0:03

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production

0:05

of My Heart Radio. Hey

0:13

you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

0:15

is Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick.

0:17

As we've discussed on the show before, memory

0:20

is a complex topic. There are things we remember,

0:23

there are things we forget, There are the things

0:25

we only think we've forgotten, and

0:27

then there are the numerous ways in which altered

0:29

memories are stored and then retrieved

0:31

as if they're fact. Memory is powerful,

0:34

it's beautiful, it's dangerous at

0:36

times, and it's essential to

0:38

human culture and the human experience. In

0:40

this episode, we're gonna be looking at some of the issues

0:42

related to memory and music because

0:45

the way we think about, store and recall

0:47

music. I feel like this helps

0:49

illuminate what's going on in

0:52

the complexity of memory. And it's also

0:54

something that's that's that's highly

0:56

relatable. We can we can all dip

0:59

in on the this particular topic, and I

1:01

look forward to hearing from listeners about it. But

1:03

also we're dealing with something that's you know, slightly

1:06

intangible. You know, you try and

1:08

when you try and think and talk about

1:10

how you remember music,

1:12

how songs stick with you over

1:15

the ages, and what songs mean

1:17

to you. Uh, you know, you know, you get into a

1:19

lot of interesting territory. Sure. I

1:21

mean, I think one of the most common things that we can

1:24

all relate to is the way

1:26

that music has, uh such

1:28

a powerful ability to

1:30

evoke by gone places and

1:32

times that you know, to to just sort of

1:35

like put you right back in the mindset

1:37

of you know, that summer, the year

1:39

that you were nineteen years old or whatever. Um.

1:42

And it's kind of strange why sequences

1:45

of sounds do that seemingly

1:47

so much more than almost any

1:49

other, uh stimulus

1:52

of any kind. Yeah, yeah, they

1:54

you know, there's a lot of nostalgia

1:57

tied up in music, and uh,

1:59

you know, I I thought I might share a personal

2:01

example of of how I sometimes

2:03

feel like I'm haunted by music. Sharing

2:05

this because I think it's a good example for our discussion,

2:08

but also, deep down, I

2:10

have this secret hope that somebody will will

2:12

help me identify this or send me a maybe

2:15

just you know, send me a VHS tape that will

2:17

answer my question. Uh.

2:19

And I imagine people out there have had similar, many similar

2:21

experiences. So as a child

2:24

home one summer and watching lots of daytime

2:27

television. I saw a commercial

2:29

for a community college or state college.

2:32

I'm not sure which, but it I seem

2:34

to recall it was probably a regional

2:36

advertisement. This

2:38

might have been for it might

2:40

have been a college in Tennessee, or it might have been a college

2:42

in Kentucky. I'm not sure which, but

2:45

it contained various splashes of

2:47

technology and humanities classes.

2:50

It showed footage of people, you know,

2:52

tinkering with some electronic equipment, uh,

2:54

you know, doing some other stuff that looked vocational.

2:57

And it also contained uh, footage

2:59

of the stage performance featuring what

3:02

I think was a Cyclops, like a large

3:04

scale Cyclops costume that towered

3:06

over people. It might have been a minotaur, but

3:08

I think it was a Cyclops. You can respect

3:11

their advertising department saying, okay, we got

3:13

a bunch of footage of the stage productions.

3:15

What what what goes front and center in the commercial?

3:17

It's got to be the monster? Yeah, yeah,

3:19

I mean it made an impression on my mind.

3:22

But what also made an impression was

3:24

the music in this commercial, because

3:27

at the at the time and as I look back

3:29

on it, it felt like the music of the future.

3:31

It was some sort of glistening retro

3:34

sounding synth and I've never

3:36

been able to find out exactly what it was.

3:38

I've I've never found like footage uploaded

3:40

on YouTube of this particular advertisement,

3:44

and as far as I know that, the commercials

3:47

just lost to history. And again it was likely very

3:49

regional. But listening

3:52

to Boards of Canada, the musical

3:54

duo years later whose specializes

3:57

and often very nostalgic, founding

4:00

sounding retro synthies tracks, um,

4:02

I did listen to a track titled

4:05

M nine off of Old Tunes Volume

4:07

one, and it either it reminds

4:10

me a lot of what was

4:12

the of the song that was in this advertisement.

4:15

It reminds me so much that I'm tempted

4:17

to wonder if this was the track somehow.

4:19

This is funny because to me, the Boards of

4:21

Canada very much is the sound of

4:25

like an a trium in a

4:27

in an institutional building on a college

4:29

campus that has like sort of futuristic

4:31

looking staircases exagging around

4:34

and like an orange carpet or something

4:37

exactly. That's I mean, that's the complicating thing,

4:39

right. The kind of sounds that the

4:41

Boards of Canada excels at

4:43

crafting are are sounds

4:45

that are reaching back towards the time period,

4:48

like they're they're they're kind of reverse

4:50

engineering the sort of sounds I would have heard

4:53

in this advertisement. And I'm not sure

4:55

exactly when I would have listened to this advertisement.

4:58

The tape in question, Old tun Tunes

5:00

Volume one, came out, and I think, but

5:03

I'm yeah, I'm not sure how the timelines

5:05

add up here, And if they do add

5:08

up, I'm not sure exactly how that track would

5:10

have wound up on this commercial.

5:13

And like I say, in Tennessee or Kentucky

5:15

or something, um

5:17

and and again, I'll likely never have the

5:19

answer to it. But every time I listen to that

5:21

track M nine, it takes me back

5:23

to that experience of watching this

5:26

this advertisement and sort of glimpsing

5:28

into this possibility of

5:30

what the future was like, what college might

5:33

be like, what adulthood might be

5:35

like, what you know, a life

5:37

of technology or art, what that might

5:39

consist of. I think it's interesting.

5:41

I don't know if you're even aware you said this, but

5:43

that your vision of the future

5:46

necessarily includes consciously

5:48

retro elements, like retro sounding

5:51

synth. Is what you what

5:53

you think of when you think of the future. Yeah,

5:56

it's it's weird. Yeah, And and

5:58

and I'm still kind of tied to this where

6:00

I see like there's certain building styles

6:02

which are no longer modern, that

6:05

are very much retro, but they still look like

6:07

the future to me because they looked like in

6:09

many cases, they look like you know these strange,

6:13

you know, collegiate buildings that I

6:15

saw when I was a child, you know, some of these buildings

6:17

that were probably built in the nineteen seventies that

6:19

we're you know, super reliant on air conditioning

6:21

and maybe didn't have as much natural life.

6:25

Like the atrium and overdrawn at the Memory

6:27

Bank, and it's both it is both of

6:29

the past and of the future. Yeah

6:31

that that I forget which atrium

6:35

was used in that movie, but they made great

6:37

use of an atrium there. Uh, there are

6:39

various other sci fi films. I love

6:41

it when it's clear that they're filming

6:43

inside of a hotel or a mall and making

6:45

him look like some sort of like a futuristic building.

6:49

Absolutely love it. And to that extent,

6:51

I love just being in a large atrium. There

6:53

is that. I mean, these are like cathedrals, they're

6:55

just the god at the center of it

6:58

is just the hotel chain. They

7:00

give you a brutal hanker in for some cinemas.

