Memory Techniques/Learning Music

[NaturalDissolve]

I'm learning some memory techniques and they are really interesting. Basically it has to do with setting up a filing system with pictures. I'm trying to figure out a way to apply this to learning music. So far I've only been able to memorize lyrics more effectively.

Where I am at a loss is trying to apply it to learning intervals/notes/keyboard. It seems nearly impossible to apply a picture to a musical interval, or a note. Anyone have any ideas on how to apply these memory techniques? There has to be a way.

[Nanakai]

Matching an audio clip of a song with a written example of that interval might be cool. I'm not sure how effective it would be at learning music, but it would be fun.

[NaturalDissolve]

Hmmmmm, interesting. I think the problem is music is a pretty boring visual. Our minds more easily remember things that are interesting and vivid. Notes and intervals don't equate to pictures. That's why they are so hard to memorize.

[Nanakai]

It depends on what you're trying to learn. If you want to associate the sound of an interval with the written interval, then you treat it just like you're learning to read a foreign language. If you want to use the old trick of memorizing the sounds of intervals via songs you like, then you could use a picture of the song's artist (or just the title of the song in text) and associate that interval to the picture.

There are things you can do to practice associations in music, but you're right that since music isn't a visual art, it's very difficult to apply to a visual mnemonic technique. It's possible, but I think anything you do would be inferior to just practicing music.

[NaturalDissolve]

it's very difficult to apply to a visual mnemonic technique. It's possible, but I think anything you do would be inferior to just practicing music.

I disagree, associating pictures in a filling system, in your brain, is a very fundamental way of how our brain works. Something we should have all been taught in elementary school. Being able to harness this power would increase speed, in any subject, 10 fold.

[Nanakai]

What leads you to believe this? Where have you seen such improvements?

[JumpingJackFlash]

This is where being fluent in staff notation can really help.

Being able to see music written out, and associate that with the sound (and vice versa) - is pretty much what you're talking about, and it certainly does help a lot.

Too many people these days think staff notation is an unnecessarily complicated burden, but it can be hugely beneficial in many different ways. My intonation certainly improves when I'm reading from a score, and when I'm not, I often imagine one in my head (particularly if I'm singing).

[NaturalDissolve]

What leads you to believe this? Where have you seen such improvements?

Memory techniques have been around forever. One man was able to memorize the order of a standard deck of cards is under 27 seconds. Music is based on memory. There has to be a way to apply standard memory techniques to learning music.


That's interesting about imagining the music as you play/sing. It gives the musician a visual. Although I think that is kind of a very basic form of what I'm talking about. There has to be a better way to organize the visuals.

[jancivil]

It seems to me you have a theory you want music to fit to. I don't think it will prove as useful for music as you want it to be. I think one should think of music qua music rather than filter it through this extraneous idea.

a better way to 'organize the visuals' [than notation, which is made to suit musical ideation? wonder why this hasn't proved necessary before]; I wonder how blind musicians can cope. Maybe they have less in the way, actually.

[Sendy]

Surely the best way to memorize the intervals is to routinely expose yourself to them, both as dyads and melodic steps. Experience them, rather than adding another layer of obfuscation between you and the music. Each one has a blatantly obvious characteristic. In a way I feel visuals are the enemy of pure music, if not when music is in it's finished, mastered stage then certainly at it's formative moments.

There's a program called Functional Ear Trainer that plays random intervals to you and asks you to guess them, keeps tally and wotnot. It's really fun.

[coquillo]

Surely the best way to memorize the intervals is to routinely expose yourself to them, both as dyads and melodic steps. Experience them, rather than adding another layer of obfuscation between you and the music. Each one has a blatantly obvious characteristic.

I'm currently transfering the notation examples from Harmonic Experience to the piano roll in Ableton Live. I think I have learnt more in the last week than in the last couple of decades. And it's an excellent way to experience what Sendy is talking about.

[tapper mike]

Surely the best way to memorize the intervals is to routinely expose yourself to them, both as dyads and melodic steps. Experience them, rather than adding another layer of obfuscation between you and the music. Each one has a blatantly obvious characteristic. In a way I feel visuals are the enemy of pure music, if not when music is in it's finished, mastered stage then certainly at it's formative moments.

There's a program called Functional Ear Trainer that plays random intervals to you and asks you to guess them, keeps tally and wotnot. It's really fun.

I agree with most of this...
If you really want to learn it comes in performance/physical practice. The best way is to practice songs that match what you are trying to achieve and ....the lost art of improvisation. A former teacher would drill a concept into my head by making me drill it into my fingers. I'd try it and try it again and then I'd be expected to improvise with it over a progresson or simply a beat trying to force it out of me.

I think in terms of shapes when it comes to music. A chord or a pattern has a shape and I connect the dots to form the shape in performance. When learning something new first I listen then I look then I work out the musical idea by closing my eyes and trusting my fingers. It's one thing to hear what you see, another to see what you hear and a third to be able to apply what you hear/see that only comes with practice/performance.

[Nanakai]

What leads you to believe this? Where have you seen such improvements?

Memory techniques have been around forever. One man was able to memorize the order of a standard deck of cards is under 27 seconds. Music is based on memory. There has to be a way to apply standard memory techniques to learning music.

There is no single, monolithic memory. Both your short and long term memories are dependent on the stimuli. For an example, check out Baddeley et al's working memory model and how that does, or doesn't, affect language and music skills.

What you're talking about is indeed effective, but it's just a matter of association. If you want to use this technique with music, you will have to isolate the parts of music that are memory - much of music resides in memory, but not all of it. There has been some interesting research into pitch memory where groups of people with no musical training were each given a tone to memorize. People in the first group had to memorize the sound by its given pitch, C# for instance. The experimental group was able to give their tone a meaningful name, like Ted. People who were tasked with memorizing the note Ted did much better than those who had to memorize C#, even though they were both the same pitch.

So, you could do the same thing. You could pick a note or interval and associate it with any visual stimulus, like a picture, a solid color or a name. Make it something meaningful to you. But is that really "learning music"? I don't think so. I think that music, like language, becomes meaningful when combined and reformed by an intelligence with a goal. Sure, there's a lot of learning involved, but rote memorization - the kind that your mnemonic techniques excel at - doesn't touch the substance of music. To demonstrate my point, we could transpose the question again to language. How can we adapt mnemonic techniques to teaching people how to write poetry? I've thought about it and posit that we cannot. Let's see if you can prove me wrong.

[chordprogression7]

The only such system, for sounds, is good old ear training: knowing sound with your ear alone. Don't waste your time trying to circumvent what can't be circumvented, if a system such as the one you describe would work for music, it would already have been created during the amazingly long history of music.

[Musicologo]

I'm a programatic mind: I see images all the time when I'm listening to music or vice-versa, I have images in my head that often mean music and I compose soundtracks to them.

I'd say regarding intervals, that I associate motion pictures and ideas to themes where they come from.

The more common example: Shark. The theme from "Jaws" is a minor second interval repeated all over. So for me, a minor second often is associated with the image of a shark wandering around in the sea, mouth open wide...

Another example: the opening chord from "Simpsons", the second inverson of a major chord. Everytime I hear that chord I "see" a blue sky and a cloud going appart. And everytime I'm trying to identify an inversion of a major chord I try to see if that fits...