This workshop provides an overview of developments in AI involving music creation and improvisation, including a high-level exploration of how these systems work. The emphasis will be on similarities and differences between AI-generative music and (human) musical creativity, as well as insights from this comparison for the practice and experience of improvisation. There will be guided “experiments” in improvisation that bridge the research with your musical practice.
Improvisation and Meditation: Awakening to Your Musical Mind
Overview
Embark on an exploration of the intriguing parallels between the neuroscience of improvisation and the practice of meditation. We will delve into the experiences and brain changes underlying these two disciplines.
Workshop Highlights
Mind and Melody: Discover the commonalities and differences between improvisation and mindfulness meditation as well as their complementary effects on the brain.
Psychedelics, Meditation, and Improvisation: Delve into the synergies between meditation and psychedelics and how they provide insights into the practice of improvisation.
Theory Meets Experience: Engage in guided “experiments” that bridge neuroscience research with your musical practice.
Who Should Attend: This workshop is ideal for curious minds, musicians, artists, and listeners intrigued by meditation and improvisation. Discover how these practices complement and enrich each other, based on neuroscience research!
About Dr. Bradley Vines, PhD, MBA
Dr. Vines is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in music emotion, perception, and performance, and a saxophonist. He holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from McGill University, an M.B.A. from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He has postdoctoral research training in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, and has been a Research Associate and Lab Director at the Institute of Mental Health in the University of British Columbia Department of Psychiatry. Bradley has received competitive grants for his research from the GRAMMY Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NINDS), and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. He has 26 academic publications to his name, which have been cited in the literature more than 2,700 times and referenced in major media outlets including the New York Times, US News and World Report, and Businessweek. His published work includes research on music for stroke recovery, the epigenetics of music learning, multisensory integration in the perception of music, neuroplasticity in fine motor coordination, and pitch memory. He led research on music for psychedelic therapy as Chief Science Officer at Wavepaths and conducted research on music in advertising and sonic branding as Director of Neuroscience at Nielsen. He currently teaches Music Cognition for Berklee College of Music Online and hosts The Neuroscience of Improvisation, which is a program exploring the experience of improvisation from the perspective of neurobiology.
As a saxophonist, Bradley studied jazz improvisation in the William Paterson University Jazz program and privately with Gary Smulyan, Paul Nedzela, Knoel Scott, and Allaudin Mathieu. He has also studied South Indian Carnatic music with several prominent musicians in that tradition, including Dr. Vijaya Bharati, Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan, and Prasant Radhakrishnan. Bradley has contributed to music for psychedelic therapy as a Wavepaths artist and has performed with musicians such as Eddie Gayle, CK Ladzekpo, Mel Martin, and Steve Turre, in a variety of venues including Yoshi’s Oakland and Zellerbach Hall.
In this program, we compare dreaming and improvisation focusing on creative synergies, experiential similarities, and the underlying neurophysiology. These states of mind are mutually illuminating. That is, learning about one provides insights into the other. A key insight here is that we can deepen our understanding of improvisation by exploring other states of mind that have overlapping experiential qualities or brain states. In his book Dreams of Awakening, Charlie Morley writes that “…there are many different ways to tell the difference between [different states of experience], but the easiest way to get to grips with these differences is to spend as much time as we can in these states.” I propose that this is the case for improvisation, as well. By paying more attention to our dreaming experiences, we may deepen our knowledge of the experience of improvisation.
Braun, A. R., Balkin, T. J., Wesenten, N. J., Carson, R. E., Varga, M., Baldwin, P., … & Herscovitch, P. (1997). Regional cerebral blood flow throughout the sleep-wake cycle. An H2 (15) O PET study. Brain: a journal of neurology, 120(7), 1173-1197.
Kraehenmann, R. (2017). Dreams and psychedelics: neurophenomenological comparison and therapeutic implications. Current neuropharmacology, 15(7), 1032-1042.
Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fMRI study of jazz improvisation. PLoS one, 3(2), e1679.
Liu, S., Chow, H. M., Xu, Y., Erkkinen, M. G., Swett, K. E., Eagle, M. W., … & Braun, A. R. (2012). Neural correlates of lyrical improvisation: an fMRI study of freestyle rap. Scientific reports, 2(1), 834.
Rosen, D. S., Oh, Y., Erickson, B., Zhang, F. Z., Kim, Y. E., & Kounios, J. (2020). Dual-process contributions to creativity in jazz improvisations: An SPM-EEG study. NeuroImage, 213, 116632.
Walker, M. P., & van Der Helm, E. (2009). Overnight therapy? The role of sleep in emotional brain processing. Psychological bulletin, 135(5), 731.
Trehub, S. E., Ghazban, N., & Corbeil, M. (2015). Musical affect regulation in infancy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1337(1), 186-192.
Shenfield, T., Trehub, S. E., & Nakata, T. (2003). Maternal singing modulates infant arousal. Psychology of music, 31(4), 365-375.
Terry, P. C., Karageorghis, C. I., Curran, M. L., Martin, O. V., & Parsons-Smith, R. L. (2020). Effects of music in exercise and sport: A meta-analytic review. Psychological bulletin, 146(2), 91.
Bradley Vines 0:00 Greetings, and welcome to the neuroscience of improvisation. I am your host Bradley vines. In this program, we’ll be comparing dreaming and improvisation in terms of creative synergies, experiential similarities and the underlying neurophysiology. These states of mind are mutually illuminating. That is, if you learn about one, it will provide insight into the other. I think that a key takeaway here is that we can deepen our understanding of improvisation by exploring other states of mind that have overlapping experiential qualities or brain states. In his book, dreams of awakening, Charlie Morley writes that there are many different ways to tell the difference between different states of experience or consciousness. But the easiest way to get to grips with these differences is to spend as much time as we can in the States. I agree with this. And I propose that this is the case for improvisation as well. Pay more attention to your dreaming experiences. And I believe that you will become more knowledgeable about the experience of improvisation.
Bradley Vines 1:30 So what about dreaming starting with comparing improvisation and dreaming? I’m going to talk about synergies, and then phenomenological, or experiential similarities, and then neurological contrasts. So starting with dreaming and looking at synergies. So across the art world, there have been so many examples of dreams influencing art, think Salvador Dali, and just the endless examples in science and throughout human history and human endeavors. But certainly in music, we have Rahsaan, Roland Kirk, he actually, his wife said his religion was the religion of dreams. And here’s an Here’s a little clip showing, or with audio of him speaking about how he developed the idea to play multiple instruments if you don’t if you’re not familiar with his work. He was a great innovator in jazz and, and provident jazz music in general. And it wasn’t a gimmick, he was a real expression of his mind to add, playing multiple saxophones and other horns at one time. So here’s how he describes how he came to this idea.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk 2:50 Well, I just came from a whole lot of different dreams that I was having. And I was the sort of frustrated after practice day in and day out, and I’d lay down I have these dreams, I’d hear different instruments simultaneously and one of the dreams is quite clear, because it showed me plan to instrument simultaneously. So after that, I set out to have fun instruments that I heard in my dreams by looking in antique shops, different type of music shops.
Bradley Vines 3:29 Yeah, so he saw this in a dream and then brought it into reality. Albert Eiler wrote that through meditation, dreams and visions, I have been made a universal man. And then there are examples of composers talking about their experience like Brahms, saying that he enters into a semi trance condition, when the conscious mind is in temporary abeyance and the subconscious mind is in control. And that’s when these gems, these uncut diamonds, so to speak, emerge for him the core ideas behind compositions, Mozart similarly said that his ideas come, this that is, this inventing, this producing takes place in a pleasing and lively dream. So, this kind of liminal state of dreaminess seems to be the origin of many creative insights and idea. So how are the experiences of dreaming and, and improvisation similar so if we look at the phenomenology that means by that I mean, the experience of improvisation and dreaming, what are they like? Well, they both have this narrative quality, don’t they? They kind of flow And this unfolding, so to speak. And there’s a wonderful clip from I called him Morgan, Lee Morgan, the Lee Morgan, documentary.
Wayne Shorter 5:14 And sometimes we were playing, and he was playing a solo. And art will be yelling Philly. Talk to the people to talk to the people to tell them your story told me a story that he knew how to tell a story musically.
Bradley Vines 5:35 Okay, that was went shorter talking. And what does it mean to tell a story? Charles Lloyd has talked about communicating through music. So he talked about, well, let me let him speak for himself. Here’s a little clip of him speaking.
Charles Lloyd 5:55 If I can articulate it, I guess I wouldn’t have a need to play it.
Bradley Vines 6:01 So his his basically saying he has something to say, and he can’t say it in words. So he’s going to say it in music. And this is from another wonderful documentary about him called arrows to infinity, if you want to take a look at that one. So that’s narrative qualities, you’ve got this kind of the sense of a narrative that’s forming over the course of an improvisation and through a dream, then there’s the loss of agency. So when you’re dreaming, you’re not in conscious control. It’s happening to you, unless it’s a lucid dream. And then there’s some conscious control. Anyway, that’s a different discussion. Normal dreams are basically just unfolding, and they’re not really within your control, at least the main elements where you are what’s happening. So similarly, the experience of improvisers can be like this. There can be a loss of agents as well, Billy Higgins said, We are not playing this music, we are instruments of what he called the Most High, or Charles Lloyd again, the the tenor player, said the music is not my music, I’m a conduit, it comes through me I am in service. And then this idea, or this experience of the movement via adjacency. So what does that mean? It just means that you move through things that are tangentially connected to where you are now. So in a dream, you’re, it’s no problem to jump to a fully different kind of scene, as long as there’s some link connecting you with from one scene to the next in the dream, you might see some very unusual leaps in your dream progression. The same thing can happen with, with improvisation, of course. So these researchers, zodra and sickled. They said the dream stitches, a series of memories, and network explorations, that means your memory network together, keeping a principle of adjacency and operations, so these connections via via tangents, that kind of bridge between different disparate ideas. And this happens, for example, in improvisation when someone inserts a quote, so you’re playing one song, but suddenly the improviser here’s another song and in, creates that, so here’s kind of a description of how Charlie Parker did this. In relation to the Stravinsky piece, ba ba, ba,
Kansas City PBS documentary Bird: Not Out Of Nowhere | Charlie Parker’s Kansas City Legacy 8:52 ba ba. Okay, in the middle of this fast song, Charlie Parker, his jump jumps in his solo and is going at this breakneck speed. And then, at the beginning of his second course, he inserted the opening of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Stravinsky is in the audience. Immediately, Stravinsky stopped pounding the table, he went to you this jazz musician that he’d been hearing about. And now to hear him live sitting up there, he’s sitting out here, and now all of a sudden at this breakneck speed in the middle of his improvisation, he plays one of his compositions, spots, spontaneously, I
Bradley Vines 9:36 forgot to mention the context that Charlie Parker notice that Stravinsky was there. And so that would have been the adjacency there. So it led to this connection with another piece of music that normally wouldn’t go in that piece. And you can find infinite or many examples of inserting quotes from other people. Cities are taking from other solos and improvisation, of course. And then you have these unexpected twists and turns and improvisation, perhaps most clearly communicated in this story by Oliver Sacks about a patient of his who had Tourette Syndrome. This patient Ray was a jazz drummer. And Tourette’s, of course, leads to these sudden movements that are unexpected and uncontrolled. And he would, as a jazz drummer simply let those become the kernel of a new direction for his improvisation. So suddenly, it’s a new idea that takes them off in a new direction. And we’re all doing this when we’re improvising. But our surprising moments are coming from these unexpected places, perhaps. Okay, so that’s experiential. experientially, that similarity between dreaming and improvisation. What about neurological similarities? So it turns out that rapid eye movement dreaming, and I’ll say high quality improvisation. So this is like experts or people very comfortable with a particular setting. And they feel like it was a good improvisation. They both involve a decrease in activity in the frontal lobes. And these are areas that we’ve been talking about as being important for executive functioning. So you might think that there would be more involvement of these high level areas in improvisation, where you have to come up with new stuff. But actually, there’s a decrease when we let our guard down, so to speak, we stopped judging ourselves, it allows these non conscious procedural memories we’ve developed to express themselves. And this change, this decrease in frontal activity is found both in dreaming and improvisation. So this shows how you’re entering into a state of mind that has something like dreaming in it. And they both interestingly, involve a decrease in the stress response. Dreaming is kind of, from what I understand, it’s it’s kind of our built in psychological therapist. So when you dream about something traumatic, the degree of trauma that you experienced in relation to that idea or or experience actually reduces after your dream, normally, for normally functioning dreams. And it’s actually a, a sign of a problem when dreaming doesn’t lead to a decrease in trauma. And it’s actually one of the criteria that they use to determine if someone has PTSD. If their dreams are not helping them to process that event, then something is broken down, we need to find some other way to to fill in for that natural process. But for most, most of the time, dreaming is helping to have a therapeutic effect. And interestingly, music does something very similar. So music reduces stress, it is shown to reduce stress hormones do release oxytocin, as I mentioned. So it may be inducing a state that’s like dreaming. Now, I’ve just realized I forgot to mention that dreaming not only decreases frontal activity, but it’s associated with a decrease in stress related hormones. So that’s the complete equation. So both dreaming, and music, are associated with a well at least improvisation, a decrease in activity in the frontal cortex, the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex in particular, and a decrease in stress related hormones. So that may be why improvisation is especially therapeutic. Here’s a little description of from Hank Green on the same show about the relationship between improvisation and dreaming. In
Hank Green 14:30 fact, the same patterns of activity we see in improvising musicians also show up during REM sleep, the phase of sleep that lets us dream and this kind of makes sense, right? Dreaming is all about strange, unplanned associations, and a lack of control. So it’s easy to see why those same traits produced by those same brain areas produce that same feeling of other worldly inspiration that musicians report while they improvise.
What is the experience of improvisation and what are its neurobiological correlates? One way to flesh out an answer, or at least to get the lay of the land, so to speak, is to look at how improvisation compares with other kinds of brain states and states of experience that have been explored with science, such as dreaming and psychedelics. That’s what we’re embarking upon here. In this video, you are going to discover that there are some quite interesting relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation and what happens to the brain under the influence of dreaming and classical psychedelics.
References:
Rinpoche, Tenzin Wangyal. Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, The (p. 9). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
Seth, A. (2021). Being you: A new science of consciousness. Penguin.
Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2000). Phantom limbs and neural plasticity. Archives of neurology, 57(3), 317-320.
Braun, A. R., Balkin, T. J., Wesenten, N. J., Carson, R. E., Varga, M., Baldwin, P., … & Herscovitch, P. (1997). Regional cerebral blood flow throughout the sleep-wake cycle. An H2 (15) O PET study. Brain: a journal of neurology, 120(7), 1173-1197.
Kraehenmann, R. (2017). Dreams and psychedelics: neurophenomenological comparison and therapeutic implications. Current neuropharmacology, 15(7), 1032-1042.
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Carhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., … & Nutt, D. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20.
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Neuroscience of Improvisation video on changes in prefrontal cortex activation associated with improvisation: https://youtu.be/_lcaXsuDRIw
Tagliazucchi E., Carhart-Harris R., Leech R., Nutt D., Chialvo D.R. Enhanced repertoire of brain dynamical states during the psychedelic experience. Hum. Brain Mapp. 2014;35(11):5442–5456. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22562]. [PMID: 24989126]. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] [Ref list]
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Uncorrected transcript from Otter.ai:
0:00 What is the experience of improvisation and what are the neurobiological correlates? Well, one way to flesh out an answer, or at least to get a lay of the land, is to look at how improvisation compares with other kinds of brain states and states of experience that have been explored in science, such as dreaming, and psychedelics. And that’s what we’re going to embark upon at least and begin a journey into in this video, you are going to discover that there are some quite interesting relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation, and what happens during dreaming and classical psychedelics.
0:59 The neuroscience of improvisation has focused on creativity to date, improvisation being this quintessential example of creative behavior. And there’s more to the story, I think. And that’s what I’m going to be going into expanding to look at the relationship between states associated with improvisation and those associated with non dual transpersonal, and other kinds of experiential states that are being explored in the context of dream research, psychedelics, and meditation. So we will of course, touch on creativity. You can’t not talk about that in the context of improvisation, but I’m looking to expand the conversation a bit with you, okay, a little background on consciousness, which will be relevant to the discussion. We do not know, as you likely are aware where consciousness comes from. However, there are some dominant perspectives and theories that that are theoretical in nature. And the one that I think is going to be most helpful for us today, is adhered to by folks like Anil, Seth and others. They refer to waking consciousness as a controlled hallucination. So everything you’re experiencing, seeing, hearing and so on is being generated by the brain that is the dominant perspective now in cognitive neuroscience. This modern neuroscience perspective echoes age old insights from the Buddhist tradition. For example, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche writes that, normally, a dream is thought to be unreal, as opposed to real quote unquote waking life. But waking life to is dreamlike, we spend most of our waking time in the dreams of the moving mind. Or more succinctly, he writes, waking life is also a dream. And based on this, all contents of consciousness are the interaction of expectations, it building upon what you know, from the past. And sensations are the five senses plus interoception, which is awareness of internal states and proprioception, which is awareness of your movement. So your waking consciousness is, according to this perspective, essentially, a hallucination that is the meeting of your expectations for the world, your predictions, and a filtering through based upon incoming sensory input. Now, of course, this changes a little bit in the context of dreaming psychedelics, and other such states. In these kinds of states, you have experiences that are flowing from predictions from emotional implicit associations with less of that filtering going on, so you’re experiencing things that don’t actually align with reality. The the fact of this hallucination is quite clear, we come face to face with this, when we look at illusions. So for example, visual illusions, there are many auditory illusions such as the missing fundamental para Dahlia, which is seeing human forms and faces and clouds and other inanimate objects, Phantom Limb experiences as discussed and researched by Ramachandran and others. So when we encounter these illusions, it brings to the fore the fact that you do not directly experience reality but you are experiencing some kind kind of creation of the mind. Okay, that’s just some background that’s going to be helpful as we move through these, these ideas here related to improvisation. Now that we have established a perspective on what consciousness is, we can explore conscious states and also neural biological correlates of consciousness that are shared between improvisation, and both dreaming and psychedelics, as discussed in a another video, which I will link to in the show notes. One of the key characteristics of the improvising brain based on neuro science research to date, is a decrease in activity in an area called dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex or the DL PFC as an acronym, this part of the brain and the prefrontal cortex is responsible for self monitoring, critical judgment, filtering of ideas and actions and so on. And it appears that this tends to decrease in activity, when someone is improvising when an expert improvise, or at least, he’s improvising relative to when they are playing pre learned material. So let me switch gears a little bit and look at parallels with other kinds of mental states. Starting with dreaming, dreaming is very interesting. And we’ve learned a lot about what it looks like in your brain when you’re when you’re dreaming. So it’s, it turns out that the brain activity patterns associated with dreaming are very similar to your waking state. So you have the activation of emotional centers and motor centers and perceptual areas. But interestingly, and related to what we just saw in the neuroscience of improvisation is that one of the characteristic changes that is indicative of a dreaming state is the decrease in activity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, this area that’s involved in filtering your experience and this may be an interesting correlate with improvisation. So, Kahneman, put it nicely when talking about dreaming states, when he said, There is a more fluid and flexible cognitive process during reps that is rapid eye movement, sleep compared to non rapid eye movement, sleep and waking state. So this fluid and flexible cognitive processing, at least aligns with the phenomenology that is the experience of of improvising in a satisfying way, at least, he said that dreaming involves unconscious thought in progress, in which associated mechanisms are less tightly constrained by prefrontal cortical control mechanisms, and hence are predominantly driven by underlying emotions. So again, this seems to align with what we might expect for the states associated with improvisation, this, this freedom of the emotions to express themselves. And finally, he notes that dreaming involves changes in the sense of self, leading to depersonalization, loss of self and body boundaries and non dual awareness. And I’m just going to put a flag in that we’re going to get to this in a little bit, exploring these non dual experiences in relation to improvisation. But it’s it’s interesting that we see that in the context of dreaming. So now what if we look at another brain state that is being under being investigated more and more, there’s a reemergence of interest in psychedelics, the experience and therapeutic value of psychedelics starting with Roland Griffiths and and team in the early 2000s. And now centers around the world, Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins, university, Washington, Washington, McGill University, so many around the world are exploring the states. Interestingly, psilocybin which is a classic, psychedelic it is the psychoactive compound present in psychedelic mushrooms is associated with amongst Many changes in the brain, a decrease in activity in the frontal cortex. So aligned with what we’ve been seeing or are discussing in terms of improvisation and dreaming, also disrupted oscillation patterns and network connectivity in frontal cortex. And it has been hypothesized that this change in the activity and relationship between the frontal cortex and the rest of the brain, this could potentially contribute to the reduction in reality testing, and the increase in nonlinear thinking, which is characteristic of states of mind associated with psychedelics.
