Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick. As we've
Speaker 1: discussed on the show before, memory is a complex topic.
Speaker 1: There are things we remember, there are things we forget,
Speaker 1: There are the things we only think we've forgotten, and
Speaker 1: then there are the numerous ways in which altered memories
Speaker 1: are stored and then retrieved as if they're fact. Memory
Speaker 1: is powerful, it's beautiful, it's dangerous at times, and it's
Speaker 1: essential to human culture and the human experience. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be looking at some of the issues related
Speaker 1: to memory and music because the way we think about,
Speaker 1: store and recall music. I feel like this helps illuminate
Speaker 1: what's going on in the complexity of memory. And it's
Speaker 1: also something that's that's that's highly relatable. We can we
Speaker 1: can all dip in on the this particular topic, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to hearing from listeners about it. But
Speaker 1: also we're dealing with something that's you know, slightly intangible.
Speaker 1: You know, you try and when you try and think
Speaker 1: and talk about how you remember music, how songs stick
Speaker 1: with you over the ages, and what songs mean to you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you get into a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting territory. Sure. I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 1: most common things that we can all relate to is
Speaker 1: the way that music has, uh such a powerful ability
Speaker 1: to evoke by gone places and times that you know,
Speaker 1: to to just sort of like put you right back
Speaker 1: in the mindset of you know, that summer, the year
Speaker 1: that you were nineteen years old or whatever. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of strange why sequences of sounds do that
Speaker 1: seemingly so much more than almost any other, uh stimulus
Speaker 1: of any kind. Yeah, yeah, they you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of nostalgia tied up in music, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I I thought I might share a personal example of
Speaker 1: of how I sometimes feel like I'm haunted by music.
Speaker 1: Sharing this because I think it's a good example for
Speaker 1: our discussion, but also, deep down, I have this secret
Speaker 1: hope that somebody will will help me identify this or
Speaker 1: send me a maybe just you know, send me a
Speaker 1: VHS tape that will answer my question. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: imagine people out there have had similar, many similar experiences.
Speaker 1: So as a child home one summer and watching lots
Speaker 1: of daytime television. I saw a commercial for a community
Speaker 1: college or state college. I'm not sure which, but it
Speaker 1: I seem to recall it was probably a regional advertisement.
Speaker 1: This might have been for it might have been a
Speaker 1: college in Tennessee, or it might have been a college
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. I'm not sure which, but it contained various
Speaker 1: splashes of technology and humanities classes. It showed footage of people,
Speaker 1: you know, tinkering with some electronic equipment, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: doing some other stuff that looked vocational. And it also
Speaker 1: contained uh, footage of the stage performance featuring what I
Speaker 1: think was a Cyclops, like a large scale Cyclops costume
Speaker 1: that towered over people. It might have been a minotaur,
Speaker 1: but I think it was a Cyclops. You can respect
Speaker 1: their advertising department saying, okay, we got a bunch of
Speaker 1: footage of the stage productions. What what what goes front
Speaker 1: and center in the commercial? It's got to be the monster? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it made an impression on my mind. But
Speaker 1: what also made an impression was the music in this commercial,
Speaker 1: because at the at the time and as I look
Speaker 1: back on it, it felt like the music of the future.
Speaker 1: It was some sort of glistening retro sounding synth and
Speaker 1: I've never been able to find out exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: I've I've never found like footage uploaded on YouTube of
Speaker 1: this particular advertisement, and as far as I know that,
Speaker 1: the commercials just lost to history. And again it was
Speaker 1: likely very regional. But listening to Boards of Canada, the
Speaker 1: musical duo years later whose specializes and often very nostalgic,
Speaker 1: founding sounding retro synthies tracks, um, I did listen to
Speaker 1: a track titled M nine off of Old Tunes Volume one,
Speaker 1: and it either it reminds me a lot of what
Speaker 1: was the of the song that was in this advertisement.
Speaker 1: It reminds me so much that I'm tempted to wonder
Speaker 1: if this was the track somehow. This is funny because
Speaker 1: to me, the Boards of Canada very much is the
Speaker 1: sound of like an a trium in a in an
Speaker 1: institutional building on a college campus that has like sort
Speaker 1: of futuristic looking staircases exagging around and like an orange
Speaker 1: carpet or something exactly. That's I mean, that's the complicating thing, right.
Speaker 1: The kind of sounds that the Boards of Canada excels
Speaker 1: at crafting are are sounds that are reaching back towards
Speaker 1: the time period, like they're they're they're kind of reverse
Speaker 1: engineering the sort of sounds I would have heard in
Speaker 1: this advertisement. And I'm not sure exactly when I would
Speaker 1: have listened to this advertisement. The tape in question, Old
Speaker 1: tun Tunes Volume one, came out, and I think, but
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I'm not sure how the timelines add up here,
Speaker 1: And if they do add up, I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: how that track would have wound up on this commercial.
Speaker 1: And like I say, in Tennessee or Kentucky or something,
Speaker 1: um and and again, I'll likely never have the answer
Speaker 1: to it. But every time I listen to that track
Speaker 1: M nine, it takes me back to that experience of
Speaker 1: watching this this advertisement and sort of glimpsing into this
Speaker 1: possibility of what the future was like, what college might
Speaker 1: be like, what adulthood might be like, what you know,
Speaker 1: a life of technology or art, what that might consist of.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting. I don't know if you're even
Speaker 1: aware you said this, but that your vision of the
Speaker 1: future necessarily includes consciously retro elements, like retro sounding synth.
Speaker 1: Is what you what you think of when you think
Speaker 1: of the future. Yeah, it's it's weird. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: and I'm still kind of tied to this where I
Speaker 1: see like there's certain building styles which are no longer modern,
Speaker 1: that are very much retro, but they still look like
Speaker 1: the future to me because they looked like in many cases,
Speaker 1: they look like you know these strange, you know, collegiate
Speaker 1: buildings that I saw when I was a child, you know,
Speaker 1: some of these buildings that were probably built in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies that we're you know, super reliant on air
Speaker 1: conditioning and maybe didn't have as much natural life. Like
Speaker 1: the atrium and overdrawn at the Memory Bank, and it's
Speaker 1: both it is both of the past and of the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah that that I forget which atrium was used in
Speaker 1: that movie, but they made great use of an atrium there. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are various other sci fi films. I love it
Speaker 1: when it's clear that they're filming inside of a hotel
Speaker 1: or a mall and making him look like some sort
Speaker 1: of like a futuristic building. Absolutely love it. And to
Speaker 1: that extent, I love just being in a large atrium.
Speaker 1: There is that. I mean, these are like cathedrals, they're
Speaker 1: just the god at the center of it is just
Speaker 1: the hotel chain. They give you a brutal hanker in
Speaker 1: for some cinemas. Sorry, the overdrawn of the memory bank
Speaker 1: jokes can can stop right now. Well, you know everything
Speaker 1: that I've talked about so far, We've been talking about
Speaker 1: the boards of Canada. We've been talking about music that
Speaker 1: had that is that is completely um instrumental, it has
Speaker 1: no lyrics because once you start talking about lyrics, Uh, this,
Speaker 1: this adds an entirely different dimension to everything. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this is something that I wanted to talk about because
Speaker 1: I came across a paper that I thought was pretty interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: So I guess here's the best way to introduce it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with a couple of questions for anybody
Speaker 1: who ever did school theater as a kid, If you
Speaker 1: were in plays when you're in you know, elementary school
Speaker 1: or whatever. If you ever had a speaking part in
Speaker 1: a play, can you still now remember any of your lines?
