How's your auditory memory?

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neverfoundthetime
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:00 pm

I get curious about things from time to time and really like to learn more about the subject at hand. This week I had several reminders that my ability to recall names is dwindling. I've always been good at names. My visual memory is good too... I found a house I lived in in Malaysia 45 years ago on Google Earth by remembering the 17 km route to school in Kuala Lumpur... and I found this camp in Pennsylvania the same way. This morning I had one of those time-warp events where I had contact on FB with someone I had not heard from in 37 years, from the summer camp I worked in as a student in 1976. We exchanged memories and as I was struggling to recall names I suddenly realised that of the people I could remember, I could recall their voices exactly, the timbre, the accent, the whole shabang. As I followed that thought, I realised I can recall the voices of nearly everyone I knew well. I had not realised this before apart from the fact that I could always hear my mother's, my grandmother's and my father's voice in my head although they have been gone for over 30 years.

I have always been aware that I remember voices and the feel of the voices in music really well, just as I can remember lyrics well and others on TG have made me aware of that. I know from my studies that we are constructed to remember smells and faces extremely well and you will never exhaust your memory capacity for these categories in your life time. But I wasn't really aware that this applies to sound and voices too, or seemingly so. I'm very aware of how selective memories are and there's so much I have forgotten about events but as I continue to search in my mind, I'm finding that the voices stay and I can recall them all!

I'm assuming this isn't just me and that we all do this more or less. How is it for you?


thereshopeyet
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:06 pm

Thanks.


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daryl
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:12 pm

Interesting. Many/most events in my life have faded away. There is very little that I can recall of them. I can't even recall their chronological order any more. :-( But voices, like melodies, seem to be easily recalled. Weird.


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neverfoundthetime
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:12 pm

Dermot, my mother used to say, "I'll never forget what's his name..." without the slightest inkling of the humour in what she said! :-)


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neverfoundthetime
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:22 pm

Daryl, as I think about it, I'm wondering if voices are well anchored in the same way faces and smells are, its innate for us, or if its the way we direct attention. What I mean by that can be best illustrated by looking at a photo next to a professional photographer or listening to music next to a trained musician or music teacher. My friend Gabriela who is a music therapist can hear all the instruments, all their parts, the base-line, several different melodies on and on and I can single out maybe the bass-line and the main melody in one go. Having worked with photographers and graphic artists for over 25 years, I found out fast that I don't see what they see and even after much coaching I was only just catching up on the visual detail they could pick up in one look. So directing focus and knowing in detail what to look for will influence what you remember.


dennisg
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 1:11 pm

I think you're on to something, Chris. The sounds we hear are imprinted on our brains in a way that other qualities never are. As proof, spend some time listening to the radio some day, and notice how many songs you can identify simply by the first few notes of the opening riff. Conversely, if someone tested you by giving you the first few words of the song (just spoken without a melody behind them), you'd, more often than not, fail to recognize the song.

Maybe it's an evolutionary thing related to the importance of recognizing voices (friend or foe) and sounds (predator or prey) in the wild.


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neverfoundthetime
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Sat Jan 05, 2013 4:00 pm

I've wondering about the evolutionary advantage too Dennis as that's what we have with face recognition... with smell I think that has to do with it coming before sight and hearing, its a very primitive and ingrained aptitude. Music and voices convey emotion so that may be the hook here... recognising the emotional state of someone else would have been important in primitive family groups.

I've been wrapped in this all day and I keep coming up with more and more voices that I can recall.


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neverfoundthetime
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Sun Jan 06, 2013 8:27 am

Hmmm, so I remember nearly every voice belonging to someone I have known well but its still slow progress for me getting the solo in Sandman (AMERICA) down. I can play the thing through in my head ok but I'm not getting every note, just most of it, approximately, but going through the tab shows me I'm missing some subtleties ... and I take forever to translate the tab to a state where I understanding it consciously note for note... I want to jump that step and just play it from feel, but I'm a long way off that yet. This is the bit I find hard work in learning songs. So it looks like I remember what I am hearing in the sense that I can replay it in my head but when I have to go note to not, I'm actually missing bits when it comes to solos. I know the mind has a tendency to fill in bits of missing memory all by it's self so maybe that explains why I feel like I remember voices and songs so well: I remember most of it but not all and my mind just fills in the blanks without me knowing it.

What's it like for you?


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daryl
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Sun Jan 06, 2013 8:34 am

Same here. My playing is always just an approximation. I envy those who can play exactly like the record.


BobR
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Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:18 am

Hi Chris,

I think my auditory memory is OK, But the thing that stood out for me in your post was Malaysia, I am sitting in Penang Malaysia right now.

Bob


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