Rachel Burnham writes: Last week I took a week’s holiday to enable me to fully participate in the Manchester Jazz Festival. As well as getting to hear lots of wonderful music (check out #mjf2016), I also went to a fascinating lecture organised by the Festival, in association with the Manchester Science Festival, about ‘What happens in our brains when we improvise?’ This lecture focused on musical improvising and was given by Dr Graeme Wilson from the University of Edinburgh, who is both a psychologist and a saxophonist. The session was also supported by improvised music by Adam Fairhall on keyboards and Tom Ward on saxophone and flute. Here is my sketchnote from the talk:
I found Graeme Wilson’s talk most interesting both from
the viewpoint of someone who listens to lots of improvised music and as an
L&Der. It got me thinking a lot about
what is going on when we encourage people to ‘improvise’ at work both in their
day to day to work and when we are more specifically encouraging innovation. It
also got me reflecting on my own practice when facilitating learning – as that
very often has elements of improvising within it.
This is one of the very best sessions I have ever
participated in that draws upon evidence from neuroscience. Wilson explained that the session drew from a
combination of neuroscience studies, predominantly using fMRI scans, cognitive psychology
experiments and also interviews with musicians about their experience of
improvising. One of the things that
particularly impressed me about the session was the way Graeme Wilson from the
outset was clear about the limitations of these studies. He reminded us of how impossible it is to
actually interview a musician whilst they are playing and improvising – they usually
have something in their mouth and are rather occupied! So interviews are always after the event and
an interpretation of what happened. He spoke of the artificiality and limited
nature of many of the experiments and gave examples to illustrate. He mentioned one particular example that
involved a study of pianists improvising that required them to play the
keyboard upside down and in the dark to enable them to be scanned! He described the process of interpreting fMRI
scans as ‘like watching television with the sound turned off’. I think it made a significant difference to
the way he spoke about the research, that this is both an area in which Graeme
Wilson is not only a researcher, but also an active practitioner. And during the session, we were treated to
some of his playing when he and Tom Ward improvised together on their saxophones
to explore some of the points discussed.
Here are three key areas from the session:
Improvising
is demanding
One of the studies compared musicians playing someone
else’s music to when they were improvising and identified that much stronger
cognitive control is exerted when improvising.
Improvising effectively requires both mastery, but also the ability to ‘let
go’. One musician described improvising as
a ‘mystery’ that required you to ignore mistakes when in the grip of
improvising - this also sounds like being in a 'flow state' as Csikszentmihalyi describes. A study of pianists (the
one where they were playing upside down in the scanner) showed in their scans
less activity in the brain areas associated with self-monitoring and
inhibition. In my experience you can often
see and hear the moment when a group of jazz musicians relax and let go – the quality
of the music immediately takes off.
Graeme Wilson talked about the different degrees of
improvisation you get in music, sometimes just sections of a piece of music are
improvised such as in solos. In this
situation, musicians often describe themselves a focusing on playing key notes
and then using familiar phrases – ‘patterns’ to get from one keynote to another
– I relate this to the way we use habits or patterns of behaviours in daily
life. Some music has a much high
proportion of improvisation and when there are no conventions to rely on, the
cognitive load is huge.
Improvisation
is social
Much improvised music is social involving several
musicians improvising together. Some of
the studies shared explored the characteristics of this. ‘Trading fours’, a common musical practice
in jazz, where two musicians take it in turns to play in response to each other,
has been studied. This found activation
of the brain areas associated with syntax and deactivation of the areas
associated with processing meaning. So
improvising socially involves aspects of communication, but perhaps holding
back sense-making/judging?
Again, from my own experience the most effective groups
of musicians can very often be seen to listening carefully to each other and to
be very attentive to each other’s body language. An example of this comes from
the group ‘The Impossible Gentlemen’ who played during last week’s festival. I have
to confess to not being very keen on drummers, but Adam Nussbaum, the drummer
from ‘The Impossible Gentlemen’ is a wonderful drummer and my observation is
that he seems to always listening and paying attention to the other musicians. I think the most effective listeners make
better music together!
In other studies, it has been found that different
musicians make sense of what is happening when they improvise together
differently. For example, Graeme Wilson
and a colleague interviewed a number of musicians after a collective
improvisation in which a number of musicians stopped playing and each person
had a different interpretation of that event.
Improvising
involves making choices
Wilson explored that when musicians improvise they make
choices and this is more complex than some of the simpler models of music
creation in other circumstances. So
musicians may choose to:
· Maintain
ie to continue playing as they already are – this is what is done most of the
time.
· Or
initiate change. This is done less
frequently.
Initiating change can be through either:
· Doing
something completely new, which is rarely done.
· Or
responding to what someone else is doing.
There are three options in how you can respond:
o
Adopt – start doing what someone else is
doing;
o
Augment – build on what someone else is
doing;
o
Contrast – do something different to what
others are doing but to support what they are doing.
I
found this most interesting and could relate it both what happens in
conversations and also when introducing new ideas & practices to the
workplace. I think in L&D, there has
been an awful lot of adopting going on when we have lifted wholesale practices
from one organisation to another, without fully considering the different
context in which we have been operating.
Some thoughts from me on high
performance
Drawing
from this has made me wonder whether high performance in the workplace, from
individuals and teams, that requires some element of improvisation involves:
· Mastery;
· Knowing
when & how to ‘let go’ – ie break with convention;
· Highly
effective communication between co-workers, particularly listening;
· Recognition
that different degrees of improvisation may be needed eg sometimes just picking
out key notes and using existing patterns of behaviour to move between them and
sometimes all out collective improvisation.
I found this a very stimulating and thought-provoking
session and I would love to hear your views on it.
Rachel
Burnham
7/8/16
Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D
professionals become even more effective.
I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social
media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of
learning on performance.