Speaker 1: And if so, how much can you remember? And then
Speaker 1: the second part is uh, same time of your life,
Speaker 1: If you ever had a singing part the musical, can
Speaker 1: you still remember the lyrics to any of the songs?
Speaker 1: If you are anything like me, you probably find that
Speaker 1: you don't really remember many spoken lines from childhood plays.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones that stick in my head are
Speaker 1: I think they're memorable because something like maybe something funny
Speaker 1: or otherwise memorable happened during practice of the scene they're in,
Speaker 1: so they sort of become a part of an episodic memory.
Speaker 1: But but even examples like that are are pretty rare
Speaker 1: in my memory. But I I can quite easily and
Speaker 1: immediately remember all kinds of lyrics from songs that I
Speaker 1: sang many years ago and haven't practiced since, songs from
Speaker 1: the Pirates of Penzance or or like a musical adaptation
Speaker 1: of god knows what kind of weird stuff I was
Speaker 1: in as as a child, But like the lyrics have
Speaker 1: stayed in my brain for twenty plus years. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: my experience is much the same. Um. You know. I
Speaker 1: think back on plays that I was in and and
Speaker 1: and in some cases I had like pretty major roles,
Speaker 1: had a lot of lines to remember, Like I believe
Speaker 1: I was in a community production of other people's money,
Speaker 1: and I remember nothing. I had nothing at all that
Speaker 1: I said from that play, uh, which which on one
Speaker 1: hand I understand because I didn't like love that play.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was an enjoyable experience at the time.
Speaker 1: But it's not like my favorite play or anything, So
Speaker 1: it makes sense that I would maybe make room for
Speaker 1: other things in my memory and sort of flush that information. Um.
Speaker 1: But then, and but then. I also think back on
Speaker 1: musical community theater musicals I was in, and in some
Speaker 1: cases I had pretty major roles there. I was in
Speaker 1: a production of seventeen seventy six, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: any of the music from that. I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: remember the costumes and sort of the experience, but I
Speaker 1: remember no words that came out of my mouth. Well,
Speaker 1: for me, I don't know how much it has to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think I have any particular love
Speaker 1: for like the Pirates of pens Ants, but I could
Speaker 1: still rather. You know, I am the very model of
Speaker 1: a modern major general. All the you know, the from
Speaker 1: Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical And this is interesting
Speaker 1: to me because in both cases the lines I spoke
Speaker 1: in the lyrics I sang are collections of verbal text.
Speaker 1: In both cases, I would have made a conscious effort
Speaker 1: to memorize them, and I would have practiced them by
Speaker 1: repeating them out loud over and over. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, the spoken lines for me completely fade away,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the song lyrics have remained. They
Speaker 1: have way more staying power overall. Obviously I don't remember
Speaker 1: all of them, So what's making the difference? Yeah? This, this,
Speaker 1: This is interesting because I also think back on things
Speaker 1: that I liked. For instance, um, I had to learn
Speaker 1: the Dagger monologue from Macbeth Forum, just a Shakespearean acting
Speaker 1: class I took once and I love I love that monologue,
Speaker 1: a great monologue, And there have been times since then
Speaker 1: where I kind of wish I could just belt that
Speaker 1: monologue in its entirety, but I cannot. It's it's mostly
Speaker 1: gone just with you know, a few lines remain, and
Speaker 1: if I read it, you know, it comes sort of
Speaker 1: comes back to me a little bit. But then there
Speaker 1: are things like Don McClain's American Pie, a song that
Speaker 1: I have never performed. It's not like community theater or
Speaker 1: something where I had to get up and actually performed
Speaker 1: this stuff in front of people and work through memorize
Speaker 1: and work through stage fright. But with with American Pie,
Speaker 1: I could probably recite all of that right now. I
Speaker 1: haven't listened to it in a in a in a
Speaker 1: long time. But like that, is a that is a
Speaker 1: song where like the entire um uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: entirety of the lyrics, you know, they're just stuck in
Speaker 1: my head and they're not going anywhere. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: because of the power of the music. I guess, well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not. I mean, I guess it's hard to
Speaker 1: say why exactly it is that these lyrics seem to
Speaker 1: stick with us for so long. Now. Another thing, just
Speaker 1: from personal experience to sort of inform this question, is
Speaker 1: that I have also, definitely in my life, back when
Speaker 1: I was in school, uh, tried to use melody as
Speaker 1: a mnemonic device when trying to memorize things for a test.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever did this, but I remember,
Speaker 1: like trying to create songs or set things. I was
Speaker 1: trying to remember to the melodies of existing songs. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if it worked for me, but I
Speaker 1: at least I thought it might work enough that I
Speaker 1: tried to do it. Well. Yeah, I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of personal experience with this, but I've I've you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard that it works for some people, like some
Speaker 1: people and and in general I'm talking about Western um
Speaker 1: sinologists sometimes memorize the dynasties of China by using a
Speaker 1: particular song. I forget which a song. Idea is that
Speaker 1: it's like some Western song and then American. It's not,
Speaker 1: but you can you can look it up. I remember
Speaker 1: finding a video of like a couple of old sinologists,
Speaker 1: Western sinologists setting around singing this little childhood tune because
Speaker 1: it's how they both learned the order of the dynasty's.
Speaker 1: So it definitely works for people. But I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever really leaned on it myself. Okay, well I
Speaker 1: would like to hear that. Maybe have to look that
Speaker 1: up later. But so I was wondering a couple of things.
Speaker 1: So first of all, is this preference for at least
Speaker 1: the perceived ability to memorize song lyrics over other verbal content.
Speaker 1: Is this just me? And second, is there any evidence
Speaker 1: that this actually works, that this is actually true? So
Speaker 1: the first thing is it seems based on what we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, it may not be universal, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely not just me. I found plenty of articles in
Speaker 1: the mainstream press about using music as a mnemonic device
Speaker 1: or a learning tool, and some researchers thinking that that
Speaker 1: music or setting verbal information to music might help people
Speaker 1: remember it better. But the second question would be is
Speaker 1: there evidence that it actually works? And there I think
Speaker 1: the evidence might not be a firm yes or no.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite complicated, but complicated in in ways that
Speaker 1: seem pretty interesting and might reveal some things about our
Speaker 1: experience of music and about the way memory works. So
Speaker 1: there are actually a ton of studies on the role
Speaker 1: of music and the effects of music on memorization and
Speaker 1: verbal learning. Um, so I I can't do do that
Speaker 1: whole slate of literature. Instead, I wanted to start by
Speaker 1: focusing on one study that I found interesting and then
Speaker 1: maybe comment a little more broadly. So this study was
Speaker 1: published in two thousand seven in the journal Memory and Cognition.
