Music, human thought and the game of concentration...

Two bands, one guitar lick. The Bands (pictures courtesy of Virgil Porter):

Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater

Gogogoairheart

For more of Virgil's pictures: GC&ST, GGGAH, others.

What the hell am I talking about? I've been thinking a lot lately about how humans think... and information tools that might someday assist such thought. Specifically, I've become increasingly surprised at how much my brain works like a game of concentration. Remember that game? You'd take two identical card decks, lay them all out face down on the floor after shuffling them together, and then the object of the game was to turn over the same card from both decks for a match... the person that 'concentrates' harder and turns over more matches, wins.

Listening to my music collection turns out to be just such a game and I dare say I've found my first match. If you've got the bandwidth, download these two snipets of songs:

Snipet 1 [676KB MP3]
Glass Candy & the Shattered Theater
Nite Nurses
"Love, Love, Love"

Snipet 2 [804KB MP3]
GoGoGoAirheart
Reaction Atria (Pts. 1 & 2)
"Love My Life Hate My Friends"

Those guitar licks are almost exactly the same! If AMG is to be believed (and I know at times, it is not), the Gogogoairheart album was out in 1998... a full five years before the Glass Candy album. It doesn't really matter, though... both these records are hot as hell and will get your booty movin'.

This started me thinking about what caused my brain to realize that these two licks were so similar and make the connection. So often I don't make such connections... I sit around saying, "jeez, I know I saw/heard/felt that before... but where?" I suspect my method of listening to digital music is the culprit... I don't listen to specific albums or tracks on purpose... I have one playlist with all my music that's massively shuffled by iTunes (few pieces of software actually have good shuffling algorithms). This allows me to listen to what I want if I'm in the mood and statistically speaking I eventually hear everything.

I suspect that listening to music like this sharpens your associative and recall skills. Of course, it would be nice if information tools existed that allowed me to do this with other materials... and not necessarily have to use my brain to make the connection. We need more tools that assist the human brain in the manner it thinks. I don't see a lot of those out there... tools like Google are increasingly changing how we think instead of allowing us to think more efficiently. So collegues, get on it!

Posted by joebeone at Diciembre 7, 2003 01:11 AM