Is there such a thing as musical intuition?

[Ron Stern]

Inspired by the "white bread" thread.

I think the intuition thing is hugely oversold. Intuition does not mean something that occurred to you and you can't name the source. For example, if the words "Four score and seven years ago . . . " pop into your mind and you can't remember who you heard them from, it doesn't mean they came from your intuition.

If certain words produce certain emotions, and cause you to respond with a certain emotion, that isn't intuition either. It's reaction. The form the reaction takes isn't intuitive.

In linguistics, it has been shown that certain sounds are the first made by babies, regardless of culture i.e. language. All babies make the same sounds. Further, all babies learn basic grammar in the same sequence, independent of culture i.e. language. After that comes a huge overlay of culture.

It would be remarkable if the situation with music weren't very similar.

When you listen and speak music, you aren't pulling up things at random any more than you are when you speak words. "Music is the most fundamental language" goes both ways. Languages have rules. You can't make sounds at random and expect to be understood.

[cosmic gumbo]

Sometimes you can't make organized sounds and expect to be understood.....

[princeplanet]

Inspired by the "white bread" thread.

I think the intuition thing is hugely oversold. Intuition does not mean something that occurred to you and you can't name the source. For example, if the words "Four score and seven years ago . . . " pop into your mind and you can't remember who you heard them from, it doesn't mean they came from your intuition.

If certain words produce certain emotions, and cause you to respond with a certain emotion, that isn't intuition either. It's reaction. The form the reaction takes isn't intuitive.

In linguistics, it has been shown that certain sounds are the first made by babies, regardless of culture i.e. language. All babies make the same sounds. Further, all babies learn basic grammar in the same sequence, independent of culture i.e. language. After that comes a huge overlay of culture.

It would be remarkable if the situation with music weren't very similar.

When you listen and speak music, you aren't pulling up things at random any more than you are when you speak words. "Music is the most fundamental language" goes both ways. Languages have rules. You can't make sounds at random and expect to be understood.

Yes but it's interesting that out of ethnomusicology comes the realisation that some cultures don't even "hear" the diatonic scale. I'm not talking about Hungarian or Arabic scales as these still contain notes derived from the harmonic series. I mean things like Indonesian music where the scales are collections of seemingly "random" pitches (Pelog) that when analyzed fall in between our chromatic notes with no apparent mathematical order.

This music is "intuitive" to their culture, but such intuition is obviously not common to all humanity. The reverse could be argued for the musical "systems" we've inherited....

[merseybeat]

Hi, very interesting concept!

I personally believe though, that when we are born we have a clean hardrive to fill! Intuition therefore must belong to information that was acquired somewhere along the line and suddenly realized some time later!

Its funny because I was analyzing my playing the other day and having lived in the Middle East for the last 7 years its amazing how Eastern music has crept into my playing (influence?).
Also on top of that I have tended to give my 'organized sounds' mental names like bright!, Moody, Dark, Humorous, bastardo, bitch ran off with my wallet - etc. These are arps/scales, enclosures and particular areas of the neck that are 'friends' of mine! I know what they are going to sound like before I play them so I suppose the answer is YES, musical intuition does occur, especially if you have played particular lines a thousand times before!

Saying that I am actually wary of posting my thoughts here these days as some 'teachers pet' may come along and trash my ideas because I am not a professor! but what the hell, I practice over 4 hours per day and over the last few months I have made fantastic progress! Especially since I employed the guidance of 'Mimi Fox'! What a tutor!

Regards

Eddie

[Jazzaluk]

Saying that I am actually wary of posting my thoughts here these days as some 'teachers pet' may come along and trash my ideas because I am not a professor!
Eddie

That's funny... I wouldn't worry about it though... personally, if I were interested in a professor's thoughts, I wouldn't be looking for them on the internet.

Back to the questions at hand -- I think that intuition is actually a product of our three human centers: mind, body and emotions. If each center has been tuned and balanced properly for the task, no matter what endeavor, then intuition has the potential of kicking in. When it does kick in, it means that all parts are participating and become subservient to intuition, a much higher state of consciousness where the centers no longer compete for dominance but reinforce each other... In sports, they call it the "zone". Unfortunately, when one element disengages, then the intuitive force vaporizes and you are left with whatever centers remain active.

So, I agree with your "blank hard-drive" analogy. Intuition is only a potentiality that will come through a balanced development.

Hows that for psycho-babble.

[derek]

I think you are both right.

[swboy]

I think improvising is intuition.

Here are a few definitions of the word:
intuitive - spontaneously derived from or prompted by a natural tendency.
intuition - instinctive knowing without the use of rational processes
intuition - without the intervention of other ideas or deductive reasoning.