7:04

Sorry, the overdrawn of the memory bank jokes

7:06

can can stop right now. Well,

7:09

you know everything that I've talked about so far, We've been talking

7:11

about the boards of Canada. We've been talking about music

7:13

that had that is that is completely um

7:16

instrumental, it has no lyrics

7:18

because once you start talking about lyrics, Uh,

7:20

this, this adds an entirely different dimension

7:22

to everything. Yeah, So this is something

7:25

that I wanted to talk about because

7:27

I came across a paper that I thought

7:29

was pretty interesting. Um, So

7:32

I guess here's the best way to introduce it. I'm gonna

7:34

start with a couple of questions for anybody who ever

7:37

did school theater as a kid, If

7:39

you were in plays when you're in you know, elementary

7:41

school or whatever. If you ever had

7:44

a speaking part in a play,

7:46

can you still now remember

7:48

any of your lines? And

7:51

if so, how much can you remember? And

7:54

then the second part is uh, same

7:56

time of your life, If you ever had a singing

7:59

part the musical, can

8:01

you still remember the lyrics to

8:03

any of the songs? If

8:06

you are anything like me, you probably

8:08

find that you don't really remember many

8:11

spoken lines from childhood plays.

8:13

Most of the ones that stick in my head are

8:16

I think they're memorable because something

8:19

like maybe something funny or otherwise

8:21

memorable happened during practice

8:24

of the scene they're in, so they sort of become

8:26

a part of an episodic memory. But

8:29

but even examples like that are are pretty rare

8:31

in my memory. But I I can quite

8:34

easily and immediately remember

8:36

all kinds of lyrics from songs

8:39

that I sang many years ago and

8:41

haven't practiced since, songs from

8:43

the Pirates of Penzance or

8:46

or like a musical adaptation

8:48

of god knows what kind of weird stuff

8:50

I was in as as a child, But like

8:53

the lyrics have stayed in

8:55

my brain for twenty plus

8:57

years. Yeah, my my experience

8:59

is much the same. Um. You know.

9:01

I think back on plays that I was in and

9:05

and and in some cases I had like pretty

9:07

major roles, had a lot of lines to remember, Like

9:09

I believe I was in a community production

9:11

of other people's money, and I remember

9:13

nothing. I had nothing at all that I said

9:15

from that play, uh, which which

9:18

on one hand I understand because I didn't

9:20

like love that play. I mean, it was an enjoyable

9:22

experience at the time. But it's not

9:24

like my favorite play or anything, So it makes sense

9:26

that I would maybe make room for other

9:28

things in my memory and sort of

9:30

flush that information. Um.

9:34

But then, and but then. I also think back on

9:36

musical community theater musicals I was in,

9:38

and in some cases I had pretty major roles

9:40

there. I was in a production

9:42

of seventeen seventy six, and I don't

9:44

remember any of the music from that. I don't remember. I

9:46

remember the costumes and sort of the experience,

9:48

but I remember no words that

9:50

came out of my mouth. Well, for me, I don't

9:53

know how much it has to do. I mean, I don't think

9:55

I have any particular love for like the

9:57

Pirates of pens Ants, but I could still

10:00

rather. You know, I am the very model of a modern major

10:02

general. All the you know, the from

10:05

Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical

10:07

And this is interesting to me because in both

10:09

cases the lines I spoke in

10:12

the lyrics I sang are collections

10:14

of verbal text. In both cases,

10:17

I would have made a conscious effort to memorize

10:19

them, and I would have practiced them

10:21

by repeating them out loud over and over.

10:24

But for the most part, the

10:26

spoken lines for me completely fade

10:29

away, and a lot of the song lyrics

10:31

have remained. They have way more

10:33

staying power overall. Obviously I don't

10:35

remember all of them, So what's

10:38

making the difference? Yeah? This,

10:40

this, This is interesting because

10:42

I also think back on things that I liked.

10:45

For instance, um, I had to learn the Dagger

10:47

monologue from Macbeth Forum, just

10:50

a Shakespearean acting class I took

10:52

once and I love I love

10:54

that monologue, a great monologue, And there have been times

10:56

since then where I kind of wish

10:58

I could just belt that monologue

11:01

in its entirety, but I cannot. It's

11:03

it's mostly gone just with you know, a few lines

11:05

remain, and if I read it, you know, it comes

11:07

sort of comes back to me a little bit. But

11:10

then there are things like Don McClain's

11:12

American Pie, a song that

11:14

I have never performed. It's not like community

11:17

theater or something where I had to get up and actually performed

11:19

this stuff in front of people and work through memorize

11:22

and work through stage fright. But with with American

11:24

Pie, I could probably recite all of that right

11:27

now. I haven't listened to it

11:29

in a in a in a long time. But

11:31

like that, is a that is a song where like the

11:34

entire um uh, you know, the entirety

11:36

of the lyrics, you know, they're

11:38

just stuck in my head and they're not going anywhere. Uh.

11:40

And it's because of the power of the music. I guess,

11:43

well, maybe maybe not. I mean, I guess

11:45

it's hard to say why exactly it

11:47

is that these lyrics seem to stick with

11:49

us for so long. Now. Another thing,

11:52

just from personal experience to sort of

11:54

inform this question, is that

11:56

I have also, definitely in my life, back

11:58

when I was in school, uh, tried to

12:00

use melody as a mnemonic

12:02

device when trying to memorize things

12:05

for a test. I don't know if you ever

12:07

did this, but I remember, like trying to

12:09

create songs or set things. I

12:11

was trying to remember to the melodies

12:13

of existing songs. And I don't

12:15

know if it worked for me, but I at least I

12:18

thought it might work enough that I

12:20

tried to do it. Well.

12:22

Yeah, I don't have a lot of personal experience with this,

12:24

but I've I've you know, I've

12:27

heard that it works for some people, like some people

12:29

and and in general I'm talking

12:31

about Western um

12:34

sinologists sometimes

12:36

memorize the

12:39

dynasties of China by

12:41

using a particular song. I forget which a song. Idea is

12:43

that it's like some Western song and then American.

12:46

It's not, but you

12:48

can you can look it up. I remember finding a video of like

12:50

a couple of old sinologists, Western

12:52

sinologists setting around singing this little

12:54

childhood tune because it's how they both

12:57

learned the order of the dynasty's. So

13:00

it definitely works for people. But I don't think I ever

13:02

really leaned on it myself. Okay, well

13:05

I would like to hear that. Maybe have to

13:07

look that up later. But so I was wondering a

13:09

couple of things. So first of all, is

13:11

this preference for at

13:13

least the perceived ability to memorize

13:15

song lyrics over other verbal content.

