Creativity in Music

Education and Beyond

Theoretical Framework Summary

 by Dr Phil Bancroft and Dr Tom Bancroft

Video Summary:

^{What follows below is a brief framework
laying out the contents of the paper.}

I. Who are we?

We are Medical Doctors/Jazz Musicians/Improvisers and Composers/Educators who work in...

A) Developing Artistic Practice- ie developing our own artistic practice as Jazz Musicians,
and Composers.

B) Developing Teaching Practice- in our practice as teachers working 1-to-1 with students in helping develop their artistic practice- from beginner instrumentalists/improvisers up to Post-Grad level. But also as Education Resource Developers-
 developing resources and training to  help other teachers (often non-specialists) to develop
 their students artistic practice or creative learning, or to use creativity to achieve wider educational goals.

C) Developing Theories of Creativity; throughout we have been developing and
testing theories around creativity in a process similar to Action Research. Theory, Design, Test, Repeat.

II. Creativity Research and Talking about Creativity

A) The Research Literature on Creativity is amazing and extensive
     but has a number of limitations, and often doesn’t ‘fit’ our work very well.

1. 1. 1. Tends to study successful world-famous creators- often dead white men.
      2. Often based on Problem-Solving models and definitions.
         
      3. Is ambivalent about creativity in education.
      4. Is not so interested in creativity that goes wrong or why- more in‘successful’ creativity

1. 1. 5. A lot of research on the effect of emotion on creativity

i) Ideal emotional states for creativity

ii) Effect of mania, bipolar, depression

iii) Effect of happiness or sadness on creativity

1. 1. 5. Very Little research on effect of creativity on emotion - 'how does being creative make you feel'
         
      6. One example is Csíkszentmihályi's work on Flow- which does link creativity and emotion- 

i) Flow is defined as an ideal state achieved in activities with clear fixed goals
  and clear criteria for success

ii) This means it is not a good fit with many non 'Problem Solving' creative activities - which we loosely term 'Stuff Generation'.

B) Talking about Creativity is Problematic

1. 1. 1. Csíkszentmihályi has a metaphor-
         
         
         trying to describe creativity is like
         several
         
         blindfolded people touching different parts of an elephant, and trying to work out what it is. Very apt!
         
      2. Slippery language, Myths, Misunderstandings, Falsehoods.
         
      3. Imprecise (use of) terms: Confusion between creative processes, experiences, outputs and outcomes.
      4. We often collapse into talking about our own personal experience and relationship with our own creativity- and whilst this is very important it acts to prevent developing a shared understanding and set of shared  'fit for purpose' concepts and terminology.
      5. Ignorance of improvisation in the dominant western classical model (INI) of music-making.

 

III. 3 Challenges of Music Creativity

brain Overload in Public

We find this a useful concept in music education. Music has a unique capacity to overwhelm people - even when there is no creative content. A simple song with actions one may sing to children in nursery requires many different tasks to be completed simultaneously - SINGING, WATCHING, LISTENING, TRACKING RHYTHM, TRACKING MELODY/PITCH, MAKING SOUND, BREATHING, MOVEMENT/ACTIONS, TURN TAKING, etc etc  Adding in CHOOSING/CRETING and FEELING JUDGED can easily tip an activity from being manageable to being overwhelming. We can see students and classes Overloading because performance suddenly and globally fails.

We started with this concept aka BOIP and then broke it down into different challenges that all contribute to Brain Overload in Public.

We believe that Music Creativity* contains three main challenges:

1. Intinsic Emotional Challenge

We believe being creative is intrinsic emotionally challenging, as is doing anything in front of an audience. There are many components to this challenge: Creativity involves choosing - the collapse of millions of possibilities down into one actual outcome, the letting go of what one expected to happen (no matter how vague), and the acceptance of what is happening, Along with this are issues around quality and judgement -  the expectation that (as adults/in school) once creativity is over judgement tends to follow. People can easily feel judged in any setting with other people present even in the most simple warm up - especially when they don't know the other people in the group, or if they are fragile, vulnerable, traumatised, or low on confidence. Creativity as a process, or even the anticipation of it, will invariably make us feel things, Often these feelings can be negative, The emotional challenge is very related to mindset - creativity can feel very difficult or almost impossible in one mindset - one can be dominated by questions of "do I know I enough? what is the right way to do this? etc". In a different midset or emotional state creativity can feel almost effortless. Understanding and managing the emnotional challenge can transform creative processes and outcomes. Sometimes just understanding that 'it feeling bad doesn't mean it is going badly" can be transformational.

