Your brain and playing music

Subject: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 07:51 PM

The back and sides of your brain are most active when playing.
The front not so much. the back of the brain has an area called the cerebellum that coordinates vision and movement. However it is most active when playing with eyes closed because it is processing body movements independently without visual input.


Long story short; If you want to train the cerebellum, it may be best to play and practice with your eyes closed.

technical sources:
https://www.mendability.com/sensory-enrichment/the-cerebellum-coordinates-eye-and-hand-tracking-movements/


http://www.themusiciansbrain.com/?p=195

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: leeneia
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 08:21 PM

Thanks, Donuel. When I play with my eyes closed, I hear my music better.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 08:35 PM

Closing your eyes..

not such a great idea if playing an instrument whilst riding in control of a bike in heavy traffic...???

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 09:18 PM

Your cerebellum coordinates balance and appreciation of movement(proprioception). Your occipital cortex processes visual images. They are not that far apart anatomically, but wonder if the neurology here is a bit mixed up!
And please.....don't close your eyes if playing with a group of people: visual as well as auditory observation is paramount: essential for keeping together! The best accompanists you'll ever see watch the person they are accompanying like hawks!

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Mooh
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 10:47 PM

There's a good book, Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain and it's a worthy read.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 06:49 AM

I'll look for the book mooh.

Tattie is right, while looking for a new hypothesis based on the data of a most active cerebellum processing orientation in space when the eyes are closed, could the cerebellum be the minds eye when the visual cortex is sending no input?

When in a symphonic orchestra visual input is essential for precise timing. Sound is actually too slow in a large area to rely upon when a total unification is required. When an antiphonal brass choir is added to a balcony only light is fast enough to achieve simultaneous sound for a certain segment of a music hall. The larger the group of musicians the more sight is important.

My question is - is the visual cortex the minds eye or does the cerebellum simply coordinate with 'imagined vision' when eyes are closed

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 07:11 AM

As you see even the question is still evolving. Perhaps the minds eye is a concept that may not apply at all, but I remain curious.

leenia hears better with eyes closed. I have been able to see with eyes closed (sounds crazy but felt normal) Dolphins can see in 'X-ray 3D detail. *Experiments are underway to read images in someone's mind.
To understand even some of this I need more questions.
I'm going on faith that music
is a key to this *mystery.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 07:36 AM

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Gu1YSoDaY

Music sometimes creates imagery or color in imagination, sometimes sensation from orgasmic to 'meh'. Sometimes other thoughts leaves the music far away. Before the NIH Obama Brain Project goes away, answers born from music and the brain are possible

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 07:39 AM

How am I supposed to dodge flying bottles if I'm playing with eyes closed?

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 08:56 AM

Ha-ha Rusty! Improve your playing...?

A lot of the big ballad singers tend to sing with eyes closed, so that they can "see" the story unfolding, a bit like a film running through. (or so they tell me: I can't remember long ballads!!)

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: meself
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 01:16 PM

I play with my eyes closed so I can see what I'm doing.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Marje
Date: 02 Dec 17 - 06:04 PM

Closing my eyes certainly helps me if I'm trying to learn or memorise a tune, but I try not to do it when I'm singing or playing with others, as communication and watching each other are an important part of this.

Marje

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Mr Red
Date: 03 Dec 17 - 06:00 AM

you look at any professional, they have practised long and hard and they know where to put their body, without looking where to position themselves or their limbs. IME most professionals play/sing with their eyes open, this has more to do with engaging the audience and thus giving a rounded performance. Dancing is similar in this aspect.

but we all can put our bodies in the right place for familiar tasks. It is called proprioception.

I close my eyes to sing because I find it prevents distractions. But playing the bodhran is a different matter. Probably because I have been playing a long time I can even speak to people, answer questions and carry on playing. I make no claim as to the quality of either of the multi-tasks. I suspect both will not be of the most complicated variety. But then there are no lyrics nor written music to recall.

It really boils down to practice/familiarity IMNSHO.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Dec 17 - 06:33 AM

Bodhran owners have to keep their eyes open in case there's a real musician around who happens to be in possession of a Stanley knife.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Dec 17 - 03:34 PM

I completely agree with Marje and Mr. Red however the inner workings of the mind are not giving me its secrets via insights or accident.

It looks like the mind is insisting I do actual work and study, crap.
Besides who is to say that valid answers would help the music anyway.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: GUEST,Ebor Fiddler
Date: 03 Dec 17 - 03:36 PM

Which one of you will admit to playing an instrument while riding a bike in heavy traffic then? Sounds like a self-cancelling proposition to me!

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Marje
Date: 04 Dec 17 - 09:14 AM

I definitely don't shut my eyes when dancing, no matter how hard I'm concentrating!

