Confession of a Paris rookie: I want to combine jazz & rap — jazzap!

Dear Paris,

You are confusing. I can’t quite figure you out, especially your music taste. While I really appreciate all the wonderful musicians you have hired to serenade me in different locations, your musicians are all over the place. (no pun intended) Despite my confusion, I don’t mind it at all. I enjoy the soulful reggae of Ben L’oncle’s Sympathique, the vibrant enthusiasm of Zaz’s Je veux, and the electric simplicity of Stromae’s Alor on danse.   (click on the title of the songs for a listen 🙂 )

There are some data suggesting that the shape of one’s skull influences music preference due to the differing resonant properties of the person’s skull (Suwangbutra et al, 2013). I may never know why I prefer classical over screamo or why you have such diverse preference. I guess you’re that type who listens to everything.

parc flor de paris, place full of funk and jazz.

However, it would be a sin not to mention the funky side of you. For eight consecutive weekends in the beautiful parc floral, the Paris jazz festival pleases both jazz aficionados and the rookies (like me) to enjoy the diversity and history of jazz. This past Saturday, Max, Dr.Frenzel and I were able to swing by and embrace its dynamic colors. Under the warm embracing sun, we had a mini picnic on the lawn while listening to Guillaume perret & the electric epic and Céline Bonacina Trio. Unlike any other genre, jazz offers the freedom in which the musicians can deviate from the written sheet music. There is some organization and planning, such as the chord progression or the specific pattern of rhythms that loosely outline the performance, but there’s always that unknown factor. The unpredictable part (like the spontaneous saxophone solos or that mystery flavor of Airheads you’re really curious about) is a challenging yet an exciting process for both the musician and the audience.

music + beautiful weather + picnic food + good people = THE life

So what happens if you put bunch of jazz musicians in a brain scanner? Charles Limb, a doctor & a musician at Johns Hopkins and Adam Braun, the chief of the language section in the National Institute of Health, did exactly that. They wanted to find out the exact brain recipe of this musical improvisation, which they viewed as a form of spontaneous creative behavior (Limb, 2008). They hypothesized that the brain was using ordinary mental processes in a new funky combination, similar to how ordinary food items can be combined to create a bizarre flavor, such as asparagus and banana. To summarize, they wanted to see how the brain acted under well rehearsed process vs spontaneous process.

Six full-time male professional musicians, all proficient in jazz piano, participated in the study. Those six musicians all went through four musical conditions while under an fMRI scan (measures brain activity by looking at blood oxygen level at various regions. The activity and the blood oxygen level are positively correlated). The four conditions were….

1. ScaleCtrl condition: playing rehearsed scale (set of 8 notes)
2. ScaleImprov condition: improvising within the same notes as ScaleCtrl of the scale but only changing the order of the notes
3.  JazzCtrl condition: playing rehearsed jazz sheet music
4.  JazzImprov condition: improvising within the same chord progression of the JazzCtrl, changing the order and the rhythm of the notes.

The scale and the jazz condition differ in complexity. ScaleImprov condition, which has one factor to manipulate, is much easier than JazzImprov condition, which has two factors to manipulate. These four conditions not only reveal the different brain activity between learned processes and improvised processes but also illustrate how the varying levels of improvisation would influence brain activity.

jazzy musician in her vibrant orange outfit. I wonder what her brain is doing..

Compared to the controls, the fMRI images showed similar pattern of activation for both improv conditions. All six musicians, under the improv conditions, shared these four brain activities..

1. widespread deactivation in DLPFC dorsolateral-prefrontal cortex (DLPFC brain area involved in many cognitive functions like planning, organization, and inhibition)
2. increased MPFC (medial prefrontal cortex) 
3. increased sensorimotor activity
4. gradually decreasing limbic activity (area involved in emotions and memory). 

To further summarize, the musicians were thinking less, planning less, feeling less and were just playing the music. 

This research is one of the first neuroscience studies looking at the neural mechanism of creativity in jazz, and it has already inspired studying another type of improvisation – free style rapping. In addition to the notes and the rhythm, the rappers also have to consider what words to say within a short frame of time, adding another layer of complexity. The overall data has yielded very similar results (Liu, 2012). Jazz musicians and rappers aren’t so different!

what if they can sax it up with some jazzy improv?

What if Armstrong could freestyle rap?

Initially I viewed creativity as an identity that only existed in small fleeting moments, but now it has redefined itself as another beautiful brain puzzle that researchers have solved. I am still in love with the “mystery flavor” of jazz, but I can’t wait for that one day where I get to see the fMRI scans of Kanye West and Jay-Z doing jazzap, a delightful fusion of rap and jazz. Genre of the summer? I think so.

– Sehe Han

References

Limb CJ, Braun AR. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: an fMRI study of jazz improvisation. PloS one 3: 1 – 9 

Liu S, Chow HM, Xu Y, Erkkinen MG, Swett KE, Eagle MW, Rizik-Baer DA, Braun AR (2012) Neural correlates of lyrical improvisation: an fMRI study of freestyle rap. Scientific reports 2: 834

Suwangbutra J, Tobias R, Gordon MS. (2013) Music of the body: An investigation of skull resonances and its influences on musical preferences. Proceedings of meetings on acoustics 19: 1 -5

Image references (from Creative Commons)

http://liquorandkarate.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/KANYE_WEST_JAY_Z.jpg