What Exactly is Muscle Memory

[Fergie Fulton]

Muscle memory is a" buzz word " in as much as it uses something that cannot exist to try and simply explain something that does exist. As such muscle has no memory and cannot develop it, so it describes a number of complicated functions by its perceived results that we can see or feel.

Muscle memory is close to what is known as Propriception, which is the physical and mental side of us knowing what the other side is doing.
It is a form of ingraining a task, not learning the task.
Whether the task is learned correct or not it can be ingrained as such.
So in learning to play a player can ingrain all the wrong things to actually make it harder to play rather than make it easier.

In short practice or repetition will help the process, but this as I said is not learning, it is just making the task feel more natural, more familiar so easier to reproduce and repeat.

This is why when a player tries to change a long term use they not only have to un-learn what they have developed, but they have to believe it. I have written in the past about how musicians can justify certain things that only they consider to be right...despite all the evidence around them to the contrary. They can take a task and personalise it to the effect that for them the result will be different to those around them because they are doing the task their way.

What muscle memory does is give us the ability to carry out a physical task which is controlled by the conscious thought of the brain, but the sub-conscious actually collating all the senses to make it happen.

For example on the simple act of walking what do you control?
In order to walk you need balance, you do not control balance in walking.
If you do control balance,then stand still and un-balance yourself.
You can lose balance by closing off some of the many senses that add had to its function. You can affect balance or influence it but you cannot decide to turn it off.
Even in standing your muscle groups need signals to keep you standing up, of not you would fall in a heap in the ground. Again, you cannot close off these signals, again it is a task we do through the sub-conscious but controlled by the conscious.
So stand still, turn around, lean back, etc are all conscious moves, but they require sub-conscious control in order to carry them out.....this is what Propriception is about.
Call it what you want Muscle Memory, Internalisation, Propriception, In-gaining, etc it is all based on the same principal. We decide what the result is ( the conscious decision )and many other things act to make that happen ( the un-conscious decisions) this is the perception of muscle memory, not the reality of it.

The important thing to understand is it can either make a task easy to repeat or harder to repeat......every time.

In life there are people who routinely fail to do something correct no matter how much or how hard the practice.
Fact is they are not practicing doing the task correct, they are in-fact practicing doing the task wrong and as such will never get the results they seek.
So they look for short-cuts or use modern technology to help them achieve what they are looking for.
Golfers are famed for this approach, they will practice and practice to in-grain a fault rather than remove one by not understanding what they are practicing, or cannot un-do their own in-grained actions.
So for them the same problem appears time and time again, even to the ridicules statement they will make of " I knew that was going to happen" when they hit that bad shot. If they knew it was going to happen then why try the shot? Simple the brain likes to accommodate what we think.
By believing that the bad swing is in there it will surface when the swing is put under pressure or stress. So they will spend £400 on a club to say drive the ball better, rather than spend £100 on lessons to to swing and hit the ball better, so improve all aspects of their game and not just driving.....which will be improved by targeting the true problem.....the swing, not the club.

So it is with musicians, and of course bass players if left to their own devices.
They will practice at not being able to play to their peak, they physically practice ideas they have come up with that will hinder their development rather than help it. From pedals to amps to strings etc they can and will justify something to be an essential part of what they need to improve.
Part of it is looking at what other players do and play though and then take a single element from it, rather than understand the whole concept.
What they cannot see is the Propriception involved, or the amount of problems the player overcame in order to achieve what they see and hear.
Again they fail to understand there is no guarantee that if they do exactly the same thing, or use the same gear, the results will be the same.
As with Musicians and sportsmen there are those that rise to the top and those that sink without trace......each side needs the other.
Those that fail are as vital as those that succeed, for without failure there cannot be true success....everyone is a winner, everyone is equal so there is nothing to aspire to.....this is life.

So the next time you walk remember there are those that aspire to do that, next time you see, or hear, there are people that aspire to do that. For us these tasks are taken for-granted for others they are truly things that will change their lives.

Again simple acts of Propriception, but for some the ability is not there, in some the ability has different levels. For a musician to learn to read music takes time, as does learning to hear music. The task of melding them into a physical ability will have a wide range of ability from those that are successful to those that fail.....but is the player that fails, practicing and in-graining their own failure. This is just a small part of what muscle memory does or can do it is a two way street so which way are you facing.....success or failure?

 

[MartinG1957]

OK guys, why then can't I play a single song from memory?

Never been able to do it.

(I realise this is not strictly along the lines of the argument going on here but, let's forget the semantics for a minute, here's a case...)

