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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Different positions, tunings and the brain!
Different positions, tunings and the brain!
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apskarp
570 posts
Dec 23, 2011
1:49 PM
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This was initially put to different thread, but I think this deserves own thread:
I've been reading cognitive neurosciences lately. The new research findings show that if you learn something difficult there will be more new neurons forming than usually. Also more of them will live over 8 weeks which means that they will become part of the long-term networks in the brain. In practice it means that your brains are physically changing more.
This doesn't happen if you learn some easy things. If the learning involves both physical and mental learning the neurogenesis is bigger than just with mental things.
All this made me think how beneficial the harmonica playing can be for your brains. Especially if you learn not just new songs but also new positions and perhaps even new tunings. With regular instruments you just learn new tunes with the same layout of notes. With harp you might learn to play the tunes in different positions, which means more work for your brains and the mental/physical co-operation. If you add new tunings on top of that it's like the best workout you can have!
New musical melodies, new ways of doing the same musical melodies, new layouts for the brains to remember and add associations... No surprise that they call Howard the "man with two brains". Of course it means that he can play piano and harp at the same time, but I wonder how much of that has been developing because he has been learning to play 12 different harmonicas in 12 different positions...
Somebody should do a research on the effect on this to brain development, Alzheimer, etc...
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Hoodoo Sauna
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apskarp
571 posts
Dec 23, 2011
10:29 PM
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Thank's Pistolcat!
What I'm thinking here is that for any musician, harpist or human being generally, learning music in few different positions is great workout. I assume that learning few different tunings is even more beneficial. My own experience is that when I spend few days/weeks of playing with powerbender tuning for example, my playing with Richter is better after that. So the learning is holistic and not just concerning the new tuning...
@WoodEye :D
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Hoodoo Sauna
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2011 10:40 PM
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