licks, bc I feel my brain still grabs from a pool of knowledge and experience and when playing faster, there's not much time to 'select' a note and I just go with the voice in my head.. which can become almost like another form of muscle memory, with how my brain keeps choosing the same melodies.
If I don't try to really get in my ear, my muscles take over and any improv will really sound like the previous due to me then muscle memory-ing through the solo/riff/progression.
So yeah not focusing on the visual aspect is of major importance imo. Easy way to start learning this is by humming notes before you play them. In time you just hum and your fingers follow the notes instantly. Then you can 'internally hum' and that's imo a major key to original improvisations.
I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.
You essentially turn off other senses to heighten the ears for music. This is one reason why there have been a lot of amazing blind musicians/singers.
Electroencephalography (EEG) has been used in many studies as a primary method for evaluating the meditating brain....similarly deep mediation is like being in the "zone"...a term also used when a musician, or a ballet dancer or painter is focused in what might be thought of as a different realm (for lack of a better term) Electroencephalography uses electrical leads placed all over the scalp to measure the collective electrical activity of the cerebral cortex....
Way cool discussion John!
Really sweet backing track. And sizzling lead brother!
Very interesting !!
Flow states are the key to mastery of all kinds.
This isnt news to anyone who has mastered a skill. And one who masters one, usually learns to master several this way.
Music is an anlogy for life lived properly.
Interesting! Strange that an article about scanning the brains of jazz musicians shows a picture of someone playing classical guitar. For some reason, this kind of indicates that the author/editor/publisher may not know the subject matter very well. This said, interesting article nonetheless.
Jazz can be, and has been, played on nylon stringed guitars.
The writer typically has nothing to do with headline or the choice of accompanying photo.
In the beginning, improvisation mostly consists of making very small changes to music we have already internalized. As we gain confidence, we begin to chain together small familiar melodic fragments ( licks ) that ( if we're lucky ) begin to superficially resemble meaningful statements. Really advanced improvisers become bored with licks, patterns, scales, arpeggios and other devices, and begin to source their improvisations purely and directly from their imagination. At this point, their improvisations are no longer limited to "vocabulary", muscle memory, and skillful noodling, instead, they create ( in real time ) TOTALLY IDEA BASED, POINTED AND PURPOSEFUL MUSIC. That is THE REAL DEAL. Anyone who thinks they can "shred" their way there, should THINK AGAIN . . . . . . . . .