An argument that aural memory is enduring

6 hours ago, mike1127 said:

You're the one who brought up the concept of a "pattern," and I'm trying to get you to elaborate on what you mean by that. It's not clear. For instance, you've said that you could recognize your mother's voice even if distorted because of the pattern you've trained on. That sounds like a pattern is some kind of abstraction, independent of specific realizations. On the other hand, you've said Yo-yo Ma could recognize a change in his sound because it's different than what he's used to, and what he's used to is a "pattern." That sounds like a pattern is something concrete and exact.

Musicians, especially, classical, are trained to memorize music. It is the TRAINING part that is the key. Most audiophiles ARE NOT trained in the same way, so one can't say the same thing about them.

Many classical musicians also practice may hours a day. It is that practice that is also key - it is an active method. Listening to music is passive - very different. There was an interesting PBS episode talking to children in classical music - Now Hear This - was the show. It goes and talks about this.

@audiobomber Great Performances | Now Hear This “Rising Stars” | Season 51 | Episode 14 | PBS

This is the episode I am talking about. These gifted young people are actively practicing, not sitting passively. It affects memory in different ways.

If one watched the Billy Joel 100th concert on TV, one could two pads being used by him, one in the piano (a lifted section) and one on the side with lyrics.  Just saying.

Another interesting book is this one, edited by Renee Fleming - interesting interview.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/renee-fleming-talks-new-book-music-and-mind/

4 hours ago, botrytis said:

If one watched the Billy Joel 100th concert on TV, one could two pads being used by him, one in the piano (a lifted section) and one on the side with lyrics.  Just saying.

OTOH, I’ve seen Springsteen any number of times call out some obscure oldie and the band hits all the lyrics and music together, no memory aids. If you read interviews with the band, you’ll see he often doesn’t have these songs lined up in advance (in fact he does audience requests of other people’s songs occasionally). So they’ve all got quite a memory store. Of course several of them have been together 50+ years.

13 hours ago, mike1127 said:

I'm trying to get you to elaborate on what you mean by that.

It’s a broad and fascinating subject with a lot of nuances.

What’s the beverage you drink most often? Would you recognize if something was off about the taste? Failure to match the pattern laid down by repetition.

Patterns are so powerful they can cause us to sense things that aren’t there - illusions. Is the following illusion due to a pattern laid down in memory, something innate, or partly both?

https://www.pbs.org/video/brain-david-eagleman-episode-1-clip-1/

Let's say there's a musician who has a student. The student comes in once per week. The teacher makes comments each week based on her memory of the sound of the student in previous weeks. What kind of memory is that?

2 hours ago, mike1127 said:

Let's say there's a musician who has a student. The student comes in once per week. The teacher makes comments each week based on her memory of the sound of the student in previous weeks. What kind of memory is that?

Let’s say this is beyond the elementary stage of getting notes wrong and we’re talking about subtleties of intonation, dynamics, or tempo. What is “correct” in the mind of the teacher? Clearly that’s based on an idea of how a piece is supposed to be played. Where does that idea come from? If the teacher is any good, from long practice and familiarity - in other words, building a pattern to which the student’s playing is compared.

2 hours ago, Jud said:

Let’s say this is beyond the elementary stage of getting notes wrong and we’re talking about subtleties of intonation, dynamics, or tempo. What is “correct” in the mind of the teacher? Clearly that’s based on an idea of how a piece is supposed to be played. Where does that idea come from? If the teacher is any good, from long practice and familiarity - in other words, building a pattern to which the student’s playing is compared.

That's not how music lessons work if the teacher is any good. There is no one "correct" way to play a piece.

But let's say you're right. You haven't said how the teacher remembers the student's prior sound. Let's say in each lesson the teacher compares it to a standard. What mental experience is the teacher having and how to they remember it from week to week? In other words, what is the internal experience of comparing to a standard?

11 minutes ago, mike1127 said:

There is no one "correct" way to play a piece.

It’s odd then that documentaries of major orchestra conductors show them frequently asking the orchestra members to play certain passages in a particular fashion.
 

I’m not sure how it would work if the individual orchestra members and, for example, a featured soloist like Yo-Yo Ma (since you used him as an example) were to play a piece completely differently and unexpectedly at each rehearsal and then at the performance.