10:42 So in summary, we’ve seen here some very interesting relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation, and what’s happening in the brain during dreaming and classical psychedelics. In particular, we focused on this change in what’s happening in prefrontal cortical areas, either a reduction or a disruption of activity and prefrontal cortex in relation to other areas of the brain. Researchers hypothesize that this change in activity pattern in the prefrontal cortex may account for the phenomenological changes that occurred during dreaming and under the influence of psychedelics, such as a decrease in reality testing, and also freedom of emotional associations. The expression of these these kinds of experiences certainly are associated with improvisation as well. So it makes sense that we’d see this relationship going forward, we are going to explore further what’s happening in the brain during improvisation in relation to these other kinds of experiences, dreaming and psychedelics, and also look at relationships in terms of the phenomenology the experience of the states. How does the experience of improvisation overlap in interesting ways with what’s happening during dreaming psychedelics, meditation and other states of mind and being
This episode shares overviews of seminal neuroimaging studies that provide insights into what happens in the brain during improvisation. You will learn how these findings align with what improvisers say about their experiences, including remarks from Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, and Gary Burton. Cross-cultural perspectives are included here, as well, including reference to a traditional Japanese visual art form and traditional perspectives from West Africa.
Unedited transcription of the episode by Otter.ai:
Bradley Vines 0:00 Greetings, and welcome to the neuroscience of improvisation. In this episode, we are finally wading into scientific research. I will share overviews of seminal neuroimaging studies that provide insights into what happens in the brain during improvisation. You will learn how these findings align in interesting ways with what improvisers say about their own experiences, including remarks from Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, and Gary Burton. There are also cross cultural perspectives included here, including reference to a traditional Japanese visual art form and traditional perspectives from West Africa.
Let’s jump right into the most famous improvisation neuroimaging study. This was conducted by Charles Lim and colleagues. He was at the time at Johns Hopkins. He’s now at the University of California, San Francisco. And what he did was to have jazz pianists. So these were professional improvisers. He had them play in two different ways in an improvisatory way. So they’re improv improvising over a 12 bar blues form, for example, versus having them play a pre memorized piece over 12 bar blues forms. So that was the comparison looking at improvisation versus performance that has similar complexity in terms of the motor requirements for the task. But it’s pre learned. So pre learned versus improvisation, or you don’t know, of course, what’s going to happen, creating it in the moment. And what he found us was quite interesting. And, to me, strike me as a bit paradoxical. So I would have thought that improvisation would require more brain activity. After all, it seems more complex, you’re having come up with something in the moment, you’re having to create something new. But actually, what he found was the dominant finding the most interesting finding at least, was a dampening down of activity, there was less activity in a certain area of the brain, that it well, it’s the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, that will come up a few times, but it’s here in the frontal cortex. And that is the area that is responsible for self control, rational conscious monitoring, and, and so on. So this area of the brain that’s normally active to help filter what we’re doing help keep us in line so to speak with with the norms of the situation was dampened down interestingly, and there was a concomitant increase in activity in areas involved in sensation and internal motivations, including the medial frontal cortex, and areas of somatosensory cortex. So there’s, there’s this trade off, it seems, where in the impervious Tory state, you have a decrease in self monitoring, and control volitional control, and an increase in the structures that are involved in internal motivation. Notably, Lou and colleagues found a similar finding a very similar pattern and results. We’re looking at freestyle rappers, so people that were not jazz pianists, but freestyle rapping artists, and they again compared pre learned versus improvised states performance situations, and found a very similar pattern to those that lemon colleagues found. Okay, now, the story isn’t quite so simple. As you know, just stop using your your self monitoring, and you’ll be a fantastic performer and you’ll rise to the occasion. Turns out that it’s likely that the story is related to your level of experience and also familiarity with the current situation. So David Rosen and colleagues did some very interesting research, where they looked at the quality of the improvisation. So not just whether someone was improvising but how or high the quality or enjoyment or pleasure of that improvisation was based on the performers own experience, but also listeners. And what they found, in some ways does go along with what Charles Lamb and colleagues found in that. When there was decreased activity in frontal regions, the more experienced improvisers had higher quality improvisation. So there was this correlation where the less activity in the frontal areas led to higher quality. However, this was only for the experienced improvisers. less experienced experienced improvisers saw exactly the opposite trend. So the less activity in frontal regions, the less quality in the improvisations. So it’s quite interesting to see that this involves familiarity and experience. And basically, there was a replication that Roseanne and colleagues conducted where they actually stimulated this prefrontal cortex area, using a technique called transcranial direct direct current stimulation, which allows you to increase or decrease activity in an area so they increased activity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex of the right hemisphere. And they found that this actually impeded quality for the experienced improvisers, whereas it actually improved quality of performance for the less experienced improvisers. So. So the story is that using these frontal self monitoring areas might be very helpful. When we are less familiar with a particular situation, or with a particular piece that we’re performing through or structure. Think of when you’re learning to drive, of course, when you first start, you want to be quite vigilant and concerned about what you’re doing, where you’re putting your foot and so on. But over time, that falls to the background. And you’re able to basically do that implicitly. And that’s more or less what we’re seeing evidence of here in the context of improvisation. So what we’re seeing here is a pattern that connects improvisation with the idea of expression, spontaneous expression, without filter, so to speak. And this is probably not a new idea for all of you. One of the most famous albums of all time, of course, kind of blue features, liner notes by the incomparable Bill Evans, who beautifully writes in these liner notes, about impromptus, Satori, Japanese visual art form, these artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands, in such a way, such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere. So this nicely aligns with what we’re finding thus far in, in this young burgeoning field of research on the neuroscience of improvisation. And you’ll find lots of statements that are like this across musicians. But certainly Ron says it as well as anyone else, you know, what I’m basically trying to do is blot out my mind. And of course, I’ve already learned the materials, it’s just letting the material come forth. This is from a great documentary, saxophone Colossus, and it aligns with what Kenny Werner is saying, in effortless mastery. If
Kenny Werner 9:06 I witness the piano being played, well changes in neurology quite a bit. So it’s not my responsibility. You could simulate it by watching someone else move their hands on the piano. And notice that you’re not involved at all. Because in your mind, you’re watching someone else play. Then you just look oh, look, his hands are moving. And I feel in no way responsible for where they’re going. The neurology of the first two steps is to be able to experience that, although it’s you so it has the neurological component of surgically removing the responsibility.
Bradley Vines 9:49 The jazz guitarist Pat Metheny has also discussed improvisation in a similar way. Here is a quote from his presentation At the Society for Neuroscience conference in 2018,
Pat Metheny 10:05 I want to be able to really be in the moment, at the most micro level possible while essentially being almost removed from it. I often describe my relationship to at all as being a fan of music a listener first. At my best, I don’t even feel like I’m doing anything. I’m just standing there listening. And if there happened to be a guitar player there, which there is, and it happens to be me, what would I like to hear that player do and then I play that. But the entire process I just described happens in almost real time. less than a millisecond, I would say, Gary
Bradley Vines 10:41 Burton, the wonderful jazz vibraphonist and educator, put it this way.
Gary Burton 10:47 And now when I start to play, I sort of take a mental step backward in a way and I start watching the playing. Soon as I started tune, I mentally I’m just watching the plane go down as if someone else is playing. And my conscious mind is disengaged from choosing notes and all that sort of thing. The rule is, the conscious mind can do anything it wants to, except get in the way. You can think about random stuff, you can watch the music happen, you can concentrate on the tune, feel and so on, but you can’t interfere with the flow. The following
Bradley Vines 11:30 is a comment about what seems to be the same state of mind you’ve just heard described by improvisers. But from a very different cultural context, that of a community in Burkina Faso, West Africa. You will hear Dr. O’Malley DOMA. So me talking about the traditional perspective on performance more generally, that is not limited to music or improvisation, but including all human endeavors. So
Maladoma Some 12:00 it really raises the issue of, of knowledge. That’s why I’m saying that, you know, it’s, it raises an epistemological challenge here. Is that you the know how to do what you do?
Bradley Vines 12:15 Or is it something else that is doing the thing and knowing the doing and therefore taking over your hands, your feet, your mouth and your whole body? In summary, we have explored some interesting correspondences between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation and what improvisers report about their experience. We have opened the door to cross cultural perspectives on the states of mind. And going forward, we will delve deeper into the neural mechanisms underlying improvisation and what they reveal about the relationship between improvisation and dreaming meditation, psychedelics and consciousness more generally.
In this episode, we have the pleasure of chatting with the marvelous Sammy Miller, the founder of Playbook, which is a groundbreaking approach to teaching improvisation and musical skills. Playbook blends in-person learning with cutting-edge software to foster foundational skills that nourish life-long musical engagement. Sammy is an accomplished Juilliard-trained jazz drummer and a passionate educator. He is on a mission to make music accessible to everyone. In our conversation, we explore his journey, from what sparked his love of music to the creation of Playbook. According to Sammy, Playbook isn’t just about learning to play an instrument; it’s a dynamic method that empowers individuals to embrace the language of music and to communicate fluently through their art. From classrooms to online spaces, Sammy is paving the way for a new era of musical education that resonates with aspiring musicians and seasoned pros alike.
Unedited transcript from otter.ai (approximate time stamps):
Bradley Vines 0:00 Greetings, and welcome to the neuroscience of improvisation. In this episode, we have the pleasure of chatting with the marvelous Sammy Miller, the founder of playbook, which is a groundbreaking approach to teaching improvisation and musical skills. playbook blends in person learning with cutting edge software to foster foundational skills that nourish it lifelong engagement with musical performance in any social setting. Sammy is an accomplished Juilliard trained jazz drummer, and a passionate educator on a mission to make music accessible to everyone in our conversation, and we explore his journey from what sparked his love of music to the creation of playbook. According to Sammy playbook isn’t just about learning to play an instrument. It’s a dynamic method that empowers individuals to embrace the language of music, and to communicate fluently through their art. From classrooms to online spaces, Sammy is paving the way for a new area of musical education that will resonate with aspiring musicians and seasoned pros alike.
All right, it’s great to get a chance to connect and and learn more about playbook and your background and everything you’re doing, which just to me is so exciting to learn about and, and to see you have wonderful YouTube videos available. And you’ve got a great website, this, this is playback. This is playbook.com which is a wonderful resource and it just looks like you’re doing great work with students and I’m sure adults alike you you could help anyone to discover their musical language within so to speak. So please tell me could you tell me a little bit about yourself and and how this developed and what it is that you’re doing through playbooks? Sure.
Sammy Miller 2:23 So, so to go to explain playbook I’ll just go way, way, way back. So I’m a, I’m one of five, I’m one of five and I grew up playing music with my siblings, the five of us would get together after school and this dates back to when I was five years old. So we were 3579 and 11. And we would self govern, sometimes in the lord of flies Escalade, but we get together we’d fight and we’d work on music together. We learned music always, it was always familial. I, I got better and better music. I eventually attended the Juilliard School, became a professional jazz musician and spent the last decade touring, all super fun festivals, you know, Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey, jazz, played the White House, all that good stuff. But I never lost sort of that tie to how I learned music, which was people in a room working together. And in the last decade, since finishing school, and in traveling, a lot of that time has been performing. But then the other. The other time I’ve spent it is teaching, visiting students across the country. We play a show at night, and then we’d visit a school the next day. And I would see the same sort of challenges time and time again, in the big one being a lot of students quit music. For every two students that are going to pick up a horn. This upcoming school year one’s going to draw, a third is going to draw. So I know if you look at other subjects, I don’t think that’s true of math or English. Obviously, you can’t You’re not allowed to for a certain period. But what are we doing that? How come people are not getting whatever experience I got as a youngster where I fell in love with this thing. I made music with my siblings. And so playbook comes out of that. It’s it’s the approach of how I learned music, of how I fell in love with music, learning music, the same way we would learn our primary language and native language, we’re going to be mimicking, we’re going to be babbling, we’re going to be queueing all those things, and putting that into musical form. So teaching music, like a language and giving students the tools to play music long after they graduate high school. So that’s really wonderful. They’re
Bradley Vines 4:42 wonderful, and giving them the structure making them part of the creative process. I think that seems to be quite a unique approach. Instead of someone playing their parts out of 20 parts and an ensemble kind of structurally Coming to understand the music so they can get involved in in a more comprehensive way.
Sammy Miller 5:07 Well in in to that. You look at people who play music as adults, they’re not often in a in an orchestra, they’re playing in a garage, they’re learning music together where everyone knows the melody. Everyone knows the chords the form. So why can’t we do that when we’re learning music? In school, when we have all this time together? We’re trying to use some of the skills we know we’re going to need as an adult.
Bradley Vines 5:35 And is this the way that so it’s seems to be the way that you and I learned intuitively yourself and through your experience through your family, and then moving on from there is, did you find that that’s also how it’s approached at the conservatory level? Did you find there’s a match? Or is this something that’s a bit innovative? From the perspective of musical education? How was the fit between you know the way you were brought up and what you see in the music education world?
Sammy Miller 6:16 So for your first point about the Conservatory, the thing that makes conservatory special Juilliard, manis any see Berkeley anywhere, is that you have a teacher on your instrument, you have a mentor. And that’s really the important part of that pedagogically, what happens is, ideally, you you become close with someone who’s older and knows music better. That’s the thing from the Conservatory, I really wanted to bring over to playbook where as you learn songs, you’ve instrument specific training. And I felt like that’s the part of a conservatory I loved. Again, I’m thinking about music, not for people to become performing at Carnegie Hall. So constant, I’m really thinking about how can be like language, something they use every day, when they’re listening on the radio, they can pick out a melody, oh, that’s how you play it. Or they can. They can be at a birthday party and they go actually, I do know the song on trombone, I do know the song on oboe, I’m actually gonna play Happy birthday for my grandson, or, like, it’s something that’s just part of their life. And that’s where a conservatory is preparing people for a really small specific skill set, which they would call them be professional. But I think jazz musicians, which that’s my background, we seem to have the most of these like flex skills, we can jump into a lot of environments really ear focused. And you if you can’t hear something respond, you’re not really fluent in the language. If you don’t, under you can you can, reading is not what what dictates if something that someone’s fluent in a language, I’m thinking about us using really how we improve our spoken our conversational parts of music.
Bradley Vines 8:04 And I love I love that connecting language with music, quite literally, it seems to, for example, incorporate call and response between speakers and musicians. And as a sidebar, this actually nicely aligns with what we know about how music and language mix together in the brain, there are really interesting connections between the language one speaks and the rhythms and patterns that they perceive and create in the music of their choice. So for example, composers will show patterns of rhythm that are correlated with the rhythms of their language, if you look around the world, but that’s so that’s something that you, you explore, which is wonderful. And can I
Sammy Miller 8:58 ask you mean about that when it comes to language? Like? My understanding is, is our brains process is music process, like a language is in our brain? Or how is it is a process differently? I mean,
Bradley Vines 9:11 great question. It’s, it’s a blurry boundary, isn’t it? So there are some things that language can do that music just can’t like, pass the salt. It’s not that easy to unless, unless, you know, you know, Salt Peanuts. But well, that gets the other side, there are certain musical sounds that means something very specific as well, like start walking down the aisle, you know, as the head or something, you know, they’re very literal, referential cues and music to I’m
Sammy Miller 9:46 thinking a lot about how a child learns. Well, again, I go back to the how I learned Spanish is not how people should learn a language because I took it for five years. I can read the law A lot of different things. I don’t really understand what’s happening, like a lot is going past me. And I’m thinking, Why? Why don’t we babble in music at all in most in most kids, fourth grade through 12th grade. If they get good at their instrument, it’s going to be mostly around their ability to do things perfectly. And babbling involves a lot of errors. So I’m trying to create environments and play books like this, that’s really a key is a lot of room for messing up. Because you watch a baby, they’re just like, they’re really flailing a lot of the time is like when you say hello, and they go out bow. That’s kind of what they think it sounds like. And I think that approximation is super important as we begin to learn shapes, and what words might go well, next to each other. Same things are true in music.
Bradley Vines 10:50 Absolutely, I think I think you’re going down the path of what will probably work best, because indeed, that’s that’s how language is developing, it’s through a trial and error. Phase, a long phase that’s basically free of retribution or negative feedback. In fact, you know, if a child says something wrong, it’s cute, you know, it’s, you know, no one is admonishing the child for a great single word. For a long, long, long time, we’re talking years and years. So similarly, with music, having that totally open ended exploration period, that’s free of the negative feedback, some kind of corrective mechanism, that that’s a great idea how to do that. And that’s, you know, that’s wonderful that you’re exploring, making that a part of playbook. Thank you. Yeah. And so, so this, you know, is part of a bigger conversation about the importance of music, for culture, for humans, for people in their lives? And how do you quantify that it’s very challenging to do so. But we have to try, because that’s what moves the needle, of course, deciding where funding is allocated in a school district, and so on. And I know, you come across this challenge. I mean, that’s part of what moves your work forward is, is getting schools to bring you aboard, whether through your online platforms, or bringing you and your colleagues in person to run workshops, and so on residencies, etc. So, how do you approach that? I’d love to hear if you’re standing in front of the school board. How do you make your case these days at this point, what’s Yeah, I think your approach, so
Sammy Miller 12:59 I think often, people start with, we need funds. And once we have the funds the problem, we need to put money into the arts. And that part. That part is, isn’t the solution, you would say, we need to teach, give students we need to make music part of students lives, and do it in a way that they’ll be able to play into adulthood. The same way you should be getting financially literate, and all these other things that you should learn in school, you should learn learn history, if it’s something that’s going to be, we’re not teaching to the test, and it’s something that’s going to be a lifelong skill, not just because it’s they’re gonna do better on the LSAT, and they’re gonna, they’re gonna have less stress, and they’re going to be more conscientious. And they’re going to do higher GPAs, or any sort of thing you want to like when it’s just when you want to go to like data driven, it’s beneficial. But this is something that that’s a that’s a, that’s a that’s going to help them as a human being get through life and do it in a way that’s meaningful, see people as a way to communicate and express things that they can’t express, oh, he’s three English language, then it’s, and we’re going to teach it this way in the class. Now, how much money do we need to do that? I really think like, you know, California has passed Prop 28. It’s going to be a billion dollars every year, beginning this fall, that’s going to be going into California public schools. It’s amazing, amazing 80% of that’s going to go towards paying for new teachers. Long overdue California, for what it represents for the country from like, Hollywood, la music, all this kind of stuff. We’re just where I grew up. So we’re behind the rest of the country. So the money is a part of the equation but then what are we going to do during that hour when now you have all these students and you have money? Is the goal to buy new instruments. It was at the issue because I’ve been in a lot of programs that have no funding that have built incredible programs and that’s a testament to to great luck. And going back to the conservatory thing, conservatory, what makes that specialist, they have great mentors. So I think it’s hard for a teacher on their own to, to know all of about everything. So I think part of that is how teachers are taught in an education programs when they’re studying, and that they had great mentors, it’s hard to move everything at once. But again, my priority is we need money so that people can do this for life, that’s what the funding is for. And during that hour, we’re going to give them these other set of skills. I’m less concerned with them. Performing eight concerts every year, I think there’s too many concerts in school years, they teach to the concert, they teach to the holiday concert, not to the spring concert, I think they need to be learning skills. Imagine if you had to get up and do a math problem every two months in front of your whole community, stressful for the teacher and stressful for you should be a lot more like playing for each other, a lot more error a lot more messing up. That’s, I think that would go a long way. So that it’s not about funds or lack of funds. Yeah,
Bradley Vines 16:15 that’s, that makes sense. And the long term benefits here, you know, laying a foundation of musical literacy, there’s there’s just this mounting evidence, accumulation of evidence that shows that engagement with the arts in general, really enables healthier longevity, and outcomes in terms of lifespan and health span that are very beneficial. There was an enormous study done in the UK, which didn’t have a lot of specificity in terms of playing music, but looked at arts engagement in general and found that people that were engaged, just live longer and happier and more healthy lives. But then if you start looking specifically at music, there’s quite a bit of evidence that shows practice in music and engaging in music improves auditory processing, so the ability for the brain to track pitch over time, and this could take the information that’s being presented to the ear and use it in a way that’s going to be helpful for cognition. And that, that improved fidelity of processing actually extends throughout life. Of course, it is even better if someone maintains musical practice beyond that earlier training, but even to have some musical training set some sets of person on a different trajectory in terms of the ability to use hearing. And it turns out that the ability to hear is very much relevant to warding off dementia and cognitive decline in general, because hearing is so important for social engagement, the ability to stay connected with the people around us and learn and continue to be involved in the world. So that’s just one example. Music practice can help people hear better for the rest of their lives. And that could change society, it could save enormous amount of money being spent on taking care of people getting serious cognitive decline. And of course, not to mention, the emotional burden of people that are taking care of such people and family members loved ones. So I think it’s really noble what you’re doing. You could be touring the world and playing music and all the amazing places like the ones you mentioned, that you’re taking, at least some of your time. And well. You’re putting quite a bit of effort into this wonderful program. So I see you, I see a lot of social benefits.
