Musicianship (was RE: I'm going to write an Anziowin/scanning interface for filePro...)

[Fairlight]

So anyone else here have a multitrack memory for music?  When I "remember"
a song, I can remember the full mix, or I can zero in on just the bass, or
the drums, or specific keyboard parts, or vocals, or guitar, with any
inflections put on any of them.  I can randomly switch focus between the
different parts, as well.  When I play, I can be playing, say, "Time" by
Pink Floyd, starting out on the bass, and then when the guitar solos hit, I
actually end up playing those on bass...  But that's just while playing.
In practise, if I know a song even moderately well, I can recall any
individual track from any time index in the song.

I've never really heard anyone describe their memory for music that way
before.  Sometimes it's annoying, because I won't necessarily be enjoying
the song as a whole, just part(s) of it, as I find myself focusing on the
parts I'm particularly interested in at the moment.  But I -can- shift back
out to full mix...just have to realise what I'm doing and correct it.

I don't even want to know how much extra memory I'm eating by having all
that multitrack information, instead of just the full mix stream for each
song.  Especially on heavily layered stuff, which I listen to a lot of.
It's not like it's something I try to do...it just gets stored.

But I couldn't tell you what I did two days ago, without effort to recall
those details.  Go figure.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.