"In other words, the entire evolution of music is a battle over whether rhythm will be driven by the hands or the feet. The brain, I’m sorry to say, exerts no control over this process—although fingers and hips also make their occasional claims."
I like this post very much, but I think you're selling the brain short. First, the brain is m…
"In other words, the entire evolution of music is a battle over whether rhythm will be driven by the hands or the feet. The brain, I’m sorry to say, exerts no control over this process—although fingers and hips also make their occasional claims."
I like this post very much, but I think you're selling the brain short. First, the brain is more than the prefrontal cortex exercising its executive function ("thinking"). It also governs the hands and the feet, and the specialized lobes that prevail there do so in concert with other parts of the brain, including the prefrontal lobe. If you cut us up we're not going to be able to dance at all!
Second, the brain itself is part of the rhythmic orchestra of the body (Gyorgy Buszaki, now at NYU, published his semi-accessible "Rhythms of the Brain" twenty years ago), and its activities negotiate among the many available rhythm intervals we experience that underlie of feeling of what time is and how we are in it and the external realm of sounds that we hear or make.
Your recent post discussing Flow and music ties intrinsically rewarding (autotelic) skill performance to music, and reminded me of an ancient depiction of preternatural skill execution that was described as appearing to follow the beat of ceremonial music. Flow states are "hypofrontal," also involving relative suppression of the prefrontal cortex, but the holistic activity of the brain remains fully engaged. It seems to me the way the rhythmic brain and rhythmic body align in harmony is an underlying theme of both posts. Dance is an easy ground to create a flow state on.
But it's also true that although math doesn't generate the music of flow states, brain rhythms can be analyzed in mathematic terms. That math isn't being imposed on the brain and body, it's a representation of them, and I think it can also be used to create music that the brain and body will find new ways to accommodate their intrinsic rhythms to. I'm actually thinking of the Brubeck Quartet's old "Time Out" album, my initial inability to handle some of the rhythms as an incompetent high school drummer, and the way a combination of initial analysis, over-thought practice, and finally spontaneous performance demonstrated how math can propose non-intuitive ways to embody new rhythms. (And think about how the second movement of the Pathetique Symphony is so incredibly crafted that we are led into 5/4 without ever noticing that the waltz isn't 3/4).
"In other words, the entire evolution of music is a battle over whether rhythm will be driven by the hands or the feet. The brain, I’m sorry to say, exerts no control over this process—although fingers and hips also make their occasional claims."
I like this post very much, but I think you're selling the brain short. First, the brain is more than the prefrontal cortex exercising its executive function ("thinking"). It also governs the hands and the feet, and the specialized lobes that prevail there do so in concert with other parts of the brain, including the prefrontal lobe. If you cut us up we're not going to be able to dance at all!
Second, the brain itself is part of the rhythmic orchestra of the body (Gyorgy Buszaki, now at NYU, published his semi-accessible "Rhythms of the Brain" twenty years ago), and its activities negotiate among the many available rhythm intervals we experience that underlie of feeling of what time is and how we are in it and the external realm of sounds that we hear or make.
Your recent post discussing Flow and music ties intrinsically rewarding (autotelic) skill performance to music, and reminded me of an ancient depiction of preternatural skill execution that was described as appearing to follow the beat of ceremonial music. Flow states are "hypofrontal," also involving relative suppression of the prefrontal cortex, but the holistic activity of the brain remains fully engaged. It seems to me the way the rhythmic brain and rhythmic body align in harmony is an underlying theme of both posts. Dance is an easy ground to create a flow state on.
But it's also true that although math doesn't generate the music of flow states, brain rhythms can be analyzed in mathematic terms. That math isn't being imposed on the brain and body, it's a representation of them, and I think it can also be used to create music that the brain and body will find new ways to accommodate their intrinsic rhythms to. I'm actually thinking of the Brubeck Quartet's old "Time Out" album, my initial inability to handle some of the rhythms as an incompetent high school drummer, and the way a combination of initial analysis, over-thought practice, and finally spontaneous performance demonstrated how math can propose non-intuitive ways to embody new rhythms. (And think about how the second movement of the Pathetique Symphony is so incredibly crafted that we are led into 5/4 without ever noticing that the waltz isn't 3/4).