35 minutes ago, Jud said:

It’s odd then that documentaries of major orchestra conductors show them frequently asking the orchestra members to play certain passages in a particular fashion.
 

I’m not sure how it would work if the individual orchestra members and, for example, a featured soloist like Yo-Yo Ma (since you used him as an example) were to play a piece completely differently and unexpectedly at each rehearsal and then at the performance.

Just to get back to my main point before I respond to this, I think that musicians/conductors/etc remember the actual sound from day to day, from week to week, etc. in order to navigate along some sort of path toward a more preferred result (preferred in that moment, with that student, in that performance, etc.). I don't think there's any other way to do it other than remembering the sound and comparing sound in the moment to previously heard sound.

Because this would seem to fly in the face of audio science as I understand it, I'm interested in what theories an audio scientist would propose to explain this or give some alternative explanation. Maybe I'm wrong and there's some new theory that would convince me more.

Your reply is a bit of a straw man. I never said they play it completely differently or unexpectedly at each rehearsal. But let's say the conductor asks them to play it a certain way. That's how #1 that conductor, with #2 that orchestra, #3 for that rehearsal, wants them to play it. The conductor may even be doing an experiment and comparing different ways of playing a piece, remembering the sound of each way and choosing their favorite.

But different conductors and different orchestras will play the piece differently. Surely you know this! I don't know what kind of music you are into, but if you are into classical music, you will probably own several recordings of a warhorse like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. These recordings will have quite different musical performances. Surely you know this! There's no one right way to perform a piece.

A good teacher will be looking for the student to play it in a way that's authentic to that student, not a copy of someone else's playing. It's critical that the teacher be guiding the student in the process of experimenting and choose what works best, for that student, on that instrument, with that piece, at that stage in the student's development, etc. I claim the musicians do this by remembering the sound from day to day, week to week, etc. and that there's no other way to do it, although I'm interested in what an audio scientist might say about that.

1 hour ago, mike1127 said:

although I'm interested in what an audio scientist might say about that.

You keep saying this, yet when you’re told what audio scientists have said about it you say you claim what experiments have shown to be incorrect.

I’ve already recommended an entire book by one of the leading scientists in this area. If you want to know more, read it. I’ve done about all I can do here, so be well.

1 hour ago, Jud said:

You keep saying this, yet when you’re told what audio scientists have said about it you say you claim what experiments have shown to be incorrect.

 

I’ve already recommended an entire book by one of the leading scientists in this area. If you want to know more, read it. I’ve done about all I can do here, so be well.

If you want to leave it, that's okay. I just want to correct something:

I'm not saying that audio scientists are wrong about the results of the experiments they've done, but I am saying this:

- questioning the applicability to music. Illusions are not relevant to perceptual abilities. That's because no one said that reliable or repeatable perception is free from illusion. It's that the perception is responding to true differences of input. Not that what we construct in our brains is a perfectly accurate model of the real world. It's that when the real world changes, what we construct in our brains changes, within the boundaries that apply to the study and performance of music.

Happy listening. The concert hall is best, anyway.

6 hours ago, mike1127 said:

If you want to leave it, that's okay. I just want to correct something:

 

I'm not saying that audio scientists are wrong about the results of the experiments they've done, but I am saying this:

 

- questioning the applicability to music. Illusions are not relevant to perceptual abilities. That's because no one said that reliable or repeatable perception is free from illusion. It's that the perception is responding to true differences of input. Not that what we construct in our brains is a perfectly accurate model of the real world. It's that when the real world changes, what we construct in our brains changes, within the boundaries that apply to the study and performance of music.

 

Happy listening. The concert hall is best, anyway.

See, this is the issue, why do you say music is different? It is almost as if people think is it 'magical' and it is not.

9 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

See, this is the issue, why do you say music is different? It is almost as if people think is it 'magical' and it is not.

 

I think I was talking about experiments on speech and the way the brain fills in missing words. I don't see the relationship to perceiving musical qualities. It's as if the "component difference" skeptics learn that hearing involves the brain as much as the ear,  or that illusions are possible, and then conclude musical hearing must be unreliable. 

It is similar areas of the brain are used for processing.

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

It is similar areas of the brain are used for processing.

Please do pay attention to the science.