13:18

Is this just me? And second,

13:20

is there any evidence that this actually works,

13:23

that this is actually true? So

13:26

the first thing is it seems based on what

13:28

we've been talking about, it may not be universal, but

13:30

it's definitely not just me. I found

13:32

plenty of articles in the mainstream press

13:34

about using music as a

13:36

mnemonic device or a learning tool,

13:39

and some researchers thinking that

13:41

that music or setting verbal

13:44

information to music might help

13:46

people remember it better. But the second

13:48

question would be is there evidence that it

13:50

actually works? And there

13:53

I think the evidence might not be a firm

13:55

yes or no. It's actually quite complicated,

13:57

but complicated in in ways that seem

14:00

pretty interesting and might reveal

14:02

some things about our experience of music and

14:04

about the way memory works. So

14:06

there are actually a ton of studies on the

14:08

role of music and the

14:11

effects of music on memorization and

14:13

verbal learning. Um, so I

14:15

I can't do do that whole slate

14:18

of literature. Instead, I wanted to start by focusing

14:20

on one study that I found interesting and

14:23

then maybe comment a little more broadly. So

14:25

this study was published in two thousand seven

14:27

in the journal Memory and Cognition. It is

14:29

by Omilie Rossett and Isabelle

14:32

Perettes, and it's called learning Lyrics

14:35

to Sing or Not to Sing. And

14:38

they begin by talking about this existing

14:40

popular belief that we've already been discussing,

14:43

as well as some empirical evidence that

14:45

music can possibly aid in memory,

14:47

especially learning of verbal information,

14:50

learning of words. And so they

14:53

cite a few examples, such as previous studies

14:55

one by Dixon and Grant in two thousand

14:57

three that investigated trying

14:59

to learned the laws of physics through karaoke

15:03

that sounds both sweet and really

15:05

cringe inducing. And then secondly,

15:08

they mentioned to study my Medina from nineteen

15:10

three that looked into learning

15:12

English as a second language via songs,

15:15

with the idea that songs might provide an advantage

15:18

over just normal verbal content. But

15:20

the authors point out that if it's true that

15:23

singing and music help with

15:25

learning verbal information, it's

15:28

not obvious why that should be

15:30

the case, because, after all, when you learn

15:32

a song, there's literally

15:34

more information that you have to

15:37

encode and retrieve than when just learning,

15:40

say that the text of a song, just

15:42

the lyrics, because you're you're adding music

15:44

on top of it. It seems like that would be

15:46

more to remember, might be distracting,

15:48

and thus would uh, you know, would

15:51

make things harder. Yeah, I mean, if if

15:53

memory serves uh. Some actors

15:56

use the technique of learning their lines flat

15:58

without any kind of motion added to them,

16:01

and then that come then they build on that later,

16:03

you know, So they start without any additional

16:06

information aside from the words, and you know,

16:08

of course you know the meaning behind the words, right,

16:10

And though uh, though I guess

16:12

we we should always remember that acting techniques

16:15

are not necessarily informed by the

16:17

latest memory and cognition. Yeah,

16:20

like then all these things, there's also a certain amount of tradition

16:23

and different views on performance

16:25

that you know that that may not be scientifically

16:27

verified, right, But that's another thing like

16:29

we've like we were talking about that, you know, at

16:32

least it grows out of personal experience. So you

16:34

have to wonder if there's something there that could be

16:36

plumbed by empirical research. So

16:45

the authors here are Stt and Parretts. They

16:47

note that in previous studies, the

16:50

results looking into this question on whether

16:52

music aids in in verbal learning

16:54

and memory formation and retrieval,

16:57

the results have been kind of mixed. But while

16:59

they're this is not the universal

17:01

finding, there have been a number of studies that show

17:03

people have an easier time recalling

17:06

sung words over spoken

17:08

words. Now, in their introductory

17:10

section they talk about a few reasons they're hypothesized

17:13

for why this might be. Why might if

17:15

people do remember words from songs

17:17

better than the same words spoken,

17:20

what what would be going on there? And so they

17:23

say, well, maybe, uh, speed

17:25

actually plays a role, because

17:27

when you take a text and

17:30

you sing it, generally you will spend

17:32

a longer time pronouncing the

17:34

words in the text, then if

17:36

you just read it or recite it out loud,

17:39

and thus it the text is sort of less

17:41

compressed. They also say that the

17:43

characteristics of the melody seem to

17:45

be important because a simple

17:47

melody that has a very sort of repeated

17:49

line seems to be easier to memorize

17:52

than complex melodies like you might

17:54

find and say, an opera or something. But

17:57

then also that they offer another reason that

17:59

saw lyrics might be easier to memorize,

18:02

which are structural characteristics

18:05

of the text that make it easier to

18:07

recall. So to read from their

18:09

introduction quote, for instance, the metrical

18:12

structure of music and the number of

18:14

musical notes in a line can

18:16

queue word recall. Similarly,

18:18

song lyrics are usually constrained by

18:20

both semantics, meaning meaning

18:23

that there is like a meaning constraint

18:25

on what can be said in a song. So

18:27

they say a story underlies the words,

18:29

generally through a schema or script. Uh.

18:32

And then so you you've got the semantic constraints.

18:34

You know, the song sort of has to tell a story

18:37

that makes sense. That certainly not true of all songs,

18:39

especially these days. Um. But then

18:41

the other thing would be sound patterns, and

18:43

this would be things like rhymes or alliteration,

18:46

which they also say, megan limit possibilities

18:49

of what types of words could come next. You

18:51

know, these offer you some schema of

18:53

of you know, predicting what the

18:55

rest of the line would be. That

18:58

that's interesting because makes me think of American

19:00

Pie. It also makes me think of Warren's

19:03

Van's Roland the Headless Thompson

19:05

Gunner, both long songs that

19:08

I easily remember, but both of them

19:10

are are very narrative songs.

19:13

The lyrics tell a story, especially

19:15

with Roland. You know, there's a beginning, a

19:17

middle, and an end to it. There's a climax,

19:20

and they've both got very regular rhythm

19:22

in the delivery and uh and a rhyme

19:24

scheme. And so those things

19:26

can help you remember because they limit the

19:29

possibilities of what could be coming

19:31

up next in the song. If you know the say

19:33

the rhyme sound at the end of the last line,

19:35

that helps give you a clue as to what the

19:37

next line is. Whereas you know, you might

19:39

have trouble recalling otherwise. Yeah,

19:42

And the authors here note and interesting thing

19:44

they say when errors occur in

19:46

song recall, they say quote, the changes

19:49

usually preserve the rhyme and

19:51

the number of syllables in the line.

19:54

So if you were say, singing

19:57

American Pie, and you couldn't remember

20:00

drove my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry,

20:02

you might at least be able to say, took my chevy

20:05

from the levy and I looked at

20:07

the sky. You know, it would be something that preserved the

20:10

rhyme and preserved the meter the

20:12

number of syllables. Yeah, yeah,

20:14

a misheard and misconstrued

20:17

lyrics are still going to They're

20:20

still going to meet the basic framework that

20:22

was presented in the song. So anyway, in

20:24

this study, the authors did a couple

20:26

of experiments to see

20:28

if learning verbal materials

20:30

through song actually did

20:33

provide a memory advantage over learning

20:35

the same verbal materials

20:37

just recited or spoken. And

20:40

so there were three different conditions

20:42

as people were trying to learn the lyrics of an

20:44

unfamiliar song, and there're three different conditions

20:46

here. So first is the sung sung

20:49

condition, and in this condition, the

20:52

subject would have the song sung to them

20:54

and then they would try to sing it back. Second

20:57

is the sung spoken condition, and

21:00

year they would have the song sung

21:02

to them, but then they would try to speak the

21:04

lyrics back and then the

21:07

next condition. I thought this was interesting.

21:09

They tried something called the divided

21:11

spoken condition, and this is

21:13

where they would be presented with

21:15

the lyrics but not sung, though

21:18

they would be hearing the accompanying

21:21

background music. And I guess this was to

21:23

try this was sort of a control to try to rule

21:26

out Wait a minute, could it just be that

21:28

having the music going on while you're learning

21:30

the words is what contributes to learning

21:32

and not the fact that the lyrics

21:34

themselves are being sung. M

21:37

Now, that's interesting. That makes me think

21:39

of of of songs like the Moody

21:42

Blues Knights and White Satin, which

21:44

has of course traditional lyrics, but then

21:46

also has that spoken words segment, and

21:49

thinking back on it, like I can,

21:51

I can remember a lot of that spoken words segment

21:54

from Knights and White Satin, despite

21:57

the fact that it's not like, you know, a

21:59

piece that I'm particularly attached to, but

22:02

that the words will come. Well. I guess

22:04

so in one of the conditions, that's what they're going to test

22:06

here, that does that does the spoken words section

22:09

actually have a memory advantage over

22:11

just something being spoken without any music?

