Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Young
I read a really cool little book called the Laws of Brainjo a while back. The guy's a neuroscientist who plays banjo and has a teaching website. He has lots of theories based on his neuroscientist background about how we learn, and he has lots to say on your question. I found it quite interesting that he claims that playing memorized music and reading tab involve different parts of the brain. Therefore, according to him, you cannot memorize something just by reading the tab over and over, and in fact reading the tab over and over just burns the song deeper into the wrong part of the brain. You have to transfer the knowledge to a different part of the brain. This seems to be true for me. He has some tips for doing that transfer, so you might check out the book (cheap e-book), or maybe he has this info online somewhere as well.
Could all be nonsense, but it seems to work for me, and who am I to argue with a neuroscientist?
|
I'm sure not going to argue with a neuroscientist, but I'm 72 years old and I take a lesson every other week. Each lesson my instructor gives me a song to work on for the next two weeks. It is in the form of your basic lyrics and chords on a piece of paper. I make notes on it during the lesson. After two weeks of working on the song, I can pretty much play it and know the words without looking at the cheat sheet. So it appears that the two parts of my brain at least are working together. Maybe I need to be studied by a neuroscientist.
Or maybe I'm just doing something different.
One thing, if I don't use it, I lose it. I don't retain songs that I've learned and memorized if I'm not playing them regularly.