abstraction is a mental lever
What the heck is this guy talking about now? Mental lever? Like a crowbar for your brain?
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The Expert Mind
There’s a great article in the July 24, 2006 issue of Scientific American titled The Expert Mind. They did some work studying chess experts in order to learn some things about the brain. The payoff for us musicians is that idea of “manipulating mental representations” that I’ve previously discussed. Just like Chess experts can recall positions after a quick glance, expert musicians can recall music they’ve heard in more detail. And this article helps confirm why: we are manipulating a biggger store of mental imagery in our area of expertise.
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where’s the posts?
I’m pretty wrapped up right now reading a book I just got my hands on: Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation by David Huron. I have plans for a full review by my initial impression is that this is a really useful book for those of us interested in how music affects people.
There’s a bunch of Professor Huron’s writing on the web, but the book is fairly recent and looks very promising.
mental representation of music
When musicians learn a piece of music, they don’t commit a detailed image of the score to memory, in order to visualize the piece. So what the heck is stored in the brain instead?
David Huron has a lecture (available on the web) where he asks the following yes/no question: “Does the word ‘but’ occur in the lyrics to the song Row, Row, Row Your Boat?” Go ahead and figure it out for yourself, I’ll wait for you…
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