I have the ability to learn and "ingrain" the physical techniques of playing my instrument "right":
I was a very good trombone player back in the day, classically trained, played at a high level, won prizes etc.
I played violin to a reasonable standard in County Youth String Orchestra.
I play bass: lots of different songs and extensive set list to choose from.
I also have some musical understanding in that I do a lot of arranging.

I have never been able to play from memory...I practice and have done on all my instruments and I have always been able to comfortably play at a high standard, so I have the technique to hand so to speak...I practice a song and it is as it should be, in my case, that can mean a lot of repetition and a lot of playing the same notes and patterns from the music over and over again to get it right: my fingers know where to go, I don't need to be constantly looking at the fretboard...take the dots away and ask me to play what I have been playing constantly for a large number of repetitions, can't do it.

It's not a raw memory thing either that I can see:

I have a high academic standard, hold a Masters degree and have obviously the ability to learn, retain and reproduce information. In my youth, whilst being unable to remember and play a simple piece, I was able to accurately reproduce lengthy poems and Shakespeare speeches.
I am a fast typist, can use the computer keyboard and write very quickly which to me at least, implies a certain level of what we are talking about here but in the specific area of music, I can play if I have dots but cannot link what I have ingrained by practice into playing without them.

Not sure which side, if any, of the argument this supports or otherwise, or even if it is in any way relevant, just seemed like it might be a real "case" that may be useful.
Now, play nice lads.

 

[mcnach]

I call it muscle memory too, because sometimes I can switch off my mind for a bit while my fingers are still doing the job.
If you sing at the same time... nearly everyone does that, plays in autopilot and focuses on singing.

I think that comes through sheer repetition.

But there is also when I simply just know the song. If I know the melody, I can play it. If you hum something, I can repeat it straight away, nearly always and within reason.
So in most cases is not "finger memory" for me, but simply knowing a song.
When I haven't played a song for a while, I may end us using a different fingering... but I still play the notes.
It's just memory, I suppose.

Some people remember things more easily than others.
Knowing your fretboard so that you can think a melody and play it directly helps a lot, since I may not recall in principle where I put which finger for any given song... but I will probably remember the bass line, or if not, the melody and I can make up a bassline as I go along.

 

[wrench45us]

muscle memory
If one recalls the old sit com Taxi, the Chrisopher Lloyd druggie/burnout character sits down at a grand piano at a swanky soireee where he's quite out of place and begins to play exceptionally well
He's rather amazed himself and remarks, "I must have had lessons."

 

[tdelamont]

MartinG1957 - That's a version of stage fright common among classically trained musicians. No matter how many times you've played it, can't do it without the sheet music. Even though you KNOW that you know it. Brains are funny that way. I have the opposite problem from you. I can play and sing all night long, but if you ask me to give any sort of prepared speech any longer than two sentences I can't remember it.

 

[tdelamont]

muscle memory
If one recalls the old sit com Taxi, the Chrisopher Lloyd druggie/burnout character sits down at a grand piano at a swanky soireee where he's quite out of place and begins to play exceptionally well
He's rather amazed himself and remarks, "I must have had lessons."

The Reverend Jim Ignatowski (he became an ordained minister through an ad in the back of Rolling Stone). Great show.

 

[Fergie Fulton]

MartinG1957 - That's a version of stage fright common among classically trained musicians. No matter how many times you've played it, can't do it without the sheet music. Even though you KNOW that you know it. Brains are funny that way. I have the opposite problem from you. I can play and sing all night long, but if you ask me to give any sort of prepared speech any longer than two sentences I can't remember it.

Sort of there with the stage fright idea, stage fright is a deep belief that you really cannot do something, but you do it and get away with it. Deep inside you do not believe in yourself and you know that you will be found out. To keep on doing it does not cure it. By doing it and believing in yourself you beat stage fright, but only once you believe it, not by doing it......to keep on doing it only reinforces the belief you will fail at some point.

@ MartinG1957 you have learned to play with the music in front of you, so the trial and error or success and failure may not have been learned by you.
If like some of the players I have worked with you give up and go back to what works and feels right for you.
By that I mean you must give yourself the chance to fail, in a musicians terms make a mess of it a load of times. When learning we do this but because we are learning we are giving the chance for it not to matter, or be that important because the it will always be justified as " what do you expect he's learning".
If this process is giving its full run then the brain works out what is right and what is wrong, what works and what does not etc. The brain needs a definite answer to these questions so it can use the definitive way to ensure the same results. In other words not maybes ifs or buts, no thinking" maybe there is another way or better way".

