Improvisation, Part 1: Addition by Subtraction | Being musical. Being human.

09/07/16 10:50

Being musical. Being human.

Exploring the processes of music making and the path to musicality.

Improvisation, Part 1: Addition by Subtraction

Posted on May 11, 2011 | 24 Comments

We’re all fluent improvisers. The most common way is our speaking. Everyday we talk with family members,
friends, teachers, students, and even strangers. And we do it all without a script. Our spoken words are not
rehearsed, but they effectively express our thoughts and feelings. A spontaneous conversation is anything but
mindless. It’s probably in such improvised interactions that our minds are most engaged—listening to others’
words, reacting emotionally to what we hear, and offering heart-felt opinions of our own. But despite being
accomplished improvisational talkers, many of us have not developed this aspect of our musicianship. In a
recent poll, I asked my website visitors what music performance skill they would most want to improve. As I type
this, improvising is the clear leader (the poll’s are always open!).

This speech analogy may in fact be very similar to the processes of musical improvisation. A few months ago, I
caught Charles Limb’s TED Talk “Your Brain on Improv” (the video is embedded at the end of this post). Dr.
Limb is a hearing specialist, surgeon, and brain researcher. He’s also a musician. In his talk, he shares—quite
eloquently, I might add—some exploratory research he’s doing with musicians who are skilled improvisers. The
participants in his research carry out two different performance tasks: playing a memorized jazz solo and
improvising an original one over the same chord changes. The kicker is that they do this in a functional MRI
scanner, which captures images of activated areas of the brain.

Although Dr. Limb is careful to state that his findings are preliminary, they are nonetheless fascinating to me.
They suggest that certain areas of the brain are much more active during improvisation than they are when
playing music from memory. More specifically, the areas of the brain that are more active in improvisation are
those thought to be autobiographical, including language centers for expressive communication. What’s more—
and this is really cool—some areas drop in activity from memorized performance to improvisation. The area of
the brain that essentially turns off is an area thought to be involved in self-monitoring.

Dr. Limb’s theory is that what enables these improvisers’ creativity is a “weird dissociation in the frontal lobe” of
the brain. While self-expression needs to be boosted, inhibition needs to be reduced. In his words, “You’re
willing to make mistakes. You’re not constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.” In effect,
what facilitates improvisation is more thought of one kind, but also much less thought of another kind.
Incidentally he also found similar brain activity in expert rappers engaged in improvised “freestyle” rapping,
compared to when they recited an equivalent memorized rap.

As I try to apply these ideas to music making, a couple things come to mind. First, in order to be a fluent
improviser, musicians must develop the capacity to be spontaneously self-expressive. Back to the language
analogy. Just as we can quickly choose and combine words to communicate our thoughts at any moment,

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Improvisation, Part 1: Addition by Subtraction | Being musical. Being human. 09/07/16 10:50

musicians must possess a similar command of their musical instrument in order to be expressive on it. And like
learning a language, this kind of fluency is only acquired through much aural experience. But a second important
point is that performers must also be able to shut down the self-consciousness that can interfere with genuine
expressiveness. This brings to mind the motivation concept of self-efficacy, that a person must not only be
competent with a particular skill, but must believe in their competence. So in addition to developing the ability
to improvise, musicians must also learn to trust in this growing musicianship. This can be an elusive goal,
considering how so much music instruction is based entirely on error-detection (i.e., “let me tell you what’s
wrong with what you’re doing”).

I think there’s much to be gained by studying the processes of improvisation. Whether it comes by interviewing
amazing musicians or by scanning their brains in action, I’ll eagerly accept the insight gained. As Dr. Limb says
in the video below, “Artistic creativity is magical, but it’s not magic.”

Charles Limb
Your brain on improv

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