2. Information Processing Challenge

In addition to the emotional challenge of creative tasks, there is an information processing challenge. This is very clear with improvisation. What components are we building things from?, are we doing it in real time?, AND with a pulse?, are the chords/scales/note choices changing?, how many ideas am I working with?  Am I playing with a good sound and rhythm? What note/sound am I going to play next?

How do I cope woith all these things going in my head?

But also when doing non-real creativity processes - like composition - we are managing and processing information, strategies, content, desired or potential outcomes, imagined audiences or judgement.

If you are asking people to do new things, or process new ideas or kinds of information, then the level of challenge increases quickly and multiplies with any emotional challenge of the creative task.

3. Meaning Making Challenge

One can overcome the first two challenges - which is no mean feat - and still create music which has little or no meaning. With student improvisers we call this 'noodling' - when they play up and down a scale but it doesn't really go anywhere. We believe a large proportion of meaning in music is generated by FORM (ie pattern making) - via four form-related forces : Repetition (Do It Again), Contrast  (Do Something Different), Variation (Same but Different), Resolution (create a feeling of ending) . Form operates in a 'fractal' nested hierarchy - so Notes are arranged into Ideas which are arranged into Phrases, which are arranged into Songs. These forces can be used in flexible ways when one is creating things.

Alongside these forces is the need for management of idea length and stickiness - ie making sure you ideas are the right length and memorable enough/simple enough to be useable with the available cognitive bandwith. There is also the issue of context stability - ie keeping track of where you are syntactically in the bar and phrase and avoiding 'losing track' type errors. It is interesting how these errors happen to both beginner and advanced improvisers when they are working near their 'overload limits'.

So you can think about repeating notes, ideas, or phrases in creating Improvisations or Compositions.  These concepts can be used in specific programmatic ways and in general idiomatic ways. Using Ideas of Forms in educational activity design supports the creation of meaningful outcomes - which are recognisable to the student no matter whatever their level of learning WHY? because our brains are set up to recognise the meaning generated by form. It is why we enjoy and respond to music from the earliest age.

Teaching an understanding of these 4 Forces of Form, along with an awareness of the issues of idea length/stickiness and kinds of context instability/losing track errors -  supports students in addressing the Meaning Making Challenge in music creativity.

* and arguably all 'stuff creation**' type creativity - not just music creativity.

 **Stuff creation is a type of creative process that is qualitatively different from 'problem solving' type creativity.

III. Definitions: Outputs vs Outcome vs Process

To improve clarity of discussion, we propose 6 definitions.

1. 1. Output-  the concrete end result of a creative process- eg a piece of 'stuff' eg work/music/art, or a new process or solution.
   2. Outcome- full range of consequences including: the output, how it felt for all involved during and afterwards, and how we evaluated it looking back.
   3. Process- 'what we did'.
   4. Experience -'how it felt'.
   5. Intentions - 'what we thought we hoped to achieve'.
   6. Primary Locus of Meaning - which part of the Outcome is most meaningful wrt the goals of the activity - this can vary from being 100% output focussed  "this is a totally original work" to 100% experience focussed  "it really brought the team together".

 

IV. Intrinsic Emotional Challenge of Creativity - More Detail

We believe creative processes possess an intrinsic emotional challenge, felt both by beginners and by experienced creative people.

This challenge is over and above challenges common to other difficult tasks requiring skill on which we might be judged.

This challenge will be experienced differently by different people, depending on many factors including their experience and personality. Often it is experienced as being something that says something about the person - "I can't do this. I don't know enough. I am no good at this."

Understanding that this challenge is intrinsic to creative processes, - "this is not me - Creativity can be tough. This could still end in success!"  - changes how you feel, what you are then likely to do, and what you learn.,

We feel it is important to have the understanding that Creativity is something which:

• has potential positive and negative outcomes,
• can not work, but feels like it isn't working even when it is
• if it goes badly can even have a negative and even traumatic effect on people.

In education asking beginner creatives or unconfident teachers to pursue or lead creative activities without :

a) understanding the impact of the emotional challenge, and

b) providing solutions to mitigate its effects, 

can result in failed creative processes, with negative outcomes,

This can leave both beginner creatives and  unconfident teachers feeling-  'I'm not creative', and 'I'm not doing that again!'.

Why should this be?

