Golden Earring wrote: > Hi Doc! > > I believe that Mozart transcribed an entire mass setting from memory > after exiting the church where the music was performed (& jealously > guarded) when he was about 12. But he was somewhat remarkable... > > My original question related to the rehearsal sessions held by > conductors with their orchestras prior to an important concert (or > recording, or both in the case of a live recording). Obviously each > individual conductor will have his own "take" on a piece of classical > music, which itself may evolve over time. > > It had nothing direct to do with recorded music per se, but rather I was > trying to put comments about the brain's inability to recall specific > sounds for more than a few seconds into the performance context. Are you > suggesting that the members of the orchestra use the rehearsals to > annotate their copies of the score, or that their skill with their > instruments is down to some memory other than auditory recall, such as > muscle memory, etc.? > > I think we're at bit at cross-purposes - sorry if I'm missing something > obvious here, as I said I'm not a musician myself. I find playing Guitar > Hero with the kids taxing enough (but fun - our family band is called > "Muesli Is Murder"). > > Dave :)
Hi, Yes exactly it has nothing to do with recorded sound per se, and that is because there is a distinction between remembering the *sound*, and remembering the *music*. It's a different part of the brain and a different learned skill. So a conductor's brain remembers the ebb and flow of the music (consider it the "delivered meaning" of the piece), which though it could be exceptionally complex, is actually only a mental representation of the sound they heard and the actions of the players. This it's possible to know, and remember, from one day to the next, just like any person who can read can remember the meaning and story from a 100,000 word novel without having to remember all the words. Musicians (I know some but wouldn't claim to be one) have muscle memory (actually subconscious mental programming) that does the hard stuff of translating the feel of the music and that remembered melody and energy into the movement of fingers/lungs/lips/limbs whatever to play the instrument. The musician rarely has to think consciously about where to place fingers/limbs etc in response to the tune. This is that final step from conscious competence to unconscious competence. The point I think to take from this is that the musician / conductor only really consciously remembers a very simplified meta view of the piece, and the subconscious fills in the rest... So you are entirely correct they are not reliant on auditory memory for anything other than very short term reanalysis. Matt. Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk -- Hardware: 3x Touch, 1x Radio, 2x Receivers, 1 HP Microserver NAS with Debian+LMS 7.9.0 Music: ~1300 CDs, as 450 GB of 16/44k FLACs. No less than 3x 24/44k albums.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ drmatt's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=59498 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106914 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