Its defining a type of insight. The opposite would probably be a calculated
or predefined activity ie. playing something you know, or by a set of rules
ie. "always slide into a b3 when the chord changes".

If you're reacting to the chords/rhythm/bassline/melody
and playing what you feel, that's intuition.
Even if you study highly structured exercises, the idea
is generally expressed "forget all that and just play".

[merseybeat]

Some great posts here!

These days I have more or less dispensed with thinking scales! After studying Prof Warnock's material (Yes I do like our profs here! its the apple carriers who annoy me!) I sort of knew instinctively how to change an Ionian/Aeolian into a HM or MM using the same grip and I just got used to it! By omitting certain notes or altering a note or two to superimpose over the chord of the moment I find I can use these grips over anything!

So now Im just into Joe Pass's Major, Minor or Dominant approach!

Eddie

[brad4d8]

I mean things like Indonesian music where the scales are collections of seemingly "random" pitches (Pelog) that when analyzed fall in between our chromatic notes with no apparent mathematical order.

When 20th Century Canadian composer Colin McPhee went to Bali to study their music, he had the first piano imported into the region. After tuning it up he invited the local Gamelan musicians over to check it out. They thought it was a great idea for an instrument, but that it had a boring tuning.
Brad

[cosmic gumbo]

Well, when I play with others, I try to be intuitive, and instinctive, trying not to inhibit what I'm trying to exhibit. Thats cool, but it ain't no rule.

[Ron Stern]

Sometimes you can't make organized sounds and expect to be understood.....

In that case, I don't know why you'd bother.

[Ron Stern]

This music is "intuitive" to their culture, but such intuition is obviously not common to all humanity.

I would say if it's learned it's not intuitive, as with language. Korean children don't learn Korean by intuition.

[Ron Stern]

Its defining a type of insight. The opposite would probably be a calculated
or predefined activity ie. playing something you know, or by a set of rules
ie. "always slide into a b3 when the chord changes".

If you're reacting to the chords/rhythm/bassline/melody
and playing what you feel, that's intuition.
Even if you study highly structured exercises, the idea
is generally expressed "forget all that and just play".

I think there's three things going on. First, there's some sort of impulse to make at least a rhythm, such as when you drum your fingers on a desk while waiting for someone to pick up the phone. Then, there's the experience of music in your life. Finally, as you learn to play, your subconscious associates things and makes suggestions. The result feeds back in as experience of music and so back and forth. Some things are deep enough in the subconscious, and the suggestion is so quick, that it seems to have popped into existence without a cause.

What I am suspicious of is the idea that the suggestions come from some mysterious source other than the impulse toward making music being conditioned by culture. Does the impulse itself amount to an intuition? I'm not aware of any evidence that certain rhythms, melodies or harmonies are universal. For example, breathing can be pretty much unconscious and takes on a pattern, although the pattern is unconscious. But when you sing, you're deciding to breath a certain way. Why do you want to sing? Who knows. But how do you decide what and how to sing? That part is not intuitive. It's the product of the subconscious working on the memory of experience.

Whatever pops out may be difficult to trace but that doesn't mean it was intuitive.

The most interesting case for me is Wes Montgomery. How someone could play things of that complexity without having some systematic understanding is the question. I think the answer is that some exceptional minds have and/or create their own systems, whereas for most, the system has to be created deliberately. How much system you want depends on how much complexity you want.

[cosmic gumbo]

Perhaps you can give an example of any type of human intuition that you feel is valid by your definition.

[Ron Stern]

Perhaps you can give an example of any type of human intuition that you feel is valid by your definition.

I'm suspicious of the term, especially in this context. "Intuition" is often a fancy name for anti-rationality, as in, "I feel intuitively that my destiny is to help das Volk take it's place in history."

There are things which are difficult to put into words. That doesn't mean they can't be, and it doesn't mean they came from a different place than things which can be put into words.

If intuition is that which cannot be expressed verbally then it can't be expressed verbally.

Shakespeare is said to have been a great improviser of words. But he didn't make them up at random, he modeled them on existing words, i.e. on his study of language, formal and informal. Otherwise he wouldn't have been understood.

[princeplanet]

I would say if it's learned it's not intuitive, as with language. Korean children don't learn Korean by intuition.

You would think so, but as someone who takes an interest in Neo Lamarckism,
it is considered possible for certain behavioral traits to be inherited over time. If "weird" scales have been part of a specific culture for centuries, you could be born with an appreciation for them. This would make it "innate" and from there it's just a short hop, skip and jump to "intuitive"..... Not saying it's a perfect theory, but people are born with "intuition" in many respects, eg, sensing danger, sense of direction, emotional responses to certain images or sounds etc. Some such instincts may be universal to humans (in fact all mammals), whilst other more recently acquired ones (in evolutionary terms) may be more prevalent in some cultures rather than others. Early Lamarckism was rejected, but through recent scientific studies (particularly at the Wollongong University in NSW Australia), Neo Lamarckism has shown how DNA can in fact traverse the blood barrier, a biological stonewall long considered impassable.

