NATURAL PULSES

It is a strange phenomenon. A musician may practice diligently for months on end and seemingly make no progress. Then circumstances restrict or eliminate practice time for a month. Suddenly a gig comes up, which the musician accepts eagerly (wouldn’t we all, no matter how rusty we are?). Fearing the worst from weeks away from the instrument, the player finds that his playing is uncharacteristically fluid, creative, and musical; it seems that he has improved more from inactivity than from the previous months of disciplined “woodshedding”.
Musicians that I have talked to have all experienced this sort of rapid improvement after a hiatus from playing. Pianist Kenny Werner describes this experience vividly in his book, “Effortless Mastery”, and it prompted his leap from amateur to professional jazz musician. I suspect the same story could be told in other creative or scientific pursuits. There must be an reason.
Explanations always lead back to the neurons in our central nervous system. We know that our brain cells are constantly sprouting new branches, synapsing with neighboring neurons in a frenzy of connection. Learning seems to involve reinforcing the chosen connections and pruning away the irrelevant branches of the neurons. I imagine the brain like one of those topiary animals you might see at the park; the shrubbery is allowed to grow and become bushy, and then the branches are trimmed away until the form of an elephant or giraffe emerges. Perhaps the brain needs a little inactivity to grow bushy and fertile with new neural branches.
This principle of “pulses” of activity and inactivity seems to be a principle of nature. In some way, the seasons we experience on this planet act in this way on our biological systems. The hardship of winter selects and shapes the exuberant growth of the fertile summer. Paleontologists think that the ice ages worked on a larger scale to rachet up human intelligence and culture over thousands of years. When the ice sheets retreated, living was easy and there was plentiful food and free time to experiment with diverse ways of doing things. The return of the harsh winters in the next ice age put new ways to the test, selecting the most successful hunting techniques and stripping away the excesses of the lazy interglacial periods. Nature loves the tension of good times and bad.
If we knew enough, we might be able to maximize the balance of hard work and idle play. Musicians might get the most out of practice if we knew the right time to take a break. Right now it is time for me to get “deep in the shed” and intensify my own practicing for a while. Break time is over.