Another Calvino moment

[enzokrew]

"Musical training appears to have the effect of shifting some music processing from the right (imagistic) hemisphere to the left (logical) hemisphere, as musicians learn to talk about -and perhaps think about- music using linguistic terms."-Daniel J. Levitin, 2006, p.125

Comments

[princesofswords]

To start, I absolutely love that you quoted Music on the Brain. And I've gone through that exact thought process, and the result is that I'm probably going to spend some of my life studying music cognition. I was a music major once upon a time, but I saw very quickly that I had no desire to deconstruct music in the way my professors wanted me to.

However, all that was against the backdrop of having been trained in piano and jazz theory since I was very young, which meant that no matter what, I would have a slightly analytical take on music anyway. I'm really happy with my level of appreciation of music, particularly because of my already-present music literacy, because it gives me a completely different learning curve when it comes to appreciating a new song. On the other hand, it also makes it so that songs that are compositionally uncomplicated, that have overused chord progressions or harmonies, becoming boring for me very quickly, which is a drawback on occasion.

I'd say that there's no reason to pursue a slightly higher level of literacy, but you don't really need much, and a small amount will certainly not cause a dramatic difference in the processing of music on a neural level. The right --> left switch Levitin is referring to is usually only seen in professional musicians who have been studying their entire lives, and who are completely fluent in all aspects of music - playing, hearing, reading, and writing. Consider how much we use our language faculties in comparison with the amount of use your music faculties would get if you were to learn a bit of theory, and you'll see that there's really no comparison.

Also, I'm adding your entry to my "memories". I absolutely love reading about people's thoughts on topics that are so close to my heart, and I really, really hope I'll get to have more conversations with you about this at some point.

ps I totally forgot Portishead's new album was coming out soon! Thanks for the heads up, I am totally listening to it right now.

[enzokrew]

I never thought that it would be an immediate shift in thought processes, but currently the experience of music has the effect of removing words from my mind, and I think if I start to learn to label things it would create a new kind of noise in my head that distracts me from the wordless feeling of falling into music as I sit at my desk with my headphones on, or as it propels me through the streets when I'm walking, or drives me to dance and think about little else but moving. I hate to think of things having a pure form, but in many ways I cannot avoid using the term to describe this interaction with music I have in these occasions even though I know that this is unlikely to be the only "pure" form music could take in someone.

[princesofswords]

That's an interesting, yet very familiar way to put it. In that regard, I see what you're saying, but I don't think it would add an extra kind of noise until that kind of analysis becomes automatic, which takes a LONG time. Think of it like the stroop task - you have a response to a stimulus that is automatic (in this case, hearing the music) and then when you're asked to do identify an additional aspect of the stimulus (in this case, identifying musical components) the automatic response gets in the way of the instructed response. There are tricks to getting around that mechanism, but you have to intentionally focus on them. It would take a huge amount of training and effort to make the labeling a habitual thing, and for it to interfere with your pure experience.

Also, hearing your description of listening to music is rough right now, because I'm studying for two finals right now but all I want to do is put on headphones and listen to music, and not think about quantitative genetics. ARGH.

[enzokrew]

oh Stroop, that's what I did for one of my research methods projects, my other was to ask ppl for cigarettes w/ or w/o offering a quarter and testing whether I got one, and if so did they accept the quarter. That was fun.

[princesofswords]

There's some cool stuff going on now with the stroop task where instead of having color words that interfere with the color naming, they have words like "terrorist" or "rejection" or what have you instead. Conclusion: omg you can distract people with loaded words. I have a friend who's doing research on priming and she uses that kind of methodology a lot.

I like the asking for cigs bit. I've been so stressed that I'm prone to going around asking folks if they have a smoke, even though I think I've had like 5 cigs ever. I'll try the quarter trick next time :P