1 | chords as coordinates

To me, chords are coordinates…they send you to a place.

Pharrell

Pharrell spoke these words to Rick Rubin in November of 2019. The whole conversation is worth listening to for the insights into creativity, but those 3 words – “chords as coordinates” – are the ones that grabbed me when I first heard them. “Chords as coordinates” is a perfect way to describe sound’s ability to take us instantly from one state of being to another.

But where do those coordinates lead?

In the conversation, Pharrell explains that they lead to a feeling. And when he is moved by music, his goal isn’t to name the notes or the time signature or the chords involved. Rather, he seeks to reverse engineer a new creation that can (re)produce a similar feeling using whatever musical tools he can. In other words, form follows feeling.

I first came across “form follows feeling” in the book Your Brain on Art. “Form follows feeling” is a guiding principle for New York-based architect Suchi Reddy. In architecture, form relates to physical structure. In music, form relates to composition. In movement, form relates to technique.

Within sport, we often assume that technique is the reason for an outcome. Repeat the technique, repeat the outcome. But technique emerges from the focus of the performer and the constraints of a performance environment. Prioritizing focus allows the movement solution to emerge that meets the demands of the moment. And feeling, it turns out, is a great target for focus.

Kevin Becker, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has explored what happens when athletes focus on feeling while performing movement skills. In technical terms, directing your attention to the general feeling of a movement is known as a holistic focus (HF) (Zhuravleva et al. 2023). Becker’s work extends previous research investigating the difference between an internal focus (IF) and an external focus (EF). An internal focus (IF) directs attention to the movement of the performer’s body (e.g., focus on extending your knees). An external focus (EF) directs attention to the effects of the movement on the environment (e.g., jump as close to the cone as possible). We have known for a while that an external focus may enhance movement more than an internal focus, but Becker’s research has shown that a holistic focus may be equally advantageous (Becker, Georges, & Aiken, 2018; Zhuravleva et al. 2023; Saemi et al., 2024). In other words, focusing on how a skill should feel may produce optimal technique in a way that focusing on the movement itself will not.

For coaches, this means resisting the urge to make your instructions an explanation of the movement. Yes, a standing broad jump does require that an athlete extend their knees. But to what end? And in what way? The goal is to jump as far away from the starting line as possible (i.e., the end). And to do so explosively (i.e., the way). It turns out that those kind of instructions - an external focus and a holistic focus - typically produce better movement outcomes than an accurate explanation of what is happening biomechanically.

For athletes, this means finding words or sounds or visuals that help lock in the feeling of moving effectively. Those can become the cues that help maintain performance, especially under pressure. I am reminded of watching my colleague Greg Warburton work with a college baseball player to help him develop what Greg called a “positive performance phrase.” The athlete was struggling to trust his ability to read and react to breaking pitches at the plate. Greg helped him identify how he wanted to feel at the plate, which was a trust that he could drive any pitch into the right-field gap. His home field had a distance marker of 365’ in that right-field gap, so the player started using the cue “365” as his positive performance phrase. He didn’t tell himself what to do with this arms or hands or even his balance. He simply named the feeling of a perfectly timed swing. And that was enough to free his body to execute as close to that outcome as possible on a pitch-by-pitch basis.

Both music and sport orbit around feeling. So the next time you may be tempted to get technical when you are struggling to perform in the way you would like, consider getting emotional instead. Form follows feeling. So focus on the feeling and see where that leads.

Citations

Tatiana Zhuravleva, Christopher A. Aiken, Kevin A. Becker, Pin-Chen Lin, and Jack J. Sampson. 2023. The use of holistic focus of attention to improve standing long jump performance among NCAA track and field athletes. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 18(4), 1074-1081.

Esmaeel Saemi, Alireza Hasanvand, Mohammadreza Doustan, Ayoub Asadi, and Kevin Becker. 2024. Standing long jump performance is enhanced when using an external as well as holistic focus of attention: A kinematic study. Sensors, 24, 5602.

Kevin A. Becker, Ayana F. Georges, and Christopher A. Aiken. 2018. Considering a holistic focus of attention as an alternative to an external focus. Journal of Motor Learning and Development.