Rhythm, Musical Form, and Memory

Abstract

A musical phrase is most often about 3–5 s long. The reason is that it needs to fit into the short-term memory, which is about this size, as we have seen above. Longer melodies need a different form of memory, the long-term memory which seems to work in a different way. Short term memory is most often understood as the brain echoing a sound input. The nervous cells are triggered by the cochlear, which transmits the input to the neocortex via the auditory pathway, as we have seen already. The neurons are heavily connected, therefore, the longer the neurons transmit the first sound impulse in the brain, the more it fades out and vanishes.