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Comment by mahathu | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating story. Pat Martino is another (jazz) guitarist who relearned to play after a brain injury

Joni Mitchell's story and Pat Martino's story are remarkably similar (brain aneurysm). The question is, did they regain access to the part of their brain that allowed them to play guitar, or did they really re-learn?

In Martino's case, after his full amnesia, he was able to retrieve his unique playing style, but was that because he learned by listening to his recordings (just like Joni did), or because the style never left him but was somehow locked?

My understanding is Martino had to learn by listening to his old records

Kind of interesting to imagine the motivation for the former, it's surely different to that which achieved it in the first place: 'I want to be who I was' or something, rather than 'this expresses who I am' or 'I like this sound' or whatever.

Part of it was from listening to his own recordings, part of it was from discovering it inside his brain again. As Pat's aneurysm grew over time, it's likely that his brain had already somewhat remodeled to accommodate it. IIRC, in a TV show about it, they talked with one of his friends/students whom he would play guitar duos with. His friend was playing for Pat after the aneurysm (Pat wasn't back to playing yet) and the guy hit a wrong chord and Pat suddenly said "No, D minor 9th" and grabbed the guitar and played the right chord.

Pat also tells a similar story about meeting Joe Pesci backstage and knowing him only from movies until Joe tells him, "I can tell you what you used to drink at Smalls' Paradise in the '60s". Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niUwDegpYyo

Neil Young too was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in March 2005, while working on the Prairie Wind album in Nashville [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young#Health_condition_an...

A couple more examples are Oscar Peterson and Rashaan Roland Kirk.

Judith Durham, Australian singer and songwriter famous with The Seekers in the 1960s but active ever since, had a stroke.

Afterwards she could still sing but had lost the ability to write songs.

Agraphia is an impairment or loss of a previous ability to write.

I can read fine. I can type fine. Drawing is mostly fine. Physical writing is total gibberish. Think severe alzheimer level.

For Judith Durham, I don't know if the problem is the physical writing of the songs, or the ability to compose a song. Sources aren't clear on that.

Oscar had a stroke, which he didn't really recover from -- he just played mostly one-armed.

I just saw this incredible video [1] last week about him and "the greatest solo ever recorded."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj93v9j2A4A

Great video. Note the signature on that guitar by the way (2:49).

One more: Edwyn Collins, from Wikipedia:

In February 2005, Collins was hospitalised after two cerebral haemorrhages which resulted in aphasia, and he needed months to recover. He resumed his musical career in 2007. A documentary film on his recovery, The Possibilities Are Endless, was released in 2014.

Well Kirk was cheating because he could just play the other sax.

‘Martino Unstrung’ is a documentary about him and talks a lot about what he was like leading up to and after the aneurysm was discovered. A great look into one of the giants of jazz guitar but also fascinating to learn the things he could remember and what he couldn’t, personality changes, etc.

There are odd videos of him in his early public reappearance after his illness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NotxdCS9xm0

(odd in the sense of semi private recordings)

Not sure if I remember the documentary correctly, but didn't he re-learn to play with a different hand orientation, e.g. right then left hand?

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