Creativity and flow in musical composition: an empirical investigation

Abstract

Although an extensive literature exists on creativity and music, there is a lack of published research investigating possible links between musical creativity and Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow or optimal experience. This article examines a group composition task to study the relationships between creativity, flow and the quality of the compositions produced. First-year university students (n = 45) worked on a group composition task during three meetings. Each time the students met, they completed a detailed questionnaire that assessed aspects of each student's experience of the group compositional process using an 'experience sampling form' based on Csikszentmihalyi's previous work. Completed compositions were recorded and rated for quality and creativity by the participants and by a group of music education specialists (n= 24). Results indicated a number of ways in which the specialists' assessments of quality related to the students' assessments of creativity and flow. The study provides an example of a research method that can be used to further our understanding of the processes and outcomes of group music composition tasks. The discussion also considers a number of important ways that the concept of flow can be utilized within a music education context

Flow, affect and visual creativity

“…Fifty-seven psychology undergraduates (37 female; age M = 19.60, SD = 2.15) were tested in classes of 18-19 students for course credit. The sample size was determined based on effect sizes reported by MacDonald et al (2006). We used a larger sample size than MacDonald et al to ensure our study had greater power to detect significant relationships.…”

“…Visual artists were the original inspiration for the flow concept, but with the exception of a study on flow and musical composition (MacDonald, Byrne, & Carlton, 2006), flow and creativity have not been explicitly, quantitatively studied together and, to our knowledge, never with regard to visual creativity. This suggests that creativity is a domain in which flow and its relationship to affect needs much more empirical scrutiny, particularly as the creativity-affect relationship is still unclear.…”

“…Flow has been linked not only to affect, but also to better performance across various domains, particularly sports (Jackson, Thomas, Marsh, & Smethurst, 2001), but also potentially flow and musical composition (MacDonald et al, 2006). However, Landhäußer and Keller (2012) note the general scarcity of empirical research on flow's relationship to cognitive performance (such as creativity).…”

“…Flow has also been linked to performance in other domains, including musical creativity (MacDonald et al, 2006), and positive affect can lead to more divergent thought (Baas et al, 2008;Fredrickson & Branigan, 2012). Therefore, higher flow and positive affect scores were predicted to relate to superior creative performance.…”

Designing for group music improvisation: a case for jamming with your emotions

“…Emotions are an important part of music improvisation [7,8], and musical improvisation in connection with psychology [9,10] or brain research [8,11,12] are active areas of research. Musicians play a unique composition that is created in its final form at the specific moment of improvisation, resulting in a single musical design that would sound different on other sessions [13].…”