The Science of Inspiration

Jonah Lehrer, science-writer extraordinaire, walks us through recent research shedding light on how we can become more creative people.

He begins by breaking creative "revelations" into two different categories; inspiration from relaxation and inspiration from perspiration.

Some ideas will only come when you're not focused on the problem. Researchers found that watching stand up comedy clips or having a beer before trying to solve creative association tasks increased performance by 20-30% over the control group.

What explains the creative benefits of relaxation and booze? The answer involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. Although we live in an age that worships focus—we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate, chugging caffeine—this approach can inhibit the imagination. We might be focused, but we're probably focused on the wrong answer.

And this is why relaxation helps: It isn't until we're soothed in the shower or distracted by the stand-up comic that we're able to turn the spotlight of attention inward, eavesdropping on all those random associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain's right hemisphere. When we need an insight, those associations are often the source of the answer.

This research also explains why so many major breakthroughs happen in the unlikeliest of places, whether it's Archimedes in the bathtub or the physicist Richard Feynman scribbling equations in a strip club, as he was known to do. It reveals the wisdom of Google putting ping-pong tables in the lobby and confirms the practical benefits of daydreaming. As Einstein once declared, "Creativity is the residue of time wasted."

The other type of creative task involves a long, steady grind on the problem. We know this as the "two measures that took fifteen hours to write." They're nasty beasts, yes, but ones worth fighting.

But wait, aren't those two methods completely opposite one another? How do we know which way we should try to solve our problem?

The good news is that the human mind has a surprising natural ability to assess the kind of creativity we need. Researchers call these intuitions "feelings of knowing," and they occur when we suspect that we can find the answer, if only we keep on thinking. Numerous studies have demonstrated that, when it comes to problems that don't require insights, the mind is remarkably adept at assessing the likelihood that a problem can be solved—knowing whether we're getting "warmer" or not, without knowing the solution.

This ability to calculate progress is an important part of the creative process. When we don't feel that we're getting closer to the answer—we've hit the wall, so to speak—we probably need an insight. If there is no feeling of knowing, the most productive thing we can do is forget about work for a while. But when those feelings of knowing are telling us that we're getting close, we need to keep on struggling.

And there's even more insight within the article as Jonah walks us through important factors for kick starting our creativity.

One of the keys to being more creative is immersing yourself in new and diverse experiences.

Steve Jobs famously declared that "creativity is just connecting things." Although we think of inventors as dreaming up breakthroughs out of thin air, Mr. Jobs was pointing out that even the most far-fetched concepts are usually just new combinations of stuff that already exists. Under Mr. Jobs' leadership, for instance, Apple didn't invent MP3 players or tablet computers—the company just made them better, adding design features that were new to the product category. 

And it isn't just Apple. The history of innovation bears out Mr. Jobs's theory. The Wright Brothers transferred their background as bicycle manufacturers to the invention of the airplane; their first flying craft was, in many respects, just a bicycle with wings. Johannes Gutenberg transformed his knowledge of wine presses into a printing machine capable of mass-producing words. Or look at Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with their famous search algorithm by applying the ranking method used for academic articles (more citations equals more influence) to the sprawl of the Internet.

By seeking out new experiences, our status as an outsider may even allow us to solve someone else's unsolvable problem.

At 3M, engineers are typically rotated to a new division every few years. Sometimes, these rotations bring big payoffs, such as when 3M realized that the problem of laptop battery life was really a problem of energy used up too quickly for illuminating the screen. 3M researchers applied their knowledge of see-through adhesives to create an optical film that focuses light outward, producing a screen that was 40% more efficient.

Such solutions are known as "mental restructurings," since the problem is only solved after someone asks a completely new kind of question. What's interesting is that expertise can inhibit such restructurings, making it harder to find the breakthrough. That's why it's important not just to bring new ideas back to your own field, but to actually try to solve problems in other fields—where your status as an outsider, and ability to ask naive questions, can be a tremendous advantage.

Finally, we can embrace the Buddhist concept of the beginner's mind to discover new islands of thought. The beginner's mind is a way of approaching a problem not as a seasoned expert but as a fresh apprentice, eager to learn and willing to ask "stupid" questions that challenge assumptions. When composer Bruce Adolphe wrote his first cello piece, the piece was deemed unplayable because of an "impossible" chord written into the piece. But famous cellist Yo Yo Ma sight read the piece and nailed it.

