Programming and Music - Chapter 6 - Memory

Do you go the gym? I’m sure that most of you do. And that’s great. But there’s an important muscle that also needs to be trained but not in the gym. That’s right: memory, that’s common knowledge.

And here we are again on the main topic of this series of articles: why should I learn programming and/or playing a musical instrument.

No, that’s not for being the next Elon Musk or the next Michael League (Yes, I took this example on purpose. I know you’re asking who the hell is this guy … So go check it! Believe me, he’s great).

Like it or not, in a PIN / PASSWORD dominated world in packed daily routines nowadays you need to rely on your memory if you do not want to get lost at some point. And that’s where music and programming can help as your personal gym space for your mind.

Music

I think there’s no better way to train your memory that studying and practicing music.

While always being pleasant, it implies memorizing things so the training is spontaneous.

And memory in music is particularly required if you’re not that familiar with sight-reading music sheets and you need to play with others. With music, as with words you soon find that there are some special tricks to memorize long sequences of notes, or complex song structures.

Personally, the best feeling for me while studying music is the idea that you can reproduce the music you like when you want and how you want it. Let’s say there’s that metal ballad you like so much, or that dance hit you used to dance but you always wondered how would it sound played in bossa nova style … Well, you can. You study it, you memorize the chords with latin-style variations, you memorize the chord sequence, and there you go: you have your own personal cover … and you trained your memory.

You will thank me next time you will remember the name and number of that nice girl you met ;-) 

Studying and playing music is basically a continuous training for memory from which basically any other aspect of life benefits from.

Programming

Well yeah, as I said in the first article of this series, programming is a matter of language; and as every language there’s a specific syntax. That’s what you’re supposed to remember.

Every language has its own reference manual so, ok, you can in this case be “lazy” and just avoid memorizing everything. Many times you will also copy/paste block of codes or sometimes just one line but, you know, even if you don’t want to, the repetition that it’s often behind the process will “print” sooner or later many pieces of data in your brain. The continuous effort of writing block of code basically forces the brain to “stay awake” as you recall syntax.

In programming there’s also a lot of re-using concept, ideas, blocks you already used in past projects eventually so there’s also a continuous recalling of past ideas so that they continuously “stay fresh” in the mind; very similar to music making / studying, coding is a continuous training of memory that has positive impact of many other aspects of life.

So, keep on coding, keep on playing music, or do both at the same time, and you’ll no longer need written notes to remember your shopping list as you go to the supermarket 😊

This, and way more than this, is part of my “Live coding for Data Sonification” Masterclass.