You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to be Human (19 page)

Athletes report using music as a motivational tool and some claim that it really makes them work harder.
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I have no doubt that in a packed arena full of screaming and chanting people it is very useful to be able to block out distractions and focus on the all-important mental preparation before a race, bout, match or performance. But is there any truth in the belief that music can actually aid top athletic achievements?

A recent study of the effects of music on high-intensity short-term exercise in trained athletes was carried out by a research group in Tunisia.
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The authors selected high tempo music (120–140 beats per minute) and had twelve male athletes either listen to the music or silence during a ten-minute warmup before they performed the Wingate test, a measure of peak anaerobic power in the legs. The athletes then did the test again after a 48-hour recovery period. Heart rate and measures of fatigue were not affected by the presence or absence of music but power output during the test was significantly higher after the music-based warm-up compared to silence.

Another recent study suggests that music may be good for team sports as well as individual performance.
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Researchers at the Institute for Sports Science at the University of Hannover in Germany presented findings that suggested synchronised rhythmic music is associated with better performance of a
football team. Compared to hearing nothing or asynchronous music (through wireless headphones), players who heard synchronised fast music performed better on measures of teamwork, including frequency and accuracy of passes.

Unfortunately the results of both these studies, while convincing, do not allow us to better understand
why
the researchers found better individual or team performance, as they reported no effect of the music on any direct physiological or psychological measures – only performance output. It could be the case that athletes perform better in those conditions because they simply believe music is good for them.

Two studies have actually suggested that music may be more beneficial for untrained people when compared to trained athletes.
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The music in these studies had a better effect on positive outlook following an exercise session in untrained people, a finding which suggests that music may be most beneficial to those starting out in a new sport as opposed to those who already have their own routines and habits. The authors also speculated that trained athletes benefit more from intense mental concentration during their sport and music that they are not used to could provide an unwelcome drain on their precious mental resources.

One promising area in the linking of music to athletic prowess is the effect of music on synchronised movements. One study tested the performance of elite triathletes on a treadmill where they had to run hard until they could run no more. In the presence of synchronous music the athletes were able to endure the run for longer and reported better mood and physical reactions after the run compared to when they heard neutral music or nothing at all. The authors argued that the synchronised music helped to encourage exercise that was more oxygen-efficient by stimulating the athletes into a more rhythmic and regular pattern of movement; their running was effectively made more economical.
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Athletes who are used to music as part of their rigorous and extensive training regime would not go without it in a major competition. Luckily modern music technology means that they can now bring their musical sports world into the international arena for us all to see. This display of sporting headphone use does not mean, however, that music is necessary or even beneficial for elite athletes. Attempts to understand exactly why music can mentally influence athletes have often struggled to pin down really convincing patterns that are true for one person as much as the next.
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This difficulty at least partly stems from the fact that the effects of musical listening in elite sportsmen and women are highly influenced by the individual’s sport of choice, their personal habits during a lifetime of training and, crucially, their preferences for techniques that help reduce anxiety and get them ‘in the zone’.
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In this chapter we have seen that music has once again crept into our daily life, this time during activities that we enjoy for relaxation, for energy, for health and for escapism. Music is frequently an essential partner to our precious free time, whether we prefer to spend it dancing the night away in a club, curled up on the sofa watching a good film, or jogging around the local park. The music in these activities is an enhancing agent, moving us to a higher level in every sense: physical, psychological and emotional.

Throughout the book so far we have seen evidence that our reaction to music depends very much on our own life experience with music and our own preferences. In the next section of the book we will move from looking at general adult life (work and play) to viewing the broader context of our whole lives. It is time to look at how we develop these musical personalities and how they can influence our life journeys.

In the next chapter we will move on to a subject that I find uniquely fascinating within the field of music psychology: memory. I will break down the different components and influences of music on our minds to answer the question of why musical memory is so powerful. Why does hearing a tune take you right back to that special event or person? Why is it that musical memory seems to survive in many cases when other memory systems are beginning to fail or are damaged by trauma? And why do musical memories regularly pop into our head and then repeat themselves, stuck on a loop, driving us mad? The stories of musical memory portray the development and power of your life soundtrack.

PART III

Music across the lifespan

Chapter 7

Music and memory

‘What I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts’

DAVID BOWIE

I have always been fascinated by memory. I have explored many different aspects of human psychology with relation to our musical lives, but whichever way I turn, the subject of memory appears. When I am examining the abilities of amusics, I end up looking at memory function. When I am researching how music can aid language learning,
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I find myself talking about the important role of memory in the process. Even when I am looking at the positive effects of music in cancer care the importance of each person’s musical memory begins to take centre stage.

What is memory? To most people memory is the part of the mind that helps us remember a shopping list or a pin number while also seeming to delight in hiding the last known location of our keys. To me, memory is the key to understanding our experience of consciousness, learning and sense of identity; it is the glue that holds us in the present moment, allowing us to reflect on the past and plan for the future. We’ll see later in this chapter how the destruction of memory can have a devastating impact.