V. Models to Explain the Emotional Challenge: Birth Death

VI. Technical vs Emotional vs Processing Challenge

 

VII. The 7 Processes + 2 Toolkits Map of Full-C Creative Process

 

NB Please fill out our survey on the 7&2 map and be part of the research! click here

VIII. Structure vs Freedom

 

IX. Creativity & Meaning

This is a huge area - beyond the scope of this summary or even the full paper.....

1. 1. Problem Solving (PS)- has a clearly defined objective and has defined stages - Preparation/Incubation/Illumination/Evaluation or verification- with Eureka Moment. Some of these processes/stages happen unconsciously and below awareness.
      
   2. 'Stuff Generation'  - shares many features with PS but is different wrt timescale, context, goal, role of unconscious processing eureka experience and is more like exploring a personal aestehtic than solving a problem.
   3. Meaning in creativity - broader than ‘meaning’ of words.
      
   4. Constructivist -meaning created by individual based on own experience, attitudes, beliefs, culture family.
   5. Embodied Knowledge - meaning that comes from a pre-verbal stage, that si known but may not be able to be explained, meaning that is held in the body through physical experiences and learning.
      
   6. Creative Cognition: portrays the eureka type sudden insight as “the sudden unanticipated restructuring of the problem” Finke (1996 p164). meaning derived from comparing pre-inventive structure to banks of (meaning stored in) pre-existing knowledge.

6. Technical Challenge- creating a meaningful output- the concept of ‘meaning’ signifies something different in differentt artforms or domains - AND is constantly evolving as people/artforms/society evolves.

In many models/traditions- eg Big C creativity- true creativity is seen to require prior knowledge

7. Associative vs Syntactic 

Associative- meaning relates to prior knowledge

Syntactic- meaning relates to pattern/organisation not to prior knowledge, meaning is embedded within the creative product,.

8. Primary Locus of Meaning- in Core C the primary meaning is how the interaction feels for the participants - the experience - and the output is almost inconsequential. We don't release and relisten to recordings of parenst babbling with their babies.  Later in Full C Creativity the meaning is embodied in the output - how the creator felt while doing it is a side issue.
   

X. Right Kind Of Knowledge vs Wrong Kind of Knowledge.

1. 1. Wrong Kind Of Knowledge (WKOK)-
      derived from the analysis of finished artworks- alot of theory or critical analysis- processing heavy.
   2. Right Kind Of Knowledge (RKOK)- concise, open, practical, rapid-access, generates options.

 

XI. Full C vs /Baby C Creative Processes

1. Full C- creative person has to deal with full technical/emotional/processing challenge
2. Baby C- large part of technical challenge dealt with by activity leder/designer- to reduce emotional and processing challenge for learner creatives

XII. Examples of Interventions in ABC Music Resources

A) Supported Creativity- 

Split Role, restricted choice, age-appropriate notation, use of form-
repetition/contrast/variation/resolution, visual reinforcement

 

B) Use of IT- creative workspaces, guaranteeing meaningful outputs

^{A film showing a range of Baby C activites:}

C) Use of Shape Notation, AB grid, and Pitch letters

D) Create/Perform Cycle

E) Phrase Building Skills

From pre-musical sounds, actions, single sounds per beat, rhythms, pitches, lyrics

F) Early Improvisation

real-time choosing, stand on icons, conducting- sound silence, call and response,
repeat alternate jumble, Human Piano

G) Teaching Jazz Improvisation- to Undergraduate/Post Grad level

H) Creativity in Jazz Education Small groups 

I) Developing a culture of 'Fear-free' improvisation in Youth Jazz Orchestras

Examples:

_{P4/Yr3 Composition/Performance- Lego project at Clackmannan PS}

_{P6/Yr5 Composition} 

_{P5_6/Yr4_5 Composition/Performance- Professor Leyton project at Clackmannan PS}

XIV. Music Education- Specialism vs Generalism

XV. Core C

 

1. Communicative Musicality
2. Primary Locus of Meaning- engagement and interaction- connectedness- not output.
3. Metaphor of sending out a message to the universe- creativity required to create a unique message.
4. Is this why brains are creative? Is this the centre?

XVI. Reframing Creativity-

1. 1. Evolution through an individual person’s life; evolution through human history
   2. Central role for Core C.
   3. Not problem solving / meaningful stuff generation

XVII. What Is Creativity?

1. 1. Is it one thing? Is it many things? Is it constantly evolving?
   2. Is there a common (set of) characteristic(s)?
   3. What is the role of the unknown?
   4. Multi-dimensional Conceptual space (Gärdenfors) (PB)

Link to our the Full Paper- here.
This is a sizeable resource, so we suggest you look at the Executive Summary first for an overview.