May 23, 2008
Make Music, Boost Brain
I’ve played guitar - classical, acoustic, electric - for three decades, ever since I pilfered my sister’s nylon string at the age of 12, although even before that, I’d had a couple of those mini toy guitars with real strings at various points in my childhood. I eventually learned to follow music and guitar tablature, but was only really any good at keeping up with a score if I had heard someone else play the music I was hoping to make myself.
Meanwhile, I took up singing in a choral group (called Big Mouth) and have been compelled to become more adept at reading music in a slightly more disciplined environment than jamming on guitars with friends. Big Mouth formed in the autumn of 2007 and I’ve been with them from about October, so that’s several months of regularly, weekly singing practice and a couple of very low-key gigs. We even put together a last-minute audition video tape for the BBC’s Choir Wars, but didn’t make it through to the heats, unfortunately.
Anyway, that’s probably enough detail. The point I wanted to make is that until I joined Big Mouth and began making music regularly with a group, I’d always felt like I was quite useless at remembering people’s names. Like a lot of people I had to make a very conscious effort to retain introducees. However, in the last few months, with no deliberate action on my part, I’ve noticed that I seem to remember stuff like fleeting introductions, the names of people mentioned in conversations, or press releases and other such transient data much better than before. I’m curious as to whether it’s the more formal, group music that’s done something to the wiring in my brain to boost this skill or maybe it’s just the new friends I’ve made joining a new, fairly large social group like this. My suspicions are boulstered somewhat by a recent TED talk from Tod Machover and Dan Ellsey on the power of music
David Bradley
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Eva said,
May 23, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I’ve been actively involved in making music in group settings since I was 11, and I have the hardest time remembering names. (I need to see them written down, otherwise I can’t remember. My auditory memory works for melodies, but not for words)
Now I dread to think how I’d do if I *didn’t* do music.
David Bradley said,
May 23, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Interesting, maybe it’s nothing to do with the singing. I took up karate with my son around the same time, perhaps it’s that that’s done the rewiring…
db
Jon said,
May 27, 2008 at 9:32 am
I’ve always been good with names and faces, but also good at phone numbers and birthdays, but I’m really not very good at following tab - I find it much easier to do things by ear most of the time.
I have always been musical, though, and I agree that being able to keep a tune in your head can’t be that dissimilar from keeping a name or a face.
I think I’m actually the other way round from Eva - I remember things far more easily if I hear something than if I see it written down. Much to my ire at exam revision time - why did I let myself sleep in lectures!? ;)
Jon
Wayne Smallman said,
May 31, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I’ve read something similar, but (rather ironically) I can’t remember where!
But what little I do remember, it is the music / social thing. And that it hints at why early man adopted signing rituals…
David Bradley said,
June 2, 2008 at 10:57 am
Yeah, I think it is the social side of it, that helps. I’m reading Coehlo’s Witch of Portobello at the moment and he talks of the primordial urge to emulate natural rhythms with the earliest forms of music and how this bonded early humans.
db
David Bradley said,
June 2, 2008 at 11:06 am
Jon, yeah, I tend to do guitar by ear, but can cope with tab and script if I’ve already got the tune in my head, as it were.
db