Sequence Memory in Music Performance

Abstract— How do people remember and produce complex sequences like music or speech? Music provides an example of excellent sequence memory under fast performance conditions; novices as well as skilled musicians can perform memorized music rapidly, without making mistakes. In addition, musical pitches repeat often within a melodic sequence in different orders, yet people do not confuse the sequential ordering; temporal properties of musical pitches aid sequence memory. I describe a contextual model of sequence memory that is sensitive to the rate at which musical sequences are produced and to individual differences among performers. Age and musical experience differentiate adults' and children's memory for musical sequences during performance. Performers' memory for the sequential structure of one melody transfers or generalizes to other melodies in terms of the sequence of pitch events, their temporal properties, and their movements. Motion-analysis techniques provide further views of the time course of the cognitive processes that make sequence memory for music so accurate.