Discipline and Intuition

I was struck by an idea that Alan Alda presented during one of his "Clear + Vivid" podcast interviews. He was talking with his guest about stand-up comedy, and his guest mentioned a very strict kind of form for improvisation that he learned back in the early days of stand-up comedy. It involved using a phrase suggested by the audience, and that phrase had to occur at a specific time in the improvisation.

Alda added the notion that when you need to use discipline to organize something it stimulates the part of the brain associated with intuition.

This struck many nerves for me, both as a practicing and performing musician and as a composer.

I find that when I record myself practicing something while paying attention mainly to musical flights of fancy (like dynamics, expression, vibrato, sound), it never sounds as musically interesting as it does when I focus mainly on rhythm, maintaining an efficient bow stroke, and concentrating on the physical aspects of the left hand.

When writing a piece of music or making an arrangement I always get my best ideas when I am forced to stay within certain guidelines. Sometimes those guidelines involve avoiding instrumental difficulty, and sometimes those guidelines involve an external organizing force like a piece of film or a particular time frame. Sometimes those guidelines involve making my way from one tonality to another, and sometimes they involve staying within a given form (sometimes of my own creation, and sometimes not).

Twelve-tone music may not be great to listen to (at least the twelve-tone music written by mere mortals), but it is really stimulating to write. All that structure releases a lot of whatever chemical is associated with intuition. But writing scale-based pieces, working out species counterpoint problems, and writing fugues seems to do the same thing for me.