Heinz-Klaus Metzger, a prominent German music critic of the 1950s, described experimental music – nebulously defined as music that pushes genre definitions and often relies on computer-controlled composition – as “engineers art”, “musical splitting of the atom” and “laboratory music”. Along with other conservative critics, Metzger invoked the language of dehumanization, alienation, and science to drive his message home. The message? That for an art form to be associated with science was the greatest possible insult.

Most musicians are reluctant to recognize the value of a scientific approach in their work. On the flip side, as a neuroscientist, I have witnessed firsthand the zeal with which scientists emphasize the rigor of their work, for fear it should be seen as unsystematic. Underlying these discomforts is the implicit yet pervasive presumption that the exploratory sensibilities of art are orthogonal to – and hence mutually exclusive from – the disciplined objectivity of science.

I interviewed three musicians, all of whom also practice science in some capacity, and one scientist, who also makes music, and asked them questions about the process of making, whether it be a song or a scientific experiment. I asked about the initial idea, the iterative process of experimentation that follows, and about the final product itself. These conversations showed that the similarities between music composition and science outweigh the differences at every stage of the creative process.

For both music and science, the creative process seems to be fueled by a tension between seemingly opposing forces, that I’ll respectively call exploration, which can broadly be understood as sensibility, intuition, and unconstrained flow, and pursuit, which involves knowledge, technique, and focused inquiry. Mike Bloom, an electronic music composer and audio engineer, described his process as “the practice of completely and routinely building a technical understanding of sound, so much so that it seeps into muscle memory and becomes intuition. I learn all the rules to be able to break them.” In an almost perfect echo, the neuroscientist and musician Jon Gill explained that many of his scientific ideas are “born from being deep into some concept and loading myself up with information, not all of which I agree with. It ends up bouncing around in my head as I start working on something and then the spark of an idea will emerge when I least expect it.”

Both the musician Bloom and the scientist Gill recognize the inherent creative tension between the focused learning of pursuit and the intuition of exploration. This stands in stark contrast with our belief, as a society, that art relies more on the spontaneity of the exploration approach, while science is built primarily on the discipline of the pursuit approach. The danger with such a distorted view is the type of anti-scientific sentiment exemplified by Metzger’s critique of experimental music. A sentiment which justifies an insulation between two worlds which may not function so differently, after all. In fact, my conversations revealed that creative innovation lies precisely where these distinct approaches meet.

Let us first turn to the role of pursuit in music-making. Whether in art or science, the pursuit approach has two important characteristics: first, the need for a guiding concept or theory, and second, the role of experimenting and technique in expressing or testing this concept. For Stephan Kimbel Olson, a dance music producer and film sound designer, the guiding concept is to create music that “brings people to a place where they can turn inwards, to create meetings with yourself on the dancefloor.” And just as with a scientific experiment, the results can be unexpected and fail to reflect the theory’s predictions. Daniel Bellissimo, an electronic music producer and linguist, says that he often produces a song that he truly believes is good, but still fails to express the concept he set out with: “It doesn’t represent me. It doesn’t say the thing I wanted to say”. He adds: “Scientists also follow ideas and sometimes they’re wrong. And on the way they discover something else.” In this way even in music there is a possibility of failure, and this failure is often fertile ground for new avenues of exploration.

Pursuit also requires knowledge and technique. Mike Bloom emphasizes that an essential part of his artistic process involves “considering how sound gets dispersed in a room depending on its elements, taking measurements of different frequencies to monitor reflections, following the rules of experimentation, documenting progress, maintaining equipment and having an understanding of advanced electronics.” These constitute “roadmaps for how to route sound to optimize a scientific but also an emotional response”. Understandably, some artists fear that a disproportionate focus on technique or discipline will take the playful spark out of the process – while acknowledging that this is what it takes to “actually get everything you want out of an instrument” (Jon Gill). Once again, we find this tightrope walk between the flow of exploration and the concentration of pursuit.

The exploration approach, in contrast with pursuit, is one of surrender and intuition. It embraces the unpredictable and spontaneous elements of the creative process. Mike Bloom is “happy to just surrender to the randomness by playing with it and listening and tuning in. It’s about allowing the inner child in you to speak. Engaging your natural subconscious behavior.” My impression is that scientists have a harder time admitting to the role of these exploratory practices in their process. Jon Gill, however, explained that one of his best scientific ideas “just floated into his head while doing something unrelated”. He calls these “shower thoughts”. They require a special kind of listening and a trust in intuition. I would venture that such unexpected revelations are far more frequent and fundamental to the scientific process than we currently acknowledge.

The exploration approach is deeply connected to emotions. The way Daniel Bellissimo describes it, “when you produce a sound, you go through clouds of noise, you are lost in a forest, and all of a sudden you find a path, and you find yourself in the most beautiful place.” For Gill, this emotional dimension applies to science too: “in the lab we call it blood in the water. It’s the scent of something working. You can get it from a mile away. I find it very exciting.” It is this unconscious, emotional nature of exploration that distinguishes it from the conscious, regimented process of pursuit. This ‘feeling sense’ often occurs only after a process of deep learning and induction into a field – once more illustrating this balancing act between exploration and pursuit.

The obvious counterargument to claiming these types of similarities is that a piece of art and a scientific finding – the outputs of the creative process – have vastly different qualities; aesthetic for the former, epistemological (i.e., knowledge producing) for the latter. Yet any creative process has a mission to transform a subjective feeling into an objective manifestation that can be shared with an audience. Whether that mission is to take a sense of wonder at how light bounces off a bubble and seek to explain the resulting iridescence or to make a musical statement conveying the magic of walking through a forest at dawn.

In fact, in both domains the creative object can convey beauty and teach us something about the world. Stephan Kimbel Olson, p.k.a. SPF 50, says that he learns about psychology in the process of making music: “in those first few years, I was excavating so much baggage, I uncovered real lessons about myself, about the world, about music.” Conversely, Jon Gill evokes the beauty of understanding the neuroscience of smell: “how your sense of smell works isn’t just about what you’ve experienced in your life, it’s also about what all your ancestors have ever experienced, and how this has shaped this organ for you to perceive smells. There’s a direct line between what you smell and who you’ve been evolutionarily. I think that’s really beautiful.”

My hope is that recognizing these similarities will lay the groundwork for more fruitful exchange between artists and scientists, in a world that upholds their division – primarily through education. Being at the forefront of any creative domain involves widening the limits of the field. The more we share our tools for expanding those horizons, the more our creative projects will benefit.

A deeper possibility exists here too: that by making music, we are describing the structure of the universe. The Vedic concept of the Anahata Nada and the Pythagorean Music of the Spheres are both based on this idea: that music constitutes a link between imperceptible abstract principles and our physical reality. As the great experimental composer Lamonte Young put it: “the sensations of ineffable truths we sometimes experience when we hear progressions of chords may indeed be our underlying, subliminal recognition of fundamental universal principles.” Perhaps in making music, we are explaining the world. Take that, Metzger.