Speaker 1: It is by Omilie Rossett and Isabelle Perettes, and it's
Speaker 1: called learning Lyrics to Sing or Not to Sing. And
Speaker 1: they begin by talking about this existing popular belief that
Speaker 1: we've already been discussing, as well as some empirical evidence
Speaker 1: that music can possibly aid in memory, especially learning of
Speaker 1: verbal information, learning of words. And so they cite a
Speaker 1: few examples, such as previous studies one by Dixon and
Speaker 1: Grant in two thousand three that investigated trying to learned
Speaker 1: the laws of physics through karaoke that sounds both sweet
Speaker 1: and really cringe inducing. And then secondly, they mentioned to
Speaker 1: study my Medina from nineteen three that looked into learning
Speaker 1: English as a second language via songs, with the idea
Speaker 1: that songs might provide an advantage over just normal verbal content.
Speaker 1: But the authors point out that if it's true that
Speaker 1: singing and music help with learning verbal information, it's not
Speaker 1: obvious why that should be the case, because, after all,
Speaker 1: when you learn a song, there's literally more information that
Speaker 1: you have to encode and retrieve than when just learning,
Speaker 1: say that the text of a song, just the lyrics,
Speaker 1: because you're you're adding music on top of it. It
Speaker 1: seems like that would be more to remember, might be distracting,
Speaker 1: and thus would uh, you know, would make things harder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if if memory serves uh. Some actors use
Speaker 1: the technique of learning their lines flat without any kind
Speaker 1: of motion added to them, and then that come then
Speaker 1: they build on that later, you know, So they start
Speaker 1: without any additional information aside from the words, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course you know the meaning behind the words, right,
Speaker 1: And though uh, though I guess we we should always
Speaker 1: remember that acting techniques are not necessarily informed by the
Speaker 1: latest memory and cognition. Yeah, like then all these things,
Speaker 1: there's also a certain amount of tradition and different views
Speaker 1: on performance that you know that that may not be
Speaker 1: scientifically verified, right, But that's another thing like we've like
Speaker 1: we were talking about that, you know, at least it
Speaker 1: grows out of personal experience. So you have to wonder
Speaker 1: if there's something there that could be plumbed by empirical research.
Speaker 1: So the authors here are Stt and Parretts. They note
Speaker 1: that in previous studies, the results looking into this question
Speaker 1: on whether music aids in in verbal learning and memory
Speaker 1: formation and retrieval, the results have been kind of mixed.
Speaker 1: But while they're this is not the universal finding, there
Speaker 1: have been a number of studies that show people have
Speaker 1: an easier time recalling sung words over spoken words. Now,
Speaker 1: in their introductory section they talk about a few reasons
Speaker 1: they're hypothesized for why this might be. Why might if
Speaker 1: people do remember words from songs better than the same
Speaker 1: words spoken, what what would be going on there? And
Speaker 1: so they say, well, maybe, uh, speed actually plays a role,
Speaker 1: because when you take a text and you sing it,
Speaker 1: generally you will spend a longer time pronouncing the words
Speaker 1: in the text, then if you just read it or
Speaker 1: recite it out loud, and thus it the text is
Speaker 1: sort of less compressed. They also say that the characteristics
Speaker 1: of the melody seem to be important because a simple
Speaker 1: melody that has a very sort of repeated line seems
Speaker 1: to be easier to memorize than complex melodies like you
Speaker 1: might find and say, an opera or something. But then
Speaker 1: also that they offer another reason that saw lyrics might
Speaker 1: be easier to memorize, which are structural characteristics of the
Speaker 1: text that make it easier to recall. So to read
Speaker 1: from their introduction quote, for instance, the metrical structure of
Speaker 1: music and the number of musical notes in a line
Speaker 1: can queue word recall. Similarly, song lyrics are usually constrained
Speaker 1: by both semantics, meaning meaning that there is like a
Speaker 1: meaning constraint on what can be said in a song.
Speaker 1: So they say a story underlies the words, generally through
Speaker 1: a schema or script. Uh. And then so you you've
Speaker 1: got the semantic constraints. You know, the song sort of
Speaker 1: has to tell a story that makes sense. That certainly
Speaker 1: not true of all songs, especially these days. Um. But
Speaker 1: then the other thing would be sound patterns, and this
Speaker 1: would be things like rhymes or alliteration, which they also say,
Speaker 1: megan limit possibilities of what types of words could come next.
Speaker 1: You know, these offer you some schema of of you know,
Speaker 1: predicting what the rest of the line would be. That
Speaker 1: that's interesting because makes me think of American Pie. It
Speaker 1: also makes me think of Warren's Van's Roland the Headless
Speaker 1: Thompson Gunner, both long songs that I easily remember, but
Speaker 1: both of them are are very narrative songs. The lyrics
Speaker 1: tell a story, especially with Roland. You know, there's a beginning,
Speaker 1: a middle, and an end to it. There's a climax,
Speaker 1: and they've both got very regular rhythm in the delivery
Speaker 1: and uh and a rhyme scheme. And so those things
Speaker 1: can help you remember because they limit the possibilities of
Speaker 1: what could be coming up next in the song. If
Speaker 1: you know the say the rhyme sound at the end
Speaker 1: of the last line, that helps give you a clue
Speaker 1: as to what the next line is. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: you might have trouble recalling otherwise. Yeah, And the authors
Speaker 1: here note and interesting thing they say when errors occur
Speaker 1: in song recall, they say quote, the changes usually preserve
Speaker 1: the rhyme and the number of syllables in the line.
Speaker 1: So if you were say, singing American Pie, and you
Speaker 1: couldn't remember drove my chevy to the levy, but the
Speaker 1: levy was dry, you might at least be able to say,
Speaker 1: took my chevy from the levy and I looked at
Speaker 1: the sky. You know, it would be something that preserved
Speaker 1: the rhyme and preserved the meter the number of syllables. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a misheard and misconstrued lyrics are still going to They're
Speaker 1: still going to meet the basic framework that was presented
Speaker 1: in the song. So anyway, in this study, the authors
Speaker 1: did a couple of experiments to see if learning verbal
Speaker 1: materials through song actually did provide a memory advantage over
Speaker 1: learning the same verbal materials just recited or spoken. And
Speaker 1: so there were three different conditions as people were trying
Speaker 1: to learn the lyrics of an unfamiliar song, and there're
Speaker 1: three different conditions here. So first is the sung sung condition,
Speaker 1: and in this condition, the subject would have the song
Speaker 1: sung to them and then they would try to sing
Speaker 1: it back. Second is the sung spoken condition, and year
Speaker 1: they would have the song sung to them, but then
Speaker 1: they would try to speak the lyrics back and then
Speaker 1: the next condition. I thought this was interesting. They tried
Speaker 1: something called the divided spoken condition, and this is where
Speaker 1: they would be presented with the lyrics but not sung,
Speaker 1: though they would be hearing the accompanying background music. And
Speaker 1: I guess this was to try this was sort of
Speaker 1: a control to try to rule out Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: could it just be that having the music going on
Speaker 1: while you're learning the words is what contributes to learning
Speaker 1: and not the fact that the lyrics themselves are being sung.
Speaker 1: M Now, that's interesting. That makes me think of of
Speaker 1: of songs like the Moody Blues Knights and White Satin,
Speaker 1: which has of course traditional lyrics, but then also has
Speaker 1: that spoken words segment, and thinking back on it, like
Speaker 1: I can, I can remember a lot of that spoken
Speaker 1: words segment from Knights and White Satin, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not like, you know, a piece that I'm
Speaker 1: particularly attached to, but that the words will come. Well.
