Practicing while asleep?

Quick question, before I try it tonight - does listening to a song on repeat, while you're asleep, help with memorization? Your mind isn't conscious and interpreting, but it's probably similar to passively listening to music. Worked for anyone else?
 
Nonsense, it does not help. Lately I watched a show that put this to the test and the result was negative. How silly to believe that.
 
Last I checked, there is no scientific basis for saying it helps the slightest.

However, what has been shown, is that sleep helps with storing memories you've made during the day. In practice, this basically means that if you don't get enough sleep, you'll have a harder time storing long-term memories from the day before.
 
Yeah, no proof. But listen to it just before you go to sleep and you remember it better than listening to it in the middle of the day.
 
Trying to listen to music and fall asleep at the same time is torture to me.
 
How silly to believe that.


What, that something a show did constitutes scientific proof? Indeed.

As far as I know the jury's still out, it would be useful to see sources for studies that have investigated it in the first place.
People like Kenny Werner advocate the use of deep relaxation techniques to aid learning, the idea being that the larger, slower brain waves that occur in a state of deep relaxation are more conducive to absorbing material/creativity.
Therefore, it may help having a piece playing during the stages of sleep that occur before REM. I can't see there being any benefit having it playing during the very deepest satge of sleep.
 
I imagine that in some instances while you are in different levels of sleep, Some learning could occur. I don't believe that a substantial amount of learning will occur.
It has been proven that while sleeping the brain continues to process information that you have been exposed to while you were awake. That is part of the reason for sleep. Sleep allows the brain time to reset itself as well as the body.
Have you ever worked on a drum part during the day and found that you couldn't play it well? You later slept and the next day you could play the tune much better than the previous day. Your brain worked on the song while you slept! It used the info that it received while you were awake.
 
i basically can't sleep when any kind of music is audible. i can't stop listening to it!

i've tried a lot of things when it comes to learning songs. for me the quickest way is to chart it out and then play along to recordings of it or practice it with my band. if i just listen to a song i'll become familiar with it but i won't necessarily be able to play it.
 
People have always wanted to find shortcuts in learning. If this shortcut was a true one, it would be part of every music learing book out there. =P The consept isn't new at all.
 
I could have slept my way through college....Oh yeah, I did.

Dry county college huh? For me sleep was something you did when the booze ran out. Class was something you did when broke.

Colerosity,

A lot of opinions here, and I don't have an answer, but it can it hurt to give it a try can it? Since you're sleeping anyway, it's not like you'll be wasting time trying.
 
One other thing that I want to mention. We learn by doing. Playing a song is a combination of both memorizing the song and obtaining the muscle memory needed to play the part.
Being able to think of what has to be played isn't enough to actually play the song. I find that most of this process has to be done by playing the song and mixing the mental and physical skills together.
Many different parts of the brain have to work in harmony to accomplish this task. It is an amazing feat! The relationship between mental processing and physical accomplishment has always intrigued me. The mind controlling the body to react in a desired fashion.
When we sleep, The brain releases chemicals that detach the brain from the body. This sometimes goes wrong and a sleep disorder occurs such as Sleep Walking.
I became interested in how the brain controls the body a few years ago after I suffered a mild stroke. I had to learn how to use different parts of my brain to take up the slack from the parts of my brain that were damaged.
here are some links that will lead you to many others if you chose to research this topic further. http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/how-do-you-learn.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-muscle-memory.htm
 
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One other thing that I want to mention. We learn by doing. Playing a song is a combination of both memorizing the song and obtaining the muscle memory needed to play the part.
Being able to think of what has to be played isn't enough to actually play the song. I find that most of this process has to be done by playing the song and mixing the mental and physical skills together.

Hmm, I think an awful lot can be worked out by thinking through a song, something I have to do since I can't play the kit at home. If you've been playing for a long time a lot of the muscle memory is already there and I can make much progress just sitting down and playing a groove on my thigh while tapping my foot on the floor. If you can get that sounding good it wounds a whole lot better on the kit!

As for sleep learning, I'm not so keen. I'd rather "be there" to enjoy it rather than have the learning done while I'm "not there".
 
Hmm, I think an awful lot can be worked out by thinking through a song, something I have to do since I can't play the kit at home. If you've been playing for a long time a lot of the muscle memory is already there and I can make much progress just sitting down and playing a groove on my thigh while tapping my foot on the floor. If you can get that sounding good it wounds a whole lot better on the kit!

As for sleep learning, I'm not so keen. I'd rather "be there" to enjoy it rather than have the learning done while I'm "not there".
The fact that you play on your thigh and tap your foot means that you are using both muscle memory and memory of your kit as a learning tool along with your memory of the song. It makes the learning easier when you tap the tune out. Tapping out the tune allows you to work out the logistics of playing the song on a kit.
I can imagine that I play all sorts of things, actually playing them is a whole other thing. If I could only play everything that I can imagine that I can play!
 
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I can imagine that I play all sorts of things, actually playing them is a whole other thing. If I could only play everything that I can imagine that I can play!

At a certain level I can imagine playing something but if I'm REALLY focusing and including the nuance I can only imagine what I can play. If I could only play everything that I can play on my thighs :)
 
The point of those deeper states of sleep is to detach the brain from any outside input. If you listen to music on those stages you just don't hear it or you aren't in the deep state and if you do that too much you get sleep deprived and start to go crazy and definetly won't learn so much. So yes, I think it actually can do more harm than good.

Of course I'm not a professional brain researcher but I am well educated and have done some personal studying on the area.

If you truly wan't to try something new, try dividing your sleep into two parts. And by two parts I mean parts where you can get yourself in to the REM sleep stages. Then physically practice two times between those sleeps. What I have understood is that your brain stores the procedural memory (like playing music) in the REM stage. On the otherhand the "fact based" things like word and their meaning (when studying a language for example) is stored in the lighter stages of sleep.
 
The point of those deeper states of sleep is to detach the brain from any outside input. If you listen to music on those stages you just don't hear it or you aren't in the deep state and if you do that too much you get sleep deprived and start to go crazy and definetly won't learn so much. So yes, I think it actually can do more harm than good.

Of course I'm not a professional brain researcher but I am well educated and have done some personal studying on the area.

If you truly wan't to try something new, try dividing your sleep into two parts. And by two parts I mean parts where you can get yourself in to the REM sleep stages. Then physically practice two times between those sleeps. What I have understood is that your brain stores the procedural memory (like playing music) in the REM stage. On the otherhand the "fact based" things like word and their meaning (when studying a language for example) is stored in the lighter stages of sleep.
I think that you nailed it! Rem sleep followed by practice and Short periods of sleep (Naps) in between are probably the best thing.
As I have gotten older I have discovered the benefit of the nap. Not because I'm lazy or tired, because short periods of sleep help considerably. I don't sleep as long at night anymore. 5 hours or so.
 
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