Charting Creativity

On a recent plane trip to Philly I had the chance to catch up on some reading. As usual, FastCompany Magazine provided great fuel and possible fodder for an upcoming blog. But it was an article in the New York Times (love the crossword puzzle) that caught my eye and inspires this edition.

Charting Creativity: Signposts of a Hazy Territory by Patricia Cohen tells about a group of scientists who are researching 'the neurology of inspiration'. The lead lines caught my ADD brain and curiosity...

'Grab a timer and set it for one minute. Now list as many creative uses for a brick as you can imagine. Go. '

If ever there was a throw down I was built for, this was it. Creativity...? One minute? I am so there! I took my crossword pen (of course) and started making my list. I didn't care how long I went, the ideas just kept coming. It turns out this little exercise is part of a classic test that scientists are using to attempt to track creativity and inspiration in the brain.

I loved the standard definition of creativity that the scientists begin from: 'the ability to combine novelty and usefulness in a particular social context'. But some argue that this standard has outlived its usefulness.

Most people agree that no single measure for creativity exists. While I.Q. tests are still considered reliable at least for certain kinds of intelligence, there is no equivalent when it comes to creativity — no Creativity Quotient, or C.Q.

The 'brick' example actually comes from a test for “divergent thinking,” where a person is asked to come up with “new and useful” functions for a familiar object, like a pencil or a sheet of paper.

But Dr. Jung’s team goes a bit further and presents his subjects with weird situations. For example, what would be the implications if clouds had strings? Can you draw the taste of chocolate? Or, write a caption for a humorous cartoon. 'Humor is an important part of creativity,' Dr. Jung said. And his research has produced some surprising results. One study of 65 subjects suggests that creativity prefers to take a slower, more meandering path than intelligence.

“The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from Point A to Point B” when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. “But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.”

Ah yes, those wonderful, meandering side roads. Jolly good fun they are. Take a break and read the entire article here. Then go be creative!

The Other 80%

This is my response to a long and winding thread on Dr. James Frankel's blog Music Technology in Education. The original post was titled 'The Other 80%: An Industry Perspective' about how important technology is to the profession of music education and addressing the fact that academia seemingly ignores 80% of interested music makers by focusing on the K-12 demographic.

Fantastic discussion! As a music educator, software developer, and entrepreneur...(I know, your heads are exploding... but hang in there) I am delighted by and happy to address, design for, and 'sell' to the 'other 80%'. My colleagues and I have consciously tried to reach this group and find it baffling that the profession of 'music education' almost complete ignores such a large, enthusiastic, and frankly, financially sound demographic - especially at a time when 'band, choir, and orchestra' programs are being cut right and left.

We started the Dallas School of Music as a 'for profit' business, a place where people of all ages could access professional music education in a vibrant, modern, and state of the art facility. The school has been serving families in the DFW area for almost 20 years. When we first began, people (mostly family members and well wishing friends outside of music) told us to 'contact the schools' to let them know what we could provide. Their logic seemed sound, 'of course they would want to send their interested students to study privately at your facility?'. Academia could have cared less, but it became a blessing in disguise.

It didn't take long to learn that a bigger pool of interested, passionate music makers lie outside of the K-12 demographic. Of course, DSM does have classes for young children and we have many school aged kids in lessons each week. But we also have doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and average Joe's learning music for the first time (don't get me started on why many schools do not have guitar or piano classes!). The formula seemed to work and when the internet began to take hold we realized it was the perfect vehicle to take our approach to an even wider audience, so we began MusickEd.com.

Today, enthusiasts all over the world use our software and teachers have adopted our Discovery Series as part of their own curriculum. In May we will be launching a subscription service and a new 'Kore Series' followed by a Jazz Series (later this summer).

I hope that our success will pave the way for future educators to be innovative in their thinking, innovative in their teaching, and innovative in helping the profession seek more opportunities outside of the traditional classroom. Technology indeed has never been more important to music education, but if we strive only to reach that 20% - we will have sold ourselves very, very, short....again.

Dream a Little Dream...

