Abstract—This research is aim to describe how one finding flow experience in his music activity, experiencing flow and feeling the impact of flow experience to his music career and life. The research method used is qualitative, intrinsic study case. The participants are two famous jazz musicians in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. Data collecting used are in-depth interview, participant observation and document. The result shows that participant who has environment support especially from his music teacher is not only easier to find and experience flow, but also find happiness as impact of his flow experience. On the other hand, another participant who doesn’t have environment support especially from his family and have personality disposition to use his cognition, is struggling to find his flow experience in playing music, but then he finally find it when composing music. Index Terms—Flow, music, happiness. I. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, music is known as not only one kind of art, but also has been part of our life. Music becomes life style, career and popularity. Music always be part of entertainment in present days, it spreads not only in Indonesia but also in so many countries in the world. There are so many kind of music such as pop, rock, blues, jazz, etc. Every year, there are some musicians, group band, and one kind of music which become very popular. When they reach the popularity, people will listen their music everywhere, it spreads very fast. Unfortunately, when it comes the time that the popularity is down, people just leave it and listen other music which is being popular. In other words, we can see that music is just like the temporary popularity depends on what most people like. Musicians and group band are struggling to follow the fluctuation of this popularity. They hold on to something exotelic. In fact, music is about finding one’s own enjoyment that one can create by one self, not depending on something out of one control. Flow is about intrinsically doing activity because of enjoyment [1]. Reference [2] says flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act in total involvement. It is the states in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part. We experience it as a undified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future. Flow is at the subjective level of areas of human experience in positive psychology, which is focusing on positive emotions such as happiness, joy, satisfaction with Manuscript received July 20, 2013; revised September 23, 2013. Dewi Sartika is with the Bandung Islamic University, West Java, Indonesia (e-mail: dsartk@yahoo.com). life, relaxation, love intimacy and contentment [3]. Flow in music activity can facilitates the peak performance; the moments when we perform at a level that is beyond our normal level of functioning, as more efficient, more creative, more productive, or in some ways better than the person’s ordinary behavior and may occur in any facet of human activity such intellectual, emotional, or physical [3]. Reference [2] believes that flow is the experience that allows people to enjoy life, feel happier, and function better in a number of different contexts. In Bandung, jazz music is one kind of the popular music. There are two popular mucisians who are attractive and unique. The first mucisian is the violinist who is known as an improviser. That is why he is used to performing in jazz music performance because he always performs the fresh and new improvisation in each music performing. He said that he couldn’t repeat the improvisation that he had performed because he felt that he was “inside” the music. He also often does performing without preparation. He is a spontaneous mucisian. Another mucisian is only just twenty five years old, but he is known as a jazz guitarist and now he has released his own music albums which are composed by himself. He said that he felt satisfied and happy when he could release his own music to be heard by people. He said, “ I just want to be a story, a present brought, home by everyone who watch me. I just want to transform words into music” This research is aim to collect empirical data about the process of those two mucisians in finding flow, experiencing flow and feeling the impact to their life. The result of this research is to contribute in helping others to find flow in music activity. II. METHOD We use qualitative research especially intrinsic case study to understand those two special mucisians in great depth and get the rich information about the case [4]. The cases in intrinsic case studies are chosen because they are interesting in their own right. In this case, those two mucisians have uniqueness in their music career. Qualitative research is used in order to understand what the participants feel from their perspective, especially flow experience. The participants of this research are two mucisians who well-known as jazz mucisian in Bandung. The participants are chosen because of their uniqueness. We use in-depth interview, participant observation and document to collect rich data about those mucisians. We use in-dept interview in order to give wilder chance for participants to tell their experience, especially in music activity, while we are actively listening to understand the partcipants experience, the question as a trigger to participants to tell their experience [4]. We use participant observation because we have to involve in their music Finding Flow Experience in Music Activity Dewi Sartika and Saraya Ikramina Husna International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 4, No. 2, March 2014 155 DOI: 10.7763/IJSSH.2014.V4.338