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From sight-reading to memorized performance
If you have performed from memory, you no doubt have had the experience of an audience member coming up after a concert and saying in amazement “How did you learn so many notes?” In the last few posts about memory, we’ve talked about learning and memory as two sides of the same coin, about the many…
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Memory and falling dominoes
The Starry Night is regarded as one of Vincent Van Gogh’s best works and is probably one of the most well-known images in art, having been appropriated for everything from mugs to mouse pads to desktop wallpaper. I recently happened upon a very unusual version of Starry Night – a video of the iconic image created by falling dominoes. As I…
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The many kinds of memory in music
In music we often talk about auditory, visual, and motor memory. But outside of the music world, we encounter a dizzying array of memory terms. We read about short-term vs. long-term, explicit vs. implicit, declarative vs. procedural, semantic vs. episodic – and more. So what do all of these terms mean in relationship to memory…
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Learning and memory: two sides of the same coin
When I was in grad school (the first time), a friend showed up at lunch one day looking far more stressed than usual. When I asked her what was going on, she said she had a dream the previous night, and she was convinced it was a premonition of disaster for an impending degree recital. In…
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Can synesthesia be taught?
It wasn’t so long ago that the very existence of synesthesia was questioned. (You may recall from an earlier post that there are 60+ types of synesthesia, the condition in which stimulation of one sense leads to automatic experience of a second sense.) Many scientists throughout the twentieth century scoffed at the idea of synesthesia…
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Myth or reality: mirror neurons and music, part VII
A few months ago I wrote several posts about the importance of mirror neurons in the study and performance of music. Mirror neurons, as you recall, are the cells that fire both when we act and when we see someone else making the same action, and multiple studies have been conducted that specifically explore mirror neurons in musicians.…