Body intelligence vs brain intelligence - is this a thing?

Playing Technique
#1

I quite often find that I write a lick or sequence and then I ‘rationally’ work out the best way to pick it.
Then I start wood-shedding it with a metronome, starting off slow and precise and gradually building up the tempo.

I’ve noticed though there seems to be a certain crossover point somewhere in this process (usually when it goes past a particular tempo) where it’s as if my right (picking) hand says ‘naw… I don’t like how you’ve decided to execute this… I have a better way’ and the picking pattern ‘I’ve’ decided on gets modified, usually instead of strict alternative picking a sweep/economy stroke gets added in here and there, or sometimes I’ll find I’ve reversed the initial pick stroke from down to up to make the line fit with inside picking instead of outside and that kind of thing.

The weirdest part of this is that I often only notice I’ve done this after I’ve been playing it for a while or when I film it on my phone and look at the picking hand. I’m often quite surprised to see it’s doing things I didn’t realize I had ‘planned’ at all…

It’s as if my body has decided to override my brains decision in how to play it to find a more efficient way, or at least one that works better for my mechanics, quite without my conscious involvement.

Anybody else run into this kind of thing ?

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#2

OK I realize I’m talking to myself now but I’m reading the book ‘Free Play’ at the moment and came across this passage which resonated :slight_smile:

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#3

I’ve had that happen too. I’ll be practicing something that ends on let’s say an upstroke but when sped up it’ll end on a downstroke. I usually find that my picking hand has decided that a economy pick or a pull-off should be inserted. For example if I’m doing an alternate picked line where the last note on the D string is a downstroke, then 2 notes on G, then switches to D or B my picking hand will almost always do an economy pick to G. But if there’s 3 or more notes on the G it won’t.

Or both hands will team up and say “Hey man, we don’t care about you trying to pick every note and TWPS. We’re throwing in a pull-off right here so can stay in nice comfy DWPS land.” If it sounds good and gets the job done I let them do what they want. Cuz they can strangle me in my sleep :slight_smile:

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#4

Hi,

You are not talking to yourself. I am actually watching the topic because it sounds interesting. Waiting for some experts if we have any in the forum to share their thoughts!

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#5

Yeah a few days ago, while I was practicing a tremolo-like ascending scale, I noticed this: I wanted to repeat each note 3 times, but when going all out I realised that I was inserting an extra note before some string changes so that it became a fully UWPS lick (however, the rhythm became less metronomic).

Warning - this is me being extremely nitpicky with words: I don’t think “body intelligence” is a thing, as the nervous system is always the same. I would guess this high-speed stuff involves a different way of using the brain though :thinking:

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#6

Yep, same thing happens to me. Sometimes it’s frustrating because I’m trying to strictly alternate pick a passage and I keep ending up on the wrong end stroke and when I go through it slow it doesn’t happen. So my picking hand is cheating somewhere.

One way I take advantage of this is when I’m learning a new pattern, once I get to where I can get through the pattern okay but it’s not yet really clean, I’ll start moving the pattern up and down the neck. This pulls away some of my concentration from my pick hand and focuses it on my left hand. The idea is I’m forcing my subconscious to take over my pick hand which I believe helps get muscle memory ingrained.

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#7

Technically, “body intelligence” isn’t a thing. You see, the brain sends signals to the rest of the body to perform in certain ways via the central nervous system. If the body had the capacity to “move the way it wants to” without receiving signals from the brain to do so, then paralysis resulting from damage to the neck and/or the vertebrate in the back would not exist! Imagine that! People with devastating neck injuries that in the real world leave them paralyzed for life, sometimes from the neck down would not exist… Nobody would be paralyzed at all just because the signals from the brain couldn’t reach the muscles since “body intelligence” would take over. It sounds like an interesting idea for a science fiction movie!

I think I know what you are trying to describe though and although it isn’t “body intelligence” and is still made possible by the brain, I can explain why it may seem that way to you.

I believe what you are describing is a set of signals that are being sent by the brain subconsciously, as opposed to what you call “brain intelligence” which consists of signal sent by the brain consciously.

