ASMR

I just came across this story on "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response" and want to put up a link because it fits into something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's my feeling that people are communicating in more ways than we are aware of, and in ways science has yet to adequately describe.

Several years ago I had a go around with frequent commenter Jonathan West over how to talk about the way we sometimes feel so fully engaged with other music makers, particularly during "flow" experiences, and that that feeling can extend to and include audiences as well. I came up with the phrase "enhanced awareness" so as to avoid the negative baggage of ESP.

According to people who feel they can have this experience, ASMR can be triggered by a whole series of videos with boring content delivered in a whispering voice. One of the makers of these videos, which have an established internet audience, says, 

“I think it has to do with childhood,” she said. “Whenever your mother would treat you delicately, or your doctor or teacher would talk to you gently… The caring touch is the biggest trigger.”

The physical response in susceptible people is said to be:

a tingle in your brain, a kind of pleasurable headache that can creep down your spine. It’s a shortcut to a blissed-out meditative state that allows you to watch long videos that for someone who doesn’t have ASMR are mind-meltingly dull.

Wikipedia has kicked off pages trying to talk about this, so it's definitely fringe territory. Should there be something to it, though, I can't imagine there's not some kind of an overlap with some kinds of music.

Lineage

In some recent posts with the 2.0 tag I've been trying to establish a conceptual framework for the deep process of the practice of music making, making connections to the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. 

In this morning's post Pliable makes the connection of lineage in both the practice of music and the practice of Buddhism. Over and above my never having seen that particular commonality, there's much to think about is the post. On a hectic Independence Day just want to bookmark the post to come back to, probably multiple times.

Among the questions to consider is how Pliable's use of the word "mystical" in the following quote will play with skeptics. 

. . . the establishment of a mystical link from the performer forward to his audience and back to the composer . . .

Flexible Stability vs. Contorted Rigidity

I had a great back and forth with David Wilken down in the comments on this post of his. The topic was embouchure, but it's my feeling the general concept plays in to music making on all levels. Here's something I said:

The other thing I keep wondering about is your point of the less movement of the embouchure the better. I understand how that really helps cleaner playing. The problem for me that led to an embouchure crisis that nearly had me give up the horn was that I think I got more over into “rigid” rather than “stable”, and that the appropriate supporting musculature and fascia weren’t in place, leading to over stressing some parts of the embouchure and not using others as much as needed (if that makes any sense).

And here's Dave's response:

I understand exactly what you mean here. It’s very common for players to concentrate their effort in areas that aren’t ideal, while letting the muscle groups that should be doing the work be lax. This happens with breathing as well as embouchure. If you look back a few posts I wrote up on a study that used infrared photography to note the areas on trumpet players’ faces that were doing the work while playing. One thing that was noted was that the professionals had a more uniform look compared to each other, whereas the amateurs had their muscular effort all over their face, with a lot more variety.

It's my feeling that this idea of the physical effort being evenly distributed throughout the embouchure applies equally to other areas of music making. One of the constants of my helping people make music on a whole panoply of instruments over the years has been helping them see and hear and feel how they're stressing where they don't need to and not giving full attention to other areas. 

So often people starting to play an instrument seem to be contorting themselves in ways they never would in everyday physical endeavors. I think this becomes less immediately apparent as we play our instruments better over time, but needless small rigidities can still lurk just below the surface and hinder us from being as fully expressive as we might be.

Part of my recent "flow" experience was not once experiencing any physical glitches and the horn simply making the sounds I wanted it to. I just thought about the sound I wanted, not about what I needed to do to make it. My sense is that having a flexible stability in physical technique makes that more likely to happen than when you've got some physical contorted rigidities getting between you and the music.

Just as music making and meditation seem to have some overlap in terms of brain function, music making and yoga seem to have some overlap on the physical level.