The term memory encompasses many different processes that enable us to hold on to and manipulate information and
life events.
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There are two main memory systems discussed in this chapter that I will elaborate on before we begin: episodic and semantic memory.

Episodic memory is memory for events in time while semantic memory is static knowledge. Consider an orange (I just happen to be eating one as I write): an episodic memory for an orange could be the memory of a shopping trip the last time you bought one or the memory of a fantastic meal that featured orange; a semantic memory by comparison would be the knowledge of how to eat an orange or how you might cook with one.

Episodic memories have a temporal element to them, meaning they can be replayed in your mind’s eye. They can be autobiographical too, if they are your memories for events that have happened to you. With these kinds of memories people can often re-imagine themselves in that situation, relying on the ability to indulge in what the psychologist Endel Tulving referred to as ‘mental time travel’.

But there is also another, secret memory system. Implicit memories are the kinds of knowledge that we find hard to describe to another person, typically our skills and abilities such as playing a musical instrument, riding a bike, driving, swimming or walking. It is impossible to verbally describe all the knowledge necessary to ride a bike – you can guide a person, but ultimately the new learner will just have to get on a bike and have a go. They need to establish their own implicit memories for the various muscle movements, balance challenges and visual skills necessary to accomplish this complex activity. Implicit memories are built subconsciously and quietly support our activities as we go about daily life.

These different memory systems may be partly distinct but they also overlap and interact. The majority of semantic memories require the initial input of an episodic memory.
Implicit memories can also begin life as a series of facts and events that are very fresh in our minds and that then gradually melt away into implicit memories as they no longer require conscious access or attention. Anyone who has learned a skill will recognise this process of going from laborious, focused thought to much more effortless and automatic skill. The memory systems that I have described are therefore not separate ‘storage boxes’ in our minds but intertwined processes that play different roles depending on the task we are trying to accomplish or the problem we are trying to solve. They are part of a larger network that functions together to allow us to understand and learn about the world around us.

In this chapter I will take you on a journey through musical memory, and in particular through the more extreme manifestations of our tendency to remember, forget, and be chased around by our musical past. By looking at the unusual and often less understood features of musical memory, the exceptional cases of skill and loss, we gain a unique perspective and understanding of the more everyday interactions that we all experience with our musical minds.

In three tales we will now explore musical memory: I call these tales ‘the star’, ‘the survivor’ and ‘the miscreant’.

‘The star’ – expert musicians

Musicians face a unique challenge if they want to make it as a world-class performer. For the last 200 years or so, the fashion has been to play from memory in concert. This is not true of all kinds of music performances but it is typified most strongly in the virtuoso style, where ‘the star’ musician aims to display their skill on the stage. You will even see performance from memory featured in competitions for young musicians nowadays, and I recall from my teaching days that there were more points available to exam candidates who could play their pieces from memory.

I will confess now: as a performer, my musical memory is pretty terrible. I never encouraged my students to play from memory, preferring them to have the score available just in case they suddenly went blank. This preference no doubt sprang from my own experience; I never performed from memory. Quite apart from my stage fright, which meant my public performances were few and far between, I was always a visual musician. When I think of music or attempt to play from memory I see the notes, the score, rolling in front of my eyes. Over time I convinced myself that some people were naturally good at playing from memory and that I was simply not one of them.

My assumption seemed to be supported when later in life I went to judge music competitions and saw candidates playing from memory. It all looked so effortless … and completely impossible. Then there are the tales of music memory experts. In particular there is the often-told story of the early 20thcentury conductor Arturo Toscanini, which goes something like this:

Just before the start of a big concert, an agitated musician from the orchestra hurried up to Toscanini, who was waiting for his cue to go on stage. The desperate musician reported to his conductor that the key for the lowest note on his bassoon was broken beyond repair and at such short notice, nothing could be done – surely he could not play in the concert? Toscanini sighed, shaded his eyes with his hand, thought for a moment, and replied: ‘It’s all right – that note does not occur in tonight’s concert.’

Not only did Toscanini apparently know every note for every orchestral instrument in that concert (probably around 70 musicians and at least two hours of music), but it has been estimated that he knew by heart every note for every instrument of about 250 symphonies, the words and music for 100 operas, plus volumes of chamber music, piano, cello and
violin music, and songs. How on earth is a memory feat like that possible?

I only learned later in life, once I began my PhD, that musical memory is a skill, not a gift, one that develops with practice and that relies on the types of techniques that just about any memory expert will use, adapted for musical purposes.

