I once programmed a memory test copying the idea from some 80’s console game. There were four fuction keys to push F1=C, F2=D, F3=E, F4=F. The 80286 computer started playing notes
C - you push F1
C C - F1 F1
C C F - F1 F1 F4
C C F D - F1 F1 F4 F2
C C F D F - F1 F1 F4 F2 F4
C C F D F E - F1 F1 F4 F2 F4 F3
and so on…of course if you push a wrong button that test stops and you get a score. Every time you run the program, notes are different.
Now, I tested this program on me for about a hundred times and my best score was 42. I was proud until I introduced my program to a musician friend who with his first attempt got 211. I must say that I’m miserable in any kind of memory test (and playing music, too). But is it common that musicians do well in them?
You mean that you had to correctly identify the notes, remember the sequence and play it back after it had completed? Musicians would certainly do better at this kind of memory test because many of them do it all the time on a far more complex level. They listen to another musician play and try to duplicate it. There are more note possibilities and there is also a time component (how long does a note last?) that appears to be missing from your program.
It shouldn’t be surprising that a musician is good at a musical memory test. But this appears to be true more generally based on the first google result:
Musicians have better memory – not just for music, but words and pictures too
Psychology research like this is always a little dubious, but its at least a result.
Is a good memory a prerequisite for musical talent?
From my days of doing musical stuff, I got to where I could memorize parts pretty quickly. It was because I remembered what the whole musical piece sounded like after a few rehearsals, and played what made sense without actually reading the score. I was also able to predict which notes came next pretty accurately. It’s just something that comes to musicians after years of practice.
While some people are born with better memory than others, it’s also something you can develop. Being a musician is one really good way to do that.
When I am learning the songs that my chorus will perform, I tend to remember the notes first, then the words. In fact, I tend to learn the vowels before the consonants.
Back when I was in school, I was extremely good in math.
Not all musicians have a good memory. Cite
Either that, or people with good memories make good musicians.
It’s not surprising that a musician would do well in that memory test. It is easier to memorize things if you can group items together and match items to patterns. A musician is already armed with the mental tools required to mentally group notes together.
Just about all learning seems to be enhanced, i.e. made easier, quicker, more meaningful, etc., if it is contextualized somehow. A musician generally has a catalog of possible contexts in which a series of tones can be connected to. Not necessarily in terms of a specific melody that matches the tones directly, but in a more general familiarity with key, mode, melody, harmony, phrases, patterns, figures, etc. It would seem logical that someone with that type of mental catalog would find remembering any particular series of tones somewhat less daunting and maybe even easier because of the generalized familiar contexts.
I think we need to clarify the type of musician. The type that read and memorize music are more likely to have a better memory. But I don’t think it applies to people who “play by ear.” In fact, when teaching that skill, one of the first things I have to do is disabuse people of the idea that they have to get it exactly right.
I’m pretty sure that, on that test, I would have a song in my head from the music. But it might vary a bit from the original, and I would eventually fail–perhaps before the average person–as my ability to memorize is quite low, and is why I couldn’t finish my music major–as you were required to memorize your pieces in a fairly short time, so you could work more freely on the parts that are not on the page.
Not necessarily. It depends on what you’re trying to remember. I never had any difficulty memorizing entire marching band shows (both as a sax player and a percussionist–quads), both the songs played and the physical steps taken. Those lasted about 10-15 minutes and I never missed a note or step in a performance in 4 years (except one time when the guy in front of me slipped and fell down in the mud and I had to crabwalk around him. NOT FUN!).
However, when it comes to memorizing lines, I just freeze up. I almost had a breakdown in my AP English class because I stood up to recite a short Shakespearean poem and it just flew out of my head. I thought I had a decent handle on it but could not deliver (and even when the stage fright went away and I was by myself later, I couldn’t remember it). I had a similar experience as an extra in my high school’s performance of Charlotte’s Web: one line, total freeze. Theatre, obviously, is not for me.
Notably, when I was taking psychology in high school, our teacher was giving us a battery of memory tests, just for fun. I was the *only *person who was able to pass the letter-memory test. The way it worked was she would read a letter out loud and we would have to remember it without writing anything down. Then a 2nd letter, then a third, and we would have to try to remember the whole string. Then at the end of her recitation, we were supposed to write down the letter string to the best of our memory. Like so:
W…
H…
A…
T…
K…
I…
N…
D…
O…
F…
C…
A…
T…
S…
D…
O…
Y…
O…
U…
L…
I…
K…
E…
I figured out by the sixth-ish letter that she was spelling actual words. But for some reason, nobody else did. Maybe they tuned it out after forgetting the first letter early on, or something. And that definitely wasn’t a case of me gaming the test or knowing what was coming. I was in 11th grade and had no prior exposure to the topic of psychology at all. Everyone in the class looked at me like I was a circus freak when I was the only one to raise my hand after she asked if anyone knew they had gotten all the letters right.
I don’t know if that means anything about my memory, or says more about the memories of the other kids in class. I did always score well on tests, and my math and reading skills were always years ahead of the standardized expectations.
I would say my short term memory has been enhanced by a job where I type in phone numbers with the 10key pad a lot, too. I used to only be able to remember a “pack” of 3 or 4 numbers at a time in the short term. Now it’s definitively 7.
Pianist here. Muscle memory is one thing, conscious memory is another, ingrained uncaring/knowlege-memory is another. My blessed piano teacher, Joseph Prostakoff, used to have me play pieces with arms crossed, in different keys, even with one hand in a different key than the other. I could do these as slow as I could (which believe me, I did), but what he (and his teacher,Abby Whiteside) were getting at were not parlor tricks, but a specific reduction of muscle memory*, *and a way of “filling out time” with physical tact, as it were.
The music is then in your brain. He despised the teaching of note-reading at an early age, and the physical constant repeating of one passage, sans context over and over again.
During high school and college, I played ragtime piano mostly by first listening to a record or live performance, and then working through the score, which was never easy but well worth it for getting the piece right. After that I simply remembered how to play the tunes, and never needed to look at the music again.
Now that I play classical music, among other styles on the guitar, I have learned to read much better, but now find I don’t memorize the pieces quite as well as I once did. Top ranked classical guitarists seem to vary in this regard. When I saw Julian Bream perform, he used a score onstage, or at least I think he did, assuming it wasn’t just his set list on the music stand. IIRC John Williams[sup]1[/sup] and Christopher Parkening did not.
[sup]1[/sup]Australian guitar virtuoso, not the American film score composer and Boston Pops conductor.
This reminds me of a story about Joshua Rifkin, a classical pianist who recorded and performed some of Scott Joplin’s music in the early 1970s. According to an acquaintance who had attended one of his performances, he inadvertently mixed up a couple of Joplin’s pieces. Ragtime pieces usually have three or four sections with repeats, for example AABBACCDD. Reportedly, on that occasion Rifkin finished up one piece with the D section from another rag. I find in my own guitar playing that having the score before me helps me avoid what I might call “gross architectural errors”, i.e. mixing in movements from other pieces. That can happen even if I am thoroughly familiar with the details.
:DThat’S a great story.
Why should that make it easier to remember a series of random notes?