Harmonious Feeling of Oneness

This BBC article is the first I've seen which talks about how there are apparently two mostly independent neural networks in our brains. The suggestion is that usually one or the other predominates our consciousness, but that, at least in the case of Tibetan Buddhist meditators, the activities of the two networks can be balanced. 

He says the brain appears to be organised into two networks: the extrinsic network and the intrinsic, or default, network.

Dr Josipovic has scanned the brains of more than 20 experienced meditators during the study.
The extrinsic portion of the brain becomes active when individuals are focused on external tasks, like playing sports or pouring a cup of coffee.

The default network churns when people reflect on matters that involve themselves and their emotions.

But the networks are rarely fully active at the same time. And like a seesaw, when one rises, the other one dips down. . . 

. . . Dr Josipovic has found that some Buddhist monks and other experienced meditators have the ability to keep both neural networks active at the same time during meditation - that is to say, they have found a way to lift both sides of the seesaw simultaneously.

And Dr Josipovic believes this ability to churn both the internal and external networks in the brain concurrently may lead the monks to experience a harmonious feeling of oneness with their environment.

If this hypothesis proves out, it seems to me it could be part of the explanation of the state a music maker can sometimes enter when the ego falls away and the music seems to flow on its own. I've been talking to music friends about this and here's a great note I got from Billy Brockman, a friend I knew as a child and who went on to make a living as an electric guitar player. Billy is now proprietor of Charlottesville Music.

Time would definitely slow down. It gave me the ability to transfer what was in my head (and heart) to my fingers more easily. The ability to "play what you hear." It's analogous to a batter being able to "see the seams rotating" on a fastball. The ball is coming to the plate at 90 mph, but to a hitter "in the zone" the ball appears to be traveling slower.

Music/Spiritual Practice

This post by Pliable gets at something I've tried to talk about here from time to time, i.e. the parallels between engagement in music and engagement in a spiritual path. He's talking about Zen Buddhism, but I think other paths would qualify for this discussion.

Accepting parallels between engaging new listeners and transmission as practiced in Zen Buddhism takes us down an interesting path. Transmission is totally dependant on physical interaction between teacher and student.

His use of the word "transmission" implies something of more value than mere entertainment to pass the time. "Physical interaction" allows for the deeper communication possible with embodied cognition and mirror neurons. It also allows for the connection between the performer and audience Hilary Hahn has spoken of.

All the dogmas that have developed around reaching new audiences involve adding insulating layers between performer and listener; these range from performance conventions to digital concert halls and virtual orchestras. Yet, if the analogy between classical music and transmission is valid, the process should be reversed. We do not need more intermediate layers. Instead we need high voltages to flow between superconductors (pun not intended) in close promiximity to one another. Which means more live music, physical interaction between audience and performers, music education, music therapy, amateur, youth and scratch orchestras and similar initiatives. And less of an awful lot of things we are getting more of.

It amazes me that more people don't see things this way. It delights me that one of the few happens to have one of the most widely read blogs on the planet. 

Another way of putting this is that there's a lot of attention paid to the very top of the music making pyramid, but not nearly so much to the rest of it down below. In schools, lots of money and time is expended upon the small minority of students in the band and chorus, while the majority are shut out, sometimes very rudely. Many people seem to view music making as something to be left to the elite, but the new research coming in is telling us it can benefit us all, not just the technically advanced. 

One of the main causes of this focus on the top of the pyramid is the ubiquity of recorded music with all its technical perfections. People tend to conflate the value of technical skill with the value of simply making music and listening to it. To my mind the main issue is that there be a match between the music being made and the audience's ability to appreciate it. It's that connection which is important, and technical wizardry can either be a help or a hinderance. A priest or lama helping someone along the path doesn't spout the arcane points of theology until the student is ready. Getting someone on a good path and helping them stay on it is more important than trying to impress them with your knowledge.

