Friday, April 05, 2019
Plink plank plunk
Researchers are finally catching up to the obvious fact that memory is wave-based, not spatial like a filing cabinet.
One question that hasn't been answered yet: Music. How does the brain keep dozens of LONG pieces of music active and available and separate forever without any DRAM-like refresh?
Specific example: Some radio show used Leroy Anderson's Plink plank plunk as background music for a trivia quiz. They didn't identify it by name, just described it as the theme from Garry Moore's old I've Got a Secret show. After hearing the first couple bars, my internal jukebox played the whole thing. Just for fun I tried to recall other Anderson pieces. The Typewriter immediately popped up, and internal jukebox played the whole thing.
Until this week's few notes of Plink, I hadn't heard or thought about those pieces since 1960. How did they stay active for 60 years? Each piece is about 2 minutes long, leaving out repeats. If each is contained in a sort of tape loop, each has played 15 million times so far without degradation. (I'd guess the storage is more like MIDI than tape, with each notation calling up the sound when I hit Play.)
Sleigh Ride is also active but not so mysterious, since it gets DRAM-refreshed by Muzak every Xmas season.
Incidentally, modern performances of the Typewriter are a lot of fun. Orchestras compete for the best parody of the Virtuoso Typiste.
A related question that could help to answer the first one: Humans share this ability with birds. No other mammal recognizes or remembers or produces long structured sequences of tones. How did this happen? I've previously speculated that music might share a gene with bipedal configuration.
Labels: Asked and unanswered, Entertainment
¶ 12:44 AM
