![]() Studies show that the flow state doesn’t just improve creativity in the moment it can actually have long-term effects. The benefits of getting into a musical flow are numerous and varied. ![]() To Josh Young, producer and DJ who recently left EDM festival mainstays Flosstradamus to strike out on a solo path under the name YehMe2, it’s simply “the best feeling that I can imagine, when ideas and everything is coming naturally and organically and easily.” It's like when you look into two mirrors, and the image keeps making a new one, and it goes on forever.” It keeps getting bigger, and it seems like it can't stop. I'm just able to get to it quicker and organize it faster.”įor Jeff Parker, longtime guitarist for post-rock trailblazers Tortoise, who’s improvised with countless musical partners in styles ranging from jazz to hip-hop to laptop electronic music, flow is “kinda like a snowball rolling down the hill. “Just imagine running water and a long line of buckets. “For some reason, I'm able to grab the water easier,” he explains. In his opinion, anyone is capable of getting into the flow, but some people are just better at finding the zone. His renowned talents as a freestylist have earned him a reputation as one of the strongest battle rappers in the game, with a world championship title to prove it. “When it's going good, it's like a faucet, and the ideas are like running water,” says rapper Nocando, who probably knows as much about the practical side of being in the flow state as anyone on earth. And each musician who taps into it seems to have their own way of describing what the flow state feels like. In one form or another, it underpins nearly every style of music in the world, from famously improv-focused genres like jazz and freestyle rapping to more deliberate-sounding ones like rock and even allegedly inorganic electronic dance music. Improvisation, one of the most basic components of musical creativity, is basically the flow state made into sound. The result is that the parts of our brain that are most responsible for impulse control and critical thought–the parts that make us experience feelings like anxiety and self-doubt–go quiet, leaving ideas free to cascade without our internal filters getting in the way. When we enter it, our brains transition from producing the fast-moving beta brainwaves that define normal waking consciousness to the borderline state between alpha waves, which are often associated with daydreaming, and theta waves that typically only occur during REM sleep and the liminal hypnagogic state we experience just at the point of falling asleep.Īt the same time, the brain experiencing creative flow will also go into “transient hypofrontality,” a state where the prefrontal cortex–the center of our higher cognitive function and the home of our sense of self–temporarily deactivates. The flow state is essentially a neurobiological phenomenon, one that scientists are only starting to begin to understand the mechanics of. ![]() ![]() Artists, and particularly musicians, on the other hand, have known about creative flow for ages–not to mention how to get there for much cheaper. For businesspeople, the flow state is the latest tactic in getting an edge up on the competition, and worth investing a big chunk of cash in achieving. There are best-selling books on creative flow, seminars on how to achieve it, and entire fields of study devoted to figuring out exactly how it works. Over the past decade, creative flow–the mental state where self-awareness begins to fade out and ideas stream fast and steady, seemingly on their own–has become a thriving cottage industry. ![]() It’s the feeling that inspired the design of the all-new crossover Toyota C-HR, and what drives the creative process of music’s most gifted artists. It’s the sense of freedom that comes when things come together so smoothly and precisely that whatever you’re doing–whether it’s driving from point A to point B or assembling the pieces of a new song out of thin air–stops feeling like work and instead becomes something that’s simply a pleasure to do. ![]()
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