Human Memory Systems

This chapter is a primer on the kinds of human memory musicians use. Short-term memory underlies how we create and process chunks of music as we learn, recall, and perform. STM sends chunks of information to long-term memory for encoding. LTM underlies how we understand and convey musical form. Short-term memory and long-term memory communicate continually via cuing. Long-term learning is necessary, whether musicians perform from memory or not. Musicians require both explicit memory and implicit memory to handle information and to create motor-skill memory required for musical performance. Other critical concepts, such as associative cuing, grouping, categorization, working memory, context memory, and schemas, are explained so that core concepts of the book may be easily understood.