Speaker 1: I guess so in one of the conditions, that's what
Speaker 1: they're going to test here, that does that does the
Speaker 1: spoken words section actually have a memory advantage over just
Speaker 1: something being spoken without any music? Um? So in keeping
Speaker 1: with sort of the conventional wisdom and with what a
Speaker 1: number of studies had found before, they predicted that the
Speaker 1: sung sung condition would create the best word recall. So
Speaker 1: when people heard heard a song sung to them and
Speaker 1: they tried to sing it back, they would do the best.
Speaker 1: But here's where I thought this got interesting. They found
Speaker 1: no in this test. The hypothesis was not confirmed. They
Speaker 1: predicted that the sung sung condition would be best, but
Speaker 1: they write quote. However, fewer words were recalled when singing
Speaker 1: than when speaking. Furthermore, the mode of presentation, whether sung
Speaker 1: or spoken, had no influence on lyric recall, either short
Speaker 1: or long term recall. But anyway, at the end of
Speaker 1: their abstract they right quote altogether. The results into kate
Speaker 1: that the text and the melody of a song have
Speaker 1: separate representations in memory, making singing a dual task to perform,
Speaker 1: at least in the first steps of learning. Interestingly, musical
Speaker 1: training had little impact on performance, suggesting that vocal learning
Speaker 1: is a basic and widespread skill. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: I just like to say, you know, I like this
Speaker 1: study because it's a great example of a negative finding
Speaker 1: that can still be really interesting. The hypothesis is not confirmed.
Speaker 1: Yet we can still learn a lot from from what's
Speaker 1: going on here, and the authors had some interesting thoughts
Speaker 1: in their conclusion section about about what might be happening
Speaker 1: with music and verbal memory. So I want to read
Speaker 1: a section from their discussion in their conclusion that that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting here. So they say, Nevertheless, one
Speaker 1: important cue for auditory vocal remembering that is common to
Speaker 1: both music and poems is rhythm. The regular organization of stresses,
Speaker 1: mostly alternating between strong and weak beats or still doables,
Speaker 1: is supposed to limit the words that are compatible with it,
Speaker 1: and thereby constrains words selection, at least in English. The
Speaker 1: rhythmic similarity between the prosodic accent structure of spoken words
Speaker 1: and the metric structure of the melody is striking and
Speaker 1: has long been noted by linguists and music theorists. Moreover,
Speaker 1: Palmer and Kelly in nineteen two have shown that linguistic
Speaker 1: accent structure and musical meter are generally aligned in Western songs. Hence,
Speaker 1: rhythmic structure, as determined by the number of syllables or
Speaker 1: notes and the location of primary stress, may serve as
Speaker 1: a compatible format for setting words to tones. By this account,
Speaker 1: Recalling a particular stress pattern in a melody or spoken
Speaker 1: text activates a metrical grid that constrains the type of
Speaker 1: text or melody that is compatible with it. A common
Speaker 1: metrical grid is typically used throughout a song. Therefore, metric
Speaker 1: structure provides a means by which lines of an entire
Speaker 1: song are organized in a common hierarchical structure, thereby relating
Speaker 1: non adjacent song components and helping memory. So I think
Speaker 1: what they're arguing here is that maybe in these cases
Speaker 1: where we have found that music aids in verbal memory,
Speaker 1: it's because the words in the music are set to
Speaker 1: a sort of poetic rhythmic structure, and it's that structure
Speaker 1: that makes things easier to memorize, not so much the
Speaker 1: setting it to the melody part. Uh. They also note
Speaker 1: some interesting things like one thing that uh they mentioned
Speaker 1: is that advantages of lyrical recall might actually depend upon language.
Speaker 1: Uh So, just for example, it might be easier to
Speaker 1: recall words with the help of lyrical structures in English
Speaker 1: versus French. That's not clear, that's just a possibility they mentioned. Um.
Speaker 1: But then they also say something that I think might
Speaker 1: tie into something you're going to discuss in a bit. Uh,
Speaker 1: so they argue in the end quote. This conclusion raises
Speaker 1: the question of why music is believed to be so
Speaker 1: important for verbal memory, not only in oral tradition, but
Speaker 1: also in everyday life. We believe this is due to
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding of the utility of music. Music is not
Speaker 1: at the service of language in songs. Music contributes to
Speaker 1: the creation of a general mood that is shared with others.
Speaker 1: And then they quote an author named Booth from that
Speaker 1: teen eighty one who writes that a singer tells people
Speaker 1: quote nothing they need to decode or learn. He evokes
Speaker 1: in them ways of seeing life that they already have.
Speaker 1: And then they go on to say that quote. In fact,
Speaker 1: oral transmission of text is rarely word for word or
Speaker 1: verbatim in singing. Althose singers believe that they sing the
Speaker 1: text exactly as heard, They never do so. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then side studies by Reuben Reuben famous research into recounting
Speaker 1: of like long oral poems, things like the Iliad and
Speaker 1: the Odyssey, that people supposedly do from memory. But a
Speaker 1: lot of these studies find that that actually, while people
Speaker 1: think they are performing the same poem or song over
Speaker 1: and over, in fact, they're making major changes to it
Speaker 1: as they do. And in fact, maybe the role of
Speaker 1: music is to sort of create the illusion that what
Speaker 1: you are recreating is the same thing, rather than making
Speaker 1: it the same thing. So the structure is still the same,
Speaker 1: the words are still rhyming. Uh, therefore, surely nothing has changed.
Speaker 1: But there is of course room for stuff to have changed, right,
Speaker 1: So details may change, but something about the fact that
Speaker 1: it is the same song creates the feeling that you
Speaker 1: are recreating the same work, even though the details are
Speaker 1: actually different. So anyway, I thought the study was really interesting,
Speaker 1: though it is older. This is from two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: So I was trying to look through a more recent
Speaker 1: studies on this subject the effects of music on verbal
Speaker 1: memory and recall, and trying to see if I could
Speaker 1: find anything, you know, if any newer conclusions had emerged.
Speaker 1: And it looks to me like the the landscape of
Speaker 1: findings on this is still somewhat mixed, like it is
Speaker 1: not consistent, and that this may just indicate that there
Speaker 1: are different features of different kinds of music and verbal
Speaker 1: encoding tasks that that that provide different results in the end. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I was looking at one study from Frontiers
Speaker 1: in Psychology published in by Lehman and Seifert called can
Speaker 1: music foster learning? Effects of different text modalities on learning
Speaker 1: and information retrieval. So they have different ways of having
Speaker 1: people try to learn text through written exposure, through spoken exposure,
Speaker 1: and through sung exposure, and they found that the actually
Speaker 1: was through exposure to written text that people signal recalled
Speaker 1: the most detail in the verbal text. However, they say,
Speaker 1: and and this one really surprised me. But at least
Speaker 1: within this study, they say, quote comprehension after learning with
Speaker 1: the sung modality was significantly superior compared to in learning
Speaker 1: with the written learning modality. Comprehension so like comprehension of
Speaker 1: the of the text being presented. So they say that
Speaker 1: reading helps people focus more on details, which may help
Speaker 1: them answer sort of specific recall questions that would come
Speaker 1: down to a single word or detail later on. But
Speaker 1: listening to the verbal content as a song leads to
Speaker 1: higher levels of comprehension of the entire text. So one
Speaker 1: last thing I came across the I found an article
Speaker 1: in the Wall Street Journal from two thousand thirteen by
Speaker 1: Heidie Mitchell called does music aid in Memorization? And this
Speaker 1: was interesting because it just uh, it consulted the opinion
Speaker 1: of a of a leading American psychologist who does research
Speaker 1: on memory, and this psychologist is Henry L. Rodiger the third,
Speaker 1: who is a professor of psychology at the Memory Lab
Speaker 1: at Washington University in St. Louis. And what he's as is,
Speaker 1: there's wide agreement that information set to music is easier
Speaker 1: to remember. Now why would this be, well, Roddiger actually
Speaker 1: uh cites something that the authors of that earlier paper mentioned,
Speaker 1: So he says that music aids in memory because it
Speaker 1: helps in the retrieval process. So of course we know
Speaker 1: memory involves not only storage but the act of retrieval.