22:14

Um? So in keeping with sort of the conventional

22:16

wisdom and with what a number of studies had found

22:19

before, they predicted that the sung

22:21

sung condition would create the best word

22:23

recall. So when people heard heard

22:25

a song sung to them and they tried to sing it back,

22:28

they would do the best. But here's

22:30

where I thought this got interesting. They found no

22:33

in this test. The hypothesis was not

22:35

confirmed. They predicted that the sung sung

22:38

condition would be best, but they

22:40

write quote. However, fewer words

22:42

were recalled when singing than when speaking.

22:45

Furthermore, the mode of presentation,

22:48

whether sung or spoken, had no

22:50

influence on lyric recall, either

22:53

short or long term recall. But

22:56

anyway, at the end of their abstract they right

22:58

quote altogether. The results into kate that the text

23:00

and the melody of a song have separate

23:03

representations in memory, making

23:05

singing a dual task to perform,

23:07

at least in the first steps of

23:10

learning. Interestingly, musical

23:12

training had little impact on performance,

23:14

suggesting that vocal learning is a basic

23:16

and widespread skill. So,

23:19

first of all, I just like to say, you know, I like

23:21

this study because it's a great example of a negative

23:23

finding that can still be really interesting.

23:25

The hypothesis is not confirmed. Yet

23:28

we can still learn a lot from from what's going

23:30

on here, and the authors had some interesting

23:32

thoughts in their conclusion section about

23:34

about what might be happening with

23:37

music and verbal memory. So

23:39

I want to read a section from their discussion

23:42

in their conclusion that that I thought was interesting

23:44

here. So they say, Nevertheless, one

23:46

important cue for auditory vocal

23:49

remembering that is common to both

23:51

music and poems is rhythm.

23:54

The regular organization of stresses,

23:56

mostly alternating between strong

23:58

and weak beats or still doables, is

24:00

supposed to limit the words that are compatible

24:03

with it, and thereby constrains words

24:05

selection, at least in English.

24:07

The rhythmic similarity between the prosodic

24:10

accent structure of spoken words

24:12

and the metric structure of the melody is

24:14

striking and has long been noted

24:16

by linguists and music theorists.

24:18

Moreover, Palmer and Kelly in nineteen

24:21

two have shown that linguistic accent structure

24:23

and musical meter are generally aligned

24:26

in Western songs. Hence, rhythmic

24:28

structure, as determined by the number of syllables

24:31

or notes and the location of primary

24:33

stress, may serve as a compatible

24:36

format for setting words to tones. By

24:38

this account, Recalling a particular stress

24:41

pattern in a melody or spoken text

24:43

activates a metrical grid that

24:46

constrains the type of text or

24:48

melody that is compatible with

24:50

it. A common metrical grid is

24:52

typically used throughout a song. Therefore,

24:55

metric structure provides a means

24:57

by which lines of an entire song are

24:59

organized in a common hierarchical

25:01

structure, thereby relating non

25:03

adjacent song components and

25:05

helping memory. So I

25:07

think what they're arguing here is that maybe in these cases

25:10

where we have found that music

25:12

aids in verbal memory, it's

25:15

because the words in the

25:17

music are set to a sort of poetic

25:19

rhythmic structure, and it's that

25:21

structure that makes things easier

25:24

to memorize, not so much the setting

25:26

it to the melody part. Uh.

25:30

They also note some interesting things like one thing

25:32

that uh they mentioned is that advantages

25:35

of lyrical recall might actually depend upon

25:37

language. Uh So, just for example,

25:40

it might be easier to recall

25:42

words with the help of lyrical structures in

25:44

English versus French. That's

25:46

not clear, that's just a possibility they mentioned.

25:49

Um. But then they also say something that I think

25:51

might tie into something you're going to discuss

25:53

in a bit. Uh, so they argue

25:56

in the end quote. This conclusion raises

25:58

the question of why music is believed

26:00

to be so important for verbal memory,

26:02

not only in oral tradition, but also in

26:05

everyday life. We believe this is

26:07

due to a misunderstanding of the utility

26:09

of music. Music is not at

26:11

the service of language in songs.

26:13

Music contributes to the creation of a

26:15

general mood that is shared

26:17

with others. And then they

26:20

quote an author named Booth from that

26:22

teen eighty one who writes that a singer

26:24

tells people quote nothing they need

26:26

to decode or learn. He evokes

26:29

in them ways of seeing life that

26:31

they already have. And

26:33

then they go on to say that quote. In

26:35

fact, oral transmission of text

26:38

is rarely word for word or

26:40

verbatim in singing. Althose

26:42

singers believe that they sing the text

26:44

exactly as heard, They never do

26:46

so. Uh. And then side studies by

26:48

Reuben Reuben famous

26:51

research into recounting

26:53

of like long oral poems,

26:56

things like the Iliad and the Odyssey, that

26:58

people supposedly do from memory. But

27:00

a lot of these studies find that that actually,

27:03

while people think they are performing

27:05

the same poem or song over

27:07

and over, in fact, they're making major

27:10

changes to it as they do. And

27:12

in fact, maybe the role of music is

27:14

to sort of create the

27:17

illusion that what you are

27:19

recreating is the same thing,

27:21

rather than making it the same thing. So

27:24

the structure is still the same, the

27:26

words are still rhyming. Uh, therefore,

27:29

surely nothing has changed. But there is of course

27:31

room for stuff to have changed, right, So details

27:34

may change, but something about the fact that

27:36

it is the same song creates

27:39

the feeling that you are recreating

27:41

the same work, even though the details

27:43

are actually different. So

27:46

anyway, I thought the study was really interesting, though

27:48

it is older. This is from two thousand seven,

27:50

So I was trying to look through a more recent

27:52

studies on this subject the effects of music

27:55

on verbal memory and recall, and

27:58

trying to see if I could find anything, you know, if any

28:00

newer conclusions had emerged. And it

28:02

looks to me like the the landscape

28:04

of findings on this is still somewhat

28:06

mixed, like it is not consistent,

28:09

and that this may just indicate that

28:11

there are different features of different kinds

28:14

of music and verbal encoding tasks

28:17

that that that provide

28:19

different results in the end. So,

28:21

for example, I was looking at one study from Frontiers

28:24

in Psychology published in by

28:27

Lehman and Seifert called

28:29

can music foster learning? Effects of

28:31

different text modalities on learning

28:33

and information retrieval. So

28:36

they have different ways of having people try to learn

28:38

text through written exposure, through

28:40

spoken exposure, and through sung exposure,

28:43

and they found that the actually

28:46

was through exposure to written text

28:48

that people signal recalled the

28:50

most detail in the verbal text.

