Staying in the Zone

Charles Meadows

This is the part of music that always eludes me! I can't say I've ever found the "zone". My approach has always been to copy others' stuff and think about where to put stuff. I've been reading the "Inner game of music" as I've heard good things about this book.

toph

Simple, attach a nine volt battery to the sides of your head: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/zapping-the-brain-to-get-with-the-flow/2012/02/09/gIQAuiSeBR_story.html

Trans cranial direct current stimulation has been shown to aid in the task of achieving "flow," whether we're talking about musicians, athletes, or marksmen.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins monitored the brains of Jazz pianists using fmri and found that when improvising, as opposed to playing from memory, the musicians essentially deactivated parts of the brain involved in impulse-control such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and "turned on" other parts more conducive to improv. Researches elsewhere have used trans cranial magnetic stimulation to diminish activity in the dorsolateral prefontal cortex, presumably easing the subjects transition into "flow."

I always wear a big hat with ear flaps at shows to conceal the nine-volt batteries attached to the sides of my head.

All that aside, though, I find that the more time I spend (without burning out from excessive and forced concentration) involved with music the easier it is to hop in the zone at will. If I'm too busy with other non-music things, then my head is not in the game. The more time I spend really enjoying music (playing, watching, and listening) the easier it is to hop into the zone when I'm playing a tune I'm very very familiar with. Enjoying it is key for me. If I spend too much time really working on tedious technical obstacles or getting bogged down in theoretical matters than I carve myself a rut and my playing sounds painful and uninspired and its time to go for a hike and get my mind off it.

MattHenry

I liked reading these ideas and I related to nearly all of them.

My two cents is that developing your technique helps, as does training your ear.

I know these are totally obvious things, but if a tune isn't too fast for me to coherently play eight note runs then I find more freedom. Similarly, as I spend time learning heads or singing along with my lead playing it helps connect my ear so I'm not just noodling in a familiar shape.

Anthony's comment about really having the changes down is true for me as well. I'm starting to notice that I need to identify changes way higher up the neck than I'd play them on rhythm just to frame my soloing. Again, this is an basic thing but I'm only recently starting to put patient time to it.

Buco

At first I didn't wanna mention it, cause I didn't wanna be constantly pluggin' in my friend's book but there's a chapter in it that talks exactly about this: Go with the Flow.
He, Jon, gave me a permission to reproduce some parts of it.

It mentioned Leo Kotke who said in an interview:
"My brain becomes a vacuum up there. That's the nice thing about it. I can completely get way from myself and anything else when I'm playing. It's unfortunate those times when you discover you've gone too far and you can't use your mind to bring yourself back, but when it does work , it's very nice."

It also says this "flow state" has been extensively researched by the psychologist Mihaily Csikszentmihalyi (Mee-hy-cheek-sent-me-hy-ee) who said "a flow state is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved and you're using your skills to the utmost."

Jon says, and that's what some of you guys remarked previously, that this flow state happens in a narrow channel when your level of skill is closely aligned with the challenge of the performance.
Otherwise you fall can fall into boredom, if the challenge is too easy for your level of skill, or anxiety and worry if the challenge overcomes your skill level.

He also says "Achieving a flow state is a powerful motivator to continue to put in the practice time. Getting better is a self-perpetuating cycle."

To put it in the sports perspective for me is skiing.
Especially because your movements are very rhythmic and repetitive.
It's very easy for me to forget myself and the world around me when I'm going down a mountain face.
Everything just disappears. I'm aware of my surroundings but when I think about it now I know there's no or very little thinking of any kind involved.
I know I'm fully focused but the rest is vacuum and I don't have to do anything to get there.

OK time to go to practice...

Buco

Actually I just realized, while practicing, that I can zone out pretty well while I'm soloing over tune during practice after I slow it down a lot. Which is what I've been doing lately and enjoying a lot. I guess it makes the case for "the flow happens when the challenge and ability are closely matched" theory. Which doesn't speak volumes of my abilities but oh well, I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

Buco

Jon just emailed me a pdf with entire chapters 1,2 and 7.
Said to feel free to attach it here.

He decided to include chapters 1 and 2 so that you get some context later on when reading chapter 7 named "Go with the flow".

Pretty cool of him to say the least. Selling books is how he makes a living but he doesn't mind sharing either.
In fact he's given out over a million free downloads of his books and just recently had a "student special" to receive a free electronic copy of his last, "The practice of practice", which this excerpt comes from.

So check it out if interested what he has to say on this subject.