<story><title>It&apos;s normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)</title><url>https://www.kqed.org/arts/11523994/repeat-after-me-its-normal-to-play-the-same-song-over-and-over-again</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Transfinity</author><text>Semi professional musician here. Repetition goes way beyond what the author mentions:&lt;p&gt;- Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune).&lt;p&gt;- The work of being a musician is repetitive. Learning (memorizing) songs takes reps! Then you&amp;#x27;ve got to keep them fresh, teach them to new band members, etc. You probably have a limited book, and you know what the crowd pleasers are. Unless you&amp;#x27;re big enough to have a following cutting a song you&amp;#x27;re sick of isn&amp;#x27;t a problem, but filling out a set might be. Between rehearsal, gigs and practicing at home I probably play through most of my band&amp;#x27;s book at least twice a week.&lt;p&gt;- Being a musician is very physical, which means you&amp;#x27;re drilling exercises in your daily routine. As a brass player, I run more or less the same set of warmups, range builders and flexibility exercises every day. Drummers do rudiments. String players have their own shtick.&lt;p&gt;As far as listening to music, I don&amp;#x27;t typically put something on repeat unless I&amp;#x27;m trying to transcribe it. But I&amp;#x27;ll listen to a song, and there&amp;#x27;s a chance it&amp;#x27;ll play on repeat in my head all day (or all week!). Steely Dan and LCD Soundsystem are particular earworms for me. It wasn&amp;#x27;t until college I realized this isn&amp;#x27;t true for many people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dhosek</author><text>I once had a gig playing piano at a restaurant. It was a weekday mid-day stretch and I was scheduled for about 3 or 4 hours, as I recall. I put together about a 90 minute set of stuff out of my fake books that I figured I could do without embarrassing myself and surely no one would stay at the restaurant longer than 90 minutes.&lt;p&gt;Well, being weekday mid-day, the restaurant was nearly empty and there was some guy who sat there by himself for over two hours. I ended up taking some of my standards and doing what I could to stretch them out, playing lots of repeats, doing extended improvs over the changes. I turned Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” which I normally did as about a 4–5 minute piece following the structure of the Maynard Ferguson version which was the basis for the charts that I originally learned the song from into a 10 minute piece with extended improvs and some bonus repeats. “Night Train” turned into another 10-minute number. And this guy just &lt;i&gt;did not leave&lt;/i&gt;. Finally, when I was almost out of material, he got up, dropped a twenty¹ in my tip jar and headed out.&lt;p&gt;⸻&lt;p&gt;1. I also got paid by the restaurant, but as I recall, he was the only customer out of the single-digit number of diners in the restaurant who left a tip.</text></comment>
<story><title>It&apos;s normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)</title><url>https://www.kqed.org/arts/11523994/repeat-after-me-its-normal-to-play-the-same-song-over-and-over-again</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Transfinity</author><text>Semi professional musician here. Repetition goes way beyond what the author mentions:&lt;p&gt;- Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune).&lt;p&gt;- The work of being a musician is repetitive. Learning (memorizing) songs takes reps! Then you&amp;#x27;ve got to keep them fresh, teach them to new band members, etc. You probably have a limited book, and you know what the crowd pleasers are. Unless you&amp;#x27;re big enough to have a following cutting a song you&amp;#x27;re sick of isn&amp;#x27;t a problem, but filling out a set might be. Between rehearsal, gigs and practicing at home I probably play through most of my band&amp;#x27;s book at least twice a week.&lt;p&gt;- Being a musician is very physical, which means you&amp;#x27;re drilling exercises in your daily routine. As a brass player, I run more or less the same set of warmups, range builders and flexibility exercises every day. Drummers do rudiments. String players have their own shtick.&lt;p&gt;As far as listening to music, I don&amp;#x27;t typically put something on repeat unless I&amp;#x27;m trying to transcribe it. But I&amp;#x27;ll listen to a song, and there&amp;#x27;s a chance it&amp;#x27;ll play on repeat in my head all day (or all week!). Steely Dan and LCD Soundsystem are particular earworms for me. It wasn&amp;#x27;t until college I realized this isn&amp;#x27;t true for many people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FumblingBear</author><text>Thanks for sharing your experience with us!&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not a professional musician, but I&amp;#x27;ve played and performed in different settings for about 15 years.&lt;p&gt;Until reading your comment, I didn&amp;#x27;t realize that many people don&amp;#x27;t get songs stuck in their head. I often get very long and complex songs stuck in my head for hours to days. Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s just portions, but sometimes it can be the full song.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t quite know how to describe my recollection of music, but it seems to be somewhat akin to eiditic memory, but for sounds. After looking into things, the term eichoic memory seems to come up, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure it quite encapsulates what I&amp;#x27;m trying to express.&lt;p&gt;Out of curiousity, do you have aphantasia? I do, and often wonder if the strength of my music recollection comes from a lack of visual recollection in my mind.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it takes a few listens to fully memorize a song, but I can revisit music many years later and still have perfect recollection of the piece despite the complexity of the music I tend towards.&lt;p&gt;For example, my favorite band is Between the Buried and Me (a progressive metal band) and their compositions tend to use a ton of complex and mixed meter, as well as non-repetitive rhythmic patterns. Despite all that, I have perfect recollection of their music—even for songs over 17 minutes long.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the long response—your comment just triggered some things I&amp;#x27;ve been thinking about for a while and I wanted to process them and share.</text></comment>