Sammy Miller 19:06 Thank you. Hi, I’m interested in in the science around music, huh? Well, growing
Bradley Vines 19:14 up, I was a saxophonist, actually, and also interested in math and science, I guess, from an early age and those two interests kind of came together as I got involved in psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, through the undergrad research and work that I did, and then a PhD on the subject matter of music, cognition and perception. And from there I just have continued down that path of blurring the boundaries between those those interests of mine.
Sammy Miller 19:52 What do you think is like so it’s interesting. Like I’m very I’m interested in like, Maybe what cold therapy does too for the brand new type called exposure Asana? Do you have like, this is the minimum amount of time a week someone needs to spend being musically engaged for to make an impact where you see an effect healthspan and lifespan? Hmm,
Bradley Vines 20:14 good question. I don’t have an answer to that. I think that we’re a little bit of aways from getting to that kind of level of specificity. As of now, a lot of the research is is looking at, you know, six month year long programs and seeing, okay, someone who went into drama, had these kinds of outcomes. So when that went into the music, arm of that randomized control trial, you know, what do they see at the other end? So we could look at exactly how much time was dedicated during those programs, to arrive at phonological benefits, you know, benefits for linguistic phonological processing, and so on and so forth. But yeah, I could, I could look into that.
Sammy Miller 21:02 The other thing is just, I mean, I’m gonna get in the weeds here. But also, there’s the soul part of it that I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t understate just, it does. It does something for the soul, which we can put into like, scientific terms, but does something for the soul, I think to be certainly for playing and people seem to figure it out, when it comes to listening. And those go man, it would be so cool to be up there. And like you can be up there everyday in your house. When people watch a concert, I think it’s fascinating who sticks with it. I think and even how much of music is around, we go back to the communal part. People who play in church is one of the biggest ways I see people who are lifelong musicians. And again, often they’re not reading music, their songs that they know, kind of meaning to them, that they can play week after week. And it’s low stakes and a lot of ways, huh? Yeah.
Bradley Vines 22:01 And, and those experiences like you said, the, you know, you said, the soul. It’s the ineffable. It’s the the experience that you may be exploring. And I’d like to ask about your experience as a musician as well. which I imagine is part of central to what you wish to share what you wish to open the door to for other people. But those experiences are, it turns out, based on research, that’s, that’s happening. Very interesting, first of all, and also they themselves have these health benefits, it seems so entering into states of mind that involve the loss of a sense of self or a reduction of this self critical self monitoring processing that’s constantly kind of filtering your ideas and your feelings, what is appropriate for the moment, you know, this kind of sense of that we’re always kind of our own police, being careful about what we do and say, like when you’re entering into certain states, particularly with regard to improvisation. That’s where it’s been studied most thus far. But I imagine it’s available throughout music. These states where you’re kind of letting go a little they turn out to have some really interesting first of all, experiential qualities, but also health benefits and interesting ways that we’re just starting to get a feel for that and get an understanding of through through the science, but I’m sure you’re well familiar with. And so can you can you talk a little bit about what it is to improvise what you feel what you experienced, just from your standpoint, if you can introspect a little bit.
Sammy Miller 24:06 Yeah. I always loved playing music. And then
when I started listening to a lot of jazz, I loved how it made me feel but I did not understand what was going on. And so that part of that is because a lot of music is very repetitive. And jazz has this quality of truly flowing whichever way the group of musicians deem will be the they all agree on this is where we want to be headed out. And that sort of flow or dream state. It’s very addictive. I think it’s something once I realized like, oh, wait, I I could create this feeling something I really spent a lot of time learning the language and mastering my instrument so that I could play everything that was passing through my head that might help what the group was doing. So the in the other interesting thing about the flow state, which I’ve now gone back in, when I perform, I do a lot of talking and a lot of almost comedy, improv Satori, comedy with the audience. And I use the skills now in music. Now I’m trying to bring back to the English language, when I’m with the audience have, they become the musician I’m playing with where we’re playing, we’re okay with air, we’re trying to fly this plane together. But all the so the entire time when I’m playing, when I go on stage to the end of it, I’m trying to always be open to something new happening. So that doesn’t mean I just solo during the 16 bar form, excuse me off the song or the 12 bar blues. I’m not. That’s like one version of flow state. But I’m interested in what is even the next flow state above that. And it requires. First of all, you can’t be only one that you everyone on stage has to be open to this, you kind of have to put down any notion of being cool, or any like facade that a lot of musicians you can put up because you’re, you’re also insecure, just like the audience. So I have to really put myself out there. That’s the only way I find I can reach flow state.
Bradley Vines 26:46 That’s an amazing characterization, the release of facade, the total dissolution of those boundaries, and then the collective nature of the experience. Being that you are loosening these disconnections, you could say, eliminating them. I also, I also love that you brought up the dreamlike nature of this state. That’s actually one of the interesting correlations that’s emerging through the neuroscience is that the improv is improvising state of mind, when you’re looking at the brain has many features that are similar to dreaming. While so changes in the brain, when you enter into a state of improvisation look in the brain much like what’s happening when when you’re entering into, while in particular, a rapid eye movement, sleep dreaming state, where in particular, these parts of the brain and the frontal cortex that are involved in the filtering and self control, and yes, planning, but also kind of comparing with ideas and looking at what’s happening and comparing it with other ideas about what should be happening. So basically, you’re, you’re self monitoring and self control areas are relaxing. And then there’s a little bit more activity in these other areas that are involved in self referential emotional associations, and so on. So that’s also what happens during sleep, and dreaming rather,
Sammy Miller 28:29 I almost felt wet, when I tore, the 22 hours and 30 minutes when I’m out in the world is like, the work part. And then when I go to play music, that’s, I think dream is like, that’s the time that’s actually I get to relax when I’m on stage. That’s like its focus, but it’s, it’s the most my brain can be free.
Bradley Vines 28:51 So ah, that’s interesting. The work is you know, getting to the airport on time. Making sure you got all the sticks that you need. And so the
Sammy Miller 29:03 only musician who would who would feel that way too. Yeah. Yeah.
Bradley Vines 29:06 Yeah. That’s, that’s great. That’s, that’s amazing. And, and do you find you’re able to kind of create a vortex related to this state that draws in the students? And can you kind of feel them opening to this when you’re working with people to help them experience it? themselves? Is this kind of, yes. What you, you know,
Sammy Miller 29:31 ya know, the thing I found is, the more earnest I am, the more the more entry points for people. So I just play music really well. And there’s nothing I give nothing here and I don’t talk. That’s one way a certain group amount of people will be able to access it. But in maybe 2014 I started working with Jazz Lincoln Center, I started performing in their Jazz young people program, I was going to public schools across New York City. At the same time, I was playing a lot with my band in in non jazz bars in Brooklyn, loud. And I was noticing, at the same time, I was learning how to present to like second graders how to explain jazz to them, how to find them, for them to access the music as these like drunken brunchers or something like, there was something I was finding about how to how to play in a way that was open to everybody and had something for everyone. I wasn’t dumbing it down for any group, I was just playing and presenting my art and my humanity in a way that would be relevant for really everybody. And I think access is a huge thing. They will talk about having people have access to instruments or access to music. But again, what do you do with x? Okay, so now you have these people in front of you? Are you going to make them feel a certain way? Do you want to make them feel a certain way? Or is your notion like I’m above you, like, Get on my level and understand it, or it’s your fault, like, I’m interested in access at once I have these people in front of me a lot of these, again, students, where people are probably gonna go to three jazz shows in their life, and all of them were me presenting for them a year. So I better make a profound impact. So this isn’t gonna go you know, jazz, positive, free, fun, playful, those are my experiences with that.
Bradley Vines 31:35 So, um, yeah. So it’s your, your opportunity to connect with the human level. Because this is like language, you know, music is the most natural thing for for people. When you put children together, they spontaneously come up with songs and music, like games and so on, there’s a rhythm to play. And the way people swing on monkey bars, by people’s play the way children play that has a natural rhythm to it, and and similarly, you know, language is quite amazing to children will put together with no other exposure to language within reinvent language. And this is actually how some sign languages have developed. And I believe even twins sometimes invent their own languages, they create spontaneously, languages as they’re growing up and things. So. So language and music are the is universal potentialities of the human mind. And so it’s it is very natural to simply try to connect with that universal quality. And I guess it is a choice. Maybe, but it seems like a false wanting to think that. No, you have to be different than your human nature, in order to experience this music, because that’s, you know, that creates a barrier. How, but at the same time, there is an element of putting oneself out or making an effort to get into kind of music. So how do you kind of play with that? That tension there, you’re connecting with someone, something that’s absolutely natural to everyone you’re working with. But at the same time, there’s an element of trying, you have to put yourself out there to play a game with someone else, you have to make an effort to participate.
Sammy Miller 33:53 Right? Well, my first premise one a performance that high art, doesn’t mean it’s not high entertainment. And I think if I just for my for it sets, my premise, high art should be entertaining, entertainment should be high art. That’s what I’m after. So engage engagement. Again, I’m gonna have to engage in a lot of different levels. So with students I would find when I would drum behind only the drum set, they would kind of miss out on a lot of it. So what I would often do, and I just started when I first started playing, like, what happens if I take my drum solo out into the audience, and I’m playing on the table like, and they can see it in front of them or the bass is a really challenging instrument for people to hear it’s low frequencies. So when we’re going to take a bass solo or bass player is going to play Why don’t we focus everyone’s attention, like let’s listen to that with nothing else. So when when you talk about like engaging, I’m thinking about if I was in second grade, which nuances what I miss, what what would have had Help me understand what’s happening and you become. It’s like you’re putting a spotlight on whatever they shouldn’t be experiencing at that time. And truth be told adults need it to know lots assume that adults understand stuff. And I didn’t know that until I became an adult. And I was like, Oh, we still don’t really know what’s going on. But so we need that flashlight to we need that spotlight of in music and art, and honestly, anything like this is what you should be experiencing now. Nice McDonald’s does a good job of that. Oh, yeah, do a good job. Like, now you’re watching the game. Now you’re watching an advertisement. Now you’re watching. And we have to do that sometimes in music. And it doesn’t mean it’s any less sophisticated. great composers do that naturally.
Bradley Vines 35:49 Hmm. Absolutely. They, they are crystal clear, in terms of creating anticipation, and surprise, or confirming expectations, and so on. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. I love that, that. Basically, we can get in the way or musicians can get in the way of themselves if they are trying to make things too profound. Yeah, let’s say, yeah. Just the way that attention works. Yeah, this is this human brain. It’s been about the same for the last few 100,000 years. And it’s not going to suddenly change for your new art form. Although Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. But why not utilize the structure and function of the human brain as it is, which is, like you said, it’s, it is the, quote, unquote, art form of the people that work in media and, and advertising. They are simply just making decisions based on the structure of what’s there. What draws people’s attention, what gets them to focus in certain areas. And
Sammy Miller 37:08 I should add, if this is, my, my whole worldview is not on how to become famous and popular setting out what I know do is how to make an impact on human beings. I don’t know about. I’m not I’ve never been in popular zeitgeist, that’s not what really interests me. I like Louis Armstrong as a six year old, like, I’m living in what I deem to be this is a world of meaning and memories and community. And I found a beautiful world. But I’m not suggesting that this is what Taylor Taylor Taylor Swift’s doing. I think there might be a different set of values and structures.
Bradley Vines 37:44 Absolutely. Absolutely. And so there, that’s a subtle, subtle and interesting point about how there are different ways of approaching are different kinds of communities of music or ideas and they can connect a different Yeah, I mean, I think that’s, you’re just raising like this amazing phenomenon of phenomenology. Have you brought up Taylor Swift? Because how can we not like she, she’s literally everywhere right now, in the news, and, and so on. So that’s the interesting
Sammy Miller 38:24 thing, I’m after the things I’m interested in the as I look up the road, they seem to be the people that are full of meaning and joy in their life. And one of the thing that’s so challenging about music, and now when you say music business or music industry is, it can be really challenging as you look up the different trails, to find people who are full of joy, meaning the things that they were attracted to, at first around the music, and I think so you have to kind of carve out your own world. Because it because a lot of the other things don’t make sense.
Bradley Vines 38:59 Yeah, so that’s, but that struggle is it’s kind of a metaphor, or it’s running in parallel to the struggle of everyone to have meaning in their life. And so it’s, it’s really, it turns out work for all of society to maintain that
Sammy Miller 39:21 leading because it can help I think music can help for for everyone.
Bradley Vines 39:25 Yeah, absolutely. That’s what that’s what I was trying to say is indeed that you as a musician, maintaining that, that core of meaning, and then sharing it, and that ignites the sense of meaning and the listeners and the people that engage with your music and then of course, that you help share the creation of music with the methods and and the language of music. So I, I do I’m definitely a proponent and optimism optimists. It’s regarding the power of music to, to improve people’s lives, both from a quantifiable perspective in terms of science, but also in terms of that which science can cannot yet reach those, those kind of fix that spiritual states and meanings. That’s the biggest
Sammy Miller 40:19 bummer about people not going to church every Sunday in the US is hearing live music in person and singing with people every week. I don’t know how often. I’m in a building in New York City right now, how many people in the building have gotten together and sing with other people in the last year? At one time? Yeah,
Bradley Vines 40:39 totally. That’s, but this has been great. And what are your current plans and projects, things you’re developing right now that people should know about? Whether in the world of performance or education are both? Sure.
Sammy Miller 40:58 They were. I’m always taking feedback from educators who use playbook all over the country at all levels. And then we’re building features out of based on things they need. So, for instance, we just build out we’re talking a lot about listening and playing along. We’re talking about listening and playing along. But now in playbook we have a feature where students can record themselves along with the band, so they can actually record themselves listen back and go like, Oh, wow, that’s what it’s felt like to be playing alongside Alfonso horn on trumpet or my sister, Molly, Dr. Molly Miller on guitar, all these incredible musician and mentors, which is something I always would imagine when I was a kid playing along with records like Oh, I’m recording with John Coltrane. And now you can kind of have more of that experience.
Bradley Vines 41:43 Wow, that’s great. Absolutely fantastic. So that’s going to be it’s the next iteration. technologist
Sammy Miller 41:51 this month. Okay. So it just came out this month. So that’s really exciting. Okay, wonderful.
Bradley Vines 41:54 Congratulations on that. Yeah. Okay, wonderful. Well, yeah, thank you so much, Sammy for, for sharing all of this and for everything you’re doing in the world of education and world music indeed, and more generally, you’ve touched so many lives through your music and and also your, your program. Brother, I just wish you well and all the success in the world going forward. So thank you.
Sammy Miller 42:25 I love it. Love to stay in touch
Join us for an illuminating journey into the realms of improvisation and dreaming, where music becomes a gateway to understanding the depths of the nonconscious mind. In this unique workshop, we delve into the shared neurobiology of improvisation and dreaming, uncovering their connections and enriching your musical practice with insights from the science of dreams.
Workshop Highlights
Therapeutic Potential Revealed: Discover cutting-edge research exploring how dreaming contributes to psychological well-being and what these findings reveal about improvisation.
Your Narrative Mind: Explore how narrative cognition shapes dreams and intriguing parallels with improvisation and musical experience more broadly.
Creativity Unleashed: Find out about how dreams develop through loosely adjacent themes and see how this mirrors the flights of creative imagination in improvisation.
Theory Meets Experience: Engage in guided “experiments” that bridge neuroscience research with your own musical practice. Whether you play an instrument or sing (or improvise in some other way), you’ll have an opportunity to traverse the uncharted territories of the nonconscious mind.
Who Should Attend: Curious minds, musicians, artists, and listeners intrigued by the interplay between improvisation and dreaming. No matter your background, this workshop invites you to uncover the mysteries of the nonconscious that underlie musical creativity.
Our guest for this episode is Dr. Suresh Vaidyanathan, who is widely recognized as Ghatam Suresh. He is an extraordinary Carnatic Indian classical percussionist renowned for his mastery of the ancient Ghatam, a clay pot with distinctive resonant and percussive qualities. This instrument plays a pivotal role in Carnatic music as accompaniment and soloist. With a global presence as a leader and collaborator with world-class musicians, Dr. Vaidyanathan brings a unique perspective to the intersection of improvisation and musical expertise. Beyond his exceptional musical talents, Ghatam Suresh is a remarkable teacher known for his creativity and generosity as an exponent of rhythmic knowledge. He is also a scholar and recently completed his doctoral studies on the history of the Ghatam and its performance traditions! Dr. Vaidyanathan imparts invaluable insights into developing musical expertise through improvisation in this first installment of our enlightening conversation. He shares how his intellectual pursuits have enriched his musicianship and unveils his secrets to maintaining and nurturing the quality of mind required to excel in the world of music and the responsibility musicians hold to themselves and their audience. Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of Dr. Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan—a musician, scholar, and delightful person.
The audio for this episode was edited by Zeyn Mroueh.
Unedited transcript from Otter.ai:
Bradley Vines 0:00 Greetings and welcome to the neuroscience of improvisation
Louis Kahn 0:13 how accidentally are influenced by circumstance?
Joseph Goldstein 0:41 Africa as fate or karma or accident or whatever the conditions may be happened, they sent me to Thailand.
Bradley Vines 0:51 Our guest for this episode is Dr. Suresh Vijay Nathon. He is widely recognized as Gautam Suresh. He’s an extraordinary Carnatic Indian classical percussionist renowned for his mastery of the ancient Gautam, a clay pot with distinctive, resonant and percussive qualities.
This instrument plays a pivotal role in Carnatic music, both as accompaniment and soloist. With a global presence as a leader and collaborator with world class musicians. Dr. Vijayan often brings a unique perspective to the intersection of improvisation and musical expertise.