Speaker 1: And this can be clearly evidenced by the tip of
Speaker 1: the tongue effect. You think about how you can know
Speaker 1: the word you want to use, but for some reason
Speaker 1: you can't locate that word in your memory at the moment,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly something clicks and then you have the words.
Speaker 1: It was in there. It was retrievable in your brain,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't put it together. And likewise, you can
Speaker 1: fail to recall a memorized string of words, a memorized sentence,
Speaker 1: until maybe you get the first word in the string
Speaker 1: and then it all comes rushing up out of the
Speaker 1: DP your memory. Uh and so. So Roddeger claims that
Speaker 1: music is helpful at retrieval of verbal information be cause
Speaker 1: it provides structure through things like rhythm and rhyme, like
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier that the the other authors
Speaker 1: discussed in their conclusion, And it's this structure, the rhythm
Speaker 1: and the rhyme, that acts as a queue that makes
Speaker 1: it easier to retrieve the stored information of the next line.
Speaker 1: So Roddiger claims that it is the structure, not the melody,
Speaker 1: that aids in the retrieval process. When it is the
Speaker 1: case that it's easier to remember lyrics, he thinks at
Speaker 1: least that it's probably due to the fact that lyrics
Speaker 1: are encoded in these rhythmic structures, things that have meter
Speaker 1: and they have rhyme that make them easier to recall
Speaker 1: than just unstructured strings of text. And you know, I
Speaker 1: can kind of say that it is similarly easier to
Speaker 1: recall lines of poems, even though they're not sung out loud,
Speaker 1: just poems that have uh say, meter and rhyme, than
Speaker 1: it is to recall just lines of unstructured prose from
Speaker 1: stories that I like or or famous speeches I feel like. Um,
Speaker 1: like perhaps at some point I had I was asked
Speaker 1: to memorize the Gettysburg Address or something like that, and
Speaker 1: like that really doesn't stick with me. Some of Macbeth
Speaker 1: sticks with me because there is very much a cadence
Speaker 1: in a in a rhythm to to all of that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and also things like a rhyme of the ancient mariner.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, I certainly don't have it all memorized,
Speaker 1: but there's some some bits of it that are stuck
Speaker 1: in my memory. So yeah, I could. I can see
Speaker 1: what they're getting at in this this paper. And then
Speaker 1: that might also explain cases where like, so if you
Speaker 1: take song lyrics and you're just trying to say, do
Speaker 1: people learn song lyrics better if they hear them spoken
Speaker 1: out loud or if they hear them sung? And this
Speaker 1: is on initial exposure. Things might change if you know
Speaker 1: you're you're exposed to these words either spoken or sung,
Speaker 1: day after day for a long time. But on initial exposure, Uh,
Speaker 1: the authors of that study from two thousand seven didn't
Speaker 1: really find a difference, Like you you did not do
Speaker 1: better if you heard them sung. I wonder if that
Speaker 1: could just be as well their song lyrics anyway, So
Speaker 1: even if they're spoken out loud, they would still have
Speaker 1: the same structure. They'd still have the rhythm and the rhyme. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like even if you're if you're not hearing the song
Speaker 1: rolland the headless Thompson gunner, there's still Roland was a
Speaker 1: gunner from the Land of the Midnight Sun. You know,
Speaker 1: it has it has that cadence, and it has that rhyme.
Speaker 1: Oh and in case in point, I actually got the
Speaker 1: lyrics wrong there, it's Roland was a warrior from the
Speaker 1: Land of the Midnight Sun. But I got the important
Speaker 1: parts right. Well. It sounds like that that's what happens
Speaker 1: with songs, right Like we keep the structure and you
Speaker 1: get things about the gist. But but yeah, the details
Speaker 1: seemed us shift all over the place anyway, though. I Mean,
Speaker 1: it seems to me like this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that we could probably return to in the future,
Speaker 1: because I bet that there is still a lot more
Speaker 1: to learn about the relationship between uh, verbal memory and music.
Speaker 1: It seems that the studies we've looked at here established
Speaker 1: some things, but it's still it still seems to be
Speaker 1: a messy picture where sometimes music does aid in memory
Speaker 1: and sometimes it doesn't, and figuring out exactly what what
Speaker 1: all the variables are there would probably continue to be interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'd like to come back to um to some
Speaker 1: of the ideas we're talking about earlier, and then some
Speaker 1: of the ideas that came up in uh in your
Speaker 1: discussion of of the work with lyrics and and that
Speaker 1: concerns sort of this broader picture of of memory and music.
Speaker 1: Because memories involving music, they of course, can be highly individual.
Speaker 1: We've already shared a few different examples of that. We
Speaker 1: we also have any number of examples where a particular
Speaker 1: track or particular work of music becomes linked to a
Speaker 1: particular idea of a particular book, a particular movie, a memory,
Speaker 1: a hope, or a dream, sometimes in a good way,
Speaker 1: sometimes in a in a bad way, or perhaps a
Speaker 1: slightly annoying way. Perhaps you've had a had a co
Speaker 1: worker with a with a particular ring tone that that
Speaker 1: that kind of jabbed at you, and and now that
Speaker 1: song is forever linked with just random outbursts from this
Speaker 1: person's phone. There there is a David Bowie song where
Speaker 1: I can no longer hear the opening guitar riff without
Speaker 1: thinking that the next thing is is going to be
Speaker 1: like hearing a voice saying, hey, what's up? Uh. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the direction I wanted to go in though at this
Speaker 1: point of the episode is to is to get into
Speaker 1: the the idea of the connection between music and and
Speaker 1: not only individual memory, but collective memory. Okay, Now you're
Speaker 1: probably wondering, if some of you may be wanting, okay,
Speaker 1: what is collective memory to tell us or or remind us? Well? Uh.
