A quick thought on the differences between songline, method of loci, and memory palaces in my system of categorization to see if people concur.
They are all key storage systems with slight differences so it’s easy to mix them up when in use. I’ve waffled back and forth several times.
Key storage system – a preplanned structure for locations optionally using backgrounds and traversal methods.
Songline - my general term is journey which is traversed by a story or a type of peg system. A walk along a prescribed path is an ordered set of specific locations or a peg system where image keys can be stored.
Memory palace - I tend to see this as a synonym of the method of loci. But my idea of a locus is more like a background as translated in the Rhetorica ad Herennium instead of a distinct position. I use memory palaces without a traversal method to store multiple image keys and just look around to see what’s there limiting the image keys to around five to seven.
When identifying positions in a room/locus/background to store multiple image keys, that background becomes a memory object with positions for image keys bound to a traversal method to guarantee complete path coverage (any software testers out there?). Several different objects or stories can be added to reuse the same background. This two-level nesting is what can be called image aggregation (any software designers out there?) and extend your objects as much as you need.
Some memory palaces are pre-planned or created as a top-down system for reuse purposes and cleaned out before the next use. Utilitarian and dull. I like to create bottom-up palaces where the images create the backgrounds and I can create sequences of backgrounds by story to traverse my palace. This is how I structured the Bible (book=palace, groups of chapters = background, chapter = memory object in background, verse = image key associated with memory object).
Songlines are journeys with aggregations of memory objects it seems. I’m going to read @LynneKelly’s book when it arrives to get more clear on that.