I just finished reading this book "Take a Nap! Change Your Life". It's about how humans naturally tend toward a biphasic sleep schedule, with a long nighttime sleep period and a short midday nap. The book outlines the different stages of sleep and offers guidelines on how people can time their naps for maximum benefits.
One of the things I learned was that, during sleep, the brain forges and reinforces neural connections. This research supports the idea that you will best retain the things you do immediately before sleeping.
I wonder if this knowledge can be used to more deeply internalize my harmonica practice. I may try to experiment with practicing music just before taking a nap.
Has anyone tried this? I understand it can be difficult to say if it works (as there is no real control group), but do you feel like this worked for you? ---------- Marc Graci YouTube Channel
Last Edited by Mirco on Sep 23, 2018 2:59 PM
I nap for around half an hour nearly every day. I understand Winston Churchill did it. If it's good enough for Churchill, it's a good enough for me. That's my mantra.
I don't know, since when I work with harmonica I tend to deeply oxygenate my body and get energized. BUT, I am a big fan of naps and have taken a midday nap most days of my life for several decades now. It does feel very natural.
Used to be, and still is sometimes, after a gig, even with loading/setting up and the reverse, and 2-3 sets of playing and singing, when I get home and settled I am too wired to sleep. All that oxygen! Often this is when my muse grabs me and I work on lyrics for a new song. With 3 CD's and material for #4 in process, to me this bears out even though it's a bit OT. It's related.
I know this too- when I can get a nap after loading up to go to a venue, and then go set up and play, I am much better at all the logistics of both roadie and musician. So a nap is a total benefit to me. ---------- Music and travel destroy prejudice.
I don't know, since when I work with harmonica I tend to deeply oxygenate my body and get energized. BUT, I am a big fan of naps and have taken a midday nap most days of my life for several decades now. It does feel very natural.
Used to be, and still is sometimes, after a gig, even with loading/setting up and the reverse, and 2-3 sets of playing and singing, when I get home and settled I am too wired to sleep. All that oxygen! Often this is when my muse grabs me and I work on lyrics for a new song. With 3 CD's and material for #4 in process, to me this bears out even though it's a bit OT. It's related.
I know this too- when I can get a nap after loading up to go to a venue, and then go set up and play, I am much better at all the logistics of both roadie and musician. So a nap is a total benefit to me. ---------- Music and travel destroy prejudice.
I think there may well be something in this. I've been asked to do a lot more singing in the bands I play in. I'll type up the lyrics to a new song late at night and sing it through with the YouTube example. I'll print it out and start trying to remember it. When I go to bed, I'll start going through the song in my head, lights out. I work really hard to remember it correctly. If I get stuck, I'll turn my small torch on, read the correct lyric and go back to singing it in my head. I might do this a couple of times the first night. I find I can usually remember a new song in 2 or 3 nights. Almost every night I sing some of my set list in my head until I drift off. I'm sure there is something in it.
John, that took me back. I have been learning songs that way since I was 8 years old. I discovered my brother’s LPs and reel to reel, work out how to thread the tape and discovered this catchy pop music by a band called The Beatles. This stuff only happened in my brothers’ room. Then I found his sheet music for these songs and worked out how to read the lyrics. I set out to learn all the words and applied the process you’ve described above. More recently I’ve been able to visualise the Harmonica layout and now do something similar with scales (which usually gets me asleep quite quickly) and songs. For memorisation I think a session of working on as much song as you can recall, followed by a lie down during which you actively work over the memorisation in as much detail as you can, texture and dynamic for instance, is very effective.
I've only been singing publicly for around 2-3 years. The drummer in our band pushed me into it. He likes my voice! (I don't) Anyway, I've always been way more uncomfortable with faster numbers. So I set out to challenge myself learning this 200 bpm James Cotton version of Rocket 88, I got word perfect in about a week using the last thing before bed method. I was pretty pleased with myself doing that.
Marc, Naps MAY help immediately following studying a song. I know from medical research I first read about 7-8 years ago that REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - deep sleep - which begins about 90 minutes into the sleep cycle, cements newly learned information into the long term memory, which is the key. But there are 5 stages of REM sleep of varied duration so the "cement" happens over your night's sleep (1.5+ hours of REM sleep), not at the 91st minute. Also, as we age we: a. Sleep less; b. Sleep more lightly; c. Experience less REM sleep - so it's increasingly harder to commit newly learned information to long term memory.
I use power naps - something I first saw my 15 year old daughter do - a 15-20 min nap after 1.5-2 hours of study.
Based on my experience of trying to remember lyrics (having written & published almost 100 songs in the last two years) I believe the naps may help with short term memory. Just don't expect retention two weeks later. ---------- BnT
