5 ms·
Playing polyphonic music like Bach Fugues requires an enormous amount of focused attention and executive function. Relying on muscle memory alone does not work
by holri 5y ago
Playing polyphonic music like Bach Fugues requires an enormous amount of focused attention and executive function.
Relying on muscle memory alone does not work at all for me and all musicians I know that play polyphonic Bach music.
- ex3xu 5y agoI think as musical training increases, the amount of energy required for specific kinds of bimanual motor coordination tasks decreases, see Haslinger, 2004 [0]. Regardless, looking at the literature, logitudinal studies seem to indicate that playing polyphonic music seems to improve brain plasticity rather than cause damage. Maybe the damage is more related to the context switching aspect of multitasking. [0]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.20028 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.20028
- holri 5y agoIn my personal experience playing polyphonic music is extremely fast context switching. That is, you can not sing two melodies at the same time, but you can switch very fast between them if you sing in your head mentally. That enables polyphonic piano playing / hearing.