Guitar Zero

Cognitive psychologist Gary Marcus "investigates the intersection between neuroscience and music" in his latest book, Guitar Zero, reports Bruce Headlam in the New York Times (1/26/12). Gary’s interest was both personal and professional. At age 38, he decided he wanted to learn to play the guitar; as a scientist he wanted to explore the "long-held tenet" that the older we grow the harder it gets to acquire new skills. This may be especially true of guitar skills, given the instrument’s quirky, non-linear bent (e.g., "the guitar has the same notes at different frets along different strings").

The challenge was especially acute for Gary, who claims to have no musical talent. But he did have a year-long sabbatical from New York University, during which he dedicated himself to learning to play guitar, using a $74 Yamaha acoustic and various instruction books. Scientifically, he was interested in "how the brain can essentially rewire itself to make up for deficits caused by stroke, trauma or even a non-existent sense of rhythm." Musically, he was mainly interested in learning how to improvise, as opposed to learning specific songs or riffs.

Learning scales and improvising versus learning songs and copying actually represent the two "modes of mental processing at the heart" of Gary’s book. The former requires "a tool kit of rules that can be applied in new situations" while the latter is more about data mining, or "dredging up material from a vast store of knowledge." Gary’s interest is "in how the human mind toggles between the two approaches." Gary’s goal now is "to move beyond both and play from emotion, or as he said, ‘from the brain stem.’" He confesses to being mostly analytical as a guitarist but adds that he’s "not sure if that’s a limitation of me as a musician or as a human being."