Marje

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Dec 17 - 03:02 PM

Now is it just pure coincidence that while this thread has been running, our ceilidh band has been contacted by a university student who is researching how playing music might help prevent the onset of dementia? I am totally sure it does: that and singing too, remembering all those song words, which button does what on my accordion, and so on! Think it's QED already! (Btw, most in our band are 70+ : average age comfortably brought down by one 40+yr old!)

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Dec 17 - 03:33 PM

It's better than coincidence, it is serendipity.

As for dementia, the positive possibility may be that a well organized holographic storage of memory, owes a debt to music education.
On the other hand the plaque that grows on neuronal dendrites may be the villains. The how and why that happens is in question.

I was 65 when I learned to play a fretted instrument for the first time. Old tricks plus new tricks makes for a unique mastery.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Dec 17 - 06:50 PM

who is to say that valid answers would help the music anyway

methinks 'tis a personal approach. As an engineer I find knowing some of the mechanisms helps improve the result. Speaking as a bodhran player, he says, lobbing a feed line.

An example is a friend who struggles with her TV when things are new or there is a problem. To her, despite my best efforts, the TV is a TV. I have to remind her, without much success, to state what is switched on. Is it the TV that is purely a monitor, the PVR which can receive terrestrial broadcasts, the YouView box that can get terrestrial &/or broadband service, or the HDMI splitter.
I gave up trying to educate her, but diagnostic over the phone is a nightmare! Computer problems usually end with "I'm coming over".

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 09:35 AM

Classically funny. Understanding always helps.

Sometimes you have to add something new to get a good grasp of the issue. If all you have is an egg and a fish hook and line to grab the egg you're gonna hafta glue some handles on the egg before you can lift it.

To grasp the brain we can measure such handles as electricity, chemical messengers and even light. What if pathways of messages use a means other from what we already know? There is talk that certain structures suggest a quantum component to brain communication. Nano cone like structures are being investigated.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 09:50 AM

The cone like structures I mention are actually more tubular but small beyond belief. This is where - resonance - may play a remarkable role in the mystery of consciousness, like music.

Does this have a ring of truth to anyone?

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 10:40 AM

Which one of you will admit to playing an instrument while riding a bike in heavy traffic then?

The bell and the horn feature extensively in cycling :-)

DtG

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: BobL
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 03:42 AM

Not extensively enough on the byways round here - pedestrians need 360-degree vision.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Mr Red
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 04:06 AM

There is talk that certain structures suggest a quantum component to brain communication

Current thinking has smell as a quantum component. The justification for this is that molecules with quite different constituents can have similar smells, and it is the resonant frequency/harmonics that match.

European robins navigate with a magnetic sensor in one eye, reckoned to be quantum in its mechanism. And why do aggressive robins try to peck the eyes of their rivals? I wonder if analysis shows they target just the left (I think).

We are coming round to correlating some of these phenomena.

DtG LOL. Now gizza a tune will you.
Harry Hill has a Xyhornophone type array of honking horns he plays.

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 12:57 PM

In lay terms

I suspect there is a small amount of freedom from the confines of linear time on a quantum level. In other words human consciousness can look forward and backward in time. This really helps when driving even if it is only a second.

This may not be unique to humans.

Dolphin consciousness is processing much more information than vision and sound and smell. They have larger brains than us possibly because they need to process not just 3D vision but also 3D X-ray like internal vision converted from sound pressure waves. They can see inside us.

What music do Dolphins like? Would we like it not knowing the imagery it describes?

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: JHW
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 05:50 AM

and of course dolphins have the sense just to muck about in the water and have a good time - or was that whales

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 08:24 PM

not sure if this contribution is appropriate to the discussion -- but I have always preferred to learn by ear, whether a song, tune, poem, script, speech. I find that if I learn from the printed page then I am dependent on it, and if I 'lose' one word or starting phrase of a section or verse - I am stuffed. When I learn by ear - usually by closing my eyes and allowing the sound to wash over me a number of times, not really concentrating of what the words or notes are, just getting the feel of the music, rhythm, the story -- and yes, I see it, either as a series of pictures or as a video.
I find that I rarely stumble, my brain seems to find the way through the piece and it just flows without conscious thought.
- You have to feel confident in this, not worry about whether it will come or not- but it generally seems to work! Fingers find the notes unconsciously, moth articulates the words from - somewhere, expressing the emotions and events of the song or story.

A side effect of this type of learning is that when I am at my creative writing group, and we 'zone out' for a few minutes then are given a topic or stimulus word and have immediately to write for a set length of time -- I never have a problem, always produce a 5 minute or 12 minute of 20 minute piece - and always totally surprise myself as I have no idea what I am going to write, my hand just pushes the pencil and out it flows -- no mind map or structured plan!

Subject: RE: Your brain and playing music
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 08:26 PM

mouth not moth!