Speaker 1: French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Hubbox born eighteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: died developed the concept of collective memory and has been
Speaker 1: explored by various other thinkers since then. The basic idea
Speaker 1: is that while individuals remember things, groups of people also
Speaker 1: remember things together. Now, I was also reading a paper
Speaker 1: titled Collective Memory What is It? By Getty and Elam
Speaker 1: from volume of History and Memory, And here the authors
Speaker 1: make a connection between the modern concept of collective memory
Speaker 1: and you know, much older traditions of myth and legend,
Speaker 1: because this is this is arguably how we used to
Speaker 1: understand some of these concepts in terms of national myths
Speaker 1: local legends and so forth, but as well discuss modernity
Speaker 1: affects some of the apparent mechanisms and flows involved here
Speaker 1: with individual and collective memories of events and uh in histories. Now,
Speaker 1: there are two distinct areas of collective memory. They're small
Speaker 1: scale collective memory and this is in small scale groups
Speaker 1: among the members of small scale groups. And then there
Speaker 1: are large scale collective memories in large scale groups. And
Speaker 1: this later category is also known as memory boom. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's there's also literature about the connections between the two
Speaker 1: because anytime we're talking about these memories like individual memory,
Speaker 1: small all scale collective memory, large scale collective memory. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're not you know, distinct things separated by walls. They
Speaker 1: are they influence each other, and so there's there's very
Speaker 1: much the individual experience of all of this. But even
Speaker 1: if you have a group of just two people, you
Speaker 1: see this interesting thing emerging. We've talked about this before
Speaker 1: on the show, and there are some actually some studies
Speaker 1: about this about how couples, uh, you know, any kind
Speaker 1: of to any two people who have kind of like
Speaker 1: a long term close relationship, they'll often do this thing
Speaker 1: where they share the task of remembering certain things, and
Speaker 1: this can be a point of you know, slight irritation
Speaker 1: at times, like why am I the one that remembers uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Uncle Karen's birthday or or whatever the thing
Speaker 1: might be. And we end up doing this thing where we, uh,
Speaker 1: we allow the other person to be the the the
Speaker 1: remember of that particular fact, and then perhaps we end
Speaker 1: up remembering other things, and then you engage in this
Speaker 1: kind of collective remembering of things. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: this is of course one of the great great pleasures
Speaker 1: in life. Right. You get together with either you're you're
Speaker 1: talking with a significant other, perhaps as a close friend
Speaker 1: or a relative, and what do you do together? You
Speaker 1: share stories? But you remember things together. Yeah remember when. Yeah. Though,
Speaker 1: it's great to point out the idea of sharing stories
Speaker 1: as as being crucial to this this collective memorization, because
Speaker 1: that's sort of like it. It puts emphasis on the
Speaker 1: fact that the the retrieval of these memories often in
Speaker 1: itself is a type of performance. It's like a creative
Speaker 1: act in a way. And uh, and I think that's
Speaker 1: one reason you ever get in the situation where, uh,
Speaker 1: you are together with a group of people and say,
Speaker 1: your spouse says I, Oh, here's you know. They bring
Speaker 1: up the concept of a story, but then they want
Speaker 1: you to tell it, you know, and so that you
Speaker 1: can kind of something sometimes doesn't quite feel right there
Speaker 1: because it's a story that you could tell, but somehow
Speaker 1: I don't know, like you don't feel like up to
Speaker 1: performing it at that moment. It's not like you can't
Speaker 1: remember the details as they're supposed to be told, but
Speaker 1: something about being put on the spot is like I
Speaker 1: was not ready to perform. So it's almost like you
Speaker 1: can't remember. But I think a lot of times we
Speaker 1: we kind of stow away the idea that well, this
Speaker 1: person either they have the better telling of the story,
Speaker 1: they have the beats down, they can tell it in
Speaker 1: a funny way. Or sometimes it's more that person's story
Speaker 1: to tell, right, like it's it's their experience. So it's
Speaker 1: even maybe you don't feel is right being the bearer
Speaker 1: of that story, like like you need to tell it,
Speaker 1: Please tell that story. It's such a good one. So
Speaker 1: so basically in all of this, a kind of emergent
Speaker 1: memory can emerge from a small group of people or
Speaker 1: a large group of people. Um oh, and of course
Speaker 1: we have to remember we're talking about. When we're talking
Speaker 1: about memory retrieval, we have to recall that the mere
Speaker 1: act of retrieving a memory can alter the memory. UH.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the memories that we retrieve the most,
Speaker 1: or perhaps the ones we can trust the least, right, um.
Speaker 1: But in either case it's important to drive home. We're
Speaker 1: talking about ecological and historical concepts here, and UH it's
Speaker 1: it's a different beast from objective history, but rather a
Speaker 1: view of the past that involves specific views and values
Speaker 1: of a given group, Right, I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: something that should come through. It's not that humans never
Speaker 1: recall details accurately. Sometimes they do, but broadly, I think
Speaker 1: it is better to think about your memory as a
Speaker 1: sort of UH, a mythology based on facts about history,
Speaker 1: rather than an objective recording of events. Yes, yes, that
Speaker 1: the link between mythology and UH and even individual memory,
Speaker 1: but also collective memory. I think it's strong, and you
Speaker 1: can also tie in I think various connections to the
Speaker 1: idea of collective unconscious and the power of various symbols
Speaker 1: and tropes. Um. But the basic concept here of collective
Speaker 1: memory sometimes described as social memory, and UH it is
Speaker 1: also sometimes criticized for being very monolithic and its approach
Speaker 1: because everyone in a particular group is not actually going
Speaker 1: to have the exact same memory of something, and while
Speaker 1: their various memories might contribute to a collective memory, they
Speaker 1: are still not going to have the same specific memories
Speaker 1: of the event. Also very true of mythology. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's rarely just one version of a myth, right, you know, right, right,
Speaker 1: and get all these different variations on where did Medusa
Speaker 1: come from or whatever? But then often you will have
Speaker 1: somebody come along and attempt to codify it and say,
Speaker 1: this is the version that we are adhering to. And
Speaker 1: sometimes this is merely and sometimes it's accidental, like a
Speaker 1: great storyteller comes along and retells the story and now
Speaker 1: this is the one. Other times, you know, there there
Speaker 1: are potentially nefarious attitudes involved, you know, particularly if you
Speaker 1: have someone who is looking to to lead people or
Speaker 1: manipulate people, and in doing so they might say, well,
Speaker 1: this this is our collective memory. Surely you remember it
Speaker 1: this way. This is the way that that I would
Speaker 1: like for you to think of it. But you know,
Speaker 1: we might think of this. We might take this concept
Speaker 1: and apply it to something like let's say the nineties
Speaker 1: sixties in America. Uh, there are and we're individual memories
Speaker 1: of this time period. But there also are and we're
Speaker 1: collective memories of that decade. And depending on who you
Speaker 1: were and where you were, there was likely a fair
Speaker 1: amount of drift concerning the exact flavor of that time period.