Mr. Adolphe told Mr. Ma what the professor had said and asked how he had managed to play the impossible chord. They went through the piece again, and when Mr. Ma came to the impossible chord, Mr. Adolphe yelled "Stop!" They looked at Mr. Ma's left hand—it was contorted on the fingerboard, in a position that was nearly impossible to hold. "You're right," said Mr. Ma, "you really can't play that!" Yet, somehow, he did. 

Other recent research describes how to jump into the beginner's mind using a method called the Generic Parts Technique.

Here's how GPT works: "For each object in your problem, you break it into parts and ask two questions," explains McCaffrey, who is now a post-doctoral fellow in UMass's engineering department.

"1. Can it be broken down further? and 2. -- this is the one that's been overlooked -- Does my description of the part imply a use?" So you're given two steel rings and told to make a figure-8 out of them. Your tools? A candle and a match. Melted wax is sticky, but the wax isn't strong enough to hold the rings together. What about the other part of the candle? The wick. The word implies a use: Wicks are set afire to give light. "That tends to hinder people's ability to think of alternative uses for this part," says McCaffrey. Think of the wick more generically as a piece of string and the string as strands of cotton and you're liberated. Now you can remove the wick and tie the two rings together. Or, if you like, shred the string and make a wig for your hamster.

Awesome.

It's truely wonderful to be alive in a time when we're beginning to unravel the mysteries of creativity so that we can become more creative, enlightened versions of ourselves.

Brainstorming Doesn't Work

Johan Lehrer's article in the New Yorker lays it out bluntly.

...Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, has summarized the science: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.”

This provides some interesting insight into the dynamics of group creativity. This further develops my earlier thesis describing changing social dynamics as the primary cause of "lame supergroup-itis".

But there's more nuance to this story than outright dismissal of brainstorming. One of the defining factors of brainstorming, according to it's creator, is not allowing negativity as it supposedly stifles creativity. This is wrong.

According to Nemeth, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong. Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive. True creativity requires some trade-offs.”

Sometimes blind positivity isn't the best answer.

As the article continues, researcher Brian Uzzi studied Broadway musicals to develop a measure Q of how familiar different artists were with one another. The higher the Q, the more familiar the artists are with one another and vice versa. After running the data to analyze Q scores with relation to the success of these musicals, the results were stunning.

When the Q was low—less than 1.7 on Uzzi’s five-point scale—the musicals were likely to fail. Because the artists didn’t know one another, they struggled to work together and exchange ideas. “This wasn’t so surprising,” Uzzi says. “It takes time to develop a successful collaboration.” But, when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation.

...The best Broadway shows were produced by networks with an intermediate level of social intimacy. The ideal level of Q—which Uzzi and his colleague Jarrett Spiro called the “bliss point”—emerged as being between 2.4 and 2.6. A show produced by a team whose Q was within this range was three times more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced by a team with a score below 1.4 or above 3.2.

If these results were to hold true across the creative spectrum, they could explain countless musical phenomena.

• Could this be why so many "legendary" acts tend to flame out after producing their masterpiece instead of producing two masterpieces many years apart?
• Is this at fault for the sophomore slump?
• Is there an optimal creative lifetime for a band?  I suspect yes.

Profound food for thought.

Is it time to reevaluate some of your band's procedures?

Tear Down

We tore it all down. Everything.

Two years of blood, sweat and beers washed away. After painful deliberation, we decided to drop every song Onward We March wrote for our first EP, The Golden Vine. No more playing these songs live.

It hurt, mentally and financially,

But it had to be done.

The idea for our music was to have a concept running through all our albums (similar to Coheed & Cambria), since we're all about depth in our music. But this story was the child of our departing singer, and it felt wrong to try and raise it as our own. The lyrical style, too, was all his.

It hurt, but we realized we would have to give up all we've done so far to start fresh with our new singer.

Which is ok.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post about getting songs stolen, it's not an individual item that makes you important, it's your entire body of work. If you want long-term success in music, you have to have a legacy of great work.

Otherwise you're just a one-hit wonder.

Why is Heavy Metal an Acquired Taste?

Who wrote the first metal song?

Forget Sabbath. Blue Cheer? Yeah right. Not even Celtic Frost has anything on Igor Stravinsky.

Back in the misty land before vinyl, Stravinsky wanted to challenge his audience like never before. He wanted to reshape the public's opinion of what a song could be.

