why is it so easy for our brains to memorize songs after 3-4 times of listening to them but way harder to memorize a regular written paragraph?
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The pattern in a song with words is phrased in a similar fashion and most often rhyming makes it a lot easier to remember. You know it’s four bars and you know the next phrase should end with something that rhymes with “Blue”. Helps a lot when memorizing.
Written sentences is most cases are not structured like this. Newspaper articles, novels etc (stuff like poems being the exceptions) are just words basically tumbled over each other as rythm and rhym serves no purpose to convey the message.
Patterns make memorization easy. If you sang a paragraph like you sang a song, you would be surprised at how much more you can remember by equating it to a tune.
In my line of work I need to memorize dozens of strings of characters a day, I do so by singing and snapping the characters in groups of three. It makes memorizing them much easier than simply reciting the string plainly, like you would with a paragraph.
Simply put, music is made up of patterns that your brain is wired to recognize and latch onto. This is why songs seem so easy to memorize comparatively.
As others have mentioned, patterns and structure. Music has repetitive wordings (like the chorus being sung a few times), it has rhyming scheme, and it has syllable meter. The human brain is good at picking up on patterns, so employing those patterns make it easier to remember a song.
Music also allows for engaging multiple facilities of the brain. Rather than just the stiff logic of “Remember X phrase”, you’re also engaging sound and rhythm functions of your brain and sharing the learning load
In addition to pattern recognition as others have said, the parts of the brain responsible for making memories and processing music are kinda looped around each other, so connections between the two are easily formed. This is one explanation for why people with Alzheimer’s can still recognise music from their childhood even thoigh other memories have gone
To add to others, the words in a song have 3 distinctive characters that make them easy to remember.
1. They rhyme, so you’ll know the word sad is coming when you hear the word bad first.
2. They’re sung using notes in different pitches and octaves, making each word and syllable very distinct in comparison to others.
3. They’re sung using rhythm, allowing you to anticipate the exact moment a word is on the way.
All these things combine to promote easy memorization.
Don’t forget that it’s unlikely that you’re recalling a song perfectly. You’re likely ignoring /it not noticing it /not remembering the exact melody. And recalling music usually only recalls one aspect, such as melody or harmony, or the words being sung by one person, or a specific instrument or beat.
Most people can’t actually recall multiple aspects simultaneously; your focus may shift from one thing to another in the musical piece but you’re not actually recalling the piece in total all simultaneously.
So it’s easy to think you can recall music accurately. And there’s not much error correction your brain has to do when it makes a mistake doing so. It just skips past mistakes or omissions, or does little fills when you can’t remember a bit.
Recalling the written word requires more accuracy. It simply stops making sense if you recall it in banana, moving van the… wait…. uh if it recall it in uh oh. Incorrectly. If you recall it incorrectly. And you immediately notice.
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