Competitions

The Improvisational Brain

passed along by Monica Daniel-Barker



The more I delve into my career as a professional musician, the more I learn about what it is that makes us truly be Musicians.  There is a special thing that happens to all of us when we enter that zone in performance when we are really creating something out of nothing but it feels like our aural journey is inevitable.  What we are putting out there feels very obviously in the direction of where we are headed, though in truth the potentials are infinite.


So in my own quest to understand some things about making music and why or how we feel such a need to do it, I find myself more and more taken by essays or journals on how the brain functions.  Everything we do in life has an impetus from a brain cell that travels a path to create something, whether it be movement, words, emotions, or in our immediate case, music.  And the more the science of neurology delves into this, the more amazing it seems that we come to understand music the way we do.


A fun article was published recently worth sharing -- take a look and see how it resonates with you.  I guarantee there will be at least one point where each of us says -- yes! I’ve been in that place!


http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_improvisational_brain/


And for some of the best reading out there for people who are curious about how the brain processes music, check out Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia (http://musicophilia.com/). -- In my opinion, required reading for anyone in our industry.  As it trolls a journey of all of the various disorders people have in processing music, you’ll learn a lot about what your brain is doing when you listen, and you’ll find yourself more amazed than ever that humans not only hear, but FEEL and RESPOND to music.