So, to finish explaining this phenomenon you are describing, there exist both conscious signals and subconscious signals both sent by the brain. When you feel that your body is taking over, so to speak, you are referring to the set of signals your brain is sending subconsciously rather than consciously.

It’s interesting isn’t it?

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#8

Yeah I definitely wasn’t being scientific with my terminology :slight_smile:

But yeah… I think you’ve described how it is pretty much, the ‘rational’ brain decided on a pattern that seemed sensible to it and then the ‘instinctive’ brain overrode that as it didn’t find it efficient… is maybe a better way to put it.

I guess it’s like the old thing Jazz guys say sometimes - ‘if you’re thinking - you’re stinking’… which I take to mean that there’s a point where you have to get your rational thought process get out of the way and feel the music in a more intuitive way… of course that’s probably preceded by a long period of practice where you do work on things in a very conscious way first…

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#9

This is sort of the crux of why Cracking the Code exists. Imagine if there was no rational brain at all, and all you ever had was the subconscious element of hands doing things on their own. Then you would be Albert Lee, Michael Angelo Batio, Mike Stern, and so on.

The Oz Noy clip is a great example of this. It’s particularly notable because Oz is an economy player when he clicks into his high speed mode, and the economy types are often the ones that have the most conscious awareness of where the sweeps are, and where they are not. And here we have someone who claims to be totally unaware that sweeping is involved at all.

There’s a point in our discussion where he shows me how he works out arpeggio shapes on the neck. He goes through three or four different fingerings across all six strings, each one involving a different combination of alternate picking and sweeping, each one sounding more or less fine despite what he says about them being awkward. He stops when he finds one that he can play the fastest / smoothest - again, not aware that any sweeping is involved.

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#10

Ha! That’s so great to see… I feel a lot better knowing guys at this level are having the same ‘issue’ I’m having :slight_smile:

I’ve often wondered should I just try to muscle through playing a part how I think I should play it rather that doing what comes more naturally. I think this answers the question!

#11

Great passage, thanks for sharing! That’s this book right?

(Been on my to-read list for a while :slight_smile: )

This question of where / how intelligence is located is really interesting…I think brain science in general is fascinating in large part because of how complex it is and how many open questions remain.

I remember reading something about how what we call a “gut feeling” has a real physical / neurological component…see for example description here: https://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/raven/thinking-outside-brain-gut-feelings-and-following-heart And of course a large part of what the nervous system does is take care of “automatic” activities (e.g. heartbeat, digestion, etc.) that we don’t consciously think of at all.

So, while the brain is the command center, the nervous system in some sense seems to have a mind of its own. Actually maybe we should distinguish “mind” from “brain”…the former being what we’re aware of as manifestation of our conscious self; the latter being the bafflingly powerful organic computer that not only forms the substrate of our mind but facilitates all this other incredible unconscious activity as well.

The concept of “muscle memory” seems relevant here…again, super complex and not fully understood! We talked about this stuff with Pietro Mazzoni who studies motor learning at Columbia. Scientists are constantly adding layers and refining our understanding of how all this functions.

Embodied learning / embodied cognition is another really interesting area of study:

See also: Embodied Cognition (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

But I’ll just leave that here for now and avoid any attempts at further summarizing lest I spend the whole evening down a Wikipedia rabbit hole :wink:

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#12

Indeed that’s the book! I think it was on this forum I saw it mentioned recently so I grabbed a Kindle copy and am flying though it, it’s a really enjoyable read and very inspiring, not just for music but for life in general!

Those links are very interesting, speaking of the brain in general - I’ve read a couple of books recently that discussed neuroplasticity, ‘The Brain that Changes Itself’ by Norman Doidge and ‘Mindset’ by Carok S Dweck and it’s a really fascinating subject and also kinda reassuring for those who might sometimes feel that there are ‘those who have it and those who do not’… not that innate talent isn’t a factor of course but you can go much further than you might think if you have the right attitude and approach.

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#13

Can’t wait for that interview to be released!

Actually, I can wait a bit because I enjoy watching and re-watching Andy Wood and Martin Miller’s interviews (old and new) :slight_smile:

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