24/6/2020
More thoughts on learning and memory
I would like to share with you another important idea. It has to do with memory. Usually, we assume that to remember anything it has to be repeated many times. This includes competencies. To become competent we have to perform actions many times correctly, going from being clumsy (conscious competence), or even overwhelmed (conscious incompetence), to being fluent (unconscious competence).
That is often true. And yet...and yet... we can certainly all think of single experiences that stayed with us, even though it was not repeated many times. This tends to be the case with intense experiences, whether positive or negative. Experiences that have unusual intensity stick in our minds. No need for lots of repetition. Love at first sight. The first taste of Italian ice-cream. Your first solo flight as a student pilot. Or think of phobias as examples of one-trial learning. A phobia is an extremely intense negative reaction permanently associated with and triggered by particular sensory stimuli, usually as the result of one single intensely negative experience. Intensity is the critical element.
The author of a book that surveys the scientific research about memory summed it up with: memory = meaning. Indeed. The meaningfulness of experiences determine how well, and how quickly, we remember them (or not).
MEMORY = MEANING
The more meaningful an experience, the better it sticks in our memory. And if the intensity of that meaningfulness crosses a certain threshold, a single experience could be sufficient for lasting impression. Positive or negative.
It is called saliency. SALIENCY: the quality of being particularly noticeable or important.
If an experience impresses us as being extra meaningful, it engages more of our neurology. Let’s think of it as the fight-or-flight-or-mate survival reflex kicking in. (Yes, I added “mate” to it for the sake of completeness).
The great performing musicians have uncanny ability to learn extremely quickly, both technically and musically. They are able to perfectly memorize vast quantities of music, and they overcome technical challenges with stunning ease.
I think their astounding speed of learning is in large part due to the SALIENCY of their musical experience. And they do not save their intense musical experiences only for formal musical performances. Everything they do on their instruments -- every note they play, every scale, every exercise, every phrase of music -- in the practice room as much as in performance, is loaded with so much musical/aesthetic/emotional meaning that one-trial learning is often possible.
MEMORY = MEANING
MEANING = MEMORY
Their learning and performing experiences are so infused with high-intensity meaning that it immediately sticks in their minds. In short, they use SALIENCY as a learning tool. I am convinced that the idea holds for technique as much as for music. The learning of complex movements happens faster and deeper and more thorough when it is also associated with high intensity musical meaning.
Profound aesthetic meaning elevates learning to a higher plane where greater sophistication is possible. I think that is the fundamental reason why Mikhael Pletnev could learn all the Scarlatti sonatas on one airplane flight; why Anton Nel could memorise and play perfectly the accompaniment of the Dvorak violin concerto from scratch by playing it only twice in rehearsal with me (I swear it’s true!); and why Christian Altenburger could learn and memorize the Alban Berg violin concerto away from the instrument in a single week and play it perfectly from memory at a lesson with Dorothy DeLay! Even she was astonished! The list of examples can go on and on.
There is a lesson in it for all of us lesser mortals. Instead of practicing mindlessly and mechanically, we should deliberately seek out the musical meaning in everything we do. Even technical work should not merely be technical work. We should find ways to make it salient, to make it stick in our minds. Saliency can come in many forms. Beauty is salient. Surprise in salient. Humour is salient. Anything unusual is salient. It stands out from uniformity.
Even a “boring” technical exercise, or a scale, can be made salient. We can do it by adding all kinds of salient features: vibrato, accents, rhythms, pressures, tempi, dynamics, variations of all kinds -- anything that makes it unusual. We can play it in ways that represent different emotions or characters: happy, sad, funny, agitated, angry, mischievous, lazy, seductive, cruel, frightened, loving, tender, etc. Your imagination is the limit. It is simultaneously also an exercise in imagination, musical characterization and communication.
It is the same principle on which the technique of mind-mapping is based. By using pictures, colours, humour, metaphor, playfulness, unusual perspectives, unusual associations, sexyness, even grotesqueness and aversion, ideas and information can SALIENTLY be represented in a mindmap, MAKING IT MUCH MORE MEMORABLE.
MEMORY = MEANING
MEANING = MEMORY
I remember reading flutist James Galway’s first autobiography many years ago in which he recounts how he turned his aversion to practicing scales into pleasure by making a game of it. The object of the game was to play any scale in as many wildly different ways as his imagination could conjure up. Voila!, the element of SALIENCY was added, not to mention the resulting increase in variety (see my essay on the Law of Requisite Variety). Different, unusual ways of playing a scale is not only more salient, and therefore more memorable, but each different way of playing it also offers a new set of information. The more information you can process, the richer your representation of a skill, resulting in greater flexibility.
Memory = meaning. Practice with meaning in mind. Use your imagination to make things salient. Your learning will be greatly enhanced.
