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When I go through my jazz study diaries I'll often come across something from 2 or 3 years back that I spent a couple of weeks working on only to realise I'd totally forgotten all about it! Then when I make sense of my own hasty notes and stay with it for a bit, it of course all comes flooding back and the fingers start to play like I worked this stuff out yesterday...
So muscle memory is more reliable than I often give it credit for, whereas general memory, well, not so much...
If you're like me, there's a ton of stuff we all work on and it's quite a challenge to refresh all the knowledge gleaned and have it constantly at the fingertips so to speak. New stuff slips in while some old stuff slips out.
Now surely, the prodigious players on any instrument must have greater ability to just clearly recall things they work on enough, without it ever slipping into the fog- whether it's tunes, lines, devices, strategies etc etc. We all rely on good ol' muscle memory, just as long as stuff is floating around in the ol' "cache" so to speak... But having a larger cache would surely not only help us retain stuff better, but also make us faster learners and ultimately better players, agree?
There's more than a few oldsters on this forum, how do you guys find your general memory vs muscle memory? Do you find you forget stuff if you don't constantly keep refreshing? How important do you think general memory is to your playing? More or less important than muscle memory?...
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06-11-2018 03:50 PM
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First, "muscle memory" is what people call it, but if we called it by a name that more indicates what we would want it to do we would call it "muscle melody" or "muscle harmony" or something... the idea being that the hands don't just "remember" what they did when and where, but act as if they remember the names, shapes, patterns, or sounds and relationships of what they did back when and where.
"General memory" is a problematic term as well because in something like recalling music, people's strategies are variable. Strategies that depend on verbal recall of chord names, or graphical shape and pattern movements, or various other methods are using different kinds of memory function. Those like me that recall a song by the way it sounds (what I call "how it goes") are using another memory function.
People use different ways to conceive and execute how they play as well. Perhaps, for those that use the same method for recall and execution, it feels like their memory is long and accurate (and reliable, dependable), while those who conceive and remember music using one strategy but then execute playing using a different strategy, if feels more like their memory is short and decays quickly (because of losses during the translation between the way it was remembered and the way it needs to be conceived for execution).
So, if one remembers by naming but plays by using patterns, a conversion is in the way; and likewise if one remembers by patterns but plays by sound, or remembers by sound but plays by names or patterns. With the numerous possible strategies it would not surprise me at all that there are a lot of guitarists suffering a mismatch of their recall-execution strategies.
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Interesting thoughts Paul. Yes, I'm sure many of us deal with the conversion of stored patterns or some visual or graphic representation into the music, and are slowed down by this. I certainly do/am.... Mind you I'm not really talking just about recalling tunes, I spend more time trying to develop improv devices in all positions, all keys all situations kind of thing for up tempo hard bop type stuff. In this way It's probably not so different in the way that many of the great players created a store of material to draw upon, which makes me appreciate what makes them greater than the rest of us. Surely things like natural talent, taste, technique and efficient practice methods are all important, but what about memory?
Could Coltrane have achieved what he did without a powerful memory? Not just to draw from during his improvisations, but to enable a large active "cache", if you like, at all times during his development and practice. Without getting into definitions of memory - because we still don't know how it functions or where it even resides - how important do you think it is to an improvisor? Some players seem to do a lot with relatively little stored information (good at recombining or variation), while others seem not to repeat themselves much at all. Sometimes these people are surely drawing from a larger pool of stored information that might create the impression that they are creating 100% fresh ideas on the fly at break neck speed (like Rollins seems to do).
Although I have many problems with the "language" analogy, it may be instructive here. Let's consider an ageing person who's memory is failing - not uncommon, right? - now, such a person has no trouble using his/her known language to communicate, even though they may forget about upcoming appointments etc. They don't forget to speak although they may search for the odd word or two from time to time. 99.9% of the time they have no trouble using the language they have grown up with. But trying to learn Mandarin at such an age with a deteriorating memory will be almost impossible to expect fluency, even after say 10 years.
Let's face it, Jazz to many is like learning a foreign language and unless you are speaking it all the time it will be a struggle. On the other hand, if you do speak it all the time, then it takes up permanent residence in your "cache" to the point it becomes permanently embedded. Some people can learn new languages faster than others, even into their 50's and 60's. I wonder if such people would be equally predisposed to have an advantage in learning the Jazz language? Whether they'd have musical talent or taste, of course is another matter!
We each have different ways of interacting with our memory, I think. I've always noticed that even from an early age I would not remember things like song lyrics, or plots in movies like my friends could. But I could remember the baselines or drum parts to songs, or the harmonies. And with films I'd remember the atmosphere from certain scenes, or the scenery or even the quality of the film stock! I don't know if this is "selective" memory, because I didn't choose to "select" these things.... or did I? ... Hmmm
But I always would recall actual conversations in real life better than most, so I knew my memory wasn't all bad. With music it's a mixed bag for me as well. I'm ok at recalling music if I hear it, or if it's in my mind somewhere as a "sound" as Pauln explains, but trying to remember umpteen ways I thought I learned to finger something needs constant refreshing to be "there" for me to use in the heat of improv. I'm pretty sure I'd be a better musician by now if I had a photographic memory!