”Most people find the pitch memory judgment much easier when spoken numbers rather than tones are played during the interval between the test tones.”

https://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=209

Let me get clear on the argument here. Is this an argument that long-term memory for component sound (or the sound of a student's playing, or one's own playing) is nonexistent?

Let's say a listener hears a selection of music at time T1 and a similar but different selection at time T2. Let's say T1 and T2 are far apart (could range from 10 minutes to days). Let's say that the listener hears other music in-between. Or we could say that the end of the selection at T1 intervenes T1 and T2 so even without additional music, there is music between.

Is the argument that people have a difficult or impossible time judging pitch similarity when pitches intervene; hence a listener will have a hard time judging the similarity of selection T1 and selection T2 given that much time and many pitches have intervened?

16 hours ago, mike1127 said:

Let me get clear on the argument here. Is this an argument that long-term memory for component sound (or the sound of a student's playing, or one's own playing) is nonexistent?

 

Let's say a listener hears a selection of music at time T1 and a similar but different selection at time T2. Let's say T1 and T2 are far apart (could range from 10 minutes to days). Let's say that the listener hears other music in-between. Or we could say that the end of the selection at T1 intervenes T1 and T2 so even without additional music, there is music between.

 

Is the argument that people have a difficult or impossible time judging pitch similarity when pitches intervene; hence a listener will have a hard time judging the similarity of selection T1 and selection T2 given that much time and many pitches have intervened?

 

Rather than going back and forth here, it would be better if you read the book I recommended and developed your own understanding. As I said before in the thread, it’s a complex and nuanced subject, and you’re asking generalized questions.

I’ve read literally dozens of peer reviewed scientific journal papers on this and related subjects. (Of course that doesn’t make me anything like an expert.) That was a while ago. But if after reading the book you’d like to go further, I can see whether I can dig up links, and whether those links are still good.

You know, I am still learning in this area. The more I read, the more complicated it really is and the I realize, we really don't know it all.

As I said, I got interested in this area because for 7 years, my wife and I took care of my mother-in-law who had dementia. It is a heartbreaking and devastating disease I wouldn't wish on anyone. The reason I mention this, is with music, which I tried to play as much as possible, when home, seemed to calm and help her. THIS IS WHERE I AM COMING FROM.

My mother, who just turned 91, and my dad 94, tell me they are just waiting to die. They live about an hour away, and I do the best I can. I can see the downturn in memory and health because all they do is sit around.

All of this is why I am trying to learn about all this.

6 hours ago, Jud said:

Rather than going back and forth here, it would be better if you read the book I recommended and developed your own understanding. As I said before in the thread, it’s a complex and nuanced subject, and you’re asking generalized questions.

 

I’ve read literally dozens of peer reviewed scientific journal papers on this and related subjects. (Of course that doesn’t make me anything like an expert.) That was a while ago. But if after reading the book you’d like to go further, I can see whether I can dig up links, and whether those links are still good.

You're referring to the Diana Deutch book?

28 minutes ago, mike1127 said:

You're referring to the Diana Deutch book?

Yes, I like it because it’s not only by one of the foremost scientists doing recent work in this field, it’s entertaining and readable as well.

I read enough scientific papers for work 😇 already. It is going to get even busier as we ramp up.

Thanks Jud, I ordered the book📖 👍

On 4/20/2024 at 7:30 PM, Jud said:

Let’s say this is beyond the elementary stage of getting notes wrong and we’re talking about subtleties of intonation, dynamics, or tempo. What is “correct” in the mind of the teacher? Clearly that’s based on an idea of how a piece is supposed to be played. Where does that idea come from? If the teacher is any good, from long practice and familiarity - in other words, building a pattern to which the student’s playing is compared.

I've spent a great deal of time with music professors and high level professional musicians. They aren't concerned about audio equipment so much and can glean the "sound" of a performance from what might be a simple recording played back on a laptop. This includes auditioning things like different bows.

Or even getting into a music school where a video or audio is uploaded and then watched on a laptop.

For me, there is still something unquantifiable about a playback and a live performance. I think that 99.99% of what we talk about as audiophiles failed to get at this issue i.e. whether cables and widgets and various forms of equipment make any difference. Maybe improved immersive technology, room correction, equipment correction etc will get us closer to "being there" ... and by that I mean getting me back to the memory of "being there" at a Dead Concert or standing yards away from Buddy Guy etc etc