Same here, writing stuff down has always worked for me. My main method of revision for school exams was basically writing my notes out again. I lose focus/interest if I just read and typing isnāt the same. I can get away with drawing on the screen of my iPad with Apple Pencil thingy which is my preferred way at the moment as I donāt have loads of notebooks lying around and thereās not loads of things crossed out 
Last year I re-taught myself to solve a Rubikās cube (Iāve since forgotten again as I didnāt keep it up). Some people can probably visualise where the pieces are going but I just memorised some series of moves by repetition (eg front, left, front anti, right etc)
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not for me ā¦ i don t have a photographic memory and writing is just a pain in the ***
Listening was enough for me
what works for some do not work for others ā¦
so you have a photographic memory
I can learn lyrics after only hearing a song once or twice
The new Gossip song is already an ear worm 
So question for the aphantasiacs (completely unrelated to music, but something I was thinking about when mentally āchewingā on this)ā¦is doodling not really a thing for you?
Sitting in class as a kid (or even in conferences as an adult), Iād doodle all over the margins of my paper - mostly animals when I was a kid, often imagined geometric designs these days, but really flowers, plants, whatever comes to mind. If you were to do the same, would it have to be drawings of objects/people in the room that you can see?
My doodles were always just a mixture of random squiggles and shapes. If they did include things like trees then theyād be cartoon type trees rather than an actual tree.
I always found I could copy a 2d image from a book cover quite well but wasnāt so good at 3d objects and people although I couldnāt say whether aphantasia has anything to do with that. I certainly couldnāt draw a person from memory and even something like a picture of the front of my house that I see every day would be basic because I know where the doors and windows are
There s nothing wrong with cartoon trees 
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I still draw like Picasso in kindergartenā¦unlike my wife who also sees black when she closes her eyesā¦ She paints quite a lotā¦but not from out the imagination her headā¦
If I were to start doing this, even tracing paper wouldnāt help me
EdiT:
so so true 
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picasso in kindergarten would still worth millions 
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Squares and cubes for me we the occasional tringle on top (houses)
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Very catchy vibeā¦ and what I get out of it in lyrics is nice and catchy 
ā¦ but are you now calling my thick-glazed, glasses-wearing girl a blind person? ooo I used to get punished for that ā¦ 
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Well, someone told you you were a sharp-looking dude! 
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Touche 
Didnāt I tell you āseveral people (ladies)ā? ā¦too late, my own faultā¦Iām crawling away 
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I am also finding this topic fascinating; I had never heard of it before either. Iām guessing I donāt have it as I can picture all those apples with no problems, and oddly I am now imagining a whole bowl of apples singing with cartoon lipsā¦
I remember in grade school, age 10-12 or so? Being given a battery of tests. (they loved those things in the 70s), to test our aptitude for various subjects. I scored high in things like art and foreign languages but low in math, and yet I became an engineer even though I really hate mathā¦
I remember one type of test was in spatial relations, theyād show a bunch of line connected dots in different orientations and youād have to match them to a particular image. Apparently, I was very good at this though it was āsupposedā to be a thing only guys were good at.
Now youād think that would help me with visualizing the fret board when it comes to translating TAB to finger positions. But no, Iām still confused by why the TAB seems to be upside down to me, low E on the bottom, high E on the top. My brain just doesnāt want to switch it around.
Okay, I have no idea how this relates to the subject, itās just what popped into my head while reading this thread.
HEY, maybe TAB is why Jimi played his guitar upside down?
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DO you mean Jimi H? he had another abnormalityā¦ he was a lefty 
Blues legend Albert King is not only left-handed, but he also plays with his strings upside down. He plays right-handed guitars that he simply flips over, making the low E string the bottom string instead of the top. To make this unorthodox way of playing a little easier, he tunes his guitar two notes lower so he can bend the low, thick strings. To make those whining guitar notes with his high E string, he pulls it down, instead of pushing it up.
for people who want to expand their knowledge of languages
Edit: About Jimi
and so just read that he had to play right and turned it over when his father was away 
Thanks for these interesting insights Rebeccaā¦ 
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I also play my guitar āupside downā, and I still feel like tab is backward - though I think thatās because if you imagine the tab like you are looking at the guitar strings head-on, itās backwards for me.
This makes my brain melt 
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Thatās interesting with regard to the 2D vs. 3D, though I suspect that may be more of an artistic training type of thing - perspective is challenging to draw! Hard for me to say, though, since I did a lot of visual art classes from an early age - would be interesting to hear from others on that.
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Hi,
Iām hopeless at a lot of things uh the most of things ā¦but since I started learning to play the guitar Iāve realized that I could even have gotten pretty good at drawing/painting with the right course/teacher and the sheer amount of hours I put in each day. ā¦certainly not certain things like, well, I donāt actually know that, but I can do so much more than I used to think or what people said that something is so difficult or impossible to learnā¦but I am very happy that the choice 4 years ago became music and not something like embroidery to sleep well 
ā¦ I think itās cheaper to embroidery and I donāt know what the new neighbors think about it yet ā¦Iāll have to ask the old ones
Good night to everyone in this hemisphere 
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Tabs just like guitar are about pitch not where the strings are. The bottom of the tab is the lowest pitch, the thickest string is the lowest pitch. So the bottom of the tab represents the thickest string. Just like music notation.
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You are right, Brian, I certainly know how my husband, family members or others around me look ( thanks god!). As you say, itās the extent I can recall persons, situations, places, etc. in my mind. I repeat myself by saying, that I can recall all of that, rather as a āschemeā, without any kind of picture.
This obviously is quite a core issue, as aphantasiacs canāt do that consciously / on demand, but unconsciously are able to see pictures in their dreams (at least, itās what I read)
Maybe! At least your fancy dresses are a great help to try that, kind of a ākey stimuliā .
On a serious note: I already mentioned elsewhere, that I have some serious eye sight problems coming up and probably getting worse over time, up to the possibility of losing eye sight. In this context, it is definitely a major issue, if someone like me wouldnāt be able to reconstruct images from their minds to save lots of information āinsideā. It was kind of an āawakeningā experience within the last few days, that maybe, I wonāt even be able to recall those āpicturesā any more, but others do. Losing the faces of my beloved ones might be the hardest part of it, but not having the ability to recall experiences either, is kind of disillusioning . I simply wasnāt aware of that. Another ugly toad to swallow.
Guitar related, it maybe were impossible to visualize everything on the neck then. Thanks god, my sensitivity and feel for the fretboard will get better over time.
Thatās what Iām asking myself too!
Been busy within the last days, Iām a little late on replying, Phil. Glad you found a way to deal with that all. Iām a paper girl too, writing out songs does help a lot with recognizing song structure, etc.
Although I donāt see pictures in my mind, I certainly do random scrawling. E.g., I do that during protracting work phone calls, but itās rather tracing the squares on a sheet of paper than drawing objects or people.
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