Speaker 1: Was it a time of liberation, a time of struggle,
Speaker 1: a time of great danger, a time of laughable fashions? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm simplifying here, but hopefully you get the idea.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, media plays a role in
Speaker 1: all of this as well, again, as do certain manipulations
Speaker 1: of recollections of tough times by people who have a
Speaker 1: particular agenda in all of it. And of course music
Speaker 1: plays a part as well. And in this I come
Speaker 1: to the paper that I was reading about all of this,
Speaker 1: um titled record and Hold Popular Music between personal and
Speaker 1: collective memory. I wonder if that might have been an
Speaker 1: illusion or a play on sample and hold from Neil Young.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's by the the researcher yo
Speaker 1: Say Van Dunk, published in Critical Studies and Media Communication
Speaker 1: from two thousand six. Van Donk writes that quote people
Speaker 1: nourish emotional and tangible connections to songs before entrusting them
Speaker 1: to their personal, mental, and material reservoirs. But they also
Speaker 1: need to share musical preferences with others before songs become
Speaker 1: part of a collective repertoire that in turn provides new
Speaker 1: resources for personal engagement with recorded music. So her main
Speaker 1: contention here is that that musical memories emerge and become
Speaker 1: codified at the intersection of personal memory, collective memory, and identity. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, which leads to the question how do personal
Speaker 1: and collective memories intermingle here? And I think this is
Speaker 1: really quite interesting to think about. For for for instance, think
Speaker 1: back to a song that came out when let's say
Speaker 1: you were in high school or perhaps college, or perhaps
Speaker 1: some other justformative time in your life, you know, think
Speaker 1: about a time when a lot of new music was
Speaker 1: entering your life and your life was changing and so forth. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, how did you think about the song then,
Speaker 1: and how do you think about it now? How did
Speaker 1: your group, small or large think about the song, How
Speaker 1: have you come to reflect on it as a product
Speaker 1: of that time period? And how is the song packaged
Speaker 1: and sold to you at the time figuratively and perhaps literally,
Speaker 1: and then how has the media been packaged or repackaged
Speaker 1: since then? You know, I recall a kind of youthful
Speaker 1: arrogance about my taste in music when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, and a lot of the stuff I liked,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would now regard as quite horrible. Um,
Speaker 1: but I but I remember thinking at the time like, oh,
Speaker 1: finally music is good, you know about about like the
Speaker 1: kind of music that I liked then. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess I grew out of that fairly quickly, but like
Speaker 1: there was a kind of a feeling of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know this new this new type of metal that
Speaker 1: I'm into now, which in my case was probably like
Speaker 1: early two thousands metals, so you know, like real good stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was like, finally, you know, we've we reached sort
Speaker 1: of the apex of music. This is what it's all
Speaker 1: been building up to. This is the new frontier here.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of pity for like previous generations who
Speaker 1: didn't have that, you know, they didn't really know what
Speaker 1: music was about because there wasn't disturbed yet. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: reminds me. I think it was a no fielding line
Speaker 1: about how um. Uh, that's saying something about like adam
Speaker 1: ant having been having invented music and someone was like
Speaker 1: what about classical music? And he was like, well, it
Speaker 1: was just that was just warming up, you know, like
Speaker 1: like well, whatever came before the music that was pivotal
Speaker 1: for you, Like that was just the precursor, the necessary
Speaker 1: precursor to the real music that was that was actually speaking,
Speaker 1: which is is ridiculous, but also I think makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense as we as we move on through
Speaker 1: all of this. Uh so, um, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to consider when thinking about it. But uh and
Speaker 1: in those questions here that I asked, the only scratched
Speaker 1: the surface. But as um As van Deynk points out,
Speaker 1: Number one, remembering as an active process of a mind
Speaker 1: in the world. So we are stirred to remember things
Speaker 1: by a multitude of stimuli. So it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: you're not just a black box of memory. There's all
Speaker 1: this additional stuff coming in stirring memories, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes like stirring them up to into a into
Speaker 1: a storm, into a uh, you know, a new obsession
Speaker 1: or a re obsession. The second point is that that
Speaker 1: music is enabled through instruments and technology and quote enabling
Speaker 1: apparatus becomes part of the recollecting experience. So this is
Speaker 1: I think this is perhaps worth remembering as we occasionally
Speaker 1: throw out old physical albums and playing devices like all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. And I'm not saying, hey, keep all
Speaker 1: of your your garbage, but but it's worth remembering that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that physical album is still a part of the
Speaker 1: experience of that album. And uh and uh, I guess
Speaker 1: some of us may be cling onto that idea more
Speaker 1: than others. Uh, pieces of my soul will always live
Speaker 1: on unlabeled, burned c d s A right that. The
Speaker 1: next point that Vandang makes is that music emerges from
Speaker 1: a socio technological context and then also quote, remembrance is
Speaker 1: always embedded, so the social context within which we live
Speaker 1: stimulate memories of the past. For an example of this,
Speaker 1: she points to internet forums and and radio programs is
Speaker 1: things that don't merely stimulate such musical memories but also
Speaker 1: helped construct collective memory. Oh yeah, I mean, so music
Speaker 1: is powerfully evocative, but to a great extent, we determine
Speaker 1: what it evokes by talking about it with each other. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I mean, there's because there's what the music means
Speaker 1: to me. It's what the music means to us, you know, again,
Speaker 1: the collective memory of of what this song is or
Speaker 1: what it was, what it meant, you know, especially when
Speaker 1: songs become anthems, right when they become things that are
Speaker 1: attached to movements, to generations, or just a particular scenes
Speaker 1: and times. Now, I mentioned high school and college for
Speaker 1: a reason here. These are period of time, but not
Speaker 1: not the only periods of time during which we often
Speaker 1: build out our musical taste and in doing so, construct
Speaker 1: our own identity. And it's kind of crazy to think
Speaker 1: about that, you know. These are these are largely sonic
Speaker 1: and linguistic chunks of technologically constructed media that are used
Speaker 1: to build out the cultural self. So I'm I'm taking
Speaker 1: this building block, you know, dripping in the cultural honey
Speaker 1: of the hive from which I have, I have yanked it,
Speaker 1: and now I'm I'm putting it inside myself. I'm implanting
Speaker 1: it in my body, altering the shape in the form
Speaker 1: of my own being. And so the music becomes me
Speaker 1: and I become that music totally. Now she she points
Speaker 1: out that exactly how music gets stuck in our memories
Speaker 1: is kind of hard to nail down because different networks
Speaker 1: and functions of the brain are involved in music remembrance.
Speaker 1: There's cognitive, there's a there is a motive, there's a
Speaker 1: a somato sensory. She cites some cognitive scholar Patrick Comb
Speaker 1: Hogan who says, quote, the tendency of working memory to
Speaker 1: cyclic repetition, combined with the exaggerated accessibility of a simple
Speaker 1: and frequently repeated tune, gives rise to a situation in
Speaker 1: which the song is likely to cycle repeatedly through working memory.
Speaker 1: And this touches on some of what we're talking about already, sure,
Speaker 1: on the basis that every time you recite a memory,
Speaker 1: you make that memory easier to access in the future.
Speaker 1: Though not necessarily accurately, but you at least make it
Speaker 1: easier to access in the future. And songs, by their
Speaker 1: very nature, especially sort of catchy songs with easily repeatable
Speaker 1: melodies and and and lines, um, really are easy to
Speaker 1: recite in the heads, so you sort of like you
Speaker 1: implant them for very powerful ease of retrieval in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and when you start talking about repetition in these songs, um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that the Van Bank points out
Speaker 1: is that technology aids in it immensely. Um, because the
Speaker 1: the advent of recorded music technology allowed us to engage
Speaker 1: in true repetition and to expose ourselves um cyclically to
Speaker 1: particular songs, both privately and collectively. UM. And I think
Speaker 1: we can all probably think of examples of this where
Speaker 1: we you know, we hit on that one song and
Speaker 1: nothing but that song is going to do it do
Speaker 1: it for us right now? So what do we do?
Speaker 1: We put that baby on repeat. You'll listen to it, like,
Speaker 1: you know, five, six, ten times in a row even uh,
Speaker 1: just continuing to get that hit. And UM, I want
Speaker 1: I wonder like, Yeah, in the old days, I guess
Speaker 1: if you had a song in your head and you're
Speaker 1: in your heart, you could just continually sing it to
Speaker 1: yourself as you just went about your day. Um. But
Speaker 1: but without recorded media, you have the chance to change
Speaker 1: it in the process of doing that. That's right, That's right.