That is why we give up, there may be a gene we have that works out effort and reward. Scientists believe that one of the reasons we became success full as a species is because we could work out effort and reward. So if say a food source became harder and harder to find, rather than carry on with the effort, we moved to where it was plenty or developed another food source. Because of this we became adaptable and flourished, where as those that could not died off.

So for anyone that can play with the music in front of them, why would they put themselves in a situation where there would be none? Well they would not, in the same way as someone who cannot read music would not put themselves in a reading situation and believe they can carry it off. Each one of those situations requires learning, not playing, but learning. You have to learn not to need the music and that means messing up....or at least having the chance to mess up. That may be a learning experience you cannot afford, so you do not commit to it and therefore you never learn to do it.
Your thinking reinforces the belief and vica versa, and your experiences reinforces the condition further that you cannot play from memory. It is common in many walks of life not just to musicians, in some it is a superstition, as in " the reason that happened was because I was not wearing my lucky socks".
If a player has new success they can project the reason for it onto something totally random and make that the justification for their success. Because they cannot bring themselves to believe in themselves, they believe in something else.
I have seen it with everything from guitars to amps even to the colour of picks....one player I know has to have a purple pick in order to play "properly"...his words not mine. LOL.

 

[Kamael83]

Here comes really simple definition:
Ever happened to you to play one song for let`s say an hour or 2? then you switched to another song with similar fingering and your fingers didn`t want to do it, they didn`t listen to you? instead they were going the way from the previous song? THAT`S MUSCLE MEMORY!

 

[MartinG1957]

Quote:
" MartinG1957 you have learned to play with the music in front of you, so the trial and error or success and failure may not have been learned by you.
If like some of the players I have worked with you give up and go back to what works and feels right for you.
By that I mean you must give yourself the chance to fail, in a musicians terms make a mess of it a load of times. When learning we do this but because we are learning we are giving the chance for it not to matter, or be that important because the it will always be justified as " what do you expect he's learning".
If this process is giving its full run then the brain works out what is right and what is wrong, what works and what does not etc. The brain needs a definite answer to these questions so it can use the definitive way to ensure the same results. In other words not maybes ifs or buts, no thinking" maybe there is another way or better way"."

Not sure I buy that...I have always practised and learned with the music in front of me and in doing so have made plenty of mistakes along the way, lots of trial and error and lots of success and failure in doing that...not sure I agree with the "what do you expect he's learning" bit either, I don't see that that relates directly to playing with or without music.

I have tried to play without music and have tried it with pieces and songs that I have played inside out and upside down. I've tried various techniques of learning small parts off by heart and adding more parts..this used to get me to scrape a barely acceptable level when I did music exams and a piece had to be played from memory...always the simplest piece, always had an abnormal percentage of rehearsal time spent on it to try and get it in there...always the worse performed piece of the set...and a nightmare to do - purely from the point of view of memory, not ability...absolutely perfect in most cases if I have the music in front of me.

In terms of describing it as a kind of "stage fright," possible, but then I've walked out onto the stage of the Royal Albert Hall, filled to capacity with a big smile on my face and felt practically no trepidation at all in that circumstance and played with no problem, so it seems to be a pretty specific form if it is that! Thanks for the input but I'm still not sure about it. (And apologies if this is hi-jacking the thread, don't intend to!)

 

[NoiseNinja]

Your Operation Bootstrap logic is not entitled to say this:::

...and yet you insist that by observation that it is therefor true.

'It really does almost seem" and 'repitition' (sic) do not a physical truth make. They negate the observation in the most heinous way.

What you have seen 'demonstrated daily' is not any semblance to muscular memory, no matter what it appears to be or what you or anyone else call it.

What you MIGHT be trying to say is that neural feedback mimics what to a lay person may seem to be muscle memory.

Let's bypass homeostasis and go right for the eyes here: muscles have no sense of property, position, temperature, care not if it's day or night and care no less if they are playing a bass or picking your nose.

There is NO muscular sentience.

There is also no muscle memory, nor a place to store learned actions or reactions, nor do any muscles do anything of their own volition, unless we are want to enter into the homeostasis arena here. Since playing a bass is not a process of homeostasis, or peristalsis and cannot care what the action it is COMMANDED to perform results in, it is therefor not part of the reasoning nor learned response system.

A muscle can only move as commanded and cannot ever report their position - since that position is only being monitored by the brain from it's peripheral neural inputs.

Muscles can make no logical decisions, cannot go to a place or position by themselves no matter how many times you move them to that position. This is totally a process of and by the brain.