Beyond his exceptional musical talents, Gautam Suresh is a remarkable teacher known for his creativity and generosity as an exponent of rhythmic knowledge. He is also a scholar, and recently completed his doctoral studies on the history of the Gautam and its performance traditions. In this first installment of our enlightening conversation, Dr. viden often imparts invaluable insights into the development of musical expertise. Through the art of improvisation, he shares how his intellectual pursuits have enriched his musicianship, and he unveils his secrets to maintaining and nurturing the quality of mind required to excel in the world of music, and the responsibility that musicians hold to both themselves and their audience. Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of Dr. Gautam Suresh Vijayan, often a musician, scholar, and delightful human being. It’s just absolutely amazing to have you here to talk with you and learn from you about your experience and also your background in Carnatic music, can you just say a little bit about your background and just who you are and how you describe yourself these days,
Dr. Suresh Vaidyanathan 3:11 I come from a music loving family background, my maternal grandparents were you know, good musicians, but non performing in public. So, they initiated every child that is born in the family into music, this is when they wanted them to be singing. You know, there are many occasions in the family, where the children as they grow, they are being put into demonstate demonstrating their musical skills. So, also it is being considered as custom and ritual to have the children be taught some music. Because in future, they might, you know, find relaxation, or distressing thing with music. So music was not intended to be a professional families like ours, but it happened. So me and my elder brother, were put into learning percussion instrument from a teacher who was a friend of my grandfather, because my grandfather realized that we show more interest in percussion, or mean kind of beating on whatever utensil or a table or a chair that comes by, you know, so as far as that is handy, we were trying to express our skills. So we were put into this teacher and as we were learning, we started showing more interest in perfecting the art or probably to outdo the equals students that was that is how the entire starts. In fact, the topic is improvisation. So on improvisation is also a way of expressing your one openness, in comparison with your co students made basically, you don’t even study the rules properly, but still, even ahead of that, even before that, you’re into comparing and competing. So, that level, you know, establishes or assures that you are going to go further exploring music, then there was we could win Icron, who was the son of my first teacher, Haryana Sharma, who was busy with Shakti bye band and in every break of the tour, you would come back and you know, supervise the students. On one such occasion he found me to be worthy enough to be taught get him tactic, because I was trying to answer the question as well, then he asked me to attend specialty classes early in the mornings, then will teach me the proper fingering technique of cutter. Again, that is a stage where he would properly guide me into stage by stage, you know, exploration and improvisations, it’s this he first introduced the world to me, you cannot be static, you need to be dynamic. So, to show dynamism, you should do always make a statement and improve on it, improve on it go on improving on it and then so, that was a discipline taught basically, you need to do this. And since the teacher tells you whether it is natural or a trust of one idea, you work on it more and more. So that is how we the next stage comes, then we could become more busy. And then I had to be sent to another teacher, my father to be to the living legend Dr. Devi Gopalakrishnan, who is an expert in Madang. Suddenly, percussion and many music instruments vocal Hindustani and kinetic multifaceted genius. So this man found me worthy enough to be taught, or be put into another galaxy of music where you become a creative musician, you are able to compose you’re able to arrange and organize and lead an ensemble. And also do is particularly appreciate the lyrical part of the music or the melodic part of music because as percussion students, you know, you’re not into learning more of the melodic side of music. Say for example, the raga Audra the progress canes are how they get improved out, they get developed, how you present them the most, you will probably get to learn how to accompany songs, songs are in a restricted lyrical words based on a particular raga. But you need to learn that you need to go with a song you cannot do as a parallel track. You have to embellish any for that reason. You need to learn the song kind of you know, by by experience by it’s not being it’s not taught on a systematic manner. But the teacher always refers to the song you have to do this at this point. And don’t do this in the other song kind of cadence. So that was the next stage then for a long period I was with chemical biology. So learning the process of composing and creating opera kind of music, allotting sections to many other co artists. So this is the next level of learning. So as I was growing up, I was also being put into a company. Some of the greatest percussion players in all colors, and instrumental players. Some of the names I had played with or press Balaton those winner which was Lalgudi, Gera, Emma’s Gopalakrishnan, color, internationally acclaimed kinetic musicians. And on the vocal also, I had been playing right from the doyen of kinetic music, some of what he seen was a Yeah. Who would have been Harlan, particularly years now. If he’s alive, so that is that kind of age difference was there but still, as a young boy was put into a company, most of the musicians so it’s like every concert is an experience. And you play with a big local musician, or an instrumentalist. Both are entirely different in approach in a way in, though both of them present a lot of lyrical compositions because kradic music is based upon lyrical compositions and a large number. But approaching an accompanying vocal music is different from each Music are the skills you know, you get to learn as you grow as you perform a concert. And every concert is a teaching platform learning platform for you. So this is how I started, and almost about four decades have gone by, since I started performing onstage. And I was also good in academics, I was at a schooling, I went to college, in my bachelor’s degree in commerce and masters. And then about 1015 years back, someone suggested this homology courses are introduced in University of Madras, where you can do a mock, get a master’s degree on that. So I joined that course, well, after establishing as a professional musician, but still I treated myself as a students and attended the classes in winter to the library, exploring books, things like that, doing projects, and that is when probably the, you know, the, it dawned on my mind that I should go further deep into doing some research, because I’m being hailed as a very complete percussionist, and someone who has gone deep into the style playing techniques, and the history of meeting some kind of convention and respectability, among carrying some prospectivity on the instrument. This is, I mean, this is another part of analyzing my music, let me first complete this part. So the way the society is looking at me, as a responsible percussionist someone who can give a dignified presentation, I mean, these are all jargons, I would say, but still, they always attach this objectives to someone who’s really you know, acceptable in the field. So, at that point, I thought that let me put my mind into, you know, to go further into research, and interestingly, I found that nobody has done it earlier. One reason is that, there are a lot of, you know, academic requirements, basic conditions, like you should be a master, you should have a master’s degree you should be in a musically connected, and there is a lot of return work that is needed to be done. And when you are expected to do some real research, that is the basic requirement, though some people skip it, and they took, they take other routes, but basically, I’m someone who’s, who was crucial, a lot of interest in reading, and trying to learn, wherever there is a source and retain it and use it, it’s not just music, anything connected with music and information, I normally collect and retain it or you know, try to
put it together to use in my works. So, from there, the journey further went into, you know, referring a lot of books and collecting information about musicians of the past, especially those who played about three centuries back. And then how I mean, what, what I mean the styles of performance and various approaches to music, how they procure, determine how their instruments were made. And then interestingly, when you check the, the Scriptures, the old poem live, works, and whatever works, little literary works that are, that have a connection with music. Interestingly, there’s loads of information about general music musicians, and very less about guitar players. But, when I explored further, not not confining myself to kratom, I mean for to to Carnatic music or music, get up as a pot, you know, it has a lot of other connections, it is a household instrument, it is used in all the rituals not just by the Indian community, but by the entire world. A clay board has been a part and parcel of everybody’s life system. And then, there have been philosophers in all beliefs, who have you know, taken DisplayPort for referring, I mean for describing philosophical thoughts. So, the, the mortality of men, man or remote and the market, maturity of the soul, all these things you know, like this, for every description or explanation they have always taken the clipboard as to to show as an instant instance, or, or an example. So, I found that there’s a lot of material in that approach as well, and started collecting information on that, and made it a part of my research, though it doesn’t speak much about music. But a clay pot also has a different phase, unlike the other music instruments. So the all these things put together, I did my research, I started doing it in 2016. And it took about six years, maybe I should I should not have completed, I wanted to do a little more about time constraints where they’re imposed by the education system. So I had to stop at a particular point, and then put them together, do my dissertation and then successfully have completed my doctorate. But the day I said I should stop, I realized that that was the beginning, actually, honestly, there is so much more to learn about the clipboard and how the clipboard has been mainly to different kinds of instruments. And now there are musicians as well, I mean, living around me who do not play the guitar bass have gotten but as another instrument, the amount of animals high on top, and then convert it into a different instrument, but still it is a clay pot base like this, there are a number of instruments available all over the all over India. And there are of course, instruments like guru or other clay based instruments around the world. So the exploration cannot stop. And I just gave it a temporary break only. So I would like to explore more, if God gives me the stent, you know, life and then the opportunity to do it. But in performance, to put everything in a nutshell, all these 40 years of my journey in music, what I have realized is that I’m not here just to be another compliment in a concept as a fourth or fifth percussion player and go along with the music just moving. And then, you know, having fun with compositions, get paid, go home, have a very happy life. And then that’s it, I mean, put a full stop somewhere, during my journey, maybe three tickets back, I would have I have realized that I am a little different in my performance, I do not know how that realization came. But I have been performing but incumbent more Easter declare a call. But I cannot make that statement because it’s someone else who has to say that, but I’m trying to restrict myself not to, you know, bring in mediocrity and not to bring in an at least spoil being a spoilsport in a in a, in a very smooth, aesthetically developed performance. So my role I started redefining as a better compliment, I compared myself with somebody else who is intruding too much or who’s playing all the time, not to bother about squeezes not giving time to take in the song or allow the other performer to come out with his ideas. These are all I have always been thinking that they you know, they are actually they do not allow an artist to grow further. The the attitude, the sex in an artist’s mind, either it is indifference, or it is you know, high headedness, too much of pride or kind of all the time needing to have public attention, attention seeking attitude, all these you know, restrict a musician to open up or explore further internally. So it’s internalizing, that is what was you know, I was feeling that need to be explored more, which I have started doing and my performance improved differently, because I can see some phenomenal musicians you know, start respecting me start may not be giving me more opportunities, but they always looked upon me my statements my performance, and they underline that this is a class apart. This has happened, you know, all these all these years. I thought that well if someone pays me to be a different a concept or an offer had been standing in either place, I would like to read in that place first. And then if possible to go further up in their expectation, or in public opinion, that is probably the right recognition, you know, someone’s giving you an award or giving you more opportunities, you know, that can come or not, may not be even, you know, striking at the right time, the right proportion. But you are still, you know, given this, this platform or an innovation, that, that gives you a lot of self esteem. So, all these years, I’ve been doing that, getting a lot of students who realize my value, and be disciplined to learn from me, that is one of the point and my performances, I make sure that they have a mark of the most, I would not say sophisticated, but it has a class, it has an authority, a dignity, and aesthetic sense, and realizing the value of an audience.
Bradley Vines 21:17 Amazing. That’s fantastic background and so wonderful to hear how you are approaching development, even when you are so accomplished. And that really is the mark of the the ultimate potential of a musician or someone in any walk of life or endeavor, always striving further and finding those next steps. Even when you play in such a complete way, a way that is so on spiring already so hard. So I’d be really curious to hear a little bit more about how you found that next gear that next level for yourself. Because it would be very easy just to say like you said, you know, I’m doing very well. Look, lots of people love my playing. I don’t know, my calendar is filled with opportunities to play, how did you find that focus? And then what can you talk a little bit more about? How you you found a way to work on getting even better and and kind of what that that next approach was for you that which is a creative leap forward?
Dr. Suresh Vaidyanathan 22:45 Yes, fortunately, I was asked when I reached when I started learning from my third guru, Octavia Gopalakrishnan, he has been performing vocal music a lot. So whenever he had a performs, he wanted me to accompany him and cut him a small boy of like 1314 years old, but the other compliments would be someone who is in his 50s or, you know, a little more very established, celebrated Madonna player or a violinist. So every concert I’m here the smallest and the most inexperienced guy sitting and just for the sake of being TV stars, students, and but the rest of them are all great musicians. But that was the biggest opportunity I got because every concert I was sitting next to these giants you know, listening to them listening to their live music. And it they were literally teaching me how to earn what is the best way of performing they were giving me lessons indirectly by accompanying to accompany my teachers music and performing a very grand solo things like so, initially, they will not even turn towards my side and you know, do a nod or a smile, they will not care even to talk to my side. But I thought that maybe I should recuse myself more to turn their attention, I did not feel insulted. So then on, I mean, simultaneous I was also attracted to the way they you know, present their compositions, their own creative ideas, the groovy, the poetic ideas, and the way they give punches to the accent to their music and they connect with the audience and the sustain that energy and you know, suddenly grow up like, no big gene. So these are all, you know, a big level Seems to me so I thought maybe I should work on this. By start those days, there was no, you know, you cannot record or you don’t have a reference of what’s happened, what has happened earlier. So suddenly, you have to put all your focus on these machines performance. And I thought maybe something similar to what they do, or at least try to learn and repeat. next concert, if he plays the same thing, I will be back by playing the same stuff immediately, so that he’s surprised. So the initial idea was to surprise them. And then I started playing exactly what they were doing. And for more information, the workplane on the MME cannot be exactly played on the bottom, you won’t be able to produce same effect. So I need to alter the fingering techniques, and the concept, and then try to add a little more of my facility on the instrument and show it. So first, this, they were surprised, oh, my God, this guy, this boy is able to grasp and playback, but it was not instant it I had already been working on it from because not every other day, you play with the same great percussion player. So what I do was, what I’ve been doing was to learn this myself or I had a couple of, you know, senior students of these machines, I would consult them very, I mean, genuinely, with all respect, have learned this from them, and then be ready for the next opportunity. So it was a slow process, but I could, at some point of time, I was able to impress upon them, that I’m here, who can, you know, reply to you in the, in the level you expect someone. So this was happening right after one percussionist after another. And at one point, they started that they want to challenge me. So that is my success, when they thought from from a total ignorance or ignoring stature State, I was now being recognized, now I’m being challenged. So then the I started working on that as well again. So if they say three plus four is seven, I would say focus to the side, or at least one plus three plus four is seven, plus two plus four is seven. So it’s one double of one, and then develop to so kind of this kind of concepts. When you reply in there, you know, again, you challenge the back, kind of, not really. But I try to do that, then they come up with some more ideas. And then the best thing is that they start recommending you for more concerts. Till then it was not if you’re there, okay, fine. And then they start recommending your name. So that’s the next level of your acceptance. And once the acceptance starts more responsibility sensitive. So from then on, I thought that, well, if I have to be accepted by these people, I have to stay they’re still there in my thought process, in my work in my compositions, in my rendering, in my brevity, in my accepting and going in the same lights, there are a lot of things that make them happy. And there are a lot of things that make them unhappy as well. So I should avoid those unhappy moments. Definitely. If you’re too long, they don’t like if you play too, I mean, for I mean, the same proportion of their time, they don’t. There’s too much of pride or selfishness that sets in the musician’s mind once he is getting recognized. So he thinks that he should command the next person. I mean, incidentally, the khatam is not the main percussion necrotic music concert. So you have to be submissive, not really submissive, but you know, rested to in your playing, and you know, wait for, especially when the blade is a senior, but that rule has compensating so awkwardly, that even a junior Brazilian player would look upon someone like me? Well, I’m today I do not want to share with you what I play. I will challenge you with the some complex and delicacy. With all your experience, you’re able to respond to be all you fumble, kind of just attitude is there. But I should be prepared for anything if I’m really a professional one. I will charge whatever fees I want but I should be in a performing 100% to my ability and my experience. So you constantly I would have been put into tests. I haven’t put into no challenges that were feeding into my mind reading my brain a lot more work. They were extracting from me a lot of work. I was he even today I keep enjoying them the moment some buddy says that I have composed a new and also copyrighted music. Would you like to I mean, I would like to perform this, I don’t have to share with you, when you have it your experience at all. You can directly I mean, you, it’s all cakewalk for you, as I immediately will say no, it’s not like that, please send me the music, I’ll learn, I’ll be prepared. It’s not just learning I would do I would be prepared with the more of challenging back ideas, concepts to surprise him, not to bother him, but to you know, add my elements wherever that is possible. And tell him that, well, I am a little bit, you know, experienced and creative too. I appreciate your music at the same time, I do have some something to add up or add to it. So this is maybe I mean, I’m not sure if this is the only way a musician should grow. But to me, I find that this is the right way more than, you know, doing a PR and trying to sell my music. I mean, spend more time in communicating, marketing my music, I have always been feeling that, well, I should keep the stock ready. Once I mean there is a particular circle where they know that there’s some quality material that is available. This musician this man can deliver some of the brilliant performance or ideas or the most, you know, I mean, how do you describe satisfaction in music, and you go and enjoy music, okay, if you see enjoyment in music, that’s not the right term, but I still call it so someone comes to your concert and you make him feel very happy, elated or you know he feels satisfied, no some some way you touch is soul on his mind with your superlative performance. So, once you get into that level, you want to I feel that I should remain that once that is not possible. One one when I realized that that is not physically possible, or my mind is not going into it. Or I become more and more due to some reason and maybe contentedness or frustration, whatever it is, if I’m going to be pushed away from this state, I should stop the
Bradley Vines 32:45 keeping the purity. Keeping out mediocrity as you put it is so core to your approach and so important. And the thing about that is to stay fresh, it’s the constant movement. And you do that by constantly challenging yourself and the people you’re with which is very inspiring. So thank you for sharing that. I think that’s so eye opening, to hear that from the perspective of someone like yourself, how you approach each and every concert each and every opportunity as a growth opportunity
Dr. Suresh Vaidyanathan 33:25 as a single seven simple statement. I would say it’s the people around me who you know, made sure that I grew up. It’s not their intention, but indirectly they might be you know, grow into a better musician. By setting standards
Bradley Vines 33:42 now you are playing that role in so many young musician well musicians of all ages that come to you to learn and we’re helping them to raise their level and find the path to the next step in their progression. The legacy continues of your teachers through your teaching of your pupils.
This is an interview with the incomparable Kenny Werner. He is an improvising pianist and author whose impact on the philosophy and practice of improvisation has been extraordinary. In the realm of music, Kenny Werner’s improvisations weave melodies and harmonies that are rooted in but not limited to the jazz tradition. His groundbreaking work as the architect of “Effortless Mastery,” a transformative methodology for nurturing musical talent, has facilitated the growth of countless aspiring artists worldwide. What sets Kenny Werner apart is not only his technical fluency as a performing artist, but his understanding of the deeper connections between music, self-discovery, and indeed life itself. Immersed in the teachings of Indian philosophy and their echoes in Western thought, Kenny brings a unique perspective that extends well beyond just music practice. This discussion delves into the very heart of Effortless Mastery as Kenny opens the door to a world of possibilities through guided exercises, allowing you to experience the essence of his approach firsthand. Throughout the discussion, Kenny plays the piano to demonstrate, and you might even witness the creation of a new composition! Whether you’re a seasoned musician, an aspiring artist, or simply someone with an ear for beauty, this interview with Kenny Werner promises to be an unforgettable exploration of the philosophy, music, and wisdom that shape his remarkable journey.
Bradley Vines 0:00 Greetings all and welcome to the neuroscience of improvisation. Get ready to embark on a journey into the world of improvisation with a master of the art form. Today we are honored to host the incomparable Kenny Werner and improvising pianist and author who has impact on the philosophy and practice of improvisation has been nothing less than extraordinary. In the realm of music, Kenny Warner’s improvisations weave melodies and harmonies that are rooted in but not limited to the jazz tradition. Kenny’s groundbreaking work as the architect of effortless mastery, a transformative methodology for nurturing musical talent has facilitated the growth of countless aspiring artists worldwide. What sets Kenny Werner apart is not just his technical fluency as a performing artist, but his understanding of the deeper connections between music, self discovery, and indeed life itself. Immersed in the teachings of Indian philosophy and their echoes in Western thought, Kenny brings a unique perspective that extends well beyond just music practice. This episode delves into the very heart of effortless mastery, as Kenny opens the door to a world of possibilities through guided exercises, allowing you to experience the essence of his approach firsthand. Throughout the discussion, Kenny plays the piano to demonstrate, and you might even witness the creation of a new composition. So whether you are a seasoned musician and aspiring artist, or simply someone with an ear for beauty, this interview with Kenny Werner promises to be an unforgettable exploration of the philosophy, music and wisdom that shape his remarkable journey. Let’s begin.
Sister Wendy 2:13 Science Advances one step leads to another autism is about being human.
Swami Sarvapriyananda 2:36 The people who are pioneers in these systems, the Buddha or you know Adi Shankar are going to be the Christians, they would be very interested in development.
Bradley Vines 2:45 This is great, what a pleasure. Thanks for joining us here. My goodness, we’ve got Kenny Werner in the house. This is This is amazing. Much appreciated. And you are, of course, tremendously well known for your effortless mastery methodology first came out in the 90s, I believe, and of course, yes, you in I think 2021 or so you came out with becoming becoming the instrument? Yes. A wonderful addition,
Kenny Werner 3:23 one would think one would actually think I’m an author.
Bradley Vines 3:27 Yes, one would given the communication style and fluency and also, the fact of having two books. Now, beyond that you, you, you have, of course, your effortless mastery Institute at Berklee College of Music, where you’re taking these ideas forward. And now an online course that you’re actually currently running.
