- Clear goals
- Immediate feedback
- Confluence of action and awareness
- Deep concentration
- Sense of control
- Disappearance of self-control
In educational or professional musical settings, "flow" is the term given to the conditions described above. It is a framework for the ideal musical experience, where motivation and skill development is at its highest. It might also be useful as a diagnostic list, ie. when musicians complain about things not going well during rehearsal, it's likely because one of the listed items is not happening. Over the next few entries in this blog I plan to analyse the list further.
The term "flow" appears in the Summer 2008 issue of Canadian Music Educator. The author, Vivian Kim Cassie, mentioned that "flow" was originally used by a researcher named Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote about it in 1975. Recently the idea has been studied by Custodero and St. John. The Canadian Music Educator article by Cassie sums up some of her current research with her strings class. In particular she is looking at how seating arrangements in her classroom affect the "flow" of her music lessons.