Memory experts exist in all walks of life and the World Memory Championship is the largest gathering of such individuals. The World Memory Championships contain many different disciplines revolving around tasks such as remembering images, numbers, poems, dates, or packs of cards.
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In order to attain grand master status a person must: 1) memorise the order of 520 randomly shuffled cards (ten complete packs) in one hour; 2) memorise 1,000 random numbers in one hour; 3) remember the order of a randomly shuffled single deck of 52 cards in two minutes or less. Sounds utterly impossible. However, as of September 2013 there were 133 memory grand masters from eighteen countries.
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What all these grand masters of memory and expert musicians have in common is a great deal of hard work in developing strategies – mnemonics – to help them expand the basic performance ability of their memory, which is really no different to yours or mine. Memory is not a muscle, you can’t just work it and it will get bigger. Memory is more like a bag of tools, and you can accomplish just about anything if you put in the time and effort to learn how to use your tools well.

Learning

The first group of important mnemonic techniques is based on learning to manipulate the information as it is being learned, at the point of encoding. Good memory is as much about how the information goes in as how you attempt to get it out again.

The first important encoding strategy for any memory
expert is to reduce apparently large bits of information to smaller bite-size chunks. The task of breaking information down is called chunking (no, really) and memory experts achieve this by creating links between smaller bits of information, packing them together, and then attempting to remember these more meaningful chunks as opposed to their component parts.

A memory expert who wants to remember a shuffled pack of cards might represent each of the cards as a meaningful character, an object or a location, as opposed to an abstract card. They will then create stories or journeys involving these characters, objects and so on, thereby linking them together in their mind. Eventually all they have to know in order to recall the whole pack of cards is one story, as opposed to all the items from which the story was created.

A musical memory expert, by the same token, will not try to remember every note. Before they even play or sing a note they will study the musical score and identify points where larger melodies or movements in the music fuse into meaningful chunks. They then focus on remembering these large sections of the music as one.
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An expert musician will use their long-term knowledge of music, of scales, arpeggios, cadences and harmonic relations, to give meaningful forms to large sections of the music
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. This process of analysis has been found to benefit final performance
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and has been studied in both classical
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and jazz performers
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to date.

Musicians see meaning and structure in music naturally, without any instruction to do so. Even I recognise the consequences of subconsciously structuring music in this way. An example would be when my guitar teacher would point to my music and say, ‘Can you please begin here?’ I would often wince and reply, ‘Well, I can start about two bars earlier if you like – that would be much easier.’ It is easier to start in
some places compared to others because these places mark the subconscious boundaries that we create as a consequence of the learning process.

My musical memory would be a lot better than it is today if I had got into the habit of using these meaningful musical structures, creating sections and playing each section from memory, making each one bigger over time; and then slowly linking them together so they eventually became one piece, one memory. Studies have closely observed such processes when professional musicians learn a new piece of music and have noted their importance for performance success.
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Retrieving memories

Structures in musical memory are also important when it comes to the other end of the process, retrieving the information we want. I think of this as a process akin to fishing: somewhere in that deep, dark lake of your mind is a memory that you want to get at and the best way to bring in that fish is to use a good rod. For our purposes, this means that we stand the best chance of retrieving information from memory if we use a good retrieval structure.

Structural bars, the bars where musicians prefer to start and stop, are a key to the retrieval of music. Musicians practice their structural bars more, on average, compared to non-structural bars, reflecting their importance in retrieval.
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Aaron Williamon
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from the Royal College of Music (UK) was the first to show that you can see the consequences of using retrieval structures in music, by looking at the way that a musician’s brain reacts to viewing music.

Williamon asked six musicians to learn the Prelude in A Minor from J.S. Bach’s
Well Tempered Clavier II (BWV 889)
. Once they had learned the piece, they were asked to identify bars in the music that they considered to be structural. The following task was visual recognition: the musicians were
shown several bars and asked to say if they were from the prelude or not. During the task, the researchers measured brain responses using an electroencephalogram or EEG.

Overall, the musicians were faster at correctly identifying structural bars compared to non-structural bars, indicating that these more important parts of the music were easier to spot. Not only this, but the identification of structural bars was associated with a unique pattern of brain activity, an exaggerated negative peak in the electrical signal at around 300–400 milliseconds after the bar was shown, emerging from the right-central area of the brain. This type of pattern is associated with the retrieval of complex, meaningful structures. This result may therefore be the first indicator of a retrieval structure in the musical mind.

Once a performer has chunked their music into meaningful units and created reliable retrieval structures, the next and final step is simple: practice, practice and more practice.

The aim of practice once a piece is learned is to speed up recall; to automatise the memory. By this method a musician will activate the implicit memory system, as we do in many other everyday activities such as learning to ride a bike or drive a car. Over time and with practice, a once-complex conscious activity no longer requires quite so much thought. This transformation from high- to low-attention memory processing is especially important for musical expertise because of the high level of demand made on skilled motor coordination during performance.

Eventually, recalling a large piece of music should feel relatively effortless, and it is at this point that a performer really becomes flexible and skilled with the demands of performance itself. Once the notes can be retrieved, in the right order, then the musician can focus almost entirely on the fine art of musical communication, the nuances of an emotional performance.