Peculiar and useless occurrence

[ted]

Over the last few years I have noticed a marked increase in the frequency of a certain feature of memory. I'll be playing a piece and quite suddenly, when I reach, let us say, bar X, I have imposed on me incredible and useless detail of events which may have taken place the last time I reached bar X. Tonight, for instance, I was slowly playing the right hand of Winter Wind on my silent practice clavier (my piano is having its action rebuilt). When I reached a certain place I suddenly became aware of a sentence my wife was speaking in the background during bar X a previous time I played it some days ago.

The trouble is that it's getting worse, and spontaneous associations are springing up for much finer detail such as fragments of improvisation. I'll be playing a certain change or rhythm and bang ! Suddenly up comes the smell of the bacon and eggs cooking the previous time I played that thing last Friday fortnight, last month or even last Christmas.

I'm not talking about how certain music reminds me of certain personal events in my life, trivial or otherwise - we all experience that - this is something entirely spontaneous at an unconscious level. I wish I could harness it to some useful purpose other than this vivid and trivial, but random, associative memory but I cannot think how. 

Is this a normal thing, do you think ? It's only happened for the last couple of years, I would certainly have noticed it earlier.

[goose]

Whoa, Ted, that's really interesting...and kind of freaky (in a cool way ). I can't say that's ever happened to me. But I bet some psychology PhD could get some mileage out of you as a test subject.

For me, it works the other way around. I find I subconsciously associate inner emotional states with song lyrics and titles. For example, I'll be outside on a gorgeous spring day and find myself humming a tune. It'll just come spontaneously and I won't think about it. But then I'll suddenly realize I'm humming 'Blue Skies' and that I had indeed been struck by the beautiful clear blue sky.

Sometimes I bring myself up short when I realize what I'm humming, fearing that if someone  picks up on what I'm humming I'll be busted. Just before I announced I was quitting my job, I found myself regularly humming Queen's "I Want To Break Free"...

Anyone else got psycho-musical associative disorder? 

[steinwayguy]

Yeah, that actually happens to me fairly often. The only real example I can remember is that one time while I was learning the cadenza to Beethoven's 2nd concerto, there was a lot of talk in the hall about claude frank's upcoming guest masterclass. Every time I reached that measure for the next month and a half- "Claude Frank", followed by "what am I doing?"

[Bob]

I've had things be "imprinted" into a piece that way.  Whatever was going on in the background or whatever I was thinking about.  It's not that I necessarily focused on those non-musical ideas.  It was more that I was vaguely aware of them.  But I go back to the piece and they are stuck on it.  It's like my mind was opened up while working on the piece and someting else got in and made an impression.

I think you have to foget those things.  Stop focusing on them, so they don't become as strong.  If the piece is dropping for awhile, they can weaken.  If you concentrate on something intensely that can help.  I don't think it's possible to "erase" it, but I think it can be weakened, and weakened to the point that a stronger thought can take front stage at that point.

[Muzakian]

Wow that's really interesting Ted! I suppose sometimes what is happening around us while we play becomes important to the music we are making? If I played at a relative's funeral (not that I ever have), then there are many external factors that become incorporated into the music - the lighting, the smells and colours of the place, your family sitting in the front row etc. I think its very possible that I would thus develop associations between these things and the music itself.

I can't recall ever experiencing this myself. Unless you're synaesthetic however, I don't see any other way of explaining it.

[Sketchee]

That's a pretty interesting occurrence!  It's never happened to me though!

I almost always have the tv or something on when I'm practicing at home. At school in the practice rooms I can sometimes hear other people practicing.    I'm used to tuning it out and trying that much more to focus;  when I don't have any distractions at all my senses feel really keen.

I don't know if I'd recommend practicing with more distractions or less!  Try both ways maybe.

[Awakening]

That sounds like a horrible affliction.  Pieces could be ruined for you because of this terrible little psychological phenomenon.

[lostinidlewonder]

It using Mnemonic memory (sound relation to something else) unintentionally. Simply you are connecting a memory something abstract even with something which you are actively planning to memorise(the music). To break the memory between these two this is very tough if one still exists,which is the music you've memorised.

I have heaps of these instances in music I've memorised, I think about a particular person or what was running on Tv or the radio in the background while i was learning the piece. I've been told that it is this unintentional use of mnemonic memory, relating one thing which you want to keep with you, with something utterly unimportant and abstract. Ive used Mnemonics to memorise lists of garbage when i was in school, always handy not so handy when it fills ur brain with these totally bizzare things though.

[Daevren]

I have that too on some level.

But more on short term. If I think about something while playing something and I play it again the next hour or next day I will remember the same thing I will start thinking about it again.

After a while it fades.

[jim_24601]

Ah yes. I was practising one day not long ago when my mind began to wander (obviously I wasn't practising properly; let this be a lesson to you). I was thinking of a book that I'd read belonging to a friend of mine. It was about pirates. The passage I was practising at the time is now and forever "the pirate passage"