This all reminds me of why I write music. For me, the point is to create music the players will enjoy playing and the audience will enjoy listening to. If that happens, the connection is made and the benefits of music will flow from that connection to all concerned. The most heartening thing about the reception Timepiece is getting is the sense it's largely successful in those terms. (More on this compositional motivation here)

(Pliable continues down this path here and is kind enough to mention this post in the footnote)

Silence and Applause

When we played at Macedonia last Sunday, in his sermon Crawford talked about the power of the silence following stirring music. In this post Opera Chic tells a story, in her own inimitable style, that makes the same point:

There are nights when the music you just listened to simply overwhelms you, when you just don't feel like doing what you've been trained to -- to clap your hands, stand up, cheer, whatever. The music is still with you, within you, even when the sound stops. The music still echoes, in a way, and breaking the silence simply seems wrong. Because what you just experienced is so deep and, in a way, fragile, that you want to hold on to it just a bit longer, and you know the applause will somehow break the spell.

Opera Chic experienced this phenomenon last year, at la Scala, with the Barenboim/Quasthoff "Winterreise". Apparently, very much the same thing happened the other night in Lucerne, for Claudio Abbado's performance on the podium, conducting his beloved Mahler's Ninth.

The always perceptive Carla Moreni, in Il Sole 24 Ore, a financial newspaper with an excellent arts coverage, was present. And her review in today's paper, unfortunately not available online -- the headline reads, beautifully, "Mahler's Ninth, The Perfect Silence" -- indicates that the audience was so stunned by the finale that, literally, nobody clapped their hands for three minutes after the final notes dissolved in the air.

And, eventually, an ovation lasting twenty full minutes rocked the auditorium.

But then, in a way, this is just Claudio being Claudio.

Feel Good Music

Cousin Steve just put this video up on Facebook. For now just wanting to save it. 

later - Now that I've watched this and some other of his videos, here are a few comments:

* Back in the 60's there was a vogue for flamenco guitar and I saw Carlos Montoya perform. This player reminded me of that because of the improvisatory nature of his playing, the incessant rhythm being the framework, and that trick of playing with only the fretting fingers.

* Never realized the balalaika had only three strings. This player is amazing, but having just the three strings facilitates his fluency. Chording is very easy and the length of the strums is very short.

* I can't help wondering if he's not some sort of savant. Would love to see a bit of video of him not playing.

* The facial mugging and playing to the audience puts me in mind of a court jester, and some of the melancholy between the fast bits makes me think of bits of Stravinky's Petrushka.

* I don't think I've ever seen a better blend of physical and musical gesture, each informing the other. With the miming he's setting the instrument up as his voice and that really adds to the performance. Hearing this without seeing it wouldn't have the same impact.

* He's creating a spell, especially with those rhythms, that he enters into and is there for the audience to join in as well. There are shots of a couple of men with their eyes closed, fully engaged in the music. They are sharing in the "flow" of the music making.

* I titled this post "feel good music" because that's really the main take away. I felt mentally fresher and my mood was lifted by listening to it.

Enhanced Awareness

Using the phrase "ESP" triggers a range of reactions, so provisionally I'm going to use the phrase "enhanced awareness" through the four Jungian categories (of thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation) as a way to talk about whatever it is that can happen when making music. Here's a use of the phrase in a comment to Bruce Hembd's post "What makes a great performance?"

>>Bruce – Not being a high level player such as yourself and those who frequent this site, these points come from way back in the peanut gallery.

I prefer “Musicality” (from Jonathan West) and “Technique” – each being necessary but neither being sufficient for great performances.

“Talent” is sort of a vexed word for those of us not on a high level. It suggests either/or and that if you don’t have it, don’t even try. Saying someone is more or less a “natural” player allows for the possibility of achievement for all.

As to title of your post, I think the notion of “flow” (thanks for the link in suggested reading) or being “in the zone” comes into play. In a really great performance, my notion is that individual players, the ensemble as a whole, and the performers and the audience all enter into a kind of shared flow state – that all (or most) are to some degree in a state of enhanced awareness where the experience is one that is shared amongst all and the greater the performance, the greater the communion.<<