Kenny Werner 3:52 Well, we’ve done that for a couple years. But this first time I’ve done a course for the second time. It’s the I have two courses. At Berkeley. One is effortless mastery. One was effortless mastery. Two, the four steps in effortless mastery are the answer to the whole book. So people enjoy the first part of the book, when they say, How did he know I do that, you know, that’s their neurology, right. However, the four steps are reprogramming steps. And when Roger Brown gave me the platform to teach them as semesters. That’s quite a challenge. So the first two steps are the first semester because you don’t change that neurology. And that’s why I’m excited that we’re talking because I have a few questions for you as well. It’s time to translate this completely in terms of neuroscience, because it completely translates. So the first course is just the first two steps. Go if you don’t establish a baseline of neurology, that precept As a music is not nearly as important, as the previous neurology posits, because if understanding music’s importance made you play better, then we would take courses in enhancing its importance in our minds. But most people would say the opposite, the more important music is, the less important I seem. So the neurology just like, if you like Italian food, you smell meatballs cooking, the neurology is let’s get at it. If I say let’s play, the neurology might be, oh, now what? This trepidation over something that should be at least as enjoyable as meatballs. And that’s why it’s older allergy. So anyway, the course we’re doing online, now, we only did the first one. So if somebody wants to still sign up, they can. Because as a roll record, it is just focusing on first two steps, which is a neurological reboot. It is take the analogy, like it’s changing the polarity. Or it’s changing the apps I like to think of as changing the software, I mean, changing the operating system. Because if you have an operating system that values music over yourself, then the apps of liberation can never run on an operating system. So I like all three analogies. It’s an app, yeah, but let’s say you have a new app, the first two steps of effortless mastery have liberated you when you can’t do it, because the operating system devalues you in the face of music. So those apps don’t run on that. However, if we take and it’s worth taking that much time, at Berkeley, we take a semester. Now people can do it the me online because not everybody is going to move to Boston and spend this god awful mount of money. Just saying get to my course it just doesn’t make any sense. So now we do it directly. And expensive though it may be it’s so much less than going to Berkeley. So but here’s the thing, we reprogram the mind to distract yourself from the importance so that the body can experience the instrument. So effortless mastery has grown because it used to be accidentally someone asked me to give them a lesson. I said right there, you just got in your own way, right? There’s a 9080 something. Someone said, right there you care, then yoga. Yeah, right there. How’d you know? I said, Well, I don’t know. I hadn’t didn’t really think about it. But besides you look different when you care. You also played worse at the moment you cared. So then I made up these exercises. How do you not care. And I would start to use stuff I was learning about in the 80s. You know, the whole holistic thing kind of unfolded in the 80s. The 60s was the discovery of love. But since it was drug fueled, it had to be temporary. replaced by the 70s, which was just going after the high. Whatever the point was originally that was lost in the 60s, that and a few assassinations that, you know, disillusion you from what country you thought you were living in, right? Plus drugs. It was a statement. I’m going to redefine love. I’m not going to love neurologically the way my parents did. Because there was an awful lot of shallowness in that. I’m going to rediscover it I’m going to take this pill was the right idea. And the research on that pills, which I’m sure you’re well aware of, was cut off when Timothy Leary made it into a protest a countercultural thing. That was enough to shut it down and make it
Kenny Werner 9:08 right. All that research was over, as you know, probably it’s starting to pick up again in the 90s. And it’s pretty much in full force. Now. The part that validates effortless mastery is whether with a question to me, I knew that psychedelics could change your neurology instantly. I just assumed that the change would change back within a day or two, because it always did. Now that movie, how to change your mind and the book actually, which I’m sure you’re aware of the people’s stories, they talk about losing anxiety for good. They talked about not being depressed ever again. They talk about you know, so I want to know what’s going on with the psychedelics that my last turn with it was in the 70s and the problem with it, it was complete but it was temporary where Right. However, what he points out is neurological pathways. And I learned that actually, a long time ago, I took a course, me and Mark Johnson, this great bass player, but it was this guy, Robert Fripp or something like that. And he wrote a book called the path of least resistance. And it did. Now, the idea that of neurological pathways, which I never forgot. But the more I taught effortless mastery, the more it took it away from the romantic like music, it took it away from the spiritual like, it took it away from the philosophical which is just like pablum to the neurological. Because today, if you’re having a revelation, we don’t know if there’s a God fueling it. But we do know that you couldn’t see it if you measure the if you put some gizmos on the brain. So the only thing we’re sure of is that this existence is extremely covered, colored by various neurological pathways. And effortless mastery is aligning itself with that more and more, I’m not doing anything, it everless Master, if you don’t try to create a path, then you follow it. And that’s how this whole thing has grown. Which is why I was interested to meet with you because I need to get with neuroscience now. Or a neuroscientist that understands everything except the last thing they understand, which is the experience. They understand the technology. They may even be a bridge for others. But they’re not themselves having that experience. And effortless mastery is that piece of the puzzle. And I think they might fit very nicely together more information for me to validate what I know, transferring, you need to know that it’s far less difficult to do than anyone imagines. So now I have a question for you before we start, when I tried to describe to musicians, the neurology has to be changed. Because look, if I say where’s my metronome, trust your metronome. vise, this is the fourth step and effortless mastery. The first step first few steps is what everybody’s interested in. How do I change my self judgment, which then, of course, takes us out of the bay of music into the ocean of life, if we can only change the neurological predisposition to self judge, right. But once you have achieved that, that’s what the first two steps do. It takes a lot of losing it and finding it losing but the programming is based on repetition. Without repetition, there is no programming. And so the fourth step, now that you’re not confused anymore, that you have nothing to do with this music. And you’ve been practicing the first two steps long enough, so that even though you’re not always there, you can get there, it’s more like a fork in the road. Now I can go down the old path of thinking this matters. Or you take the right fork and watch myself breathe. And I will demonstrate to you step zero while we’re together. But have you done that already to train the machine, the instrument that plays the instrument, you can never train the instrument because you had too much neurology attaching meaning that was illusionary or as they say in Sanskrit, Maya, the illusion ego, we could go to the scriptures for we could go to the psychological studies, when you go to neuroscience, it’s time to use it. Okay, so let’s say you’ve gotten out the illusion that what you’re doing is important. And boy, once it’s not, you find out something you can never find out otherwise, every note works and relativity to every other note. The theory of relativity is just a term I only came up with two days ago, because this shit is still writing itself through me. Very well relativity exist. If I play this note, there’s no choice that wouldn’t be inspired. Next, not when the mindset is been fixed. And that’s steps one and two. But assuming they’ve been fixed, you can talk about liberation all the time. If there’s no exercise, there’s no change. If there’s no repetition of the exercise, there’s no change. It doesn’t matter It doesn’t come at all if your exercises are fuzzy on a philosophical or spiritual level. And it doesn’t come if you have exactly the right exercise. But ego keeps you from repeating it. Without repetition, there’s no reprogramming until they get to know the technology, right? Look, let’s say you find a color in the brain. That’s doubt. Now, that’s why psychotherapy has changed. It’s much more about triggers. Right? We have a lot of examples where you and I offline, can look at all the things that cross check this. But when they get to technology, right, you got your mouse in your hand. Oh, look, it’s a dark purple with brown. That’s doubt. Okay, do me a favor, grab that now press Delete. I think someday they’re going to do it. And an awful lot of hybrid instrument industries are going to collapse. If you thought you needed God, for example, to erase doubt, or you thought you needed a church, or you thought you needed psychology, or you even thought you the, you know, the music. Disconnect music from the value of the human being. And now you have the possibility of playing it, playing with it. So let’s say you’re on the fourth step, you’ve already gotten over yourself, right? It’s another way of saying it. Now, you hear that? If I say neurologically is transparent to me where one is? I don’t have to think I’m a master. Everybody always asked me, How can I repeat the mantra I am a master? Well, we can find something like walking or using a fork. And if you’re from parts of Asia, using chopsticks, now they take that for granted. Not me, I’m sitting there trying to get up three grains of I have to push them together to drag a piece of chicken out of the frickin ramen. Okay, so it’s all relative to the neurology. So let’s say my neurology says even like faster
now my question to you is, when the neuron when the neurology is transparent, like walking, you don’t have to think about the neurology of walking. There’s also very little if any ego in walking, you don’t think, well, Monk would walk this way. Some people actually do. But you know what I mean, generally, we walk to the bodega down the street, we don’t really give it a lot of thought. So a neurological certainty, causes a physiological mastery. You don’t do to left foot, it’s left, right, left, right, without thinking, one serves the other. And it happens by itself. First of all, music can be learned on that level. And then you see the miracle you see in some people’s playing. I like to play people and explain to them that way. And then they go, Oh, it’s not just this vague thing that people either have or they don’t talent. No, it’s all neurology. If you’re patient enough, this is my question. When the neurology is so transparent, that the physiology is automatic, what do you call that? I called it neurological physiology. And I gotta believe there’s a better term than that.
Bradley Vines 18:32 That’s a good way to put it. I mean, there are a couple of terms that come to mind and, and maybe taking a step back. As I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into the neuroscience of improvisation and music more generally, I see many an insight that aligns with what you knew, and have been refining your communication of so many decades ago, and and into the present and future. So
Kenny Werner 19:03 let’s say you’re picking your nose, you want to pick your nose? You don’t accidentally poke yourself in the eye? No. Okay. The neurological awareness of where the nose is, is automatic. I call that a transparency, right? Why does the man go there? What’s the physiology thing that follows? Or all I’m asking you, does complete neurological transparency. The de facto is a physical movement.
Bradley Vines 19:34 There are so many great examples. So physical movement is is definitely ultimately the currency of our embodied presence in the world or experience. If we take let’s say, I think a paradigmatic example is bicycle riding. So doesn’t matter how much I teach you about physics, and the mechanics of that bicycle and what you’re going to do when you take off You’re just going to have to get on the machine and figure it out, the body is going to have to figure it out. And after a certain amount of time with repetition, as you noted as particularly important, it will become a fluid process where your muscles through proprioceptive feedback and so on and aligned with your intentions for where you want to go, you’re going to get a feel for it. Now this is called developing what we would call procedural memory. So I think there’s four,
Kenny Werner 20:35 what was the word? Memory, what’s myelin.
Bradley Vines 20:40 Myelin. Now, myelin. Now this is okay. So the brain, you’ve got the nerve cells, the neurons, and they’ve got a cell body, and then these axons that extend out, and those are, those axons are the means by which they reach towards other neurons and send their signals onward. So myelin is what basically coats the axon, which makes it easier for information to flow. And that speeds up processing basically. So you find that, that neurons that are getting used more, yes, there are certain pathways are going to get reinforced both with the myelin development, but also the development of dendrites, which are kind of the antenna I have the next neuron listening is that word? I’m sorry? dendrites? Yeah, there’s there’s a whole there’s a whole physiology involved here. Indeed.
Kenny Werner 21:42 That’s what I’m asking you. Is the neurological transparency, the absolute knowledge in the brain of how to ride a bike? Does that Auto Translate to physical manifestation of
Bradley Vines 21:56 it? It does, indeed. So there is
Kenny Werner 21:59 no neurological physiology. There’s just neurological transparency, because the other thing is already
Bradley Vines 22:06 failed to complete. Exactly, basically, yeah.
Kenny Werner 22:09 So I’ve had this question now for a year,
Bradley Vines 22:12 a very simple way to put it is that whatever you do is increasing the chances of you doing that thing again, in future.
Kenny Werner 22:22 Even though the manifestation is physical, neurological Transparency means I look at a map and I can see what is new North America and South America that’s neurologically transparent. But it’s only within the realm of mental transparency, mental recognition, I’m calling it the dawn of recognition, right? But I couldn’t explain and now you’re telling me, they are bonded. That’s why there isn’t exactly a word, unless you want to go with about five or six syllables. You know, look, if I do this
that’s effortless mastery. But so it’s this. People asked me, How can you give me a meditation that says, I am a master, because you are a master. And now I’m realizing this is already benefiting me that we’re talking. Complete neurological transparency makes you a master of a physical action, because it is done perfectly every time without thought. And that’s why, if we set the neurology first, instead of practicing with this neurology, I’m unworthy. Which is where most people get to, if they didn’t start, nobody started that way. It was either parents, or their first teacher, or a restrictive public school environment or something in the society taught us to care. After the first experience, which if you look at children touch the instrument, is the truth.
Kenny Werner 24:24 That’s the truth. Everything after that is a permutation of ego. Which is to say, How am I doing? The one question that limits musicians in their quest to get better, or musicians in their quest to enjoy playing? And now effortless mastery is not just about music anymore. The one sentence that gets in the way, how am I doing? So the surge, elimination of that question, so that even when it does pop up in in neurology, your first instinct is, oh, let me focus on something else, because that’s the last question I ever want to think about again. How many times have you ever asked yourself, how am I doing? Did your day get better? And it always got worse. So I’m going to show you step zero right now, if I may. Now, please. Now this is where we borrow from yoga, we’re borrowing from the Vedas. We’re borrowing from the Mahabharata, from the Bhagavad Gita. When Krishna comes, and he ministers to our juniors, he’s about to go into battle. This battle has a whole representative, it’s all about the mind and the ego and the spirit, but it’s represented as a battle of royal families. So a basic thing of I don’t like saying Hinduism, because it is Hinduism. But that’s also the religion, which is always a structure that obscures the spiritual heart of the religion, right? But the Vedas, Vedanta is very, is that the Bhagavad Gita is, I don’t know, 700 verses on detachment, do your dharma, dharma is the action you are meant to do. This whole thing is a play, and you’re playing your part. Don’t do it. Watch it being done. Now that is not original, that goes back to the earliest scripture of metaphysical scriptures to be the witness. That was even the name of it, the witness consciousness. So
Kenny Werner 26:43 if I witness, the piano being played, well changes in neurology quite a bit. So it’s not my responsibility, you could simulate it by watching someone else move their hands on the piano.
And notice that you’re not involved at all. Because in your mind, you’re watching someone else play, they play too good, you might have a little bit of attack of self esteem. Which is why listening has been ruined for musicians, because of the urge to judge themselves against what they’re listening. However, if you’re if you’re not, if you’re blessed to not be a musician, then you just look oh, look, his hands are moving. And I feel in no way responsible for where they’re going. The neurology of the first two steps is to be able to experience that, although it’s you. So it has the neurological component of surgically removing the responsibility. Responsibility when it comes to creativity is a buzzkill. Respect is fine. But right before you’re about to commit the creativity, you need to Divest yourself of all respect for what has ever been. Because that becomes the baggage that you’re trying to play through. How do you create that neurology, the recognition that no one has ever pressed this button before me. And then you’re noticing something now, aren’t you, Bradley, that there’s not one note, that doesn’t go as if the universe ordained it with the previous note, without exception. But what allows this to happen is a mindset. And a mindset is a polite term for neurological transparency, which is a term I made up earlier today. Maybe it exists in the science. That’s why you and I can probably have some, some add to the body of work. But the thing is not to add to the body of work, but add to the body of people that can experience it. Let’s get more people out of the delusion and into the truth. The first thing they got to know is it’s so much easier than they imagined. So that transparency, sets up a new polarity or a new software. And by this way, I think you’ll appreciate this as a neuroscientist. Now we don’t limited to people that are musicians. There’s two instruments that you can easily practice this neurology, drums and piano. You don’t have to know anything about the piano to play the notes saxophone, you get hung up on, well does armature violin, you could really do it. But because if you understand that this arm does this, and this hand does that, actually, you can do it. But it’s a lot more pleasant on the piano, which doesn’t sound much worse than someone who never played it or someone that’s a virtual so so the piano And the drums then become a new therapy for liberating people from and you can use all the psychobabble and all the holist about Well, that’s a word I made up. Holistic language has become as bad ballistic as psychology babble. So there’s a new word. You’ve heard psychobabble, right? Oh, yes. Yes. What is popular, right? A list of Babel. That’s all the language of liberation and none of the experience that you have to look at the person that’s saying, You should love your mistakes. There’s one. That’s good holistic babble right? Meaning, don’t you believe the truth is that you are more precious, and your preciousness is not in any way affected by making mistakes? Don’t you believe that? Of course. But then if you make a mistake, and an instrument will hold a mirror up to you, you’ll realize that even though you believe it, you can’t access that thought at that moment. So the language of freedom is not nearly as important as the experience of freedom. And then the question is, what exercise are we going to do? Because without an exercise that remains holistic Babel, kind of right to a list of Babel. Think goes like like that? Yeah, it’s coming. Luckily, we’re recording. That’s the first four bars and Melissa Babel, could be three and a half, or five and one quarter, I wasn’t really counting. But you see what I mean? Without the barriers, the pseudo the barriers, whoa, get ready for quotation marks, the barriers of pseudo importance. US it belongs to everybody on contact. Wages learn to move your fingers faster. Now having codified that liberation, naturally, the question comes up, how do I do that while playing something real, which is to say a form or in time, or what if you want to be a liberated being and before that? Now, the fourth, the third step is this. First step is this. I’m watching my actually, we need to step zero. This is where every class I’m going to do with you. Okay. All right. We hear that
was a fire truck going by? Huh? Okay, that was God saying? Check this out. Bradley. Okay, ready? Yep. Are you breathing? Your breathing? Right?
Bradley Vines 33:05 Yes.
Kenny Werner 33:06 You don’t have to think about it. It’s not a trick question. You are breathing. Right? Absolutely. Even when you’re not focusing on your breathing, you’re still breathing. Luckily, luckily, your breathing is not dependent on your self esteem. Like other things, like I’m going to give a lecture on neuroscience. And I want it to be good. Now. It’s not gonna be such a great lecture, right? Which is the foundation of effortless mastery. Trying is what gets in the way. hardly unique, but never so well. deprogram, then effortless mastery. Okay. So luckily, you could be in your worst state of mind, you’re still breathing. You could have just had a baby, you’re still breathing. You could have just lost a child. You’re still breathing. You could have had the best gig. I assume you play an instrument to have your life but you’re still breathing. You could have embarrassed yourself in front of 1000 people, you’re still breathing. So breathing, we’re going to use a little differently than all the other holistic models. Breathing happens. Whether you’re spiritually fit or not. Whether you like yourself or not, right. You’re breathing whether you watching it or not, right? Yes. Can you feel approximately where you’re breathing in your body? In the body is a machine. Right in the machine. There’s a gizmo in the machine. It’s somewhere around here, right? You can feel that right. And it breathes it’s like the boiler in the basement. It breathes right? For 20 seconds for a very short time. All I want you to do is watch it. Breathe. Ready go.
Now stop. Now, when you look at this video, you’re gonna see a change in you.
You’ll see it. That’s why I can do these courses online. Now, I’m not gonna explain it yet. Let’s do it again. But remember, don’t translate it into anything more meaningful than exactly what I’m asking you to do. You breathe, right? You are breathing before you are watching. For 20 seconds, find the gizmo in the chest that breathes. And watch it ready, go. Don’t close your eyes, because then you’re conflating it with meditation. Okay, okay, is manifestly unspiritual Let’s stop. Let’s do it again. I’m gonna describe it again. There’s a gizmo in your body and it breathes. Watch it, watch it, breathe, not you. Watch it breathe. For 20 seconds, go. But look at me when I look at you. But we’re not looking at each other. We’re watching ourselves breathe.
Watch it breathe. I mean, really watch it free
you go. And stop. It’s hard to stop when I say stop. But if I said How long can you do it, then you wouldn’t be trying to keep it going and you’d stop. Reverse psychology is a very real thing. Okay, now, did you have an experience? Absolutely. It was the absence of things. There wasn’t a unit you just that was not there before. It was to you that’s always there. But for all these imaginary barriers. So I’ll tell you what is the innovation of this step zero. For one, you don’t say I’m going to watch myself breathe. You remind yourself well, I’m already breathing. So I’m not about to do anything. To you imagine it as something that exists separately from you know what, you’re going to watch it breathe. Three, you’re only going to do it for 20 seconds. Because if I said do it for five minutes, you probably wouldn’t ever get there. But anybody can drop any aspect of their life for 20 seconds. So it disarms the feeling that you’re losing your life because you have to let go for five minutes. For 20 seconds I can let go of anything for when you’re done, you say stop and you don’t even think about it. It’s like it never happened. So you’re introducing something to the mind that you’re not going to clouded up with the imposition of meaning and urge for it to have meaning you would have had to refer back to it to divine its meaning but if you don’t go back to it it never happened. However, there are impressions left and this is the neurology by do it once it’ll be something I can recall wow I can he put me through this trippy little thing. So the next innovation was your stopping when you stop you know go back to watching TV go back to whatever take another bite of a meatball whatever really stop it has to be free of the past or the future. It has to be free of challenge and for do that you have to remember how simple it is finally the less innovation less Do you think my god he’s come up with something so simple. It allows me to change No, you’re not going to change because you will change back very quickly. So after you’re done whatever neurological thought you were thinking about whatever your future how’s your future gonna be? What are the things age appropriate? I don’t know You don’t look like you’re close to retirement yet. We’ll Berkeley up my contract again. It could be that or what about how many people ever come to my masterclass Am I give a thing on neuroscience or whatever you were thinking about questions that have no answers, otherwise known as the future. After you’re done with this exercise, you’re not only don’t try not to do that you invite yourself to go back to your problems. Okay, I watched it brief. I’m done. Now let me go back to obsessing about shit that I have no control over, which is the majority of what hangs up people in this world, especially this world, especially this time. Right? Maybe trying to thank God, I have so many passwords. I gotta buy one of those services that stores your passwords. You know, this world, there’s plenty to lose the presence on. So after you’ve done this exercise for only 20 seconds, but you couldn’t make it half a minute, if that feels better. You give yourself permission to get entangled again. And whatever it was, you were thinking about that step zero, beautiful. Now, here are some of the backups if you want to make it spiritual. You could say this. I’m not breathing. I’m watching it brief. Here’s how it becomes spiritual, a very aligned with whatever the spiritual heart is. Vedanta, whatever. Do you know that Guru? Ramana, Maharshi? And yes, okay, he only had one practice, one practice, right? You don’t have to chant. You don’t have to meditate. You don’t have to do austerities he had one practice, who are you? The teacher I studied with which I don’t say publicly and I’m not supposed to say publicly was a guru taught witness consciousness. So this is a very, very old practice. The science of the mind was available, we’ll just say in the East 1000s of years before the West. And then there was this distraction of religion. That completely took us away from the point of a science. But if you look at the scriptures 500 A D. 1000. BCE, they say Before Common Era now, right? You Oh my God, these cats had it figured this is 15. This is like 2500 years before Freud. You know, I’m saying. So from those sources, whatever you want to call it, the east, I like to say it definitely came out of the east. It expanded to the a different part of the East, Japan, China, Hong Kong, became Buddhism, but Buddhism started in India. I guess it’s Indian, right? Character, Buddhism changed because the character of people from Japan, and the personality was different than the people of personality in India. But whatever the idea of witnessing Rama Ramana Maharshi would say, who are you? So if you were watching it, breathe? Who was watching?
