I would like to think music has played an important role in my life. Let’s face it; music plays it a role in everyone’s life. You can’t get away from it.
Music and Memory
One of the reasons music is used so often with advertising is that it works. I often ask people, “how many songs connected with advertising do you have stuck in your head from 1980?” If you’re like me, the answer is “many!” I remember the theme song from a soft drink in the 1970s, “wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too?”
As a middle school teacher in Connecticut in 1995, I tried to use my student’s memory for songs to help them learn español. We sang songs about the vowels, verbs, prepositions, and other things. Students liked it because it was fun and, most importantly, because it was “easy.”
Nowadays, I use music to help myself memorize things. It’s still fun . . . and it’s still easy! I have catchy tunes I sing to remember my telephone number and my street address.
Note: Just in case you are reading this and do not suffer from a brain injury, let me assure you, sometimes mundane things are the most difficult to remember.
Patrick Owen McGuigan was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1969. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1992 from the University of Minnesota. He served in the US Peace Corps in Paraguay, South America from 1992 -1994. He then moved to Connecticut and taught Spanish to middle school kids for five years. In 2002, he was enjoying Ireland when he stepped in front of a car and received a very Traumatic Brain Injury. Patrick currently lives with his older sister Sue in her house in Golden Valley, Minnesota.