On this week’s show, Dawn Ivers and I discuss Dr. Daniel J. Levitin’s book, This is Your Brain on Music.
Music activates the oldest and newest parts of our brain together
The old brain and new brain work together when playing an instrument. (pg 57)
Listening to music activates brain regions in a particular order. (pg 191)
You may have heard that music is good for the brain, and it’s true. The research shows that both playing & listening to music create more & stronger neural pathways between different brain regions.
Melodic Memory is a combination of both abstract and specific.
We store both abstract and specific memory of melodies. We pay attention to absolute pitch/tempo, as well as relative pitch/tempo. (pg 165)
When we hear a familiar piece that has undergone a transformation, we still recognize it. (pg 137)
Like the ragtime interpretations of classical themes in the video below.
Most people, even non-musicians, when they sing a song will be within 4 bpm of the ‘original’ they are referencing. (pg 61)
We also tend to sing at or very near the original pitch of a song, because we sing along with that specific memory representation in our heads. (pg 153-154)
Experiencing a thing and imagining it or watching someone else do it will activate the same neurons.
Brain scans were done on people while listening to music, and then while they only imagined listening to music. The same brain regions lit up both times. (pg 154)
Our brains also react when we watch someone do something (the experiment referenced is a monkey reaching for a banana). This phenomenon is called mirror neurons.
While there was no specific research into this with musicians at the time this book was written, there is speculation that while watching a musician perform, we may be trying to figure out how they are making those sounds, and our brains may essentially be ‘playing along’ ( pg 266-267)
For piano students and parents, this means that visualization practice and listening to our pieces is an effective practice tool that can reinforce the same neural pathways and musical memory we’ll be relying on when we play a piece.
Chunking and Memory Tricks
Pg. 218-220 We use something called ‘chunking’ to encode things like scales, chords, cadences, blues patterns, as quick ways to describe sequences of notes. This means we just have to recall one chunk instead of a whole set of individual notes and beats each time one of these comes up. (pg 218-220)
When a musician learns characteristics or stylistic norms of different genres (categories pg 145) as well as basic components that may be present in those categories (chunks), this makes learning new music, playing by ear, improvising within the style all that much easier. So this is why your teacher is having your piano kid practice cadences and scales! We’re encoding those chunks, so when they show up in the music we don’t have to painstakingly learn each note, we can just recall the whole chunk.
Another interesting thing about how our brains use chunks can be seen when a student has to start from the very beginning of a piece every time they mess up. Their brain has encoded that entire piece of music as one massive chunk – not great if you have to perform it on stage.
Ways to counteract this:
put some landmarks within the piece to divide up that chunk, so they can recover quicker or resume from one of those landmarks.
use your knowledge of the style/rhythm of the piece to try to continue without letting the audience know you’ve stumbled.
Music is not just for the experts!
Until very recently, music was a culturally inclusive practice. Only in recent human history have we started putting expert musicians on stage and paying lots of money to watch them perform. (pg 6)
Also until very recently, music and dance were inseparable in almost every culture studied. (pg 157)
Music can be a form of abstract art.
Music can be a professional artist on stage.
Music can also be you singing in the car or shower.
It can be a spontaneous dance party in the kitchen, or family and friends gathering around to make music together.
Music is for everybody. It’s a part of who we are and how we relate to one another.
There’s not one right way to do it and we are all invited to participate.
Conclusion, call to action, resources
What art and science have in common is the ability to live in an open-ended state of interpretation and reinterpretation of the products of our work. (pg 5, 194-195)
For those of you who quit piano lessons when you were younger, even if you aren’t the musician you had hoped you would be, your brain is still enriched by the process.
To get your own copy of Dr. Levitin’s book, “This is Your Brain on Music” click here.
To read Dawn Ivers’ blog post about “This is Your Brain on Music” click here.
Thanks for listening!
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