Bradley Vines 43:11 Good question. Very good question. Well, then
Kenny Werner 43:14 it becomes a spiritual issue. Or if you want to talk about superconscious mind, what kind of science is that? Is that neuroscience? Or is that sort of psychology science? You know, conscious mind. self conscious, subconscious, super conscious. What is that science Bradley, I don’t even know.
Bradley Vines 43:32 All of these have a level of description of neuroscience in the realm of neuroscience, okay.
Kenny Werner 43:39 Or you say Universal Consciousness, right, universal consciousness, which is a language that I think comes from when religion systemically, not everybody, and not every pastor and not every church, but when religion and mass started to separate us from ourselves. Another form had to come, and that’s what we call spirituality. How many people today say I’m not religious, but I am spiritual? If you are a religion, the answer is an alarmingly amount of people will say, I don’t belong to a religion, but I am spiritual in that understanding. There’s individual mind, universal mind, that may also be part of, of neuro neuroscience, but the idea is that I have universal consciousness is really borrowing from early Indian metaphysical scripture, I guess I call it India. It started in India so it’s another places to but I’m not a historian. I’m aware of the starts in India right? So in whatever language you mentioned, the tools are exactly the same. And effortless mastery is now a convergence. And now I’m going to really sound like, you know, bring on the influences, I guess, through me. Because I wasn’t looking for it. So that’s how you know it’s authentic. I never thought I want to be something to somebody I want to play, I’ll tell you what most musicians don’t admit, I want to be the best player in the world. And I want everybody in the world to fucking know it. And then I want to be paid millions of dollars to show it. Okay. However, I seem to have a different calling, as well as being pretty up there when it comes to playing. But I have this other calling. And the fact that I wasn’t looking for it, is the best indication of its authenticity. And today, it’s where it is, at this moment, there are still new terminology coming out, like the theory of relativity, that was two days ago, here’s the theory of relativity. They’ll sit knows, because since our facilitator, people aren’t seeing, but he’s my angel these days. This is called the second step. It’s like moving the hand spatially, and not paying attention to the superimposed meaning of the order.
But I just realized, but it’s the theory of relativity, isn’t it? I don’t know what that actually is, as expressed by Einstein, I don’t know what it actually is. But every note is relative to every other note, how could one be more relevant than another? It has to be a delusion, that one note is more relevant to another, not the truth can’t be the truth. The truth is the absence of desire. The truth is the absence of a goal. You have a goal, but you need to put it out of your mind. So you can pursue that goal. Because the oppression of the goal itself is reason enough to ruin this day. How do you remember the day Bradley? Thinking about your future? So it’s very universal? Right? Okay, I’m gonna shut up for a minute, you got something to ask me.
Bradley Vines 47:40 This is wonderful. Food for thought. Thank you for sharing all of this very enlightening. And it’s amazing to experience it in real time with you. So I am sure this, so much will come across to listeners, but it’s a real pleasure. And, and I do just see so many wonderful parallels with well just take, for example, this idea of relativity. It’s something that Roger Shepard who was a leading neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, took into account when he created his model of pitch, pitch, pitch relationships, that involves this helix formation that allows for pitch height, but also tonal qualities of the pitch quality. And also tonal relationships, these ideas of self definitely have parallels in, in the emerging neuroscience and, and also just theoretical understanding of consciousness as a kind of program, like you have said, so something that’s running in the background, just like any other perceptual process, like seeing this,
Kenny Werner 48:55 like CPU, computing power in the computer. Yeah,
Bradley Vines 49:00 it’s a creation of the mind. So you’ve touched on a bunch of things that I wanted to talk about meditation and, and music. It’s psychedelics, to some extent, there’s maybe more to explore there.
Kenny Werner 49:16 Yeah, oh, almost three things. We’ll just take meditation for a second. Let’s do that. Let’s do that. Words that originally indicated liberation become the new prison. If you ask the average person, Let’s meditate. Their first thought was, I can’t do that. Because meditation, the word has gained enough pseudo meaning to obscure the act of zero. If I call it a meditation, you wouldn’t be able to do it again. But if I said, Hey, Bradley, are you breathing? And he said, Yeah. Were you breathing before I asked you that? Yeah. You see where it is? Yeah, watch it. Okay. Now you actually are meditating. But nobody presented it quite that it was that available to people that weren’t quite that lazy. Like me. This is something you’ll find interesting. I always thought of myself as less than because everybody works. So hard music, nobody believes they were asking me last night this party. Of course, she spent four hours a day right now, we got to ask every woman from my wife all the way back to my mother, she recipes I never practiced. I’m not recommending it. But once I embrace the fact that I never practiced, I figured out how to do more change in my playing with 20 minutes than other people when they’re sitting there grinding it out for four hours, which I share, but only at the level of the fourth step. Because if you can’t change the polarity of your mind of caring, you couldn’t do it anyway, even if I showed it to you. Your mind is way wired to not be that simple. Especially around music, which you presume to be of a finer quality than you this general idea of music. So in the same way music has become a word has baggage, meditation has baggage, listening, has baggage. Now you ask any musician, when they listen, they think you ask anybody at Berkeley, especially what is listening me, I have to understand it, or I have to transcribe it. Definitely transcribing is potentially one of the most harmful things you can do. Not for your ear, but for your neurology. Because after you transcribe, you can never listen to anything anymore without being conscious that you’re not transcribing it. Neurology, right. However, you can transcribe, we can’t cover it all in one session, right? But listening means trying to figure out for a musician, listening means comparing yourself to the person you’re listening to. Do you know and a lot of kids if you shy don’t know you’re gonna show this to but people are studying or shake their head? Yes, when I say this, how many people avoid listening, because it challenges them to have a lower opinion of themselves in relation to the person they’re listening to. So therefore, it’d be just better if they didn’t have time to listen today. So I’ve replaced the word listening, which now is corrupted with hearing. Why would you have to listen? Why would I have to listen to this? It’s being played in the same room that I’m in? I’ll hear it. If it’s in the same room, I’m going to hear it why would I have to listen? So at least for now, hearing is a clarification and a relieving of ego as opposed to listening. Listening beckons self judgment. Listening, invites comparisons. Here hearing is just something you do. If something’s making a noise in the same room you’re in, you hear it. Now, will they find a way to put baggage on hearing? I’m sure somebody will. But sometimes you need a term to defang the previous term, listening meditation, God, Oh, my God, what word has been corrupted more than that? So terminology has a way of becoming corrupt. Because So ultimately, look, it’s not about the terminology. It’s not about the technology. I’m saying this for certain person to send me this video. Because this guy’s invented new instruments. He thinks terminology change, technology changes anything it doesn’t. There’s only one thing that changes anything. The mindset of the instrument, the mindset of a human being, we won’t save this planet with new technology. Or it will take a mindset to create it. What we already have it, don’t we? But without a change in mindset. We can’t use it. Right? What a perfect example. I never said that before. And that’s why effortless mastery is still evolving through me. I have a name for it isn’t ism. It’s not Hinduism. It’s not Buddhism. It’s not Christian mysticism, not communism. Capitalism. It’s Long Island Jew ism. Right. Now, why is it Long Island Judaism? Because I’m a Jew, not a practicing Jew from Long Island. And this is coming out of my mouth. It is the tyranny of terminology. Is the delusion that technology is the way and it takes a lazy man are a lazy person, a lazy mammal that covers it right? To find the truth? You know, there’s a saying. Necessity is the mother of invention. Laziness as a mother of invention. I can give me an example of one of the earliest examples, the wheel. Well, how many 1000s of weird years? Were they already moving things and going from place to place? Did they really need the wheel? Or were they tired of walking? So really, laziness is the mother of invention. Now, you know that, if you honor your laziness, you’ll find pathways that lazy people were previously exempt from, because it took work. Cool, right? So this whole thing comes together in some sort of a macro, a quilt of understandings that now can mesh together by allowing for the intuitive spewing of it, rather than the erudition, of studying it. But without an exercise, there is no movement. Now, if you go back to the Vedas, the Mahabharata no the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is the little blue man. Krishna is blue. Actually, I have a tune
remember it, but you can find it on YouTube. Go Kenny Werner trio, Little Blue Man. It’s about Krishna.
People we know would have great philosophical statements that they would agree with. Right? But here’s the thing that I discovered from my laziness. Here’s your philosophy. But here’s your experience. Why is there a schism between the two? And I can use one of the most blatant examples. Love your mistakes. Don’t you believe that? You might have even taught that. Right? Love your mistakes. But do you? So it’s a very blatant example, when you were making mistakes when i What if I said, Should you love him? And he said, Yes. I’m talking to my friend over here. Okay, so how do you get to the Schism? Here’s the philosophy. That’s what you believe. But this is how you behave. A practice. There has to be a practice. Doesn’t have to be daily, but it has to be repetitive. And see every other day or this morning and Lebanon yesterday, I thought tomorrow, five, and two days didn’t go and you don’t care that you didn’t do it for three days. It’s 12 o’clock. You’re going to do it right now. But you except like brushing your teeth. Here’s the example that I came up with. Okay? If practicing music was like brushing your teeth, everybody would continually get better. Think of the neurology that means the associations with brushing your teeth a no matter how well you brush them tonight. You fully expect to brush them tomorrow morning. Be you’re not tricked into thinking you’re getting anywhere by brushing your teeth. Oh, wow, man, if I keep doing this, I’m gonna be pretty soon. No, there’s no sense of a destination. It’s just something you have to do. And no matter how good you do it tonight, you can do it again. Tomorrow, most people will brush their teeth in the morning and night. And then in the morning again. If you take the neurological implications, which are none of brushing your teeth and you apply them to I’m going to practice playing an 11 or I’m going to practice to but we were practicing this tune called Animal Crackers. You can look this up to everybody. Animal Crackers, my trio recorded it
and it’s basically an etude having stuff that I don’t do well. That’s what etudes were, right an etude. So you can practice some mechanical thing you don’t do well, like the left hand was a
Ah something like that, I don’t know, very, you know, actually remarkably close at moments. But there’s not another human being in the world that would let themselves do that. Because they think it matters. Alright, but let me not go off topic. So if you were able to transpose now musicians understand that the lack of meaning of brushing your teeth to practicing, you probably do it all the time. Well, yeah you wouldn’t care how far you gotten, you would just notice that some tartar, there’s some tartar in bar too. And you will erase it. So the transposing of meaning is a way. But it has to be an exercise of some kind. Because if it’s not an exercise, it’ll just be a thought, which means it’s in the realm of unused ability. You can have the thought that you should love your mistakes Bradley, but if you don’t have a practice of actually loving your mistakes, even if you don’t mean it, and you’ll find you evolve to meaning it. Oh my God, I didn’t realize I actually love my mistakes. I didn’t I thought it was just something you say. To lesson lighten musicians and yourself. Oh, Aren’t I cool, man pass that joint. Yeah, man. You gotta love your mistakes. Yeah, but you need an exercise to go from the mode. This is your philosophy. But this is where no, let’s do it this way. This is your philosophy. But this is really where you’re at. And you want to get there. You have to have a daily or repetitive exercise that actually actualizes that. So how do you touch the instrument without caring? So I will show you step one. Tried to get the hand in there in the chorus. And it’s on every instrument that guitar violin drums. I’ve done it with every oboe. Oboe players are the most neurologically convinced that they’re masochists. That’s why they play the oboe. Any oboe is watching your podcast. Now they’re gonna laugh. Because it’s true. You accept the pain of playing the oboe, or trombone players are neurologically locked in to know that they’re not supposed to be specific in their tonality. That’s because, you know, here’s part of my I am also working on becoming a stand up comedian. Okay. But it seems like I’m at my funniest when I’m doing this deep wisdom. So anyway, trombone, you know, that was a practical joke, right? Trombone was a practical joke. A guy said, you know, we could just give him vows, and then you can play there. But let’s invent this instrument. Every note, you gotta move his hands like that. It’ll be a practice, we’re going to play this practical joke on one guy. And what happened? Was it caught on and people took it seriously. I’m gonna play this instrument doing this. What do I have to do with this? On a lower horn? So I tell that to every trombone player. Now, here’s the lesson. We’re not going to presume that your notes should be sloppy because you’re a trombone player. But we’re used to that sound. Even good trombone players, if they go like they do that is gonna be on all. Wow, great. Now what if we presume that this neurologically and then the physical result of it is as easy as this? We’re going to practice something much deeper than we would have. If our neurology was convinced that this is supposed to be a practical joke that this is supposed to be sloppy. So when you you have to have an exercise. Alright, here’s the first step. None of this will work badly unless you can approach your instrument and think about something else before you start playing. Now that way, anybody could do it. You can look out the window. Or you could be binge watching something on Netflix. But while you’re looking at it, that’s probably very effective because you’re deeply for what happened over here
yeah, that’s that that’s instructive. But when we decide to grab on something, that’s the properties of give you a little quiz. Here’s something exists in you. It never changes. It always works. It you can’t mess it up. unless something happens to you physically, that’s kind of a hint. And it’s always happening with inside you with absolutely no care or concern for the drama that you call your life. What is it?
Kenny Werner 1:05:15 That’s it. It’s your breath. Well, heart rate too, but it’s kind of hard to feel your heart rate. But you can always catch them breathing. So the first step is this. You don’t focus on this at a tooth monster. You focus on your that spot that you’ve been doing with step zero. Now, while you’re focusing on that, oh, the hand went up over here, that was just simple neurology. I know how to do this with my hand. And I know when my hand touches these white keys, I am dimly aware that this smooth, they’re shiny, I’m dimly aware of the temperature of them. That is tactile sensation. Some people call it mindless mindfulness. I hate that word. Now. Mindfulness is bullshit now, too, it’s been overused. Unfortunately, it’s a casualty of overuse, like wellness. Meaningless. How do I know that when I saw wellness on my insurance policy, I knew it no longer me it meant anything. When you can get a 10% discount on your health insurance, we’re being mindful mindfulness will have ceased to mean anything. Okay. But you could say, I’m moving my hand, I am mindful of the fact that his fingertips are touching the keys. But that’s not even me. What am I focusing on? Well, I was already breathing. I’m watching it brief. It’s a little more challenging than binge watching on Netflix, or reading a book, but they all work. But if you can do this, I’m not looking outward Bradley, I’m looking inward while staring at you. That’s what those paintings of Jesus and you, anybody, Moses, there are certain paintings of Krishna, and Shiva. And and there’s something different about them. What what is that? coin that’s over their head? Somebody turned it into a coin, obviously. But what was that aura. And then the person is looking down with this incredible compassion. If you’re looking at a different he’s not looking at anything, this it’s a lens through which something is looking through. So the most closest thing I can get to that that’s internal, it’s not dependent on counting the leaves on a tree, for example, which is works. I’m breathing in. Thank God. I’m breathing out. If there is a God, I always have to preface it with that.
I’m breathing in. Wow, the last one felt good. Now let me go. Do you know that within you if there is a God,
you don’t need drugs. Every time you breathe in, you would associate with getting high if instead of calling breathing in I said vaping Oh shit. Yeah, thank you, God or whoever. Now, what do we do that gets us in trouble. We’re always seeking release. And it’s so easy to fire in the wrong venues of release. And then that’s the trouble isn’t it? The 60s becomes the 70s. But every time I vaped I get a release. Now not using my exhale to make this next note happen. I’m not doing this. No, that would be cheating. I am not involved. So I can also talk to you can’t just put my hand over here next to you. So sometimes I tell somebody, count the viewer from Israel count backwards from 100 and Israeli or whatever, you know, Hebrew. And while they’re doing that, who’s playing? That you could spend a lifetime trying to figure out and becomes a spiritual path. But we already know it’s neurology at hand knows how to be lifted. It knows how to balance on the keys. It can lift a finger and Goddamnit it can drop it. Just like every inhale causes an exhale. So once you realize that the inhale is getting high, and the exhale is a release from responsibility. Imagine how happier lazy person can become all I gotta do. I’m already breathing. Fortunately, I don’t have to do anything. But instead of thinking about my problems, which is another word for living in the future, because it’s very rare that you have a problem in this moment, very rare. You get a call, someone died. You have a problem. And it’s in this moment, you just got to call. But how often does that happen? Whenever you’re worried about how many days have you spent worrying about when it hasn’t happened yet? Now in program, they know this, they say 95% of the things we’re worried about will never happen. So keep worrying. Yeah. And it’s, oh, you’ve got Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now, I mean, this, he covered that, if you’re thinking about tomorrow, you’re not in the present. If you’re thinking about when is this over? Then you’re not in the present. If you’re thinking about what were those other 11 questions I had, you’re not in the present. If you’re thinking about, I can’t wait to get this ready to put out, you’re not in the present. So for good or bad. The trick of being in the present, one of the things we have in our body, that is a machine that is only in the present, is our breathing. So in that way if you can get used to that model, and that’s why I’ve added step zero wasn’t in the book, step zero, as you’re walking down the street, and you’re thinking shit, I parked my car three blocks away, and it’s hot out today. Or I can go Yeah, I’m already anticipating the length of how far away My car is. I’m experiencing the heat more. So because I’m referencing heat as something I don’t like, you know, you’re not in the present, you’re either in the past, the past is more related to the depression. And the future is more related to anxiety. If you’re practicing effortless mastery, if you’re in the class, I’m going to ask you to do this. Okay. I’ve been down this road many times before. This road never ends. Well. I was trying to figure out questions that don’t have any answers. I’ve already been down that road, it’s already a form of enlightenment to acknowledge you’re going down a road, which never ends well, though, it’s not like you figure it out. You always emerge from thinking about the future, less confident than you were when you were just in the moment. And those moments become precious to you. So if you here’s something everybody agree on most of your friends, you need to live in the moment, right? We all agreed and that that’s a good holistic babble. How many people live in the moment? Everybody says it. So you need an exercise. So you go, Okay, I’ve been down this. By the way, I lovingly call that the shithole. And I think this thing I’m telling you and several things are in the second book. They were things that unearthed since I wrote the first book, I say, you’re going down the left fork will say, which I lovingly call the shithole, or quicksand, because you’re gonna go down that path, but it’s not going to yield any peace. Right? It’s just going to make you less tolerant tolerance of the present. may say, I’ve been on a road many times, it never ends well. However I am breathing. I think I’ll watch it breathe right now.
Now, I can only do this for 10 seconds or 20 seconds. Because if I said I’m going to stop what’s going to happen Bradley, you’re not going to be able to do it. Thereby affirming neurologically the importance of your ability to channel your thoughts. were so convinced that we can’t do that. And you know what, you’re right. You cannot change your thoughts. Your mind is smarter than you are. But you can and my class last class, because I started using this last semester. They know this word, I did a quiz with him. It was really fun. You can’t change, but you can interrupt your thoughts. So I know I’m worried and I give myself permission to worry about it again. But I’m going to take 20 seconds and interrupt that thought with the simple observe instead I was doing something already. I was breathing. Now you got to learn to do that because if you assign meaning to it, like it’s supposed to change you, you won’t find Do you have to be convinced that what I’m saying to you is no more complicated than what I said? Let’s go through the cycle. Are you breathing? Yes, I’m already breathing. Where? Oh, somewhere in here. Watch it breathe
but only for 20 seconds or 30 seconds. Okay, stop. Now go back to worrying. Now if you were taking my course you would keep a little bit of a journal, a lazy man’s journal, it could be like one sentence.