More thoughts on learning and memory
I would like to share with you another important idea. It has to do with memory. Usually, we assume that to remember anything it has to be repeated many times. This includes competencies. To become competent we have to perform actions many times correctly, going from being clumsy (conscious competence), or even overwhelmed (conscious incompetence), to being fluent (unconscious competence).
That is often true. And yet...and yet... we can certainly all think of single experiences that stayed with us, even though it was not repeated many times. This tends to be the case with intense experiences, whether positive or negative. Experiences that have unusual intensity stick in our minds. No need for lots of repetition. Love at first sight. The first taste of Italian ice-cream. Your first solo flight as a student pilot. Or think of phobias as examples of one-trial learning. A phobia is an extremely intense negative reaction permanently associated with and triggered by particular sensory stimuli, usually as the result of one single intensely negative experience. Intensity is the critical element.
The author of a book that surveys the scientific research about memory summed it up with: memory = meaning. Indeed. The meaningfulness of experiences determine how well, and how quickly, we remember them (or not).
MEMORY = MEANING
The more meaningful an experience, the better it sticks in our memory. And if the intensity of that meaningfulness crosses a certain threshold, a single experience could be sufficient for lasting impression. Positive or negative.
It is called saliency. SALIENCY: the quality of being particularly noticeable or important.
If an experience impresses us as being extra meaningful, it engages more of our neurology. Let’s think of it as the fight-or-flight-or-mate survival reflex kicking in. (Yes, I added “mate” to it for the sake of completeness).
The great performing musicians have uncanny ability to learn extremely quickly, both technically and musically. They are able to perfectly memorize vast quantities of music, and they overcome technical challenges with stunning ease.
I think their astounding speed of learning is in large part due to the SALIENCY of their musical experience. And they do not save their intense musical experiences only for formal musical performances. Everything they do on their instruments -- every note they play, every scale, every exercise, every phrase of music -- in the practice room as much as in performance, is loaded with so much musical/aesthetic/emotional meaning that one-trial learning is often possible.
MEMORY = MEANING
MEANING = MEMORY
Their learning and performing experiences are so infused with high-intensity meaning that it immediately sticks in their minds. In short, they use SALIENCY as a learning tool. I am convinced that the idea holds for technique as much as for music. The learning of complex movements happens faster and deeper and more thorough when it is also associated with high intensity musical meaning.
Profound aesthetic meaning elevates learning to a higher plane where greater sophistication is possible. I think that is the fundamental reason why Mikhael Pletnev could learn all the Scarlatti sonatas on one airplane flight; why Anton Nel could memorise and play perfectly the accompaniment of the Dvorak violin concerto from scratch by playing it only twice in rehearsal with me (I swear it’s true!); and why Christian Altenburger could learn and memorize the Alban Berg violin concerto away from the instrument in a single week and play it perfectly from memory at a lesson with Dorothy DeLay! Even she was astonished! The list of examples can go on and on.
There is a lesson in it for all of us lesser mortals. Instead of practicing mindlessly and mechanically, we should deliberately seek out the musical meaning in everything we do. Even technical work should not merely be technical work. We should find ways to make it salient, to make it stick in our minds. Saliency can come in many forms. Beauty is salient. Surprise in salient. Humour is salient. Anything unusual is salient. It stands out from uniformity.
Even a “boring” technical exercise, or a scale, can be made salient. We can do it by adding all kinds of salient features: vibrato, accents, rhythms, pressures, tempi, dynamics, variations of all kinds -- anything that makes it unusual. We can play it in ways that represent different emotions or characters: happy, sad, funny, agitated, angry, mischievous, lazy, seductive, cruel, frightened, loving, tender, etc. Your imagination is the limit. It is simultaneously also an exercise in imagination, musical characterization and communication.
It is the same principle on which the technique of mind-mapping is based. By using pictures, colours, humour, metaphor, playfulness, unusual perspectives, unusual associations, sexyness, even grotesqueness and aversion, ideas and information can SALIENTLY be represented in a mindmap, MAKING IT MUCH MORE MEMORABLE.
MEMORY = MEANING
MEANING = MEMORY
I remember reading flutist James Galway’s first autobiography many years ago in which he recounts how he turned his aversion to practicing scales into pleasure by making a game of it. The object of the game was to play any scale in as many wildly different ways as his imagination could conjure up. Voila!, the element of SALIENCY was added, not to mention the resulting increase in variety (see my essay on the Law of Requisite Variety). Different, unusual ways of playing a scale is not only more salient, and therefore more memorable, but each different way of playing it also offers a new set of information. The more information you can process, the richer your representation of a skill, resulting in greater flexibility.
Memory = meaning. Practice with meaning in mind. Use your imagination to make things salient. Your learning will be greatly enhanced.
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