28:53

However, they say, and and this one

28:55

really surprised me. But at least within this study,

28:57

they say, quote comprehension after

29:00

learning with the sung modality was significantly

29:03

superior compared to in learning

29:05

with the written learning modality. Comprehension

29:08

so like comprehension of the of

29:10

the text being presented. So they say

29:12

that reading helps people

29:14

focus more on details, which

29:17

may help them answer sort of specific recall

29:19

questions that would come down to a single word

29:22

or detail later on. But listening

29:24

to the verbal content as a song

29:27

leads to higher levels of comprehension

29:30

of the entire text. So

29:32

one last thing I came across the I found

29:34

an article in the Wall Street Journal from two

29:37

thousand thirteen by Heidie Mitchell called

29:39

does music aid in Memorization? And this

29:41

was interesting because it just uh, it

29:43

consulted the opinion of a of a leading

29:45

American psychologist who does research on

29:48

memory, and this psychologist

29:51

is Henry L. Rodiger the third,

29:53

who is a professor of psychology at the Memory

29:56

Lab at Washington University in

29:58

St. Louis. And what he's as

30:00

is, there's wide agreement that information set

30:02

to music is easier to remember. Now

30:04

why would this be, well, Roddiger actually

30:07

uh cites something that the authors

30:10

of that earlier paper mentioned, So he says

30:12

that music aids in memory because

30:14

it helps in the retrieval process.

30:17

So of course we know memory involves not only

30:19

storage but the act of retrieval.

30:22

And this can be clearly evidenced by

30:24

the tip of the tongue effect. You think about

30:27

how you can know the word you

30:29

want to use, but for some reason you can't

30:31

locate that word in your memory

30:33

at the moment, and then suddenly

30:36

something clicks and then you have the words.

30:38

It was in there. It was retrievable in

30:40

your brain, but you couldn't put it together.

30:43

And likewise, you can fail to recall a

30:45

memorized string of words, a memorized

30:47

sentence, until maybe you get the

30:49

first word in the string and then it all comes

30:51

rushing up out of the DP your memory. Uh

30:54

and so. So Roddeger claims that music is

30:56

helpful at retrieval of verbal

30:58

information be cause it provides

31:01

structure through things like rhythm and

31:03

rhyme, like we were talking about earlier

31:05

that the the other authors discussed

31:07

in their conclusion, And it's this

31:09

structure, the rhythm and the rhyme, that

31:11

acts as a queue that makes it

31:13

easier to retrieve the stored information

31:16

of the next line. So Roddiger

31:18

claims that it is the structure, not the

31:21

melody, that aids in the retrieval process.

31:24

When it is the case that it's easier to remember

31:26

lyrics, he thinks at least that it's probably

31:28

due to the fact that lyrics are

31:31

encoded in these rhythmic structures,

31:33

things that have meter and they have rhyme that

31:35

make them easier to recall than just unstructured

31:38

strings of text. And you know,

31:40

I can kind of say that it is similarly

31:44

easier to recall lines

31:47

of poems, even though they're not sung

31:49

out loud, just poems that have uh

31:52

say, meter and rhyme, than it is to recall

31:54

just lines of unstructured prose

31:57

from stories that I like or

32:00

or famous speeches I feel like. Um,

32:03

like perhaps at some point I had I was

32:05

asked to memorize the Gettysburg Address or

32:07

something like that, and like that really

32:10

doesn't stick with me. Some of Macbeth

32:12

sticks with me because there is very much a

32:14

cadence in a in a rhythm to to all

32:16

of that. Uh, and also

32:19

things like a rhyme of the ancient mariner. You know.

32:21

Um, I certainly don't have it all memorized, but there's

32:24

some some bits of it that are stuck in my memory.

32:27

So yeah, I could. I can see what they're getting

32:29

at in this this paper. And then that might

32:31

also explain cases where like, so

32:33

if you take song lyrics and

32:35

you're just trying to say, do people learn song

32:38

lyrics better if they hear them

32:40

spoken out loud or if they hear them

32:42

sung? And this is on initial exposure. Things

32:44

might change if you know you're you're exposed to these

32:46

words either spoken or sung, day

32:48

after day for a long time. But on initial

32:50

exposure, Uh, the authors of

32:52

that study from two thousand seven didn't really find

32:54

a difference, Like you you did not do better if

32:56

you heard them sung. I wonder

32:59

if that could just be as well their song lyrics

33:01

anyway, So even if they're spoken out loud, they

33:03

would still have the same structure.

33:05

They'd still have the rhythm and the rhyme. Yeah.

33:08

Yeah, Like even if you're if you're

33:10

not hearing the song rolland the headless

33:12

Thompson gunner, there's still Roland was

33:15

a gunner from the Land of the Midnight Sun.

33:17

You know, it has it has that cadence, and it has that rhyme.

33:19

Oh and in case in point, I actually got the lyrics

33:21

wrong there, it's Roland was a

33:23

warrior from the Land of the Midnight Sun. But

33:26

I got the important parts right. Well. It sounds

33:28

like that that's what happens with songs, right Like we

33:30

keep the structure and you get things

33:32

about the gist. But but yeah,

33:35

the details seemed us shift all over the place

33:38

anyway, though. I Mean, it seems to me like this is the kind

33:40

of thing that we could probably return to in the future,

33:42

because I bet that there is still a lot more

33:44

to learn about the relationship between uh,

33:48

verbal memory and music. It seems

33:50

that the studies we've looked at here established

33:53

some things, but it's still it still seems to be

33:55

a messy picture where sometimes music

33:57

does aid in memory and sometimes it

33:59

doesn't, and figuring out exactly what

34:02

what all the variables are there would probably

34:04

continue to be interesting. Yeah, So

34:14

I'd like to come back to um to

34:17

some of the ideas we're talking about earlier, and then some of

34:19

the ideas that came up in uh in your

34:21

discussion of of the work with lyrics

34:24

and and that concerns sort of this broader

34:27

picture of of memory and music.

34:29

Because memories involving music, they of

34:31

course, can be highly individual. We've already

34:33

shared a few different examples of that. We

34:36

we also have any number of examples where

34:38

a particular track or particular work of music

34:41

becomes linked to a particular idea

34:43

of a particular book, a particular movie,

34:46

a memory, a hope, or a dream, sometimes

34:48

in a good way, sometimes in a in a bad

34:50

way, or perhaps a slightly annoying

34:53

way. Perhaps you've had a had a co worker

34:55

with a with a particular ring tone that

34:58

that that kind of jabbed at you, and and now

35:00

that song is forever linked with

35:02

just random outbursts from this person's

35:04

phone. There there is a David Bowie song

35:06

where I can no longer hear the opening

35:08

guitar riff without thinking that the next

35:11

thing is is going to be like hearing

35:13

a voice saying, hey, what's up? Uh.

35:18

But anyway, the direction I wanted to go

35:20

in though at this point of the episode is to is to get

35:22

into the the idea of the

35:24

connection between music and and not

35:26

only individual memory, but collective

35:29

memory. Okay, Now

35:32

you're probably wondering, if some of you may be wanting, okay,

35:34

what is collective memory to tell us

35:37

or or remind us? Well? Uh.

35:39

French philosopher and sociologist Maurice

35:42

Hubbox born eighteen

35:44

seventy seven died developed

35:46

the concept of collective memory and

35:49

has been explored by various other thinkers since

35:51

then. The basic idea is that while

35:53

individuals remember things, groups

35:55

of people also remember things

35:58

together. Now, I was also reading

36:00

a paper titled Collective Memory What is

36:03

It? By Getty and Elam from

36:06

volume of History and Memory, And here

36:08

the authors make a connection between the modern

36:10

concept of collective memory and

36:13

you know, much older traditions of myth and legend,

36:16

because this is this is arguably how we used to

36:18

understand some of these concepts in terms

36:20

of national myths local

36:22

legends and so forth, but as well discuss

36:25

modernity affects some of the apparent

36:28

mechanisms and flows involved

36:30

here with individual and

36:32

collective memories of events and uh

36:35

in histories. Now, there are two distinct

36:37

areas of collective memory. They're small

36:39

scale collective memory and this is in small

36:41

scale groups among

36:43

the members of small scale groups. And then

36:45

there are large scale collective memories

36:48

in large scale groups. And this later category

36:50

is also known as memory boom. Uh.