I did Kenny’s exercise, the thing I was worried about soil got went away for a while, write it down. I did step zero. And suddenly I had vitality that was lacking, because the future was weighing me down. The neurological sense of the future is that it increases gravity. What puts somebody on the couch? The future? What am I going to do in my life? God, nothing sets my ass on the couch faster than that. Right? But you’ve interrupted it. With something so simple. Even an American can do it. Or even an American to do it. Check that out. I’m already breathing. I’ll watch it for like a half a minute. And then I’ll go back to what I was obsessing about. And this is where we need to do some research because I’ve already done the research. My students have changed, not because I sucked them into thinking they could change. But I’ve convinced them how easy it is to interrupt. So we, we did a quiz. I want to show I’m gonna send this to my last class because we did this quiz. All right, I’ve been teaching you this for all these semester. You’re walking down the street in Boston, everything’s fine. It’s a beautiful day. And you’re troubled. You’re troubled, because you’re worried I don’t play good enough. That would be a common thing that’s appropriate to anybody that’s going to Berkeley. So many people play better than me. Oh, there you go. Have I not nailed it for like, was it 7000 students? 6995 of them are thinking this. So many people play better than me. You’re walking down a street, you’re walking down Boylston Street. Pretty soon as coffee places as the dispensary as the Apple Store supposed to be the answer to something right. You’re walking down Bledsoe street, you’re not happy. What’s wrong, the weather is fine, you’re healthy, you’re breathing. You have a background thing working in the operating system. I don’t compare well to other musicians. And no matter how you unless you get high, which some people fall into getting high, they go, Wow, I feel great. Don’t go that way. I mean, don’t get high for that reason. Because you don’t feel good. And getting high will make you feel better. Because like the 60s morphed into the 70s There’ll be become about getting high just to feel normal. In the beginning, it seems to solve something. So I say to them, you’re walking down the street, and you can’t really be happy because when you compare yourself to others, you’re not as good, right? You can’t change that. Don’t even worry about but you can blank it. And they’ll go I say give me the answer and whoever it is I’m gonna buy them a cupcake. Whoever gets this right, they get a cupcake tomorrow. That’s your grade. Okay, so if we graded in cupcakes, they’d be a lot more great musicians at Berkeley. Okay. Anyway, you can quote that. Okay. Anyway, so they go, not care. No, that’s not a right answer. You’re going down the street, there’s no problem. You don’t feel good. And you can’t change that. But you can blank it and ask the God, they came up with a lot of right answers, meaning they studied effortless mastery. But it wasn’t the answer to this question. The you know, the answer this question, I’ll say it again. And the hint is I said it recently, you’re walking down Boylston Street, everything’s fine. The temperature is perfect. But you’re not happy. You can’t change that. Because your mind is smarter than you are. But you can blank it. What’s the word?
Bradley Vines 1:19:41 Interrupt?
Kenny Werner 1:19:43 Yes, it’s interrupt. I did say it to you only five minutes ago. I’m going into it. And here’s the new neurological discovery. You can’t change yourself. So stop expecting it. But you can interrupt the self that you’re in the habit of Bing. Now, the mind takes a picture of that the brain moments of interrupting what you thought was reality. And it starts to go from a momentary thing to sort of a fork in the road. I could go down to the shithole, which is empowering problems that I have no answers for. But I am breathing. I’ll just watch out for half a minute, then I’ll go to the shithole. The more times you do that, another sort of imagery is you got a wall. That’s the wall between you and reality. On the other side of the wall is the light. You don’t see the light you see a wall every time you interrupt it. Little hole in the wall. At first is little pinpricks of light coming through the wall. That was the interruption. You didn’t know that enlightenment was so easy. You weren’t lazy enough to let an enlightenment come to you. But if you interrupt it, wow. Now I can’t apply the same thing. But suddenly, it’s the absence of everything. Turns out that’s what you will go for. Now go on deal with problems. I’m not as good as certain people I’ll never be as good, of course I could deal with psychologically, is that when you’re going to make your bottom line as a person for self love or self acceptance? Is that going to be it? Well, no matter how much you convince me of a bunch of holistic babble, a walk out of here, I’ll still be pissed off. When I hear someone play better than me. This is how I found it. And however, this master became a massive hit. Unfortunately, it didn’t become that hidden one year, I would have gotten the royalties all in one year. It sells a study 510 1000 books a year. Unfortunately, it’s spread out annually. But it’s so common the problem for musicians. And I don’t want to hear the psychobabble or the holistic Bible, tell me how I can change it. I say you can’t, you’re never going to feel good about yourself. Because you’re not the player you wish you were, you might feel pretty good about yourself, man, when I obliterate everybody else, when I start to play, that makes me happy. Believe it or not, those people suffer from as much bipolar and anxiety as the people. That’s a that’s a clue. The propensity to worry is a neurological condition. And guess what effortless mastery has respect enough to say you’re not going to change it. But you can interrupt it. And what I discovered by just going intuitively like this, is that the more people interrupt it, the more it becomes a fork in the road, those little pinpricks of light starts to look a little more like Swiss cheese. Wow, this these areas of light, because I don’t have to do this to myself. But if I do do it to myself, which I can’t control, I can always interrupt it at least. And the widening of consciousness continues. But very incrementally, that’s why a campaign forget New Year’s resolutions, they suck. They’re too broad. And very rarely does anyone ever carry through a New Year’s resolution. So it’s it’s like about a point, it’s got less point and putting a pumpkin on your thing during Halloween has no point because you’re not going to do it. The broadness of your hopes, ensures the the dilution of them of the solution, the dilution of the solution. And the more you limit the area that you will just temporarily interrupt. The more you introduce a neurology to the mind that changes through interruption, but never through the actual presumption of change.
Bradley Vines 1:24:15 So you come in through the back the backdoor into into behavior change.
Kenny Werner 1:24:20 No, I kind of think 20 said, Well, you know, what could I do? I can’t commit I never practiced. I mean, yeah, there might have been two or three days I practice 40 minutes in a row. Actually one semester at Berkeley. I was so happy to be there. And I was the only time I did have a piano I walked out have one street every day to go into a practice room. I said, I can’t believe this. I’m practicing. But that wore off. You go back to the neurology you’re used to which is not practicing. But hating yourself because you don’t practice that goes back to childhood. You know, and so on neurological pathways, if we want to narrow it down to something that applies to everything, it is neurology. I don’t care if you talk about God, the devil, sugar, heroin, self esteem before you try to deal with these things as if they were different problems. before all that, you can see it with the technology they now have to pattern eyes and watch the brain.
Bradley Vines 1:25:32 You’ve been very generous and this has been great
In this episode, we present an interview with the magnificent Tommy Campbell. Tommy is a drummer who has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Smith, the Mingus Big Band, and many other world-class musicians. He also leads the Vocal Eyes ensemble, which presents an innovative blend of percussion and vocal performance. In our conversation, Tommy shares his perspective on the necessity of improvisation in daily life and music. He tells us about his time with Dizzy Gillespie, how music has played a healing role in his life, and how he developed his world-famous “porkestra”, which is this delightful polyrhythmic puppet show he performs with squeaky toys.
Bradley Vines 0:00 Greetings all. We’ve got a phenomenal guest today. Tommy Campbell is a drummer extraordinaire, who has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Jimmy Smith, the Mingus big band, and many other world class musicians. He also leads the vocalize ensemble which presents an innovative blend of percussion and vocals in our conversation, and Tommy shares his perspective on the necessity of improvisation in daily life and music. He tells us about his time with Dizzy Gillespie, how music has played a healing role in his life, and also how he developed his world famous poor Kustra, which is this delightful polyrhythmic puppet show of sorts that he performs with squeaky toys. If you ever have a chance to see him doing that, I can just about guarantee, it’ll bring a smile to your heart. Tommy is a wonderful storyteller and a lovely person. Here is our conversation with Tommy Campbell.
Andy Clark 1:17 Both the brain and world become equal partners in the construction of thought, experience, and action.
Alan Watts 1:36 If you describe carefully the behavior, then you cannot do so without at the same time describing the behavior of the environment.
Bradley Vines 1:43 Where are you from originally. And now you’re you’re in New York,
Tommy Campbell 1:49 I live in Weehawken, New Jersey now, which is right next to New York. I’m right next to the Hudson River. Five Minutes from New York City. I’m back and forth all the time, all the time, different hours of the day,
Bradley Vines 2:05 to keep up with you, you can find you at smalls zoo, find you a blue note, find you at all, all the ripe locations. You’ve just had a really rich life and career in music. There’s some really interesting insights that are coming out of the research that are revealing what’s happening in the brain when you or someone like you, an improviser is entering in and out of different states of mind, you could say, and there seem to be some really striking relationships between what’s happening in the brain during improvisation. And what happens during dreams, dreaming, and also, during certain kinds of psychedelic states that are occasioned by psilocybin and, and the like, these kinds of classical psychedelics. So the neuro imaging is now helping us to understand the neurobiology of consciousness and look at the connections across these different states of mind in really interesting ways. And meditation plays into it as well. So that’s, that’s the background
Tommy Campbell 3:21 of a heavy bag. Man. I’m just going along with
Bradley Vines 3:25 trying to learn this to it. I’ve got experience as a neuroscientist and also experience as a musician. So I understand what you’re doing, at least with appreciation. And I understand quite a bit of the neuroscience. I’m trying to connect these worlds basically. You don’t need to know neuroscience to play polyrhythms clearly, you’re managing just fine.
Tommy Campbell 3:50 Yeah, I was just thinking while we were them’s Yeah, okay. But yeah, I just want you to you just leave me on. I just want to, I just want to help Bradley, I just want to help. I’ll never forget how we hit it off. And you know, we definitely vide together and enjoy each other’s company.
Bradley Vines 4:08 So I want to ask you about your experience of improvisation how it has evolved over time and in developed, I’ll be asking about how you help other people discover improvisation. I know you’re a wonderful and experienced educator. Okay, to start off. May I ask if you could just tell us kind of your biography how you got to where you are,
Tommy Campbell 4:36 you know, my upbringing, thank goodness. My, my mom and dad. Emphasis on my mom, but my dad, you know, moved. You moved out when I was 10. So my mom became my dad and my mom. My uncle is Jimmy Smith, a jazz organist. So I you know, I was raised on him without even knowing who he really was, you know, my dad was a he was in the Navy before I was born, and then he was like, he was a lounge singer. Let’s say he did the hotel circuits and and he did play Oregon, but not to have it be three. He played like Hammond M three. And he was really more of a singer, I think, than an organist. But he did play organ and he repaired organs. You repair my uncle Jimmy so many times. So what else? My mom was a My mom was a career. One of the few black career women in our community neighborhood. He was a courthouse clerk. She She was artists. You know, she, she, she typed 123 or 24 words a minute. On one of those, you know, old typewriters shorthand note hand. She was an artist. So, you know, she, she did? She did a lot of advertisements for events, you know, certain events, they would ask her to make a poster, you know, you know, as my sister was very smart move younger, one year younger than me. Very smart. And so smart. I give you one quick example. One day my mother came to pick me and my sister up from school. I was in the third grade. She was in second grade. My sister Karen. We’re getting back into getting a backseat. We’re driving home. My mom turns around. So my mom turns around and she’s driving. I Tommy Karen, how was school today? Find mom. And he said, Tommy, Did you learn anything new today? And I was ready for I was ready for what was the biggest word that I could spell at the time. And that was something and I spelled it out for s o m e t h i n g and of course her being a teacher and my mother. She was so supportive, you know? Oh, Tommy. That’s great, son. That’s a big word for you. You really getting the hang of this throwing? Yes. Excellent. Keep it up, son. And what about you, Karen, Did you learn anything new today? Yeah, Mommy, I learned a new word. And what word is that? antidisestablishmentarianism. A, and she’s, she spelled it out as if she was singing a song. And my mom had to pull the car over, you know, and pull out the dictionary under the seat of the car, you know? Okay, hold on, Cam. Let me check it. Okay. I smell it again. You know? My, my mom had the money to get me in Berkeley. My uncle Jimmy had the credibility and you know, so they work here is that Jimmy Smith’s nephew. So I was accepted into Berkeley. As long as my mom paid, paid for it, and she borrowed money from the bank and so forth. And my sister on the other hand, she got a full scholarship to Boston College and her after her. After her first year, IBM found her and picked her up and had her working at IBM after school, you know, what, three years and then she worked another 20 years at IBM, you know, multimillionaire, blah, blah, blah. Two kids and no, you know, yeah. So. So we were quite the opposite. But you know, we kind of need each each other, you know, she helped me see in what, what she is about. And I guess I helped her see into what I was about, so I have no doubt she passed away of breast cancer when she was 44. Oh, no, my mother passed away. But my father passed away at 56. And my mother passed away at 67 Maybe 68. So my uncle Jimmy, on the other hand, who’s a who’s a jazz musician? Completely? Oh, he lived to be 80. You know? So, um, so yeah, so it adds a little, there’s a little, little background, I guess. I probably got thrown, I’d probably veered off course of your question. But
Bradley Vines 9:44 it’s great to get a sense of where you’re coming from the support and, and also that you’ve kind of felt out where your strengths were early on, with the help of your sister kind of seeing how you Got a balance? And I’ve no doubt that you, you are the coolest and greatest Big Brother of all time.
Tommy Campbell 10:10 I always asked her up and yeah. And so
Bradley Vines 10:13 that’s that kind of thrust you and then through Berkeley obviously it was just off to the races from there for you
Tommy Campbell 10:19 off to the races. Quick story about Berkeley and that is that okay. You know how I felt about school so when I was accepted into Berkeley, I was auditioning by Gary Burton. When I got accepted into Berkeley, you know, I was looking, they said, Well, what, what course you want to take? So they handed me the brochure, and I was looking at the names of the courses. I was looking at the description of the courses they made sure. Okay, up No, that has math in it not doing that. Okay. Oh, God has history. Science and nope, not doing that. Oh, no, that has math in it. And English. Nope, nope. This Oh, how to play your instrument and just be good. That one. And I looked up and it was called instrumental performance. diploma. That’s it. But I just want to play drums. Yeah, yeah. So So I did four years at Berkeley, three, about three months before I was supposed to graduate. Finally, I’m mom’s home, she’s happy, you know, I’m gonna graduate with a diploma, she knew that she knew the difference between a diploma and a degree. I knew, but I really didn’t care. I really did at that time. And even and even now, but that’s, you know, 40 years later. So, three, three, about three months before I’m supposed to graduate. And I already have, you know, a lot of local games that I’m playing with half of my teachers, you know, stuff. And Berkeley called me up to the administration office, and they said, Tommy, we just realized that you’re six credits short, and you’re not going to be graduate. We’re going to have to have you come back for one more semester. Don’t worry, we’ll get your mom to borrow more money from us. And from the bank, we’ll figure out the finances. And I was stunned. And so I’m walking home. And I’m thinking, I gotta call mom and tell her I’m not going to graduate. But I knew I knew if I called her that night, that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I said, I’ll wait until the next day. And the next day, Dizzy Gillespie called me out of the blue and said, Tommy, you want to join the band? We’re going to Brazil. In a week. That’s it?
Bradley Vines 12:46 No, that was not a hard decision. I imagined. No, you had great news to share with your mom. That’s fantastic.
Tommy Campbell 12:56 And later, I went back 10 years later, I went back to teach at Berkeley, you know, they, they asked me to teach air show I was a student from 75 to 79. I was a teacher from 85 to 89. Okay,
Bradley Vines 13:09 so you’ve had a good eight years, with Berkeley in various capacities.
Tommy Campbell 13:16 And the President of Berkeley who expanded it 30 times, from what from when it was when I was a student to President and a Berkeley, Roger Brown. He was my former drum student. It happened. It so happened that he was actually a fundraising specialist who was a drummer, and he wanted a drum lesson from me. So he would come and take drum lessons from me. And he took several, maybe for a half a year or something. He took drum lessons from me. And then later, I looked around and he’s a president and a Berklee College. Wow. So that was what? We were just working on power tools, man.
Bradley Vines 14:04 Yeah, He parlayed para diddles into the President’s role at the university. That’s amazing. You never know what’s going to happen over the person across the way, sitting across from you, indeed. beautiful story. And so I guess you’ve been improvising from the beginning as part of your music practice. But how did that evolve? As you worked with Dizzy Gillespie and later, so many other well, your uncle, I guess to start with, and then so many illuminate fingers? Yeah.
Tommy Campbell 14:49 Yeah. My uncle he was my uncle until until I got into Berkeley. And one of my first classes was called listening and analysis. And he said today we’re going to, we’re going to analyze Duke Ellington. Maybe Stan Getz, and Jimmy Smith. And I’m sitting back going, Okay, I, you know, I’ve heard of at least two of them. And then he started and then eventually you got to Uncle Jimmy was Jimmy Smith and him, you know, and I said, Man, that sounds like my uncle. Yeah, like that. I you know, I didn’t make the connection at all. Yeah, and so I was, I was shocked, you know, that that was the same person. But Dizzy hired me because I because I could play funk. That’s why Harvey. And he, when I was in my second or third year at Berkeley, he came maybe yeah, he came, he drove with his friend, because he doesn’t he didn’t drive well at all. He had a friend drive them up to Boston. And they came to see a group that was called TCB. The Tommy Campbell band, featuring Kevin Eubanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, you know, like, one of my best friends just spoke to him yesterday. And this and that band was like a mixture of funk like, you know, calling the gang Sly and the Family Stone Parliament Funkadelic maybe you know, and, you know, r&b, a Motown What have you found Earth Wind and Fire and the Baja Vishnu orchestra, fusion. And Kevin was a huge Mahavishnu Orchestra. Fan, and we played all my office Yorkers just songs basically. So a lot of so you have odd meters. And you’re improvising on top of the odd meters, you know, so, so a lot of my improvisation comes from there. Technically. You know, and then, of course, playing with Dizzy Gillespie, you know, I got the jazz improvisation going. So, um, I don’t know, really exactly where it started my improvisation. Because, you know, to me, even when we were copying, even as a teenager, when we’re copying songs that we liked from our favorite groups, there was improvisation in those songs, you know, there was short, guitar solo or sax solo or something. And we weren’t good enough to play that solo. Exactly. So we had to improvise it, you know, trying to try to get close to it when that so that’s probably how some some of us started on a amateur level. And then professional level was with Kevin and you know, our Mahavishnu Orchestra, copy cover band, you know, and this he came up and he hurt our band. He listened to both sets, you know? And, and then my first time sitting in with Dizzy Gillespie. You know, I’m already I’m in my second year at Berkeley and I’m already this play salt Pinot student Cornell mine burps works in Cushing, Manteca, you know, and night in Tunisia. And by the third set, they were tired of playing jazz. And when they said, Okay, we’re gonna bring a little Tommy Campbell up there. And we played all funk. Cool in the gang, funky stuff. James Brown, buddy miles down by the river. We didn’t play any Jazz at all. I was all ready to play my brushes and stuff. And we played all fun. And afterwards he does. He took me in the back in the dressing room, and he talked to me, you know? So, you know, what are you doing up here in Boston? Well, I’m at Berkeley. Oh, really? So when you graduate? I say, Well, Mike, I didn’t even I couldn’t even think that far ahead. And I said, Well, I if everything goes right, I guess in two years. So, um, but we what? I wanted to just get that out of the way because I’ve come to a conclusion. Now presently, in New York City, man, if you can’t improvise, you better get the hell out of here, man. I like every roll every regulation. There’s so many, you know, changes last minute changes in the subway and streets and directions and people and oh, it’s crazy. If you can’t improvise in New York, get out. You won’t make it or two. weeks, you won’t make it. Because all the schedules are written out, supposedly. But when you get to, let’s say the subway, for example, you know, in a train to be to see it, and then the after G. And it’s supposed to run this way and that way and by man, you don’t really know until the train pulls into the station man. And when the train pulls into the station, there could be an announcement. Ladies and gentlemen, the F fly, the F train. This is the F train, but we’re running on a line. And it’s going to stop at 61st Street. And there’ll be no more service. So you’ll have to either you know, take the the C train, walk through another avenue and you know, there’s a bus that will take you to another you know, it’s crazy.
