jazzmen fall
Music in your head
Before modern neuroimaging techniques were developed, researchers studied the musical abilities of the brain, observing patients (including famous composers) with various disruptions in their activity due to injury or stroke. So, in 1933, the French composer Maurice Ravel developed symptoms of local brain degeneration, a disease that is accompanied by atrophy of certain sections of brain tissue. The composer’s mental abilities did not suffer: he remembered his old works and played scales well. But he could no longer compose music. Speaking about his alleged opera “Joan of Arc”, Ravel confessed: “Opera is in my head, I hear it, but I will never write it. It’s over. I am no longer able to compose music.” He died four years after an unsuccessful neurosurgical operation. The history of his illness gave rise to the idea among scientists that the brain is devoid of a specialized music center. Continue reading
Ensemble
Ensemble – means the joint performance of a piece of music by several participants or a piece of music for a small number of performers; A favorite type of music since ancient times. In accordance with the number of performers (from two to ten), the ensemble is called a duet, trio (tertset), quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet or decimet – by the Latin name of the numbers. As independent works, ensembles belong to the field of chamber music, but also belong to operas, oratorios and cantatas. VIA (vocal – instrumental ensembles) were common in Russia in the seventies.
The story tells us one of the possible ways to form an ensemble: another instrumental “voice” joins the poetic tune of the shepherd’s horn, he timidly searches for his way and finds it, wrapping the melody of the first performer with expressive ornament of sound lace that does not interfere with listening to this tune , as if emphasizing inventive finds. Continue reading
Brain “under the jazz”
When jazz musicians improvise, areas that are responsible for self-censorship and inhibition of nerve impulses are turned off in their brain, and instead, areas that open the way for self-expression are turned on.
A companion study at the Johns Hopkins University, in which volunteer musicians from the Peabody Institute participated, and in which the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method was used, shed light on the mechanism of creative improvisation that artists use in everyday life.
Jazz musicians, improvising, create their own unique riffs by turning off braking and turning on creativity.
Scientists from the Medical University, National Institute of Deafness speak about their interest in a possible neurological basis of a state close to the state of trance, into which jazzmen fall, starting spontaneous improvisations. Continue reading