36:53

There's there's also literature about the connections

36:55

between the two because anytime we're talking about these

36:57

memories like individual memory, small

37:00

all scale collective memory, large scale collective

37:02

memory. Uh, they're not you

37:04

know, distinct things separated by

37:06

walls. They are they influence

37:08

each other, and so there's there's very much the individual

37:11

experience of all of this. But even if you

37:13

have a group of just two people, you

37:15

see this interesting thing emerging. We've talked about

37:17

this before on the show, and there are some actually

37:19

some studies about this about how couples,

37:22

uh, you know, any kind of to any two people who

37:24

have kind of like a long term close relationship,

37:27

they'll often do this thing where they share the task

37:29

of remembering certain things, and

37:31

this can be a point of you know, slight irritation

37:34

at times, like why am I the one that remembers

37:36

uh, you know, Uncle Karen's

37:39

birthday or or whatever the thing

37:41

might be. And we end up

37:43

doing this thing where we, uh, we allow

37:45

the other person to be the the the

37:48

remember of that particular fact,

37:51

and then perhaps we end up remembering other things,

37:53

and then you engage in this kind of collective

37:56

remembering of things. Uh. And this is

37:58

this is of course one of the great great pleasures

38:00

in life. Right. You get together with either

38:02

you're you're talking with a significant other, perhaps

38:05

as a close friend or a relative, and what do you

38:07

do together? You share stories?

38:09

But you remember things together.

38:12

Yeah remember when. Yeah. Though,

38:14

it's great to point out the idea of sharing

38:16

stories as as being crucial to

38:19

this this collective memorization,

38:21

because that's sort of like it.

38:23

It puts emphasis on the fact that the

38:26

the retrieval of these memories often

38:28

in itself is a type of performance.

38:30

It's like a creative act in a way.

38:33

And uh, and I think that's one reason you ever

38:35

get in the situation where, uh,

38:38

you are together with a group of people and

38:40

say, your spouse says I, Oh,

38:42

here's you know. They bring up the concept

38:45

of a story, but then they want you to tell

38:47

it, you know, and so that you

38:49

can kind of something sometimes

38:51

doesn't quite feel right there because it's a story

38:53

that you could tell, but somehow

38:56

I don't know, like you don't feel like up to performing

38:59

it at that moment. It's not like you can't remember

39:01

the details as they're supposed to be told,

39:04

but something about being put on the spot is

39:06

like I was not ready to perform. So

39:08

it's almost like you can't remember. But

39:11

I think a lot of times we we kind of stow away

39:13

the idea that well, this person either they have

39:15

the better telling of the story, they have the beats down,

39:18

they can tell it in a funny way. Or

39:20

sometimes it's more that person's story to

39:22

tell, right, like it's it's their experience.

39:25

So it's even maybe you don't

39:27

feel is right being

39:29

the bearer of that story, like like you need

39:31

to tell it, Please tell that story. It's such a good one.

39:33

So so basically in all of this, a kind of emergent

39:36

memory can emerge from a small group of people

39:38

or a large group of people. Um oh,

39:41

and of course we have to remember we're talking about. When we're talking

39:43

about memory retrieval, we have to recall

39:45

that the mere act of retrieving

39:47

a memory can alter the memory. UH.

39:50

And in fact, the memories that we retrieve the

39:52

most, or perhaps the ones we can trust the least,

39:54

right, um.

39:56

But in either case it's important to drive

39:58

home. We're talking about ecological and

40:01

historical concepts here, and

40:03

UH it's it's a different beast from objective

40:05

history, but rather a view of the past

40:08

that involves specific views and

40:10

values of a given group, Right,

40:12

I mean, I think that's something that should come through. It's

40:14

not that humans never recall

40:17

details accurately. Sometimes they do,

40:19

but broadly, I think it is better to

40:21

think about your memory as a sort of UH,

40:24

a mythology based on facts

40:26

about history, rather than an objective

40:29

recording of events. Yes, yes,

40:31

that the link between mythology

40:34

and UH and even individual memory, but also

40:36

collective memory. I think it's strong, and you can also

40:38

tie in I think various connections

40:40

to the idea of collective unconscious

40:43

and the power of various symbols and tropes.

40:46

Um. But the basic concept here

40:48

of collective memory sometimes described as social

40:50

memory, and UH it is also sometimes

40:52

criticized for being very monolithic

40:54

and its approach because everyone in a particular

40:56

group is not actually going to have the exact same

40:59

memory of something, and while their

41:01

various memories might contribute to a collective

41:03

memory, they are still not going to have the same

41:05

specific memories of the event.

41:08

Also very true of mythology. I mean, there's

41:10

rarely just one version of a myth, right,

41:12

you know, right, right, and get all these different variations

41:15

on where did Medusa come from or

41:17

whatever? But then often you will have somebody

41:20

come along and attempt to codify it and say,

41:22

this is the version that we are adhering

41:24

to. And sometimes this is merely and sometimes

41:27

it's accidental, like a great storyteller

41:29

comes along and retells the story

41:31

and now this is the one. Other times,

41:33

you know, there there are potentially

41:36

nefarious attitudes involved,

41:38

you know, particularly if you have someone who is looking to

41:40

to lead people or manipulate people, and

41:43

in doing so they might say, well, this this

41:45

is our collective memory. Surely you remember

41:47

it this way. This is the way that

41:50

that I would like for you to think of it. But

41:52

you know, we might think of this. We might take this concept and

41:54

apply it to something like let's say the nineties sixties

41:57

in America. Uh, there are

41:59

and we're individual memories of this

42:01

time period. But there also are

42:03

and we're collective memories of that decade.

42:06

And depending on who you were and where

42:09

you were, there was likely a fair amount of

42:11

drift concerning the exact flavor of that time

42:13

period. Was it a time of liberation, a time

42:15

of struggle, a time of great danger,

42:17

a time of laughable fashions? Uh?

42:20

You know, I'm simplifying here, but hopefully you

42:22

get the idea. And on top of that, media

42:25

plays a role in all of this as well, again,

42:27

as do certain manipulations

42:30

of recollections of tough times

42:32

by people who have a particular agenda

42:36

in all of it. And of course music plays

42:38

a part as well. And in this I come to the paper

42:41

that I was reading about all of this, um

42:43

titled record and Hold

42:45

Popular Music between personal and collective

42:48

memory. I wonder if that might have been an

42:50

illusion or a play on sample

42:52

and hold from Neil Young. I don't

42:54

know, but it's by the the

42:57

researcher yo Say Van Dunk,

43:00

published in Critical Studies and Media Communication

43:02

from two thousand six. Van Donk

43:05

writes that quote people nourish emotional

43:07

and tangible connections to songs

43:10

before entrusting them to their personal,

43:12

mental, and material reservoirs.

