You can’t remember anything without directing attention to it.
Dr. Amishi Jha: But what happens is that what we pay attention to is the doorway, it’s like the conduit by which we remember information. So, if you were not attending to your environment, you were not encoding it to get into your long-term memory.
Dr. Brené Brown: You have to say that part again. The thing we pay attention to…
AJ: Let me put it this way. In order to remember something, you have to have paid attention to it.
AJ: You will not hold anything in memory unless you were attending to it as it was occurring, for example. […]
Oftentimes what we think of as a memory problem is actually an attention problem.
Dare To Lead with Brené Brown, “Finding Focus And Owning Your Attention” with Dr. Amishi Jha
I know this seems completely self-evident, but with our increasingly divided attention, it bears repeating. This idea needs our attention.
I especially find that my students increasingly don’t know how to focus their attention. It’s not a lack of interest, or a lack of ability: it’s a lack of practice. And without that attention, the time it takes to master music dramatically increases. It’s profound.
That said, music-making can be one of the very best opportunities for practicing attention. When I create the circumstances for my students to deeply pay attention, they show that, like every human, it’s built into their brain’s operating system. It’s there, waiting to be built up.
If your singers are struggling with memory, ask yourself, “Is this a memory problem, or is it an attention problem?” I think solving the attention problem is likely to solve the memory problem.