The brain and music performance

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 May 22 - 05:15 PM

I am reminded of the known unknowns...

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Helen
Date: 13 May 22 - 05:09 PM

MaJoC, when I was studying to be a teacher, many decades ago, one of the lecturers mentioned an idea about the four stages of gaining competence in a skill. As I recall it was:

1. Unconscious incompetence, 2. conscious incompetence, 3. conscious competence, and 4. unconscious competence.

Using learning to drive as an example:

1. You don't even know that you don't know everything you need, think of an overconfident teenager driving recklessly.

2. You become aware of what you don't know and work towards gaining that knowledge or skill.

3. You have more knowledge but you are thinking through every little thing that you do, double checking that you are doing the right thing.

4. You get in the car and drive and when you arrive at your destination you can't remember every step you took, but you arrived safely, so the skill and knowledge is embedded in the brain, awareness and muscle memory.

(Of course, all of that assumes that the teenage driver gives a hoot about getting better, more skillful and more knowledgeable with driving or whether hooning around in a hotted up car with no regard for the safety of self or others is the key goal.)

Four stages of competence

I've worked with and also played music with some people and I find myself saying quietly s/he doesn't even know what the question is, so how can s/he know the answer.

Note, I'm not a professional musician and I still have a long way to go to achieve the competency I am aiming for, but I enjoy playing music with my friends and I think I'm not a burden on the group. I hope.

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 May 22 - 05:31 AM

Meanwhile, back at the thread, I understand from those who drive that that's a matter of a well-trained conditioned reflex too: first you educate yourself to drive, then you educate your internal autopilot to do the routine bits of the job for you. Mebbe I ought to don L-plates while I'm playing the banjo.

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 13 May 22 - 05:14 AM

There's much research on the links between the origins of speech and singing; one paper in the Learned Journals which I've read traces speech back to "motherese" (usually pronounced "baby talk", or in our house "grandma-speak"), and suggests singing came first. My understanding from this is that the first speech, and the first music, had a common origin in the lullaby.

See The dawn of language

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 May 22 - 05:07 AM

Muscle memory applies to more than just music - knitting, for instance.

DC

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 13 May 22 - 05:03 AM

"It depends on the scientist." Yup. At which point they cease to be doing (empirical) science and the absurdity of the proposition is revealed.

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 May 22 - 04:05 AM

> How do the scientists know what music is?

It depends on the scientist. There's much research on the links between the origins of speech and singing; one paper in the Learned Journals which I've read traces speech back to "motherese" (usually pronounced "baby talk", or in our house "grandma-speak"), and suggests singing came first. My understanding from this is that the first speech, and the first music, had a common origin in the lullaby.

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Donuel
Date: 12 May 22 - 08:08 PM

It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is.

Scientist Richard Feynman used to admire the overtone singing of the Tuva and went to Asia to meet them.

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 11 May 22 - 10:54 PM

How do the scientists know what music is?

Subject: RE: The brain and music performance
From: Donuel
Date: 11 May 22 - 06:26 PM

What is the study of music and the brain called?
'The neuroscience of music' is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, and ancillary activities.

The cerebellum is vitually the top of the spinal chord. Combined with the Hippocampus (memory) and other nearby structures around the brain stem, responces are quite direct.

Subject: The brain and music performance
From: Donuel
Date: 11 May 22 - 06:13 PM

When practiced musicians play, it is not with the cerebrum which controls the fingers, it is with the cerebellum at the back of the skull. The processing is unconscious! It can be flavored with the rest of the conscious brain but once muscle memory is embeded in the cerebellum the conscious mind can be somewhere else entirely.