43:15

But they also need to share musical preferences

43:17

with others before songs become part of a

43:19

collective repertoire that in turn provides

43:22

new resources for personal engagement

43:25

with recorded music. So her main

43:27

contention here is that that musical memories

43:29

emerge and become codified at

43:32

the intersection of personal

43:34

memory, collective memory, and

43:36

identity. Uh, you know, which

43:38

leads to the question how do personal and collective

43:41

memories intermingle here? And

43:43

I think this is really quite interesting to think about. For for

43:45

for instance, think back to a song that

43:47

came out when let's say you were in high school

43:50

or perhaps college, or perhaps some other

43:52

justformative time in your life, you know, think about

43:54

a time when a lot of new music

43:56

was entering your life and your

43:58

life was changing and so forth.

44:01

So, first of all, how did you think about

44:03

the song then, and how do you think about

44:05

it now? How did your group,

44:07

small or large think about the song,

44:10

How have you come to reflect on it as a product

44:12

of that time period? And

44:14

how is the song packaged and sold to

44:16

you at the time figuratively and perhaps

44:19

literally, and then how has the media been

44:21

packaged or repackaged since then? You

44:23

know, I recall a kind of youthful arrogance

44:25

about my taste in music when I was in high school,

44:28

and a lot of the stuff I liked, I'm sure I would

44:30

now regard as quite horrible. Um,

44:33

but I but I remember thinking at the

44:35

time like, oh, finally music is

44:37

good, you know about about

44:40

like the kind of music that I liked then. I mean,

44:42

I guess I grew out of that fairly quickly,

44:44

but like there was a kind of a

44:46

feeling of like, Okay, you know

44:48

this new this new type of metal that

44:50

I'm into now, which in my case was probably

44:52

like early two thousands metals, so you

44:55

know, like real good stuff. Uh.

44:58

I was like, finally, you know, we've we reached

45:00

sort of the apex of music. This is

45:02

what it's all been building up to. This is the

45:04

new frontier here. There's a kind of pity

45:07

for like previous generations who didn't

45:09

have that, you know, they didn't really know what music was

45:11

about because there wasn't disturbed yet.

45:15

Yeah, it reminds me. I think it was a no fielding line

45:17

about how um. Uh,

45:19

that's saying something about like adam ant having

45:22

been having invented music and someone

45:24

was like what about classical music? And he was like,

45:26

well, it was just that was just warming up, you

45:29

know, like like well, whatever came before

45:31

the music that was pivotal for you,

45:33

Like that was just the precursor, the necessary

45:36

precursor to the real music that

45:38

was that was actually speaking, which

45:41

is is ridiculous, but also I think makes a lot

45:43

of sense as we as we move on through all of

45:45

this. Uh so, um,

45:48

you know, there's a lot to consider when thinking about it. But

45:50

uh and in those questions

45:52

here that I asked, the only scratched the surface. But as

45:55

um As van Deynk points out, Number

45:58

one, remembering as an active process

46:00

of a mind in the world. So we are

46:02

stirred to remember things

46:05

by a multitude of stimuli. So it's

46:07

you know, it's you're not just a black box of memory.

46:09

There's all this additional stuff coming in stirring

46:12

memories, um, you know, and

46:14

sometimes like stirring them up to into a

46:16

into a storm, into a uh, you know,

46:19

a new obsession or a re obsession.

46:21

The second point is that that music is enabled

46:23

through instruments and technology

46:26

and quote enabling apparatus becomes part

46:28

of the recollecting experience. So

46:31

this is I think this is perhaps worth remembering as we

46:33

occasionally throw out old physical albums

46:36

and playing devices like all of that

46:38

stuff. And I'm not saying, hey, keep all

46:40

of your your garbage, but

46:43

but it's worth remembering that, Yeah, that that physical

46:45

album is still a part of the experience of that

46:47

album. And uh and uh, I

46:49

guess some of us may be cling onto

46:51

that idea more than others. Uh,

46:53

pieces of my soul will always live

46:56

on unlabeled, burned c d s

47:00

A right that. The next point that Vandang

47:02

makes is that music emerges from a socio

47:05

technological context and

47:07

then also quote, remembrance

47:09

is always embedded, so the social context

47:12

within which we live stimulate

47:14

memories of the past. For an example

47:16

of this, she points to internet forums

47:18

and and radio programs is

47:21

things that don't merely stimulate such

47:23

musical memories but also helped construct

47:26

collective memory. Oh yeah, I mean,

47:28

so music is powerfully evocative, but to

47:31

a great extent, we determine what

47:33

it evokes by talking about it with each

47:35

other. Yeah, yeah, there's I mean, there's

47:37

because there's what the music means to me. It's what the music

47:39

means to us, you know, again, the collective

47:42

memory of of what this song is or what

47:44

it was, what it meant, you

47:46

know, especially when songs become anthems,

47:49

right when they become things that are

47:51

attached to movements, to

47:53

generations, or just a particular

47:56

scenes and times. Now, I mentioned high

47:58

school and college for a reason here. These are period of

48:00

time, but not not the only periods of time during

48:02

which we often build out our musical taste

48:04

and in doing so, construct our own

48:07

identity. And it's kind of crazy to think

48:09

about that, you know. These are these are largely

48:11

sonic and linguistic chunks of technologically

48:14

constructed media that are used

48:16

to build out the cultural self. So

48:18

I'm I'm taking this building block, you

48:20

know, dripping in the cultural honey of the

48:23

hive from which I have, I have yanked

48:25

it, and now I'm I'm putting

48:27

it inside myself. I'm implanting

48:29

it in my body, altering the shape

48:31

in the form of my own being. And

48:34

so the music becomes me and I become

48:36

that music totally. Now

48:38

she she points out that exactly how music

48:40

gets stuck in our memories is kind of hard

48:42

to nail down because different networks

48:45

and functions of the brain are involved

48:47

in music remembrance. There's cognitive,

48:49

there's a there is a motive, there's

48:52

a a somato sensory. She

48:54

cites some cognitive scholar Patrick

48:57

Comb Hogan who says, quote, the tendency

48:59

of working memory to cyclic repetition,

49:02

combined with the exaggerated accessibility

49:05

of a simple and frequently repeated

49:07

tune, gives rise to a situation

49:09

in which the song is likely to cycle

49:11

repeatedly through working memory. And

49:14

this touches on some of what we're talking about already,

49:16

sure, on the basis that every

49:18

time you recite a memory, you make

49:21

that memory easier to access in the future.

49:23

Though not necessarily accurately, but you

49:25

at least make it easier to

49:27

access in the future. And songs,

49:29

by their very nature, especially sort of catchy

49:32

songs with easily repeatable melodies

49:34

and and and lines, um,

49:37

really are easy to recite in the heads,

49:39

so you sort of like you implant

49:42

them for very powerful ease of retrieval

49:44

in the future. Yeah, and and when

49:46

you start talking about repetition in these

49:48

songs, um, one of the

49:51

things that the Van Bank points out is that

49:53

technology aids in it immensely. Um,

49:56

because the the advent of recorded music technology

49:59

allowed us to engage in true repetition

50:02

and to expose ourselves um cyclically

50:04

to particular songs, both privately and

50:07

collectively. UM. And I think we

50:09

can all probably think of

50:11

examples of this where we you

50:13

know, we hit on that one song and nothing

50:15

but that song is going to do it do it for us right

50:17

now? So what do we do? We put that baby on repeat.

50:20

You'll listen to it, like, you know, five,

50:22

six, ten times in a row even

50:25

uh, just continuing to get that hit.

50:27

And UM, I want I wonder

50:30

like, Yeah, in the old days, I guess if you

50:32

had a song in your head and you're in your heart,

50:35

you could just continually sing it to yourself as

50:37

you just went about your day. Um.

