It is believed that singing songs in the Greek and Roman times constituted the reiteration of a passage or a tale with perhaps only a slight intonation to the voice.
Before Homer's day, memorizers called bards passed along the tales of the Trojan war and other stories of the Bronze Age for hundreds of years only to have them eventually transcribed and recorded by Homer for posterity.
Songs and long poems were related by bards in total completeness by memory alone, and it is not unlikely that such bardic memorizing involved some form of intonation to the voice.
Why do you think many TV and radio advertisements stress song and intonation to convey their product message?
Because it sticks better in the brain, that's why.
Rhythm has an interesting effect on developing your mental abilities.
It is also an avenue to right brain processing.
The following superlearning exercise from Bulgaria gained wide acclaim some years ago.
Select information bits (foreign vocabulary or whatever) that you want to learn.
Get in a comfortable position, close your eyes, relax and do some deep breathing to prepare yourself.
Next, have your assistant read to you the material to be learned in 4-second intervals.
Have your assistant read a bit of information for 4 seconds, then pause for 4 seconds; and then continue this 4-second read and pause process over and over with different bits of information.
While your assistant does this, you rhythmically breathe in and out during the 4-second silent period, and hold your breath during the 4-second reading period.
Within just 15 minutes, you'll be able to assimilate over 80 new bits of information quite easily.
To help pace yourself with the 4-second tempo, record a tapping sound every 4 seconds on a repeating loop tape and play it during the session.
Keep the learning sessions about 20 to 30 minutes long.
T o enhance the effect, play a largo movement (60-beat per minute cycle) of specific baroque compositions (Bach, Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi or Corelli) in the background.
The slow 60-beat per minute tempo of the largo movement entrains your heartbeat to beat at the same pace, and this relaxed state in turn slows your brain wave activity as well.
Hence, your body/mind relaxes, but at the same time keeps you alert and receptive.
After several months of this practice, your mind develops a semi-photographic memory ability as well.
If you design a tape for a headset, put the baroque music on the left ear track (for the right brain) and the rhythmic recitation of information on the right ear track (for the left brain).
Even without baroque music, a tape designed rhythmically and played as a 'sleep-learning' tape (see "Exercise -- Sleep-Learning") produces good results.
Repeat each bit of information 3 times in the 4-second speak, 4-second pause tempo as described above.
If the intonation of the taped voice is varied from soft, to commanding, to normal each time or even sung intermittently, the right brain 'attends' to the material more easily.
If the voice is from a member of the opposite sex, the memorizing attentiveness is enhanced even more.
Also, make each 4-second bit of information a complete fragment to facilitate better grasping and not a thought cut in half.
In addition to this, precede your memorizing session with positive affirmations concerning the material presented.
For those people that are visual minded, a video tape can be designed with visual information blips accompanied by verbal explanations every 4 seconds while baroque music is played in the background.
For those people kinesthetically inclined, the information input can be through braille or other feeling types of input.
A good memory is a skill that can improve with practice, so take advantage of small fragments during your normal day and get conscious about remembering things.