Tunes in 'deep' memory
- Peter Duggan
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Tunes in 'deep' memory
It's an amazing thing, the human mind (even mine!), when things long 'forgotten' can actually be lurking there all the time and just need the smallest nudge to start re-emerging complete...
So I used to know loads of tunes when we had a gigging band some twenty years ago, but most had simply 'disappeared' through years of only sporadic trad. playing since. Then, on finding myself starting to play whistle again regularly (like hours a day instead of rarely at all!) last summer, they just started to find their own way back. Like The Mountain Road followed by another reel we used to play as a set, and the second reel (in G) was all there but I was darned if I could remember its name (it's Paddy Canny's, aka various other things). Then, playing flute a few weeks back, I found myself (subconsciously prompted by Jem's McCarty review?) playing The Musical Priest, which we used to do as the middle reel of a set of three. The first (The Maid Behind the Bar) soon followed when Cathy Wilde posted its name in response to a question from Chris Coreline, and was back complete within a few goes despite neither listening to nor looking it up. Which just left the final tune of the set (a reel in D with a great second part the way I learned it), and that just spontaneously found itself following The Musical Priest the other day despite being out of sight, mind and earshot for longer than I could say. But, although the tune was back, I was still stumped by its name (just knew that all three were 'about' people), and had to think where I got it from before identifying it as The Scholar!
Anyway (to cut a long story short), these aren't isolated cases and I'm constantly finding myself playing stuff I'd forgotten I knew... so how about anyone else?
So I used to know loads of tunes when we had a gigging band some twenty years ago, but most had simply 'disappeared' through years of only sporadic trad. playing since. Then, on finding myself starting to play whistle again regularly (like hours a day instead of rarely at all!) last summer, they just started to find their own way back. Like The Mountain Road followed by another reel we used to play as a set, and the second reel (in G) was all there but I was darned if I could remember its name (it's Paddy Canny's, aka various other things). Then, playing flute a few weeks back, I found myself (subconsciously prompted by Jem's McCarty review?) playing The Musical Priest, which we used to do as the middle reel of a set of three. The first (The Maid Behind the Bar) soon followed when Cathy Wilde posted its name in response to a question from Chris Coreline, and was back complete within a few goes despite neither listening to nor looking it up. Which just left the final tune of the set (a reel in D with a great second part the way I learned it), and that just spontaneously found itself following The Musical Priest the other day despite being out of sight, mind and earshot for longer than I could say. But, although the tune was back, I was still stumped by its name (just knew that all three were 'about' people), and had to think where I got it from before identifying it as The Scholar!
Anyway (to cut a long story short), these aren't isolated cases and I'm constantly finding myself playing stuff I'd forgotten I knew... so how about anyone else?
- mutepointe
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
This last week, I played the song "Turn to Me" on my flute. I had never played it on a flute and hadn't played in on a guitar in many years. I'm not sure why this song even popped into my head. I have no idea what is going on inside my brain, why should I expect other people to know what I am thinking?
Rose tint my world. Keep me safe from my trouble and pain.
白飞梦
白飞梦
- MTGuru
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
I notice this most often with old (and usually frightfully bad) pop songs that I may not have heard once in literally 30 or 40 years. Two seconds in and I'm singing along, words and music both, as if it were yesterday. And I think to myself: No wonder I can't remember my telephone number, or the quadratic formula, or the capital of Namibia ... because "Muskrat Love" or "Winchester Cathedral" has fought a pitched battle with some other genuinely useful fact in long term memory and emerged the victor. Then, to celebrate its victory, the song turns into an earworm for 48 hours, requiring an extended session listening to the collected works of Karlheinz Stockhausen to drive it back into its cage ... until the next one comes along and obliterates your memory of who invented the sewing machine ...
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
Bound to be another singerMTGuru wrote:... until the next one comes along and obliterates your memory of who invented the sewing machine ...
The brain keeps track of everything, but it forgets where it stores it all. Until something triggers it, a song, a smell, a place that feels so familiar...
John
- MTGuru
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
Really? Howe can that be?NZJLY wrote:Bound to be another singer
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
Those items are kept in different areas of the brain, have you checked your card catalog or microfiche?MTGuru wrote: No wonder I can't remember my telephone number, or the quadratic formula, or the capital of Namibia ... because "Muskrat Love" or "Winchester Cathedral" has fought a pitched battle with some other genuinely useful fact in long term memory and emerged the victor.
Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
But he only perfected the sewing machine, not invented it. A fact that always used to needle him.MTGuru wrote:Really? Howe can that be?NZJLY wrote:Bound to be another singer
- Innocent Bystander
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
These jokes have me in stitches.
Yes, those old pop-songs are in there, curse them. But it happens with classical pieces too. I was presented with sheet-music for a guitar-duet and could play both sides immediately. I don't sight-read that well. I had played the tune a long time before. I haven't played it for years and couldn't play it properly, but it meant I knew what was coming next in the duet! Then tripped over my feet on the next one...
Yes, those old pop-songs are in there, curse them. But it happens with classical pieces too. I was presented with sheet-music for a guitar-duet and could play both sides immediately. I don't sight-read that well. I had played the tune a long time before. I haven't played it for years and couldn't play it properly, but it meant I knew what was coming next in the duet! Then tripped over my feet on the next one...
Wizard needs whiskey, badly!
- chas
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
My sister-in-law is fond of telling the story of how she met my brother. It involves a song from an old Guess Who album. I verified with my brother that the didn't have the album on CD, and got her a copy for Christmas. She said it only took once through before they were both singing along with it, remembering most of the words after not having listened to it for 20-odd years.
Charlie
Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
- s1m0n
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
Below is one of the weird stories I ran into while researching my father's elder brother. I never met him, but he was a doctor who appears to have done a number of mysterious and not especially savory things for MI5 and MI6 (British military intelligence). He's not mentioned in this account, but other info identifies him as having been part of this effort:NZJLY wrote:But he only perfected the sewing machine, not invented it. A fact that always used to needle him. :poke:MTGuru wrote:Really? Howe can that be? :PNZJLY wrote:Bound to be another singer
The program called for the production of thirty million darts. This would require a large number of specially-made needles; the head of the British project contacted the obvious source: the Singer Sewing Machine Company, in a letter apologizing that: “It is a little difficult to explain what I want sewing machine needles for… ”
The reply from Singer was helpful, if baffled: “From your remarks it would seem the needles are required for some purpose other than sewing machines. In any case, we should like to help you, if at all possible.”
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
A pretty girl is like a melody
That haunts you night and day,
Just like the strain of a haunting refrain,
She'll start up-on a marathon
And run around your brain.
You can't escape she's in your memory.
By morning night and noon.
She will leave you and then come back again,
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.
That haunts you night and day,
Just like the strain of a haunting refrain,
She'll start up-on a marathon
And run around your brain.
You can't escape she's in your memory.
By morning night and noon.
She will leave you and then come back again,
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.
- MTGuru
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
At the music store there was a accented gentleman who came in maybe once a month or so and bought guitar strings. Always singles - 8's, 10's, 12's, etc. Trying to be helpful one day, we asked him what kind of guitar he played.The program called for the production of thirty million darts.
"No guitar! Cheese!"
We figured he was either a restauranteur or an assassin for hire, and we didn't ask him again.
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
- Innocent Bystander
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Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
How often did he change his cheese-strings?
(I had the impression that assassins used piano-wire. There was the Turkish Mute with the bowstring, but that would be an archery bow. Them horsehair yokes wouldn't strangle a gnat.)
(I had the impression that assassins used piano-wire. There was the Turkish Mute with the bowstring, but that would be an archery bow. Them horsehair yokes wouldn't strangle a gnat.)
Wizard needs whiskey, badly!
Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
Cutting the cheese is just one of the myriad uses for guitar strings. They're also great for doing whip finish wraps on cracked whistles, wrapping fishing rods, tying nautical knots, slicing eggs,and mushrooms, clay pots from the wheel...
Re: Tunes in 'deep' memory
Or maybe he was a Casanova and stringing his women alongMTGuru wrote:At the music store there was a accented gentleman who came in maybe once a month or so and bought guitar strings. Always singles - 8's, 10's, 12's, etc. Trying to be helpful one day, we asked him what kind of guitar he played.
"No guitar! Cheese!"
We figured he was either a restaurateur or an assassin for hire, and we didn't ask him again.
John