On May 29th, 1913 he premiered The Rite of Spring (Wikipedia).

There was a riot.

Police couldn't stop the fights. It was a classical mosh pit.

What was so different about this piece? Classical concerts are't really known for these shenanigans. The few times I've been they feel so proper that even clapping seems inappropriate.

First off, this piece features heavy doses of dissonance and polyrhythms. Sound familiar?

(side note, one year later The Rite of Spring was a smash hit with the public. That's like Blues Clues featuring Slayer as a musical guest)

When music is totally predictable and simple, it's reallllly boring. When music is totally unpredictable, it's stressful because your brain is trying desperately to find patterns in the chaos. (Previous Post) The music that really takes us over is music that walks the thin line between predictable and unpredictable.

All your expectations for what music can actually be and do are constructed from what you've heard in the past. As you become more and more enthralled with music, your library of knowledge grows. There's a reason that effective children's songs are simple and repetitive. Kids don't have the vast mental library of musical ideas like adults do. Because of this, the songs are simple and pleasing so the patterns are easily recognizable. (Infants smile when they hear perfect fifths and frown when they hear diminished fifths. Can't find the article at the moment.)

Now take that same baby and have it grow up with dad playing Judas Priest and Opeth on the ride to daycare and the child will start to become more familiar with the patterns and cliches of metal. The child would, so to speak, build up a tolerance for thrash, scream and lyrics a teenger would write in the margins of history homework.

Metal is an acquired taste because things like dissonance and polyrhythms don't come naturally, especially to non-musicians. It's all about developing an understanding of the bitter flavors of the beer and how they play off each other to create a symphony of hops and alcohol.

So you see, liking metal is a sign of sophisticated taste! (Haha, kidding!)

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Hat tip to Radiolab for introducing me to the Rite of Spring. If you want to REALLY stretch your brain with one of the best produced podcasts on the planet, I HIGHLY recommend you start listening.

Of Unicycles and Songwriting

Unicycles seem magic. Somehow a stick with a wheel on it being used as a means of transportation seems inefficient. But it works. A good friend of mine decided to take up unicycling as a hobby (?) a year back and now regularly commutes to work on it. He wants to start a unicycle crew and roll around town clowning on those with two or more wheels.

Yeah.

To an outsider, unicycles seem magic. But really it doesn't take anything more than practice and strong knee pads. It's a skill. Sure, you can read articles on unicycling, watch youtube videos of professionals in action, or purchase "super high-quality" unicycle accessories to try and get better. But it's a skill. You get better at unicycling by unicycling

The same goes for songwriting.

Is it any surprise that the great songwriters of our generation have massive song catalogs? Sure, there's trash in all vast archives, but that doesn't matter when you create songs that become cultural touchstones. 

Let's get down and nerdy.

Think of song writing skill as a percentage of good songs, similar to a free throw percentage. Assume you've got a songwriting skill of 7%, meaning whenever you write a song you've got a 7% chance of it being "good" as determined by your audience. If you only write five songs a year, what are your chances of putting out a decent album? What if you write five songs a month? A week? 

What matters is both your songwriting skill percentage AND the number of attempts you make. There are limits to how good you can make your songwriting skill through laboring over a single song, studying, or otherwise avoiding writing songs. If you want to be good at a skill, practice it! This should not be hard for musicians to understand.

And as you increase the number of songs you write, you'll get better too. Going from five songs a year to ten songs a year gives you more practice writing, performing and editing these pieces, giving you a stronger idea of what a good song is and is not. You'll understand your strengths and weaknesses, and how best to leverage the talent you've got to create a memorable piece.

If you want to write good songs, write more songs. 

Side Project: The Great Nothing

To blow off some creative steam while the The Golden Vine slowly coalesced, I decided to buy a bare bones copy of protools and put together an ambient / doom side project to give my OWM writing skills a rest. Sometimes the best way to get fire up your creative energy is to do something new and totally unrelated to what you're accustomed to do.

I'm very pleased with the result of this project, and I feel very revitalized to start writing for our next album already.

The Great Nothing is a 20 minute, four movement piece about the creeping of nihilism that haunts our steps towards improving the world. Time coldly erases all. It is about facing the part of ourselves that wants us to fail at any cost. It is a scary piece, for sure, but ends with hope. The fight can never be won but we must fight regardless, for all we have is our actions. We must be good.

