A question for artists (Page 2 of 4)

and mistaken

If you've never been in the zone then you've never truly been passionate about something. The zone has nothing specifically to do with video games, or even music. It's just a state you enter when you're doing something and there are no longer any stumbling blocks ahead of you.

The zone is that 3 hour coding session where the problems all seemed to fall away and the lines just streamed out from your keyboard. It's that point in a marathon run where you stop feeling your sore body and you start to see the finishline in your head.

I know some of you guys absolutely hate any parallel being drawn between video games and chipmusic, but if you've never been in the zone in any aspect of your life I feel very, very sorry for you.

^this

No, the zone is partially about luck, too. When you concentrate you don't automatically have no problems doing anything. The zone is about being on fire (not literally, by the way). It can certainly be part concentration, but it's more about a periodic combination of luck and skill.

How do you not know about the concept of "the zone"? Dude.

Last edited by jefftheworld (May 6, 2011 5:28 am)

<psychology nerd post to follow>

In defense of the OP, there actually is a scientific term for these concepts within contemporary positive psychology/study of personality. It's by Dr. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "cheek-says-me-high"), and the coined term is simply "Flow." Flow is defined as an intense state of concentration through doing a certain task. Trick is though, it must fall on a safe line between easy and challenging. It had to provide that slight amount of challenge to promote motivation however it can not be too challenging as to stop the person from doing the task. Experiences of "flow" allow for the person to feel as if time had passed by very quickly-much like the old phrase, "time flies when you're having fun." Perhaps it's best to view it as upon a spectrum:

Here, flow is observed within a task that has a high challenging level-however the skill level for that task is high. It's contextual. For example, one can experience "flow" during something as menial as even mopping the floor. However, the process of making music is a highly observed domain where experiences of flow are said to occur, and recent study in contemporary psychology continues to study this relationship between flow and music. At the risk of not overloading this post with scholarly articles and "snooze-reads," here's a cheap pop-psych intro to this theory by Dr. Csikszentmihalyi himself:

http://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-P … 0060928204

additional reading (or just search 'csikszentmihalyi' and 'flow'):
http://lateralaction.com/articles/mihal … ntmihalyi/

There WAS a big story on this in Electronic Musician magazine or something, but I can't find it now for some reason.

Last edited by an0va (May 6, 2011 8:55 pm)