I take great pleasure in the DJ Inside. What is this thing?
Well, as all of us humans have experienced, when your listening to music a most delightful side affect occurs -- your brain, the most complex collection of matter known, replays songs that you've listened too during the day. It is essentially an iPod-of-the-Graymatter; or more colloquial, the GooPod.
Scientific American recently had a piece on memory about the affects of stress. Most of us can recall exactly what they were doing on 9/11, or, throwing a bone to the boomers, when JFK was shot with stark accuracy. Not only sad or shocking moments have this effect. Joyous and emotional times tend to sear things into long-term memory as well. I can recall lyrics to Rush songs that I haven't listened to in years because of the repetition and emotion of that experience.
Interesting that song-memory is, with its own distinct attributes. You can listen to a song very many more times than you can watch an event. The shelf life of emotional response is much shorter with visual memory. The first time you saw "Lost" you were enthralled, but no one would watch the same episode ten times, yet you would listen to a song easily that many times. Perhaps then our musical memory is short than our narrative memory. Our brains hold a pointer to stories that have been told to us and interrupted, but no so with audio.
Music has a much different structure than the visual though, even when the visual isn't narrative. Typically music, at least the features that differentiate it from noise, is repetition, harmony, dissonance, time signatures, and a varying dynamic of tempo and volume. Yet the structure most effective in allowing us to recall the song is repetition and emotion. A typical pop song will repeat itself two or three times at least. Analysing the structure this genre in particular shows that there are only a few unique artifacts inside a new song, and those are looped inside of 5 minute window typically.
The same device is used with classical, but on a larger time scale, resulting in a more difficult task for the mind to recall. I've listened very many times to Beethoven's 9th. It was my gateway drug if you would into the majestic world of classical music. I can recall almost any juncture of the song, and even now as I type this I can, though not linearly, access sections of the song that made emotional impact.
Another attribute of this music memory is that it is decidedly short term, holding the most recent music only. I will not more than likely get surprised by a very old Rush song this morning. Its far more likely that new music that I just encountered will be replayed, such as an Usher song that I enjoy but growing tired of as music stations run it into the ground.
This leads to the maladaptive nature of this circuit. Sometimes its less than pleasant to recall sounds and tunes. My only request to the Great Architect is that when He makes Man 2.0 that he allows a little more control of this internal radio station. During this the 21st century, interruption-based marketing is dying, and those who try still to force us to remember their wares use irritating music to get our attention. They repeat their phone numbers seven times in a jingle, or a car commercial that repeats a dissonant refrain over and over. Ironically, Vonage ( Voip vendor) used the same music briefly, until the suits got together. Vongage "won" that battle, and still use that awful virus-like 'melody'. It would be great to reach in and yank that record off the player.
Unfortunately, even thinking about it activates that memory area, so I must end this article.
So, it is this moment on a sunny Monday morning in NY that I devote to the architecture of the mind, and to that clever little device whatever it is that surprises us in the doldrums of the day with a little Mozart, Rush, or, gasp, Usher.
