I have a visual memory not an audio one. I can't remember tuns or music at all. But I can describe visuals, and if the song is used in specific way in a story or movie I'll remember it. When I hear music - I see a story or movie, or a feeling.
I can't venture an intelligent guess as to how common your way of processing music is, but it may well be more common than you think.
The one thing I can state with certainty, based on my several decades of work in the retail specialist audio trade is that a weakness in many salespeople is a failure to understand that people do indeed hear/process sound and music differently, often very much so. If you're trying to recommend a component or system for a customer, you have to first try to find what works for them.
One simple example would compare myself with another salesman I worked with in my early days in the trade. He was especially sensitive to a characteristic known as "imaging". This is the ability to place yourself between the two speakers, and with your eyes closed, be able to tell exactly where each instrument or singer is located within that space. I'm nearly deaf to that ability, but on the other hand, I can usually detect even minute amounts of distortion in the audio. I'm moderately pitch sensitive, others-- fairly rare-- have perfect pitch, can for example say "that's A above middle C" and be dead on.
As to hearing music visually, there was a segment on 60 Minutes a few weeks back where this fellow who was totally blind nearly from birth started playing a toy piano his father bought him when he was just two years old. He could not only hear a piece of music, and then play it on the piano, he used both hands to do so!
His parents , realizing how astounding this was, got him started with lessons. Today, he is one of the world's greatest jazz pianists.
But the mind-blowing thing was, recently, a doctor who wondered just how this young man's brain actually processed information when he played music, arranged to have MRI scans done while he played a keyboard.
The results? The man's entire visual cortex responded when he played, or simply heard music! His brain had effectively reprogrammed the normal visual area to work with sound, obviously from when he was a small child.
Damn. Gives new meaning to that old saw about a mind being a terrible thing to waste.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 05:50 am (UTC)I can't venture an intelligent guess as to how common your way of processing music is, but it may well be more common than you think.
The one thing I can state with certainty, based on my several decades of work in the retail specialist audio trade is that a weakness in many salespeople is a failure to understand that people do indeed hear/process sound and music differently, often very much so. If you're trying to recommend a component or system for a customer, you have to first try to find what works for them.
One simple example would compare myself with another salesman I worked with in my early days in the trade. He was especially sensitive to a characteristic known as "imaging". This is the ability to place yourself between the two speakers, and with your eyes closed, be able to tell exactly where each instrument or singer is located within that space. I'm nearly deaf to that ability, but on the other hand, I can usually detect even minute amounts of distortion in the audio. I'm moderately pitch sensitive, others-- fairly rare-- have perfect pitch, can for example say "that's A above middle C" and be dead on.
As to hearing music visually, there was a segment on 60 Minutes a few weeks back where this fellow who was totally blind nearly from birth started playing a toy piano his father bought him when he was just two years old. He could not only hear a piece of music, and then play it on the piano, he used both hands to do so!
His parents , realizing how astounding this was, got him started with lessons. Today, he is one of the world's greatest jazz pianists.
But the mind-blowing thing was, recently, a doctor who wondered just how this young man's brain actually processed information when he played music, arranged to have MRI scans done while he played a keyboard.
The results? The man's entire visual cortex responded when he played, or simply heard music! His brain had effectively reprogrammed the normal visual area to work with sound, obviously from when he was a small child.
Damn. Gives new meaning to that old saw about a mind being a terrible thing to waste.