Did you know that even when performing with sheet music, student musicians are constantly using their memory to perform. The skill of memorisation, opens and establishes new pathways in the mind and can serve students well in education and beyond.
The musical experience has been employed in therapeutic situations where a person has suffered a traumatic brain injury, music generally but in particular, the act of keeping a beat, has been shown to re-engage parts of the brain that have been damaged and contribute to re-establishing memory recall and coordination.
Music learning extends the students ability to keep attentive for longer, one reason is that music employs most of our senses and also requires them to work together. Often times, it requires us to operate different parts of the body and use our concentration towards musical sensitivity skills, such as playing loud or slow or with specific accents or stylistic attributes implied by the music.
So we are taking in a lot of varied information, processing it quickly and then applying ourself to understanding, expression and interpretation of the music material. Sometimes music is repetitive and other times experimental. Such a range of applications requires us to memorise some parts so we can concentrate on other aspects of the performance. This develops mastery of memorisation in students, which is then transferable to other pursuits.