Learn English – Gaining a skill after some amount of time (while not actively practicing the skill)

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This weekend I decided to master a song I recorded. The last time I spent time mastering a recording was well over a month ago. Before, I had no idea how to use an equalizer – I looked up a bunch of videos and tutorials, but after a few hours stopped trying because it was taking too long to figure out.

When I went to master the song today, I just started flying through the equalization process for each track like I had been doing it for years (and the quality of the sound was improved, so I must have been doing something right). I have no clue how I 'just knew' what to do, considering that I've never actually done anything like it before, with the exception of the 3 hours I spent on it a month ago.

Is there a word or expression for suddenly knowing how to do what you didn't before? Presumably, some amount of time has passed between the first attempt and subsequent attempts.

This is similar to gaining insight into a problem after sleeping on it, but with a practicable skill.

Best Answer

The terms

subconscious learning

or

subliminal learning

are essentially the phrases for what you mean - I don't know if there's a better single-word.

(Simply google for literally 10,000s of both Real Scientific mentions of this, and Crass Commercial mentions, trademarks, etc, eg .. http://www.realsubliminal.com/how-subliminal-learning-works http://effortlessenglishclub.com/subconscious-vs-conscious-learning

Finally: I believe there's a lot of research in to issues like "How many hours per day should concert pianists practice?" where the answer is along the lines "surprisingly the hours when you stop practicing and do something else are where you Actually Learn", etc. So perhaps you could pursue that type of field and find some neat terms being used.

Also Chris as I mention in a comment, it's common that (whether today or historically) some famous musicians have taken the point of view that they "never had to learn", were simply "learning something they already new", or "already knew everything as soon as they were about to be taught it." (This can indeed veer to a sort of mystic re-incarnation vibe.)

An example of this from an extremely popular bestseller of the "new-age" era is the actress and musician Leslie Parrish's explanation of her musicality in her boyfriend Richard Bach's bestseller "Bridge across Forever"...

"But there is one funny thing. Music that's no later than Beethoven, than the early 1800s, it's as if I'm relearning, it's easy, I seem to know it at first sight. Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart-like meeting old friends. But not Chopin, not Liszt . . . that's new music to me."

It could be your feeling leans to this? Rather than "scientific" "subconscious learning, let's say.

So, I'm pointing out there's kind of TWO phenomenon along the lines you ask, Chris,

(A) "scientific" for want of a better word, subliminal learning, which you can find studies about and so on

(B) particularly since you mention music, the phenomenon where certain musicians have reported they "already knew it" - which can be a little "new age", if you will.

So, I don't have exact terms for those two, A/B, but I'm just adding that as a kind of clarifier!

For another more specific suggestion (example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning ) you could possibly use the term

hypnopedia

in a related way. You could say something like:

"It's so weird, I worked with the desk once, months ago, and never thought about it again. Then today - I'm a master of it with no further effort. It's like hypnopedia or something!"

(BTW, as always with wiki, I don't know if some idiot just made up "hypnopedia" out of fresh air to make that page look good, or, if it is really used widely.)

Hope it helps!

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