And yet muscles are filled with nerves, that constantly communicate with the brain. You cannot separate the brain from the rest of the nervous system.
If you take the consequences of what you are saying, the body is not a part of you. In fact you are only the brain. And that is just nonsense. Especially when most of the brain works unconscious. That would mean that most of you isn't "you" at all.

So yes muscles do have memory, just as "you" have memory... And all though that memory is located in the brain, it is as much a part of a communication between the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

Muscles can report their position via the nervous system, and can make decisions to move (just take a look at your heart)

And how do you make logical decisions? You'll find that much of the thinking done when making so called logical decisions are unconscious, further more a majority of the information processed come from your brain. Does this mean it is not "you" but the brain that are making logical decisions for you?

 

[SurferJoe46]

Here comes really simple definition:
Ever happened to you to play one song for let`s say an hour or 2? then you switched to another song with similar fingering and your fingers didn`t want to do it, they didn`t listen to you? instead they were going the way from the previous song? THAT`S MUSCLE MEMORY!

No - that's just persistence of cognitive mental imagery. With logic like that, I bet I can sell you some 'Smart Muscle Pills'.

The muscles cannot negate an action nor infuse capacity to play a song no matter the pattern nor the sameness of the music unless the muscular contractions and release creates too much muscular fatigue.

The true limiting factors of muscles are: if the skeleton can move in the required dimension: if the muscle itself is capable of such contraction and/or release: if there is a physically limiting barrier to that motion.

 

[bassman2020]

Question answered and topic thoroughly covered. Thanks you bassists.

 

[Syco_bass]

I thought "Muscle Memory" was having a "memory" of when I used to have muscles.

 

[SurferJoe46]

And yet muscles are filled with nerves, that constantly communicate with the brain. You cannot separate the brain from the rest of the nervous system.
If you take the consequences of what you are saying, the body is not a part of you. In fact you are only the brain. And that is just nonsense.
So yes muscles do have memory, just as "you" have memory... And all though that memory is located in the brain, it is as much a part of a communication between the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

Think about what you just said.

Yes - muscles have nerves, but most of them are dedicated to initiate action as commanded by the brain and as such can be considered as uni-directional, command-information links in the most. This is NOT a bi-directional line of communication between the brain and the muscle.

There also exist pain receptors and limited pressure sensing capacity from the muscle, but that's about it. FWIW: pressure-sensory activity by muscles doesn't actually exist; that's a function of the skin.

However, commiseration and telegraphic pains felt 'deep in the muscles' are not actually IN the muscles. They instead come from the sheath surrounding individual muscles EG: a 'Charley horse' or muscle spasm, which is really neural reapportionment by the brain and confused attempts by the brain at switching muscular tasks to maintain minimal percentile core homeostasis.

The muscles do NOT report to the brain if a command from the brain was received or acted upon correctly, with enough action/deflection/motion or quality of motion.

'Phantom pains' are indicative proof positive of the muscle's inability to communicate back to the brain.

F'rinstance: If a leg is removed, the muscle because it's not 'there' --- no longer has a connective neural pathway to tell the brain that it's gone, and yet the brain tries to fill in the void, so to speak, and it imagines the limb still exists.

Brains are where memories exist, like it or not.

 

[NoiseNinja]

So tell me how pacemakers works?

 

[ffutterman]

In the red corner, weighing in at 325 pounds and over 6 feet tall, llllllladies and gentlemen I present to you: The Internet!

In the blue corner, weighing in at 103 pounds and 5 feet - 2 inches tall, the returning opponent: Science!

Turns out, this thread was actually done at this post:

Part of "muscle memory" is actually a function of the cerebellum, which stores the procedures and patterns (motor skills) that we practice. Once learned, we need only think of doing the task, and we can perform complex movements relatively easily.

Procedural memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[onosson]

Brains are where memories exist, like it or not.

Since that is quite obvious, why not use the simple interpretation of muscle memory as "memory pertaining to the usage of muscles" rather than "memory contained within muscles"?

There's nothing in the term that indicates the specific relationship between the two words.

 

[delta7fred]

MartinG1957 - That's a version of stage fright common among classically trained musicians. No matter how many times you've played it, can't do it without the sheet music. Even though you KNOW that you know it. Brains are funny that way. I have the opposite problem from you. I can play and sing all night long, but if you ask me to give any sort of prepared speech any longer than two sentences I can't remember it.

+1

I play in an occasional band with a guitarist who cannot play unless he has his music in front of him.

One night we started the first set and only when he tried to turn to the next piece after the first song did he realise he had his folder upside down. That's how much he needed it but he still refuses to be parted from his folder.

