Music Performance and Memory for Music
Music performance is a fluid balance of motor, expressive, and cognitive skills. A great example of musical performance is from the conductor Arturo Toscanini. He had very poor eyesight and would have to memorize his scores before he would conduct them. Motor skills can be seen when a high-level pianist is playing a piece of music. You can see that memory, complex integration, and muscular coordination are all involved in creating this piece of music. Expanding on motor skills, there is a neuromotor aspect in creating music. Musicians train the fine-motor movements of the lips, larynx, tongue, fingers, and hands. These fine-motor movements are trained through repetition and this allows the brain to activate multiple regions. This allows coordination to develop over time and allows a musician to evolve their skill sets.
Within an adult musician's brain, we see the extensive increase in fibers in the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the main point of interconnection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Each hemisphere has sensory-motor areas and controls different neurological actions. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. In these two hemispheres, there is a motor cortex. The motor cortex is involved in conscious decision-making that allows specific muscles to react. In front of the motor cortex is the premotor cortex. The premotor cortex is involved in preparing and planning the programs for the motor cortex. The supplementary motor cortex plays a major role in the coordination of the two hands, complex movements, and executing fine motor movements. The cerebellum is the last part of the motor process and carries out the messages from the brain to have the specific motor movements take place.
Quality and quantity of practice is extremely important to a musician's progress. Practicing should begin at a young age, a musician should be practicing at least 10,000 hours over ten years, and rehearsals should be deliberate. Deliberate practice should include well-defined goals, improvement, feedback from a teacher or colleague, lots of repetition, and refinement of the performance over time. With this mindset on how to practice, musicians do experience focal dystonia, or the involuntary constriction of the muscles, musical cramps, and over-learned muscle movements. All these of these can be equated to a sports injury, but they are not looked at as such because they are perceived to be less serious. After all, it's just music. Music is also mental and mental rehearsals are extremely important for a musician.
Sleeping is a major factor in music learning. Like any other field of study, to place something in long-term memory, a healthy amount of sleep is the key. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks discusses the link between music and emotion. In the case of Harry S., Harry was in a serious cycling accident and was placed into a medical coma. When he woke up he had severe neurological damage and couldn't move his legs and his memory was majorly affected. Slowly, he regained his ability to walk and life for him returned to a new normal. One day, he started singing out of nowhere. "He had a fine tenor voice and loved Irish songs. When he sang, he showed every emotion appropriate to the music, the jovial, the wistful, the tragic, the sublime" (Sacks 334).
This experience by Harry S. displays the effect music has on memory. Memory in general is a collection of codes, synapses, nerve cells, modes of functioning, short-term and long-term memory, and mental limits. Our long-term memory consists of episodic(autobiographical) and semantic(general knowledge). We continuously have a working memory that allows us to alter and add to what our expectations are of ourselves and the world around us. There are many different types of expectations. Musical expectations, schematic expectations, veridical expectations, and dynamic expectations. Musicians have certain internal expectations that include pitch proximity, pitch declination, and an internal basic tempo(internal metronome). Music activates the auditory working memory and this is how we can recall different pieces of music from younger times in our lives. In closing, much about musical memory is still being explored. As we have already discussed, music affects emotion and this is a significant factor that can determine how we retain long-term memories. I will end this post with a quote from Hans Christian Anderson, "Where words fail, music speaks."