What do you guys reckon?
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I think interest has a lot to do with it. We remember things we like or which have some significance for us. Repetition helps, of course, but unless the interest is there that'll fade too.
Incentive also helps. If one's doing a gig then naturally one has to know the repertoire so that helps fix it in the brain. I suppose there are players with minds that simply remember every little thing but, as you say, with most of us it's selective.
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I used to practice so much, and i developed a theory that when you practice all the time, you really remember 10 percent of whatever it is you are working on; the other ninety percent is about chops maintenance. so if you practice 100 things you’ll absorb 10 of them, and if you practice 1000 things you’ll have 100, and if you practice 10,000 things you’ll have 1000. I figured the more i absorbed, the less chance there was that id run out of ideas, and if i had a lot of licks in my bloody stream, i could just bounce from one thing to another and it’d sound ok
benson
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Haha! So we really only get to hear 10% of what GB has actually tried to learn?
Originally Posted by basinstreet
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Correct me if I'm wrong:
I'll assume that both you and John Coltrane have decent memories.
What then might be the difference?
You both spent much time developing material while practicing. The obvious difference,
John was also constantly gigging and consolidating many of the ideas he studied.
Also, we'll never know what he practiced that never found it's wayinto his playing.
The club gigs those days were often 3 sets long and in some places with a full week engagement or longer.
I've heard that Ravi has some journals/idea sketch books from his father.
That would be real cool if those were to be published.
May not come to pass. It would also be of interest to me to see some of
your sketch book ideas, those developed or forgotten.
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yup, terrifying Originally Posted by princeplanet
Haha! So we really only get to hear 10% of what GB has actually tried to learn?
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This is a really interesting topic. I sometimes wonder if my playing is mostly all muscle memory which really isn't a great thing maybe. I often ask myself if I'm really playing musically or am I just fingering things that I know will work. Maybe I'm just not giving myself enough credit but it's humbling to think about.
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Human memory is not like the raw bits in computers. I mean, those bits we have are "active".. first, one memory can trigger 100 others. Secondly, we are not requesting a bit of info by its actual "address". We send a request like "how did this go" and hope that the bunch of brain cells get the message, get off their lazy butts and send the info.
Is there even something like a "general" memory? I mean, we have many different types but to call some of it "general", what kinds of info bits are ... "general"?
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muscles have no memory, we are training the brain and conditioning the muscles. if you are stuck in a rut, that's an issue of confidence, most likely.
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Without getting pedantic, I'm sure we can all agree that there is another kind of memory we use as players that is more cognitive that the reflexive type we call "muscle" memory - again for want of a better term or definition. Originally Posted by emanresu
If the cerebellum houses autonomic learned reflexes, this is quite distinct from the frontal cortex cognitive type of memory. So autonomic v cognitive is what I mean by muscle memory v general memory. OK? It's not really important to go into more detail, surely we all know what we mean by this basic difference.
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Good golly, there are probably a thousand reasons why Coltrane was a better musician than I can even imagine being - but would he have been as developed as he was if his memory was poor, or even average? Originally Posted by bako
We can all accept that having perfect pitch can be an advantage to a musician, do we accept that a superior memory might also be an advantage. How about a deadly combo of PP and a photographic memory? Has there ever been a musician that had both?
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Sorry, not really trying to compare you with Coltrane. Just making the point that the countless hours he spent gigging
and playing with others helped him consolidate what he practiced.
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True. Or maybe just a lack of creative ideas. Originally Posted by ronjazz
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Muscle memory is for executing whatever you may come up with. It's pretty much binary - no muscles = no play. What is there to compare?
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Great topic. I go over things I'd worked on before and "relearn" new things more frequently than I'm proud of. I sometimes find penciled in notes in the margins that offer meaningful insight, evidence that I really "got" what was happening; so why am I "relearning"? I think especially now with the overload of info and lessons that's available online it's very easy to chew more than one can ingest. If you go on a little kick listening and studying a particular musician, you find a bag of devices they routinely use(d), ways of navigating changes, melodic phrases, harmonic subs, etc. that make anyone sound like themselves. We now have at our fingertips the ability to easily search the web and/or books and find the handful of devices that our musical icons use and try to work them all into our playing, and it's just too much. You need your own handful, borrowed from varying sources, and with a little of your own twists to make them "yours", but you really can't "use" all of what Mile, Trane, Pat, Herbie did. Obviously Miles was well aware of everything that was being done around him, but he didn't try to put it into his playing.