50:39

But but without recorded media,

50:42

you have the chance to change it in the process

50:44

of doing that. That's right, That's right. You could

50:46

change it a little bit each time, even uh,

50:48

you know, come up with your own lyrics.

50:50

I guess and U and I guess you probably

50:53

saw that of merge, especially with like work

50:55

songs right where it's like people

50:57

working collectively collectively sharing

50:59

in a song and then perhaps contributing

51:01

to it and building upon it as they went. But

51:04

but it makes me think of these various like especially

51:06

like medieval style and fantasy setting,

51:09

um shows where you'll have like a pub

51:11

scene and there's a performer, there's a bard

51:14

singing a song, and usually

51:16

the bard will sing the song once. But in

51:18

reality, would you have a situation where they're like,

51:20

yeah, we love that, let's let's just keep doing it.

51:22

No, that song over and over

51:24

again? Uh, I don't know. I don't

51:26

know what the answer is. If you ever been to a

51:28

concert where the musician played the same

51:31

song twice? Oh I don't. I

51:33

have know that that occurs occasionally

51:36

if yeah, if the audience demands

51:38

it all

51:41

right, Um, so we don't remember

51:43

all the songs we hear, but we we do remember

51:45

a lot of songs, especially if we can pair

51:47

it up with a specific emotional, physical

51:50

response, even stuff as simple

51:52

as well, this song pumps me up, you

51:54

know, And I think we can all think of examples

51:56

of that. Right. Maybe it's it's not even the song that you

51:58

like really connect with in a

52:01

lot of meaningful ways, but it gets your blood pumping

52:03

and therefore it's easy to remember. But

52:06

this alone can't account for the stickiness of music

52:08

and memory. Uh S Van Dank also

52:10

points to two complimentary

52:12

theories. There's the neurocognitive

52:14

theory, and this is the feeling associated

52:17

with the song. Uh is inscribed

52:20

in our in our biographical meaning,

52:23

and recalling them causes a flood

52:25

of emotion and time, event relationship

52:28

specifics. And then there's the cultural

52:31

semiotic theory. The musical

52:33

sign is not the key thing, but rather the emotions,

52:35

feeling, and experiences attached to

52:37

hearing a particular song. So

52:40

the comparison that has been made here is

52:42

that a tree is falling in a forest. The

52:44

forest is the song, and the waves

52:47

emanating from the falling tree are

52:49

the emotions. Okay,

52:51

I don't know if that clarifies anything for

52:54

anybody, but um but

52:56

but but hopefully what these two theories

52:58

both kind of work at is that

53:01

yeah, there's the song, there's the lyrics,

53:03

but then they are all of these um,

53:05

you know, biographical elements, and it's

53:07

the and and some of this is perhaps make them

53:09

off as an overstatement of the obvious. You know, like that

53:12

time when you heard this song that time

53:14

when you listen to this song six six

53:16

times in a row, like, all of that becomes

53:18

encoded in the memory of the thing and the nostalgia

53:21

of the thing. Right. Well, another way to think

53:23

about it is that there is no way to appreciate

53:26

a song on its own terms.

53:28

There actually is no you know, there is no way

53:30

to just think about

53:32

a song. You're always thinking about it

53:34

with some kind of biographical and cultural

53:37

framing. So you will have, you

53:39

know, independent personal emotions,

53:41

feelings and biographical details that will become

53:43

associated with that song, and you

53:45

will probably keep reproducing in memory

53:48

every time you hear the song or sing the song.

53:51

But then there will also possibly be these broader

53:53

sort of cultural associations. But it it

53:55

fits into a time, a

53:58

social context, to political context,

54:00

and it means something to you within that

54:02

context. Yeah. Absolutely.

54:05

Now, as as an example of of some of

54:07

this um in her paper, Vannk

54:11

goes into it looks at an example

54:13

from a Dutch pop music survey.

54:16

It's called the Dutch Top two thousand,

54:18

and this is a radio event, and

54:20

she argues that the Dutch Top two thousand is

54:22

a great example of how quote unquote

54:25

mediated memories are

54:28

shaped at the intersections of personal

54:30

and collective memories. So this was a national

54:32

radio event with generated

54:35

user responses in narrative form

54:37

like people uh, people sharing

54:40

their connection with a particular song, what it

54:42

means to them uh, a narrative form for

54:44

those memories, and since it's a

54:46

major media event, it also helps to

54:49

shape cultural memories through the sharing

54:51

of the the individual connection to

54:54

the song uh. So. So I

54:56

found that that interest is trying to think, do we

54:59

are there examples of out from

55:01

you know, from my my own experience with music or

55:03

I don't know if you have experiences with this, because oftentimes

55:06

it's you know, music is presented to you and

55:08

it's presented to you by a

55:10

by a DJ or or a d J

55:13

if you were watching uh MTV

55:15

back in the day, and maybe they might

55:17

add some sort of personal experience or some sort

55:19

of priming as to why this song is important,

55:21

but maybe not. UM.

55:24

I guess sometimes back in the old

55:26

days, maybe they do this still. People would have

55:29

requests on the radio and would like, you know, say

55:31

this song goes out to so and so. I

55:33

could see that being a form of this. So I hope

55:35

this service as just kind of a you know, introduction to some of these

55:37

ideas. Um, the topic of music

55:39

and collective memory plays into a number of

55:41

interesting looking papers and

55:44

books even that perhaps beyond the scope

55:46

of this episode, but I thought I might mention a couple

55:48

of them in passing in case people wanted to explore

55:50

further. Uh. There's there's music Memory

55:53

and Nostalgia, Collective Memories of Cultural

55:55

Revolution songs and contemporary China.

55:58

This one was by Bryant came out into that and

56:00

five and China Review. And there

56:02

is also a book edited

56:05

by edited by Um, bos Quasca

56:07

and bomb Gardner titled Music,

56:09

Collective Memory, Trauma and Nostalgia

56:12

and European Cinema after the Second World

56:14

War. And I was looking at that one a little bit,

56:16

and it Uh, this, this is something

56:18

that that is

56:20

worth noting, like the way that we strongly

56:23

forge these connections between music

56:25

and cinema. Uh. And

56:27

and it's and something and and and just sort of visual

56:29

media in general. And sometimes it can kind

56:31

of co opt the original

56:33

meaning of a song, uh, and that song

56:36

becomes forever associated with

56:38

with, say a particular period of

56:40

time or or a conflict,

56:43

et cetera. All Right,

56:45

well, we're gonna we're gonna go and close things out here,

56:47

but obviously we'd love to hear from everybody out there,

56:49

because again, everybody has some sort of connection

56:51

to to what we've been talking about here, and you're

56:53

gonna have specific examples that might be

56:55

worth sharing from your own life

56:58

and your own your your own musical history.

57:00

I also want to throw in I did look it up real quick,

57:03

the Dynasty's song that I'm thinking about,

57:05

um the Way to Remember the Dynasties

57:08

of China. It's sung to the tune of Freda Shaka.

57:11

So you can find examples of that online

57:13

if you want. I am I'm not going to sing it now.

57:17

In the meantime, if you like to check out other episodes

57:19

of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find

57:21

us in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed,

57:23

available wherever you get your podcasts. We have

57:25

core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

57:28

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57:30

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57:32

We Do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to

57:35

set most serious matters aside and just focus

57:37

in on a weird film. Huge thanks as always

57:39

to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas

57:41

Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with

57:44

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57:46

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57:48

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