How the scarcity of time to make decisions affects eminent jazz bassists' creativity?

What is it about?

People are generally able to produce their most creative work when they are not under excessive time pressure and have enough time to complete the task. However, highly skilled jazz musicians are able to improvise fluently even at very fast tempos, leaving them with very little time to decide what note to play next. I investigated how the scarcity of time to make decisions affects the creativity of two eminent jazz bassists by calculating the proportion of novel patterns in their bass lines. The results showed that both musicians were able to create highly creative bass lines even at fast tempos. Furthermore, the creativity of their bass lines did not decrease considerably when they improvised at a faster tempo or when the distance between chord changes was shorter.

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Photo by Richard Wang on Unsplash

Photo by Richard Wang on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While several studies have examined the effects of time scarcity in the workplace, little is known about the effects of time scarcity on the creativity of musicians. The results indicate that time scarcity may have little effect on the creativity of highly skilled jazz musicians. Understanding how skilled jazz musicians able to create highly creative improvisations at any tempo could lead to new insights in creativity research and beyond.