{"id":1280,"date":"2016-08-06T15:47:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-06T14:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/2016\/08\/06\/the-secret-link-between-jazz-and-physics-how-einstein-coltrane-shared-improvisation-and-intuition-in-common\/"},"modified":"2016-08-06T15:47:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T14:47:00","slug":"the-secret-link-between-jazz-and-physics-how-einstein-coltrane-shared-improvisation-and-intuition-in-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/the-secret-link-between-jazz-and-physics-how-einstein-coltrane-shared-improvisation-and-intuition-in-common\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Einstein & Coltrane Shared Improvisation and Intuition in Common"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Einstein & Coltrane Shared Improvisation and Intuition in Common | Open Culture<\/a><\/p>\n

Alexander describes his jazz epiphany as occasioned by a complex diagram Coltrane gave legendary jazz musician and University of Massachusetts professor Yusef Lateef<\/a> in 1967. \u201cI thought the diagram was related to another and seemingly unrelated field of study\u2014quantum gravity,\u201d he writes in a Business Insider<\/em> essay on his discovery<\/a>, \u201cWhat I had realized\u2026 was that the same geometric principle that motivated Einstein\u2019s theory was reflected in Coltrane\u2019s diagram.\u201d<\/div>\n
The theory might \u201cimmediately sound like untestable pop-philosophy,\u201d writes the Creators Project<\/a>, who showcase Alexander\u2019s physics-inspired musical collaboration with experimental producer Rioux (sample below). But his ideas are much more substantive, \u201ca compelling cross-disciplinary investigation,\u201d recently published in a book titled The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe<\/a><\/em>.<\/div>\n
\u2026 <\/div>\n
Alexander describes the links between jazz and physics in his TED talk, as well as in the brief Wired<\/em> video further up (in the original link)<\/i>. \u201cOne connection,\u201d he says, is \u201cthe mysterious way that quantum particles move\u2026. According to the rules of quantum mechanics,\u201d they \u201cwill actually traverse all possible paths.\u201d This, Alexander says, parallels the way jazz musicians improvise, playing with all possible notes in a scale. His own improvisational playing, he says, is greatly enhanced by thinking about physics. And in this, he\u2019s only following in the giant steps of both of his idols.<\/div>\n
It turns out that Coltrane himself used Einstein\u2019s theoretical physics to inform his understanding of jazz composition. As Ben Ratliff reports in Coltrane: The Story of a Sound<\/a><\/em>, the brilliant saxophonist once delivered to French horn player David Amram an \u201cincredible discourse about the symmetry of the solar system, talking about black holes in space, and constellations, and the whole structure of the solar system, and how Einstein was able to reduce all of that complexity into something very simple.\u201d Says Amram:<\/div>\n
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Then he explained to me that he was trying to do something like that in music, something that came from natural sources, the traditions of the blues and jazz. But there was a whole different way of looking at what was natural in music.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Einstein & Coltrane Shared Improvisation and Intuition in Common | Open Culture Alexander describes his jazz epiphany as occasioned by a complex diagram Coltrane gave legendary jazz musician and University of Massachusetts professor Yusef Lateef in 1967. \u201cI thought the diagram was related to another and seemingly unrelated field […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}