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not that simple. no brain = no play, muscles or not. Originally Posted by emanresu
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It's not quite that simple. While "muscle memory" is a bit of a misnomer, the phenomenon of motor skill acquisition is real, and for all intents and purposes acts as if the muscles have a memory. Originally Posted by ronjazz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memoryMuscle memory encoding[edit]
The neuroanatomy of memory is widespread throughout the brain; however, the pathways important to motor memory are separate from the medial temporal lobe pathways associated with declarative memory.[9] As with declarative memory, motor memory is theorized to have two stages: a short-term memory encoding stage, which is fragile and susceptible to damage, and a long-term memory consolidation stage, which is more stable.[10]
The memory encoding stage is often referred to as motor learning, and requires an increase in brain activity in motor areas as well as an increase in attention. Brain areas active during motor learning include the motor and somatosensory cortices; however, these areas of activation decrease once the motor skill is learned. The prefrontal and frontal cortices are also active during this stage due to the need for increased attention on the task being learned.[8]
The main area involved in motor learning is the cerebellum. Some models of cerebellar-dependent motor learning, in particular the Marr-Albus model, propose a single plasticity mechanism involving the cerebellar long-term depression (LTD) of the parallel fiber synapses onto Purkinje cells. These modifications in synapse activity would mediate motor input with motor outputs critical to inducing motor learning.[11] However, conflicting evidence suggests that a single plasticity mechanism is not sufficient and a multiple plasticity mechanism is needed to account for the storage of motor memories over time. Regardless of the mechanism, studies of cerebellar-dependent motor tasks show that cerebral cortical plasticity is crucial for motor learning, even if not necessarily for storage.[12]
The basal ganglia also play an important role in memory and learning, in particular in reference to stimulus-response associations and the formation of habits. The basal ganglia-cerebellar connections are thought to increase with time when learning a motor task.[13]
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that you completely forgot that you worked on something, than as soon as you glanced at notes about it you were able to recall the material and play it well? I'm not a neuro-cognitive scientist (first time I've used that caveat this week ...), but I don't think this indicates that your muscle memory is taking over and allowing you to do something that your general memory has lost. I think this is a matter of your entire memory system responding to a visual cue and retrieving something that was stored in deeper memory.
My experience with music memory is is that if I spend significant time fully learning* a tune, and subsequently play it at least occasionally, it stays in memory. If I learn it thoroughly and then don't use it, it slips into deeper memory, and I can't instantly play it the way I can instantly play something that I've kept up with. But some kind of cue (e.g., a quick look at a chart or stumbling around for a few minutes with it), will usually bring it all the way back. However, if I never really learned it fully, it takes more than a quick look at a chart to bring it back -- I need to really work on it again. There's may be a point where a tune I fully learned is pushed out of memory completely, but I can't think of an example.
* Get to the point where I can play the head and comp the changes easily without a chart and can blow over the tune without struggling or faking it.
John
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Exactly what he said....Thanks for saving me the typing!!! Originally Posted by John A.
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Fine, just substitute "deeper" memory for muscle memory. The question I still ask is about our non - deep memory, do we think that people who are more advantaged in this department can advance quicker than those who aren't? I think there may be a difference between forcing yourself to refresh information as opposed not really needing to, and therefore having more time to move on and learn new things instead of rehashing old things. Originally Posted by John A.
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I think you have to be able to remember both recently and distantly acquired information and have well developed motor (muscle) memory to play jazz. I have no idea which if any of those is more important than the others for quick advancement. If there's research on the subject, I would find that interesting. Originally Posted by princeplanet
John
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I have a feeling there might be some research about this stuff, and hope someone chimes in with a link. The only thing I can recall is reading in several different places about the 21 day rule - if you practice something for 21 consecutive days and can play it perfectly, then it never really leaves you, i.e., it becomes embedded in deeper memory... I have found this to be true for myself, and is why I will practice something that I wish to keep in this way. I think I just need to refresh more... Originally Posted by John A.
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In the Lute Journal I read the long interview of the lat Patrick O'Brien who was exceptional guitar/lute physiologist and helped many well-known guitarist and lutenist to overcome technical or health problems.
In one episode he described what he called a 'kinetic memory'... he said all the virtuoso players have exceptional kinetic memomory.
He described how he played golf with Paul O'Dette (who is really virtuoso player on lute - namely virtuoso - light, clean, bright, fast.. in some interviews he used to say that speed was never an issue for him)...
So he said he noticed that O'Dette (who used to play golf in his youth as a semi-pro) does not try to figure out what to do - that he just tries a few times and once he finds proper motion and just repeats it exactly...
The same thing works in playing music - they just find once, memorize and repeat exactly... and those who do not have that kind of kinetic memory they have to elaborate a method to fix it... as they cannot memorize - they have to train it gradually through excercises.
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