Can You Use Method of Loci To Memorize Music? (Science Explained)

[@neomelodi]

Please consider subscribing if you'd like to see more of my content! It would mean allot as a small channel to break through the great wall of the KZbin algorithm :)

[@anthonyc54]

Interesting . I think in early stages we could use loci to remember the broader patterns of a piece. .the chord patterns, the key changes. Yes the emotional changes between sections

[@elialmeida4815]

Amazing, thank you so much

[@anvarts]

Again, very interesting. Still, the method of memorizing music, which I shared under one of your last videos, treats music not like a jumble of notes, but a MEANINGFUL story. Yes, it is usually takes longer to “see” a meaningful emotional story in a piece of music, but the search for it is a far more interesting and joyful experience than memorizing notes as if they were a semi-random collection or, worse, a mathematically precise craft, verified by a myriad of formulas, whose secret meaning is only known to professors of music theory, (who are so kin at torturing student of music, including those who can actually make musical magic, not just talk about it). ;)

[@neomelodi]

Thanks for the comment, totally agree with you. Musicians don't memorize purely notes, but the context that it resides in the composition, or as a meaningful whole rather than a mathematical note-per-note basis per se. Here I think the method of loci could be useful as well, as you could for example attach mental images to different sections and rope them all together into a story in which each mental image interacts with each other. In fact, this is how Akira Haraguchi actually memorized over 100,000 digits of pi, so it could work!

[@anvarts]

I’d say, the story method, extensively used by my piano prof wife, is a Loci method, simply made better for music purposes. I do know a Chinese PhD who still remembers 60 digits of pi, using Loci method, but even he admits that it’s useless waste of mental energy. What the story method offers are immediate emotional rewards: first, the joy of discovery of the story within a (pleasant) music, and then the joy of coloring/amending the story every time you play that music. Judging by the experience of my wife’s students (not to mention her own), the outcome is always greater than memorizing the notes mechanically or “scientifically”. The joy of learning a piece becomes the joy both you and the audience get during concerts.

[@neomelodi]

​@@anvarts That's interesting. Having read various research papers it can be easy to fall into that "scientific mindset" when it comes to music. Of course using the method that you get enjoyment out of the most is the most effective in the long run. Music is partly an emotional artform afterall.

[@deandonga]

epico

[@yvesjeaurond4937]

4-D chess?!? Undefined. Visual? Spatial? What mimes do. Musicians do it aurally. Please avoid giving out impertinent advice.