Bradley Vines 20:53 So you’re saying improvisation is a part of life.
Tommy Campbell 20:57 In Midtown in Midtown. There’s so many electronic vehicles, bikes, skateboards, scooters, mopeds, city bikes, you know, we didn’t even get the cars yet. You know, I mean, it’s nuts, right? Three wheelers, three and a half wheelers, you know, two wheelers, one wheelers, you know, and they’re going, oh, you know, eighth, Eighth Avenue goes up. Seventh Avenue goes down. Yeah. Ninth Avenue goes down. 10th Avenue goes up. But these bicycles and scooters that they’re like, man, we’re just bicycles. You know, we, we can go anyway, eight months ago, I was coming home from a rehearsal with Nat Abberley Jr. I’m coming home. I’m walking up Eighth Avenue. I get to 37th Street. I’m about to cross but I’m looking both ways. And here comes his bicycle messenger guy going like 22 miles an hour, because there was five witnesses who saw this. And he’s dodging off the sidewalk in between people, you know, back onto the street, into the bike lane back on the sidewalk, you know, and he hits me at 22 miles an hour. Oh, we all fly up in the air. I hit the ground first the bicycle falls on me and he falls on the bike. He immediately he immediately gets up, grabs his bicycle and takes off. It took me 30 minutes to get off the ground. There was five people’s five good samaritan standing over me saying hey, man, you okay, you will call EMS with a blah, blah, blah. I’m moaning. I was going to ground for 30 minutes terrible. EMS people came to make a long story short, EMS people came they gave me the most basic checkup that you ever want to see in your life. You know, it was I said, you want to check the area where the pain is coming from you say oh, no, we can’t do that. So I said, bye bye. And I crawled home and moaned myself home. Literally. When I got home, it took me it took me 45 minutes just to get my clothes off. When I got home. The next day, I suppose we had a gig. From the rehearsal that I did today before I had a gig where in this case on you kind of unusual is that it’s not completely unusual. I get paid in advance sometimes. But this gig, it was a over the over average paying gig. It was a good paying gig more than good. And the leader net hourly Jr. paid me in full at the rehearsal. And it paid so well that I hired a drum roadie to do the gig to do all my drum tech stuff. So So I got two people now that if I don’t do this gig, he’s going to have a drummer that doesn’t know their music and their roadie is going to be out of a gig that he you know, set aside time for. So I said well, instead of going to the hospital like most smart people would do. I did the gig already got paid for it. And like I said I would have been leaving two parties in you know, in. So I did the gig. I told my roadie, man, you’re gonna have to do everything, everything like you know more than normal everything. And he did. I took a three Advil and took a couple of hits. So we do two or three hits a week and I I played with one hand, my with my elbow pinned to my ribs where it was hurting. And I did the gig. I did the gig. The next day, my great friend, Ray Anderson from bonus, took me to the hospital. We get to the hospital, and we did a CAT scan to find out today I had three broken ribs and a punctured lung. Tommy Yeah, tambor sent puncture. Yeah, tender Santo, but it was still a hole in my lungs, and three broken ribs. They had me spent, they had me stay overnight. They had me spend the night they said, because we told them I had, I was booked to do a tour with Ray Anderson in five days later, I was booked to do a European tour. And I really wanted to do it, not only did it pay well, but first and foremost, for foremost, it was Ray Anderson, one of my best friends favorite people, one of my absolute favorite bands to play with. And we were looking, we were looking forward to the store for like, over half a year easily. Couldn’t wait for it to happen. So now I’m trying to we’re trying to figure out should we and can Can I do this tour, we asked the doctors, the doctor said, Look, we’ll keep you overnight. If you if the if the hole in the lungs starts to get smaller, you can go, if it stays the same, it gets bigger. You can’t go shade overnight, the hole got smaller. The next day the doctor walked the hole is almost closed if you want to go he said I wouldn’t do it. But if you want to go you could you could do it. So I went we did and five days later I went on a European tour 17 concerts in 17 days in 17 different cities eating at all the finest restaurants in each city, you know Berlin and Beale or Geneva Hamburg 17 gigs. The first couple of days are moaning every if I if I was just even breathe a sneeze. I would Oh, you know, it’s three broken ribs, you know, and my band members. They can’t they they carry me through it. They did everything mcareavey, they put it on my coat, they opened the door, they carry my luggage show. And he also made fun of me because every time a little shake, they go, oh, you know. So everybody’s happy this morning. So, but each day, because of the music, I was forced to play music that I love and what I love to do, and each day, I got a little bit better each day, a little bit better. And I’m starting to play with both arms down both hands and I’m starting to move a little bit, you know, like, you know, day 10 Maybe starting to move a little to the side, you know, day 12 By the end of the tour de 17 gait I was 80% I was 80% jumping up and down. That’s amazing jumping up and down. The best treatment better than going to stand in the hospital where they would have you hooked on pain better than Shane at home by myself when I got you know, no assistance at all. I was on the road with traveling doing what I love to do. And by the end of that tour, I was 80% great story. The best minutes. So I know I got thrown I knew I feel you all track. But still I had to improvise injured you know, you know, I did the first gig like this, you know, one hand you know, and two feet. You know, I didn’t you know I had to improvise what I normally do. I couldn’t do it and
Bradley Vines 28:35 find a way a new way.
Tommy Campbell 28:39 So, yeah, so So that started with being in New York City. More and more man if you can improvise, man from the music stage right on out to going home to be you know, if you can improvise, you know, your neighbor something street, you know, road closed. red smoke coming in from Canada. You know what I mean? You know, you know, yeah, man.
Bradley Vines 29:11 Yeah, so that’s absolutely apt because this ultimately is it’s a practice that you seem to be doing. We’re always improvising continually. But yeah,
Tommy Campbell 29:24 yeah, I was in New York, but somebody who lives in Deadwood South Dakota, they might say we have to improvise to because you know, there might be a deer one day the next day, next day there’s a bear the next day is exactly whatever you know, alligator you know I mean
Bradley Vines 29:42 that’s that’s that’s a that’s a beautiful story. And also it’s point points to the the pain relieving properties and healing properties of music. We will never know because we couldn’t control study with you sitting and just waiting for the healing and you traveling and touring, but I suspect that moving and hearing the music, it has all of these positive effects on stress reduction. Reduction. Absolutely.
Tommy Campbell 30:16 Yeah, definitely. Definitely. When Dizzy Gillespie was he, when he was in the hospital, his last time, he came out of the hospital, he was very underweight, you know, very thin, His cheeks were sagging, you know. As soon as he got home, he called his guitar player, and he called me and we, he said, Come over, we’re playing, you know, and he started to put his mouthpiece on his lips, and try to get his sound back. And then he just started trying to play again, it’s just like, you know, immediately, immediately came home, you know, hug his wife kissed his wife, and called called us and he started playing immediately, immediately. And it wasn’t until then, he started to started to look like himself. After a couple of days. And maybe a week or two later, he was he was doing his gig again, he was doing his first gig, you know, and, and about three months after that he passed away, you know, but each day you got better and better and better, you know, but, you know, it was time forgot how old he was when he passed away. But, you know, it was his time, but he, you know, he was going to play until until the end, like, like most musicians, you know, most artists, you know, people, most people who, who do what they do what they love to do, they want to you know, it not only you know, it helps them live, makes them happy, but it becomes more physical and mental.
Bradley Vines 31:58 The mental side, and yeah, it’s beautiful. Yeah,
Tommy Campbell 32:04 I know. I’m rambling Bradley. So Real Men Real Me. GM come back to me, you know,
Bradley Vines 32:09 you were one of the first calls that he looked at to you as a musical rehabilitation partner, for example. But that’s really
Tommy Campbell 32:22 so yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And when I saw dizzy, that that made me I mean, I am 100% Convinced that what’s going to keep me alive and happy. And as healthy as I can be. Is playing my drums and playing gigs that I love playing that game said I would do for free. That’s my key. When musicians asked me, Hey, Tommy, were you working? Were you working tonight? Man, I answered the question. But man, I don’t want to call that work. When I just got finished doing before you call that’s working. I was practicing, doing my exercise up and down. And same thing, this learning this song actually learning to bars and a song called Humpty Dumpty, written by a career for me, for me only, that’s what I call work. That’s a personal personal, other people, you know, they have families and kids to raise and you know, I understand they’re going to work they’re going to play their, their their horn so they can make money and also be happy I get it, you know, to do. But for me, and I just gave said that I do do do gigs that Johnny was doing is because it’s paying $250 or whatever, you know, and I tried to make the best of it and get the hell out of there. You know, but to gauge that the gigs that unfortunate because I don’t do many gigs like that most of the gigs I do, I would do it for free.
Bradley Vines 34:06 So you you just spent your practice routine, your time working on two bars of that chick Korea song? Because this gives us some insight on what’s involved in in developing the patience the the focus and and giving time to small bits of material. Is that the case? Is that what you are doing? Is that how you approach your practice?
Tommy Campbell 34:36 Yes, yes, it can be anywhere from one note to a few notes, key notes to bars, affection. It could be a different meter. Let’s say a song is in four, four. Now it’s in five, four, you know, could be instrumentation. It could be you The instruments that I’m playing like, you know, you know, I practice on that. But, but but I could be playing half of that a quarter of that age of that. I enjoy doing gigs, too with just a snare drum in the cymbal. If they let me in sometimes they let me. Yeah, you know, but boy is challenging, because they want you to sound like you have the full set. But I’ve seen some, some of it forces you to get more out of one sound source, you know, especially on the spot in front of people in front of your peers who will look up to you and you know, expecting to hear a certain quality of sound coming from. So yeah, so it’s great when it works. Sometimes it doesn’t know and then like, oh, man, I’ll never play with this a snare symbol again. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah, the
Bradley Vines 36:09 thing you touched on is kind of the joy music you’re you’re you’re playing it’s not work in your mind. And I know that you bring joy to other people because really a lot of it and I’ve seen it you bring great humor and joy to your playing and people just love that. And I wanted to ask you about one thing for which you are world famous the this the squeaky toys that you bring on stage? How you just curious just,
Unknown Speaker 36:43 yeah, the orchestra
Bradley Vines 36:50 How did you come up with that? Like, what was the creative moment of discovery? And then and then how did you develop this just as kind of a case study of your creative process?
Tommy Campbell 37:01 Yeah, um, I was buying a, I went to the dollar store. I was living in Tokyo at the time. And their dollar store is called the Calculate shop. yaku is 100 and yen, juggling shop. I go in there, trying to save some money. You know, my kid is only about two years old. So let me buy some nice, easy simple things for him. I bought a few toys and I’m walking into the cashier. And one of them fell on the floor on my way there and I and Simon some Italian taneous Lee, I stepped on it. And it made a sound that made me go hey, man, and almost sounded like our Hermeto Pasquali, you know, a Brazilian quicker or something. And I said, Man, I’m gonna try this on my gig tonight, man. So I took that it was a little alligator with little alligator, little plastic alligator. And so I kept that gave my son or the other choice kept, I took it to my gig. And the alligator was, you know, it’s thin. It’s not like big and round, it’s thin. And I looked over at my hi hat, cymbals, and I said, Man, you put that in there, put it just put it in there. And we’re gonna go get. And yeah, and I start you know, and I play this little Brazilian pseudo sort of groove. And I got this little, almost fake sounding quicker, you know, Santa, and it kind of went together and the band members, there’s just my first audience, the band members, they liked it. The audience liked it. And of course, they were giggling and stuff. There’s the alligator now in my eye, you know, the next night that I played in that club, one of the customers who was there the night before, brought me a pig. Yeah, now everybody’s sitting in the zone. And they brought me a pig. And it made a sound and everything I said, Okay, let me see what I can do with it. And that and that, and that’s, that’s really how it happened, you know, the alligator first and then a pig. And every time I perform somebody every well, this is like 20 years ago when it happened. So I say every, every couple of months, several months. Somebody gives me a present animal, you know, a duck, you know, a frog, and they all make some kind of little noise. And, and then on along with that, then now I’m looking in pet stores because they’re dog toys. So now I’m looking at pet stores, testing the sound, you know, and I get a few I was in Switzerland, I bought a duck in Switzerland, it was
Bradley Vines 40:03 it was 62 That’s an investment.
Tommy Campbell 40:08 It was 60. In Switzerland, in Geneva. I watch for this way, right? Really 60 $62 I bought another that was somewhere around 40 $40. But that’s doing the high end, most of them range from about 10 to $20. You know, and, and so now when I travel, I go to pet stores, you know, and I got, I got an animal, I got a Animal Hospital in there, some of them are broken one at one wing, you know, one leg, a lot of them blow out their throat because, you know, they, you know, their throat is gone, you know. So, but, and I play in and I do I do this, as you know, I mean, kids love it, I do this elementary schools, they just freak, you know, but, but grownups, they flee just as much, you know, in clubs.
Bradley Vines 41:12 And it just connects, it’s just sound Yeah, you, you bring it to the elements, because you you and your work, you focus on the prime all the voice, you know, through your, your work, the vocalize ensemble and your drum drum voice, and you bring in these toys that you just show, you know, we’re surrounded by surround sound, you know, this, everything is an instrument. Starting with your way you move your voice, it really is, you know, making percussion sounds when you take a footstep, it’s the whole, the whole world is your instrument. So it’s such a beautiful kind of metaphor, and definitely experience to see you do that.
Tommy Campbell 41:56 But a lot of people are realizing that now especially like with things like the iPhone, I mean, you know, you know, now you can become a musician with just a phone. You know, whether or not you’re educated or studied, or how much of a musician you are, that’s another story. But to make music, your own music, all you need is a phone. I, you know, and like you said, you don’t need that footsteps and whatnot, but to but to actually, you know, make a living or make money or whatever, start a band, or use a phone, hey, starting a band. Well, what do you sound like? Well, I’m on Instagram, Facebook, social media, you know, boom, boom, boom, bang, how many hits? How many followers?
Bradley Vines 42:44 So things are changing over time. And it’s interesting to see how that happens. But we’re always going to need the power of rhythm. And it’s good to know you’re there to provide that. Yeah, you’re in, you’re unique and indispensable. You got your warehouse of stories, and you’re a storyteller, which is what musicians can be sometimes. And when we’re lucky,
Tommy Campbell 43:11 I got some stories. Randy, boy, do I have some stories?
Bradley Vines 43:16 I want to hear all of them. But I wanted to ask also about so you’ve lived you lived in Japan for years. And obviously, you’ve traveled everywhere. You mentioned Brazil, obviously Russia and throughout Europe, North America, onward. What is how do you feel different in places when you were playing in Japan and improvising? Indeed, as is part and parcel to what you do, versus being in New York or or being in South America? Do you feel yourself change? How How does your experience change with place?
Tommy Campbell 43:55 Walk it’s a it’s a give and take, it changes you. You know, it will change you first you’ll start to change which will make you know what, you’re going that direction or or it’ll start to change you you know, and you have to go in that direction. You know, for example, you know, the song giant steps? Yes. Right. Yeah, right. Well, I in Japan, you know, some some old jazz musician when I was with dizzy or somebody or SHINee you know, they told me, you know, we’re talking shop, you know, probably on the road in a bus or something on a plane. And you know, there’s a lot of little jazz tricks, you know, in music within the music, you know, that relate to real life, you know, for example, giant steps. The song has 26 melody notes. He has also 26 letters in the alphabet, so why not sing the alphabet on giant steps? So, I kind of brought that to the attention of my Japanese students. And they want to learn English anyway. Not to mention that wanting to learn jazz. So, A, B, C, D, E, rather than A, B, C, D, E, F, G, you know, when you’re seeing it that way, it holds that some of the letters hold. H I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R S, T, U. V, but we’re giant steps. It’s different notes are emphasized, you know, and a lot of Americans who no giant steps, they haven’t they get tongue twisted, say, including myself when I first tried it. So it’s a very tricky and fun thing. If you know somebody who knows jazz or giant steps and ask them to sing the alphabet or giant steps. It’s a little less a little tongue twister, you know, the head to the brain, you know, you want to use it a holding up that G and you don’t when you’re singing. But, but if it works, throughout the whole song, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w x, y, z.
Bradley Vines 46:25 Okay, I know what I’m going to be doing later.
Tommy Campbell 46:29 Yeah, it’s really fun. It’s another fun thing. For you know, your musician, friends, it’s, it’s a ball. So some people get it right away. But more than half will not more than half and they’ll stumble a little bit and shot oh, I’m not gonna you know, you got to put both things together. So it’s a lot of fun. But so in Japan, they went nuts to jazz musicians. They’re, oh my gosh, I can learn my ABCs to ours and ELLs, especially, you know, on giant steps, man, that’s better in a classroom, you know? So because of things.
Bradley Vines 47:11 So you found a way to connect with with people through music? Yeah.
Tommy Campbell 47:16 Oh, man. Oh, by with that, with that, and my vocalize band. I in Japan, I had more vocal students then I did jumpsuits and I’m supposed to be a world class drummer. But man, after that, I had double the vocal students who who didn’t. They didn’t come to me for to learn. Hey, head voice chest voice and technique, vocal technique. I knew nothing about that. But improvising. I know a lot about you know, so they were coming to me, I had a lot of vocal students. So that was fun. And in Japan, in Japan, they loved live music so much. In Tokyo alone. There’s over 250 Live houses before COVID. Anyway, that musicians could go and play live music this morning in New York. More than almost any city. Yeah, just musics amazing.
Bradley Vines 48:14 That’s in Tokyo, Tokyo,
Tommy Campbell 48:17 Japanese, the Japanese government. They had over 3000 concert halls built all over the country for musicians to perform musicians, artists, dancers to perform it. The government had over 3000 of them built. You know, and I don’t mean Shaq or YMCA. I mean, like a concert hall, you know?
Bradley Vines 48:46 Yeah. It’s it’s played an outsize role in jazz history. And
Tommy Campbell 48:52 Ron Carter, he did. He did an unbelievable concert with but he did a amazing performance with a symphony orchestra. And he improvised through all you know, he you know, he played a part in and he was way off of it and solo and, and Jake, you know,
Bradley Vines 49:12 so many interesting things, how you approach teaching, you know, helping vocalist improvise in different languages, and, and so on. I’ve already kept you longer than then I said I would.
Tommy Campbell 49:29 I enjoy talking about it. You should do as much I love playing. So
Bradley Vines 49:33 but I did want to ask if there’s any thing you’re up to now that that people can get excited about and interested in any albums coming out or concert tours or any?
Tommy Campbell 49:46 Yeah, I’m doing I’m doing a lot of different albums recordings. My favorite my favorite solo album has been rereleased on Apple Music. My heart is called. They re released it Tommy Campbell my heart. And I’m very, very, very, very proud of that record. And four of my greatest friends are playing on and the chemistry is great. Five of my, my favorite people, friends playing playing a lot, you know with different people or around when I do a concert with Randy Brecker and, and Charles McPherson in Long Island at the at one of the maybe the Hampton jazz festival there. I, for some crazy reason I don’t get out to the West Coast. Like I used to drive me nuts because two of my greatest friends while one passed away, but the last time I was in Oakland was a Yoshis. And that was like,
Bradley Vines 50:58 come on out. We miss you.
Tommy Campbell 51:01 Yoshi said we did the Hollywood Bowl. Yah, yah. Yah, yah, yah, yah. Yah, I hope to get out there. Get out there. But go a lot of other places
Bradley Vines 51:13 people can find out about you on Tommy campbell.com I think is your website. And you
Tommy Campbell 51:21 Right, right, right. And my my, my gig schedule. I’m always updating it I get gigs that are far in advance gigs are their last minute, and I’m constantly keeping it updated. J campbell.com/geeks.
Bradley Vines 51:37 We’re all gonna go check out my heart. Thank you. So you’ve touched on it a bunch of things about music and health, music and improvisation and improvisation in life in the context of music, and so on. So it’s been perfect and just an absolute pleasure, Tommy, I can’t believe it. So happy to connect.
Tommy Campbell 51:59 Oh, thank you. It’s great to see you, Bradley.
Bradley Vines, PhD, MBA 