Miles Davis is not Mozart: The brains of jazz and classical pianists work differently

[Nergal]

 

When the scientists asked the pianists to play a harmonically unexpected chord within a standard chord progression, the jazz pianists' brains started to replan the actions faster than those of the classical pianists. This was measured by EEG (Electroencephalography) sensors on the back of the head, which detected the brain signals in the related brain regions responsible for action planning.

A musician's brain is different to that of a non-musician. Making music requires a complex interplay of various abilities which are also reflected in more strongly developed brain structures. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig have recently discovered that these capabilities are embedded in a much more finely-tuned way than previously assumed -- and even differ depending on the style of the music: They observed that the brain activity of jazz pianists differs from those of classical pianists, even when playing the same piece of music. This could give insight into the processes which generally take place while making music and which are specific for certain styles.

Keith Jarrett, world-famous jazz pianist, once answered in an interview when asked if he would ever be interested in doing a concert where he would play both jazz and classical music: "No, that's hilarious. [...] It's like a chosen practically impossible thing [...] It's [because of] the circuitry. Your system demands different circuitry for either of those two things." Where non-specialists tend to think that it should not be too challenging for a professional musician to switch between styles of music, such as jazz and classical, it is actually not as easy as one would assume, even for people with decades of experience.