A 4-Track Mind

The episode features an interview with Bob Milne, a ragtime pianist whom the Library of Congress has called a national treasure. Reporter Jessica Benko and neuroscientist Kirsten Betterman investigate Bob's extraordinary claim that he can hear multiple symphonies simultaneously in his head. Initially skeptical, Betterman designed a behavioral test comparing Bob to Peter Perret, a professional conductor, using four memorized symphonies by Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn in different keys and tempos. In the first test, both Bob and the conductor successfully tracked a single piece of music in their heads while in an MRI scanner, with Bob being accurate to within a note or two. In the second test, the conductor found listening to two pieces simultaneously to be an overwhelming, impossible task and lost focus entirely. Bob, however, successfully maintained all four pieces simultaneously, accurately describing his position in each symphony when asked, down to specific notes. Betterman theorizes that Bob's ability stems from two primary factors: first, his unusually strong emotional relationship with music—he associates different emotional qualities with each musical key—and second, his capacity to visualize music spatially. Bob describes seeing two orchestras as silhouettes sitting side by side with specific color hues, and he can mentally navigate through this 3D space, zooming in on individual instruments, hearing them louder or softer depending on his position, and even observing minute details like wrinkles in musicians' shirts and the color of violas. Bob uses this ability in his work as a traveling ragtime performer, composing operas in his head while driving and transcribing them in McDonald's parking lots. He travels in a converted airport bus with his wife Linda and performs approximately 250 shows annually at historical societies and churches.