In the chapter 'Music on the brain: Imagery and imagination' from his book 'Musicophilia', Oliver Sacks describes a situation when the music is played in our mind in the same way an image will appear in our head- without actually seeing it:
"With music I know well, such as Chopins' mazurkas, which I learned by heart sixty years ago and continued to love ever since, I only to glance at a score or think of a particular mazurka (an opus number will set me off) and the mazurka will start to play in my mind. I not only 'hear' the music but i also 'see' my hands on the keyboard before me, and 'feel' them playing the piece- a virtual performance which, once started, seemed to unfold or proceed by itself."
This phenomenon of playing music in our mind is very common- and we can all remember ourselves playing a musical piece in our head. Sacks claims that "Professional musicians, in general possess what most of us would regard as remarkable powers of musical imagery."
This claim makes me wonder weather being a 'better' musician makes your imagery clearer and more intense and weather practicing in some way the imagery might improve ones musical skills.
Not too long ago I came across a project by Finn Peters, who is practically exploring the connection between music and the mind. Inspired by the brain-mapping experiments of Dr Mick Grierson at Goldsmith's University, composer Finn Peters has translated brainwaves into notes and tones. The result is an album called 'Music Of The Mind' - a literal transcription of Peters' brainwaves, as well as improvisational compositions.
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so this is what I wanted to tell you:
ReplyDeleteit's not like I believe in that stupid theory "the secret" but I read the book once and the basic idea is that if you keep thinking of something, you create sort of a brain wave that carries the thought, transmit it out to the universe and eventually the thought will come back to your mind on the same wave and somehow (by some magical mysteries power) will make the thought come true.
for example if you keep thinking "I really want to get off the shift on Saturday" it will happen. (how did that work out for you by the way?)
now, why am I telling you all this? because they did give in this awful book an interesting example:
if you hear a song, or a piece of music, and you really concentrate on it or you happen to be very concentrated when you hear it than, like the thought, the piece of music becomes a brain wave that your mind transmits to the universe and eventually according to universal law the wave will come back to your mind over and over again and this is why the song that we concentrated on is being played in our head (or "gets stuck in our heads") for entire days sometimes (like "yoshev be-san fransisco')
ok, it might not be exactly connected but it reminded me of that. Gnight :)