Inconsequential ramblings, #1
Now I've talked to two people about this phenomenon: Your instinctual/reflexive mind can move so much faster than your rational mind, and that's mind-boggling.
The context that it was brought up originally in was with me talking to Erin while she was playing guitar. I was recalling Eric Clapton's "Classical Guitar Solo"(best song ever!), and somehow that train of thought led to thinking about songs like "Flight of the Bumblebees". I'm almost positive that if someone is great with sheet music and an excellent piano player, you could put the sheet music for "Flight of the Bumblebees" in front of them, and they could play it pretty decently, even if they've never seen or heard it before.
I play DDR from time to time. Anyone familiar with it may be impressed to know that I can do 'Breakdown' on heavy pretty well. No, I didn't print out the arrows for it and practice it over and over. I'd just played the song many many times on Standard. I decided to try it on Heavy and, just like I do with every song, I let go of conscious thought and just let it flow.
I imagine someone playing a song on the piano or guitar for the first time, after achieving some level of mastery, has a similar experience. I also imagine it's much, much more satisfying than the one I had with DDR, since music is crazy good like that.
I've also experimented with instinct in board games. Chess and Go, for instance. I'm a recklessly aggressive player in Chess. I very rarely end a game without sacrificing a piece. Usually, the sacrifice ends the game, either with some brand of awesome chain of events in my favor, or with the revelation that my sac was a horrendous blunder. Anyway, the point is that I've gotten to a point where the first moves I see in complex situations are sacrifices and risky moves... A lot of players at my level are cautious to a flaw, so when I think for about a minute and hurl my queen headlong into their castle, it catches them off guard. I won a game at city league with a bishop sac on something like turn five, followed by thirteen consecutive checks, and a checkmate. It was awesome.
I got way off my original point... but hey, I like to ramble.
I'm the biggest nerd in the world.
The context that it was brought up originally in was with me talking to Erin while she was playing guitar. I was recalling Eric Clapton's "Classical Guitar Solo"(best song ever!), and somehow that train of thought led to thinking about songs like "Flight of the Bumblebees". I'm almost positive that if someone is great with sheet music and an excellent piano player, you could put the sheet music for "Flight of the Bumblebees" in front of them, and they could play it pretty decently, even if they've never seen or heard it before.
I play DDR from time to time. Anyone familiar with it may be impressed to know that I can do 'Breakdown' on heavy pretty well. No, I didn't print out the arrows for it and practice it over and over. I'd just played the song many many times on Standard. I decided to try it on Heavy and, just like I do with every song, I let go of conscious thought and just let it flow.
I imagine someone playing a song on the piano or guitar for the first time, after achieving some level of mastery, has a similar experience. I also imagine it's much, much more satisfying than the one I had with DDR, since music is crazy good like that.
I've also experimented with instinct in board games. Chess and Go, for instance. I'm a recklessly aggressive player in Chess. I very rarely end a game without sacrificing a piece. Usually, the sacrifice ends the game, either with some brand of awesome chain of events in my favor, or with the revelation that my sac was a horrendous blunder. Anyway, the point is that I've gotten to a point where the first moves I see in complex situations are sacrifices and risky moves... A lot of players at my level are cautious to a flaw, so when I think for about a minute and hurl my queen headlong into their castle, it catches them off guard. I won a game at city league with a bishop sac on something like turn five, followed by thirteen consecutive checks, and a checkmate. It was awesome.
I got way off my original point... but hey, I like to ramble.
I'm the biggest nerd in the world.