Spaced Repetition for Music Listening

Background:

One can use the principles of spaced repetition with music listening. This allows one to become familiar with a piece of music, and retain that familiarity in an efficient manner by listening less and less frequently to it. This is advantageous for anyone wanting to investigate a new piece or even genre of music, since it may (and in my case, usually does) take multiple listenings to appreciate something unfamiliar.

To that end, I've set up Anki (a spaced repetition flashcard app/program) decks, with cards that represent a single piece of music. Decks are available here.

How to Use, Getting Started:

Here is one way one could use the deck.

1. First download the deck and add it to one's Anki profile. (For instruction on basic use of Anki, see the Anki website.)

2. Begin adding new pieces of music by adding cards. This will add these pieces into your schedule of listening.

A typical card is set up as so. There are other fields which one could populate as they wish (Lyrics, Performer, etc).

So add a card as a new card, and then simply answer it. How difficult one marks it (Good vs. Easy) will govern how fast it is rescheduled for your listening. This is a matter of your personal taste. 

3. Regardless, as one answers the card, one simultaneously listens to (or schedules a listening of) the piece. I use Spotify to do this. So let's go to Spotify, and search for that particular piece of music.

There it is. Multiple recordings to choose from.

4. Add one track (or tracks, if it's a multi-movement work) to a playlist set up for your listening. 

5. Repeat this for as many new pieces of music (i.e., cards) you'd like to add. In the end, you'll have a playlist with your scheduled listening. 

6. Then, just listen to that playlist. Actively, or in the background while you work, or however you'd like to do it.

7. If you get through the list and you want to listen to more on that particular day, then go back to your Anki deck and add some new cards, while simultaneously adding the pieces of music to your playlist.

How to Use, Daily Use:

Once a card is first answered, it will now be an active card, and will be set up to recur at gradually increasing intervals. Everyday you will find a number of cards scheduled for review, here five.

1. In the morning, open your Anki deck, and begin "answering" the cards.

2. If you want to listen to pieces often, answer Hard. Less often, answer Easy. (I suppose one could hit Again if one had completely forgotten that piece of music, but I never do that. One seldom has completely forgotten a piece). The intervals between each time a listening is scheduled will steadily increase.

3. Each time you answer a card, add that particular piece of music to your Listening playlist in Spotify.

4. If you find you run through your Listening playlist and want to listen to more, just add new cards.

Comments:

This is weird and obsessive.

Yep. But I've found it an enjoyable means of coming to know and appreciate music that I otherwise would probably never have been exposed to. It take a while to appreciate something you don't have any familiarity with. Originally I used it for classical music only, but I've also used it to investigate jazz, afro-beat, hip-hop et al. One can make a card for anything.

I've fallen behind.

Not a big deal. Just add cards scheduled for review to your Listening playlist each day, but don't add any new cards. Eventually, because of the increasing intervals on all cards, you'll catch up.