At any rate, it has made me reconsider the DNA of notions such as "instinct" and "intuition". Who knows, there maybe some long lost tribe in deepest Africa where thousands of years of emotional disturbance has created a psychoacoustic "aberration" in it's members whereby a diminished chord creates a feeling of ..... repose!...

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

So you are saying that because of my parents I'm doomed to have a fondness for polkas?

[princeplanet]

So you are saying that because of my parents I'm doomed to have a fondness for polkas?

Just go with it Big Daddy....

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Amyhowdy, maybe the appeal to intuition is like the topic of Malcolm Glafwell's book Blink. So you develop your improvisational skills to the point where you don't over-analyse, but you are drawing on your experience, even if you aren't consciously aware of it.

[Jazzyteach65]

as an elementary school music teacher (guitar ensemble and piano performance) I have noticed the following (and this comes from my youngest students who are around five years old)

1. Children who have parents that either play or listen to a great deal of music are more likely interested in creating sound.

2. Some children don't have ANY external musical influences in the household, however, they find music as opposed to say, arts and crafts, action figures, sports ect to be an expressive channel. I have several students like this who REALLY excell at music but who have no encouragement at home.

3. Some people have a knack for absorbing musical concepts with little explanation. One of my students has Asperger's and learns musical concepts so quickly, it's frightening, yet he struggles with math and social interaction.

[cosmic gumbo]

If intuition is that which cannot be expressed verbally then it can't be expressed verbally.

In other words, you can't come up with an example. Because you don't know what it is. Blah, blah,blah.....

[Ron Stern]

You would think so, but as someone who takes an interest in Neo Lamarckism,
it is considered possible for certain behavioral traits to be inherited over time.

This sent me to wikipedia to read up on Lamarck. I see the inheritability, carefully defined. The key point is that culture and biology evolve together. Culture is part of the environment, the environment is the theater of natural selection, therefore culture plays a role in biological evolution. How direct is the influence would be the question, very difficult to determine.

If "weird" scales have been part of a specific culture for centuries, you could be born with an appreciation for them.

Or at least the characteristics that made them attractive to your ancestors. There is the question: why are people affected differently by music? I mean in general. At one end of the spectrum are people who simply don't "hear" it at all, if you know what I mean. If they hear a dog bark, to them that indicates the presence of a dog, and maybe some associations and memories involving dogs. Play Bach for them and it indicates no associations or memories of anything because it never touched them in the first place.
So appreciation of music could be tied to an organic cause, you would have some people with a lot of it, some with an average amount, and some with none. What will be the effect of culture on the distribution of the trait? Hard to predict. What has been the effect, i.e. in the past? At least there is some data, although the diversity is gone. It's no longer possible to study people who haven't had contact with western music.

At any rate, it has made me reconsider the DNA of notions such as "instinct" and "intuition". Who knows, there maybe some long lost tribe in deepest Africa where thousands of years of emotional disturbance has created a psychoacoustic "aberration" in it's members whereby a diminished chord creates a feeling of ..... repose!...

Exactly!

[Ron Stern]

In other words, you can't come up with an example. Because you don't know what it is. Blah, blah,blah.....

The question is whether it exists at all. I don't define it as something which can't be expressed in words. Some people do. I'm just pointing out that by that definition it can't be defined, which is a curious definition, and one which makes it difficult to answer the question.

[Ron Stern]

Amyhowdy, maybe the appeal to intuition is like the topic of Malcolm Glafwell's book Blink. So you develop your improvisational skills to the point where you don't over-analyse, but you are drawing on your experience, even if you aren't consciously aware of it.

Haven't read it. But I tend to agree with the idea that improvisation is in large part the result of developed skills. The idea, especially in music, is to keep it flowing, because in music, it has to flow in time. The skills have to be deep enough in memory so that they operate faster than conscious analysis. Also, the subconscious, or something, causes these skills to operate in ways that are individual to you, and at any given point, may be new to you. That's the really fun part, anyway.

I used to horse around with photography. I would try to follow the lessons of books and teachers, with more or less success. From time to time, an "accident" would occur that would seem more interesting than weeks and weeks of analysis and practice. But there was nothing intuitive about it. I have no intuitions about what the various substances and chemicals will do. Now, in the days of digital imaging, do you know by intuition which buttons to push?

[Ron Stern]

Some people have a knack for absorbing musical concepts with little explanation. One of my students has Asperger's and learns musical concepts so quickly, it's frightening, yet he struggles with math and social interaction.

This suggests to me that there is some hard-wiring of the brain for music.