British Universities Film & Video Council

moving image and sound, knowledge and access

Here’s One I Prepared Earlier

Synopsis
Georgina Ferry explores musical memory and how musicians remember the words, scores and stage directions for live performances. Musicians and researchers talk about how the brain performs this amazing feat. Careful measurement of electrical activity in the brain shows how performers can condense the music to manageable proportions, and the role of muscular memory in reducing the load further is discussed.

But not all humans are the same. Autistic musicians often exhibit phenomenal capacity for memorising performance, and according to recent research may use very different mental techniques to reproduce music. Other research explores the way we recall long sequences of quick notes, with memory lapses here often being simply ‘the right notes at the wrong time.'
Language
English
Country
Great Britain
Year of release
2005
Year of production
2004
Notes
Broadcast weekly on Radio 4 from 24/3/2004
Subjects
Music; Psychology
Keywords
memory; musicians; music - performances

Online availability

URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/heresone.shtml
Price
free
Delivery
Streamed

Production Company

Name

BBC Radio 4

Web
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 External site opens in new window

Record Stats

This record has been viewed 414 times.