We must be good.

In this song, I play using only guitars I've built (a doubleneck bass/guitar and a p bass), my voice droning, and sound effects from objects in my reach including a squeaky chair and a computer keyboard. I avoided doing multiple passes on each track to correct mistakes, it felt better with chopped and chipped notes. The musical lines are threads of thought, attempting to make sense of The Great Nothing, with imperfect results. No matter, minute details are of little importance. It's about the journey, and it's about the cause.

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This EP/really-long-song is best administered in a quiet room with headphones. I made the track downloadable so you can carry it to wherever would be best to listen to it.
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It's a personal journey.

I won't name the movements. I won't explain the stories behind each section. I won't impose any more meaning beyond what I've said.

Like all of life's experience, it's only you who can imbue it with ultimate meaning.

It's a personal journey.
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http://soundcloud.com/derekowm/great-nothing

Communication

We compose our songs initially using tab writing software so we can write parts for everyone and play with more complicated ideas. Plus, it's fun to write parts you can't even play without massive amounts of practice.

In the process of passing around ideas, I noticed that some (what I thought were) seriously good ideas were flopping. It was frustrating, especially when I had that feeling of knowing this song was good.

So I began to ruminate, and after many cups of tea I realized something. We all saw the same music file, but only I got the full picture. I was hearing a different song than everyone else. Every time.

Although I wrote in a guitar part or a bass part, the rest of the instrumentation I didn't transcribe. Even though they were an integral part of the song, I assumed that the drum parts were obviously implied complements to the melody I wrote down. "Why bother writing them down? Everyone knows what I mean!" And another song would flop.

Bad assumptions kill communication. By not completely transcribing the music I heard in my head to the software program, I was effectively "spking n brkn st n o ne cld ndrstn me." Talking like that is not persuasive. Hearing incomplete, stuttering music tracks is not moving. It is not fair to your song to improperly communicate it.

Effective communication is clear. Don't mumble. Don't make assumptions. Spell it out.

Against Virtuosity

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When we were a young band and had only four songs, two of them had bass solos. (What can I say? I love me up some soloing: the spontaneity, the intensity, the release.) I always felt like a champ after pulling one off, yet the crowd response was tepid. (Insert joke about bassist) I couldn't figure out why. I executed it perfectly!

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You ever meet that kid in high school on debate team? You know the one I'm talking about. He had a giant vocabulary and wasn't afraid to whip it out at the slightest provocation. This loquacious, verbose and obtuse  individual filibustered colleagues with his voluminous repertoire of lexicon in perpetuum.

People thought he was smart. And a dick. With no friends.

What was his goal in hedging his language like this?

The purpose of speaking is communication. Using unnecessarily complicated language obfuscates the message. Don't put big words in sentences just because you can. Likewise, don't put solos or crazy-technical passages in your music unless they're required to convey the message of your song. It's about the music, not how fast you can sweep-pick scales in 17/8.
 
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Confession: I was that kid. Still recovering.

Creating vs. Honing

The more time you spend as a musician you'll begin to realize the importance of listening to your moods. Sometimes practice will be super-productive, other times you might as well be sniffing paint it's that pointless.   

Do you know the difference between the moods of creativity? 

-=Creating is when you're drawing new ideas out of the great cosmic jar of idea-plasm and giving them a basic shape. You do not criticize ideas during this phase, it's pure idea generation. Neuroscientists have shown that during phases of pure and spontaneous creation, your brain turns off self-censoring and inhibition. A new idea is highly disruptive and challenging to your current schema of the world, so it only makes sense that your defense mechanisms would kick in to shut down this idea that would cause too much of a ruckus. If you've got an over-active internal censor, you risk shutting down millions of brilliant ideas before they have had time to breathe. This is *part* of writer's block. (To be discussed in a later post)

-=Honing is where you're chiseling and chipping away the rough edges and giving definition to the idea-plasm. This is where you get fussy about how long you swing the third eighth in the second repeat. Unless you're full of more hubris than Kanye, you realize that not every idea is generation-defining, so you weed out the bad ones here. As such, make sure that when you're in this mood you're using it properly. When you're feeling analytical, now is not the time to try being creative and making music, you'll just end up pissed off that you can't come up with any ideas. Go retool an old song or woodshed some scales while your brain is in this mode.



Don't get confused of which phase you're in. It'll stunt your art.