 

[Fergie Fulton]

Quote:
" MartinG1957 you have learned to play with the music in front of you, so the trial and error or success and failure may not have been learned by you.
If like some of the players I have worked with you give up and go back to what works and feels right for you.
By that I mean you must give yourself the chance to fail, in a musicians terms make a mess of it a load of times. When learning we do this but because we are learning we are giving the chance for it not to matter, or be that important because the it will always be justified as " what do you expect he's learning".
If this process is giving its full run then the brain works out what is right and what is wrong, what works and what does not etc. The brain needs a definite answer to these questions so it can use the definitive way to ensure the same results. In other words not maybes ifs or buts, no thinking" maybe there is another way or better way"."

Not sure I buy that...I have always practised and learned with the music in front of me and in doing so have made plenty of mistakes along the way, lots of trial and error and lots of success and failure in doing that...not sure I agree with the "what do you expect he's learning" bit either, I don't see that that relates directly to playing with or without music.

I have tried to play without music and have tried it with pieces and songs that I have played inside out and upside down. I've tried various techniques of learning small parts off by heart and adding more parts..this used to get me to scrape a barely acceptable level when I did music exams and a piece had to be played from memory...always the simplest piece, always had an abnormal percentage of rehearsal time spent on it to try and get it in there...always the worse performed piece of the set...and a nightmare to do - purely from the point of view of memory, not ability...absolutely perfect in most cases if I have the music in front of me.

In terms of describing it as a kind of "stage fright," possible, but then I've walked out onto the stage of the Royal Albert Hall, filled to capacity with a big smile on my face and felt practically no trepidation at all in that circumstance and played with no problem, so it seems to be a pretty specific form if it is that! Thanks for the input but I'm still not sure about it. (And apologies if this is hi-jacking the thread, don't intend to!)

Not a hijack as such but maybe a good example of what is involved in "muscle memory".

The idea of stage fright at the Albert Hall would never happen unless you were to play from memory. Evertime you do not have the music is the trigger, not the piece, not the venue, not the audience and certainly not the size of the audience.

As you state you have made "plenty of mistakes" with the music in front of you, this just reinforces the idea that if there is no difference, then why pursue one or the other? So you commit to playing with the music in front of you rather than not to.

Again this shows that you can justify a certain way to learn and play that works for you. As you say it gave you a "barely acceptable level" so rather than stay on this path and make it work, you went back to what you know works. As i said if you have no need to take the harder path of the two then why would you......why would anyone?
In your situation when there is a focus then you do not have the luxury of the time to learn from your mistakes. If you have the focus of exams then you must do what is needed to pass the exams within the terms or the examination.
If it was maths and you were allowed to take in a calculator, then why would you not..why risk doing it from pure mental calculation?

What you have written in your post could be about any number of situations...i call this the Tom Cruise Plot Theory.

In my Tom Cruise Plot Theory the situation is this.

1/ He is a confident self assured.
2/ He strives to be the best.
3/He gets himself in a position to prove he is the best.
4/In doing so he has a situation that shakes his belief in himself
5/He tries to perform or function on his previous level but can't
6/His failures through lose of confidence has him quit.
7/Someone talks him through it and instills his confidence again
8/He trys again and triumphs by facing his fears and is back on top

Now take the 8 points above and put them into a Tom Cruise Plot and we have the basics of a Tom Cruise film. Whether a Racing Driver, an Airforce pilot, a pool player, a Secret Agent etc...even a barman the same 8 point apply.

So if Tom Cruise played you in a film about your life would those 8 points apply?

Obviously this is a light hearted look at your situation, which i am sure is a serious issue for you. So maybe you need to stop justifying why you cannot do it and justify to yourself reason why you should.....after all you dismiss some good points i made that are actual reason why people have problems.
In dismissing the idea that we give leway to a perosn learning over an much experienced person is sort of showing the way you think.
The phrase " you should have knowing better " is the other one used to to justify a person fault in as much as " they are only learning" lets another off the hook when both make a mess of the same task. Sometimes just the expectation of a mistake or a problem will manafest one where there should be none. as i said the phrase of " i knew that would happen" often reveals this flaw in the thought process.

Again this is no reflection on you or any attempt of Psycho Analysis of your situation, but mearly trying to show you a way to justify to yourself you can do it as there is no real reason for not being able to.

 

[zeroncali]

Since that is quite obvious, why not use the simple interpretation of muscle memory as "memory pertaining to the usage of muscles" rather than "memory contained within muscles"?

There's nothing in the term that indicates the specific relationship between the two words.

Exactily. That is the way I have always thought about it. He can argue all he wants about what it really is but it doesn't change the fact that "muscle memory" is the most commonly used name for the phenomenon.