Speaker 1: You could change it a little bit each time, even uh,
Speaker 1: you know, come up with your own lyrics. I guess
Speaker 1: and U and I guess you probably saw that of merge,
Speaker 1: especially with like work songs right where it's like people
Speaker 1: working collectively collectively sharing in a song and then perhaps
Speaker 1: contributing to it and building upon it as they went.
Speaker 1: But but it makes me think of these various like
Speaker 1: especially like medieval style and fantasy setting, um shows where
Speaker 1: you'll have like a pub scene and there's a performer,
Speaker 1: there's a bard singing a song, and usually the bard
Speaker 1: will sing the song once. But in reality, would you
Speaker 1: have a situation where they're like, yeah, we love that,
Speaker 1: let's let's just keep doing it. No, that song over
Speaker 1: and over again? Uh, I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the answer is. If you ever been to a
Speaker 1: concert where the musician played the same song twice? Oh
Speaker 1: I don't. I have know that that occurs occasionally if yeah,
Speaker 1: if the audience demands it all right, Um, so we
Speaker 1: don't remember all the songs we hear, but we we
Speaker 1: do remember a lot of songs, especially if we can
Speaker 1: pair it up with a specific emotional, physical response, even
Speaker 1: stuff as simple as well, this song pumps me up,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think we can all think of
Speaker 1: examples of that. Right. Maybe it's it's not even the
Speaker 1: song that you like really connect with in a lot
Speaker 1: of meaningful ways, but it gets your blood pumping and
Speaker 1: therefore it's easy to remember. But this alone can't account
Speaker 1: for the stickiness of music and memory. Uh S Van
Speaker 1: Dank also points to two complimentary theories. There's the neurocognitive theory,
Speaker 1: and this is the feeling associated with the song. Uh
Speaker 1: is inscribed in our in our biographical meaning, and recalling
Speaker 1: them causes a flood of emotion and time, event relationship specifics.
Speaker 1: And then there's the cultural semiotic theory. The musical sign
Speaker 1: is not the key thing, but rather the emotions, feeling,
Speaker 1: and experiences attached to hearing a particular song. So the
Speaker 1: comparison that has been made here is that a tree
Speaker 1: is falling in a forest. The forest is the song,
Speaker 1: and the waves emanating from the falling tree are the emotions. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that clarifies anything for anybody, but
Speaker 1: um but but but hopefully what these two theories both
Speaker 1: kind of work at is that yeah, there's the song,
Speaker 1: there's the lyrics, but then they are all of these um,
Speaker 1: you know, biographical elements, and it's the and and some
Speaker 1: of this is perhaps make them off as an overstatement
Speaker 1: of the obvious. You know, like that time when you
Speaker 1: heard this song that time when you listen to this
Speaker 1: song six six times in a row, like, all of
Speaker 1: that becomes encoded in the memory of the thing and
Speaker 1: the nostalgia of the thing. Right. Well, another way to
Speaker 1: think about it is that there is no way to
Speaker 1: appreciate a song on its own terms. There actually is
Speaker 1: no you know, there is no way to just think
Speaker 1: about a song. You're always thinking about it with some
Speaker 1: kind of biographical and cultural framing. So you will have,
Speaker 1: you know, independent personal emotions, feelings and biographical details that
Speaker 1: will become associated with that song, and you will probably
Speaker 1: keep reproducing in memory every time you hear the song
Speaker 1: or sing the song. But then there will also possibly
Speaker 1: be these broader sort of cultural associations. But it it
Speaker 1: fits into a time, a social context, to political context,
Speaker 1: and it means something to you within that context. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: as as an example of of some of this um
Speaker 1: in her paper, Vannk goes into it looks at an
Speaker 1: example from a Dutch pop music survey. It's called the
Speaker 1: Dutch Top two thousand, and this is a radio event,
Speaker 1: and she argues that the Dutch Top two thousand is
Speaker 1: a great example of how quote unquote mediated memories are
Speaker 1: shaped at the intersections of personal and collective memories. So
Speaker 1: this was a national radio event with generated user responses
Speaker 1: in narrative form like people uh, people sharing their connection
Speaker 1: with a particular song, what it means to them uh,
Speaker 1: a narrative form for those memories, and since it's a
Speaker 1: major media event, it also helps to shape cultural memories
Speaker 1: through the sharing of the the individual connection to the
Speaker 1: song uh. So. So I found that that interest is
Speaker 1: trying to think, do we are there examples of out
Speaker 1: from you know, from my my own experience with music
Speaker 1: or I don't know if you have experiences with this,
Speaker 1: because oftentimes it's you know, music is presented to you
Speaker 1: and it's presented to you by a by a DJ
Speaker 1: or or a d J if you were watching uh
Speaker 1: MTV back in the day, and maybe they might add
Speaker 1: some sort of personal experience or some sort of priming
Speaker 1: as to why this song is important, but maybe not. UM.
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes back in the old days, maybe they
Speaker 1: do this still. People would have requests on the radio
Speaker 1: and would like, you know, say this song goes out
Speaker 1: to so and so. I could see that being a
Speaker 1: form of this. So I hope this service as just
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, introduction to some of these ideas. Um,
Speaker 1: the topic of music and collective memory plays into a
Speaker 1: number of interesting looking papers and books even that perhaps
Speaker 1: beyond the scope of this episode, but I thought I
Speaker 1: might mention a couple of them in passing in case
Speaker 1: people wanted to explore further. Uh. There's there's music Memory
Speaker 1: and Nostalgia, Collective Memories of Cultural Revolution songs and contemporary China.
Speaker 1: This one was by Bryant came out into that and
Speaker 1: five and China Review. And there is also a book
Speaker 1: edited by edited by Um, bos Quasca and bomb Gardner
Speaker 1: titled Music, Collective Memory, Trauma and Nostalgia and European Cinema
Speaker 1: after the Second World War. And I was looking at
Speaker 1: that one a little bit, and it Uh, this, this
Speaker 1: is something that that is worth noting, like the way
Speaker 1: that we strongly forge these connections between music and cinema. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and it's and something and and and just sort
Speaker 1: of visual media in general. And sometimes it can kind
Speaker 1: of co opt the original meaning of a song, uh,
Speaker 1: and that song becomes forever associated with with, say a
Speaker 1: particular period of time or or a conflict, et cetera.
Speaker 1: All Right, well, we're gonna we're gonna go and close
Speaker 1: things out here, but obviously we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everybody out there, because again, everybody has some sort of
Speaker 1: connection to to what we've been talking about here, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have specific examples that might be worth sharing
Speaker 1: from your own life and your own your your own
Speaker 1: musical history. I also want to throw in I did
Speaker 1: look it up real quick, the Dynasty's song that I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about, um the Way to Remember the Dynasties of China.
Speaker 1: It's sung to the tune of Freda Shaka. So you
Speaker 1: can find examples of that online if you want. I
Speaker 1: am I'm not going to sing it now. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you like to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you can find us in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, available wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: We have listener Mail on Monday's Artifact on Wednesdays as
Speaker 1: a short form episode, and on Friday's We Do Weird
Speaker 1: How Cinema. That's our time to set most serious matters
Speaker 1: aside and just focus in on a weird film. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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