We go, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” to count seconds. But what if you went into an altered state that slowed time for you so you could explore each second divided into Mis-sis-sip-pi? Cannabis can make time seem to stretch, which raises a question for musicians: Could cannabis give us more room between the notes to choose the next one?
Could getting high make us better musicians?
Some of the greats did it high. Bob Dylan turned the Beatles on to marijuana in August 1964. John Lennon said they made it part of their creative lives. He said that by the time they made Help! in 1965, “The Beatles had gone beyond comprehension. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast…”
Jazz
People joke about weed making them forgetful: “In California we have voted to legalize medical marijuana five times because we always forget we already did.”
Some think this very forgetfulness may have been fundamental in the creation of improvisational jazz. Marijuana has been intertwined with jazz culture since the early 20th century. Jazz came out of New Orleans and migrated to cities like Chicago and New York, and marijuana went with it. Louis Armstrong often claimed that marijuana enhanced his playing; it allowed him to “be in the zone” for uninhibited expression and improve his timing. Armstrong emphasized that cannabis helped him maintain the physical and mental focus required to perform and hit high trumpet notes night after night.
“…the chief effect of marijuana as far as jazz musicians was concerned was that it lengthens the sense of time… they could get more grace beats into their music… if you’re using marijuana, you’re going to work in about twice as much music between the first note and the second note.” – Dr. James Munch, pharmacologist, in a 1978 interview with Reefer Madness author Larry “Ratso” Sloman.
According to Leafly, the “time” area of the brain contains a large number of cannabinoid receptors, so when THC floods the brain, it disrupts these receptors, and one second can feel like five seconds.
I lived with a jazz drummer who claimed that straight jazz drummers don’t get the same feel with their grace notes, nor do they communicate with the other players as intuitively. You certainly don’t have to get high to play great jazz, but many of the greats did.
Leafly reports that cannabis makes time appear to slow down because the psychoactive compound THC may accelerate your brain’s internal subjective clock to fire more rapidly. It could be that because your internal clock is ticking faster than real clock time, external events feel like they are crawling by comparison.
In a 2013 study published in Psychopharmacology, 44 volunteers received THC and were tested on how they judged intervals of a few seconds. After THC, light cannabis users tended to think more time had passed than had. Co-author Deepak D’Souza says, “Marijuana dilates time; that is, five minutes is experienced as ten minutes. So, the subjective experience is that time is passing slowly, but that feeling can only occur if the internal clock is speeded up.” (Why Does Cannabis Slow Down Our Time Perception?)
Sober Thoughts
I talked to Santa Cruz guitarist Larry Graff, who plays Grateful Dead material with Painted Mandolin. Cannabis makes playing and listening more enjoyable for him, and he may feel more experimental, and have more fun, but Painted Mandolin’s intricate arrangements and tempos demand precise timing. “I stopped getting high before Painted Mandolin shows,” Graff says. Feedback from a bandmate made him decide. “For the band, playing straight is how I can serve the music best.”
When I offered the theory that “slowed time” might improve playing, Graff said, “Not for me. No. Louis Armstrong was playing jazz… the beat is different in jazz and bluegrass, jazz is more laid back. You can play on the back end of the beat in jazz.” For a paying audience, he wants the reliability he finds playing sober. And music already takes him somewhere extraordinary. “The music itself, without any drugs, is mind-expanding,” Graff says.
Rhan Wilson, guitarist with Jazz the Dog, says, “Pot quiets the distracted mind. So, I can listen. I’m present. I’m paying attention to the sound. I get really focused.” He says, “It can be a tool, but you can do the same thing with meditation, it just takes longer.”
So, can cannabis help musicians play better? Jazz players on cannabis might find more adventure within the beats. Graff might feel more emotionally connected with bandmates high but plays straight for the bluegrass precision. Wilson uses it as a tool for focus, as did Louis Armstrong. Is cannabis the right tool for the job? No doubt weed can be a tool for musicians, but from musician to musician, maybe it’s finding the right job for the tool.