Tara Parker-Pope writes in the NY Times about a team of researchers who ponder the question - why do we dream? Some new research may have unlocked a little of this mystery and it leads to some interesting conclusions about how and why we learn. Dreaming may actually result from the brain’s effort to keep learning... even as we sleep!

In a study released by Current Biology, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, volunteers trained visualized their way through a complicated, three-dimensional puzzle. Half the volunteers were allowed to sleep for 90 minutes while the other half stayed awake, reading or relaxing. During their resting period, they were awakened and asked to describe their thoughts or dreams.

After the resting period, the volunteers were asked to again tackle the maze and were graded. Those who napped but didn’t report any 'maze-related' dreams did better but showed only marginal improvement over the non-nappers.

However, a few of the nappers reported dreaming about the maze and showed a startling improvement in their task, cutting completion time in half. The difference in scores before and after sleeping was 10 times higher for the maze dreamers than those who hadn’t dreamed about the task.

Even though the number of 'maze dreamers' was small, researchers noted that the gap in learning was so wide that the finding was statistically significant.

'Notably, the dreamers had all performed poorly on the test prior to dreaming about it. That suggests that struggling with a task might be the trigger that prompts the sleeping brain to focus on the subject and work on getting better', explained the lead author, Robert Stickgold.

'It’s almost as if your brain is rummaging through everything that happened today and deciding that you’re not done with it. The things that really grip you, the ones you decide at an emotional level are really important, those are the ones you dream about. The things you’re obsessed with are the ones that your brain forces you to continue to process.'

Dr. Stickgold continues, 'If you’re a student and you want to do better on the test, you might need to dream about it. The question is, ‘How do I get myself to dream about it?’ The answer is to get excited about it. That seems to be what you dream about.'

We'd love to hear your thoughts and comments about this study and in particular, dreams regarding music or learning music. Maybe this is why passionate music makers often show improvement from week to week with limited practice time?

Read Tara's complete article here.

As you know, we are huge fans of people using technology to advance a cause or to promote great products. Extra kudos go to anyone even remotely associated with music education. The D'Addario Company, suppliers of all sorts of musical accessories, is doing a really nice job of giving users some great web content and using all sorts of media outlets to reach (and maintain) their customers.

As a longtime user of LaVoz reeds, I appreciate the Rico e-mail newsletter with links to the MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and even the Rico Blog pages. There is a ton of content to peruse with a little something for all musicians and enthusiasts regardless of your chosen instrument or genre.

Check out the new reed cases and sax straps (where was this cool stuff when I was in junior high?). Anyway, we hope to lure these guys into advertising at MusickEd.com because we think their products rock and our users would enjoy their online presence...consider this a shameless plug to get the ball rolling!

Paper Raincoat Visits DSM/MusickEd

The Paper Raincoat stopped in to visit us just prior to their appearance at Austin's South by Southwest Festival.
The band is an imaginative collaboration between Brooklyn songwriters Amber Rubarth, Alex Wong, and Kevin Rice. Their songs bring life to a colorful world teeming with compelling characters, dream-like story-lines, and metaphorical narratives. Their debut EP Safe in The Sound is an introduction to a fantasy world drawn from the real experiences of excitement and solitude its creators shared while moving to New York City.

The band plays a blend of 'pop-folk orchestral arrangements, peppered with electronic textures, and overflowing with unforgettable melodies...., catchy and meaningful enough for listeners to relate to whether they knew the back-story or not.'

Their live performances can be quirky, with lots of different sounds, interesting harmonies, and band members often trading instruments. They can be seen in several TV and film placements, most notably, their song Brooklyn Blurs appears in the feature film The Last Song.

The band stopped in to meet with their pal and MusickEd's own Mike Finkel. Though a bit weary from their travels, (some members coming from Los Angeles and others from New York City) they cheerfully rehearsed in Frandsen Hall much to the delight of students at DSM.

CLICK HERE to learn more about their music and future gigs. You can also find them on Facebook and follow their every move onTwitter. Good luck guys - hope to see you back in Dallas soon!