how to have secured performance?

[mlckitt]

how to consolidate my memory once I've finished memorizing a piece?

I found it hard to play a piece the way I want--all the notes, pedal, expression, etc, when I'm not looking at the score.

Here are my ways of memorizing:
1. harmony analysis
2. playing the melodies and chords with separated hands
3. muscle memorization, which I think is an insecure method....


anymore?

 

[pianistimo]

making a tape recording of it with the tempo, the dynamics, and the interpretation the way you want it to sound at recital.  then, listen to it over and over - and play with it - noting places that you make mistakes and correcting them. 

this is my method.  i'm sure analyzing the music helps, too - since you'd know if you were playing the wrong notes.

lately, i've also noticed a phenomenon (perhaps due to my digital always being in tune) that i can know the placement of notes and what it will sound like - thus eliminating wrong notes by aiming for the right ones mentally (subconsciously).

[ramseytheii]

how to consolidate my memory once I've finished memorizing a piece?

I found it hard to play a piece the way I want--all the notes, pedal, expression, etc, when I'm not looking at the score.

Here are my ways of memorizing:
1. harmony analysis
2. playing the melodies and chords with separated hands
3. muscle memorization, which I think is an insecure method....


anymore?

 

First and foremost, memory should never be mechanical.  True memory comes from understanding, as Schoenberg once wrote, and it can only be achieved through creative means.  That suggests there is no prescription, but still there are many things you can do and principles you can follow to come up with your own creative memorization.

You're on the right track in acknowledging the multiple types of memory.  The intellectual memory, through thorough analysis, is engaged; the physical memory, through an inspection of the techniques and gestures in a piece; the visual memory, from studying the actual score, and watching the hands at action; and of course, the aural memory, the memory of the ears.

We all have better memories than we think.  If you play a piece in which your memory is shaky, but can still identify wrong notes by listening, you actually know in your memory what the right notes are!  It is a matter of accessibility, not of mechanical works.

My suggestion is to take all the areas of memory and confound them somehow.  To confound your ears, practice transposing the piece, or improvising on one of its segmnts, or switching the registration around (playing left hand above right if possible, or moving both outward an octave), bringing out hidden, inner voices - creatively exploring the sound of the piece from every aspect.  This will make you familiar with the music on more than one level, and, when you come back to play it normally, it will be a return - having confounded your ear, your ear will grasp at the familiar, and strengthen it even more.

To confound your physical memory, the answer is to simply practice everything very slowly, or as Bernhard said, in slow motion.  That way you cannot rely solely on your phyiscal memory, which is what many people tend to do.  Also, Busoni suggested practicing passages with the most difficult (but still logical) fingerings.  That way, when you return to the tempo of the piece, and the easier fingerings, it will be all the more comfortable than when you left it.

Confounding your intellectual memory may not be advisable, but one thing you can do is this: take every missed opportunity in the score, and explore what would happen if another path was chosen.  For instance: if Mozart writes a deceptive cadence, explore where you could go if it was a true cadence; if Bach suggests a modulation but doesn't actually go there, explore what would happen if he did.  This has the benefit of adding to your intellectual memory a strong understanding of the direction of the music, and a better knowledge of why composers made the choices they did.

To confound your visual memory, practice with your eyes closed.

I hope this helps!  The idea is not to rely on one memory, but to put all of them to the test, and have them work together to make a finished product.

Walter Ramsey

[pianistimo]

that would take an awful lot of time, ramseytheii, but it's probably what composers did/do.

[ramseytheii]

that would take an awful lot of time, ramseytheii, but it's probably what composers did/do.

Well there are no shortcuts, and if you want to know something for real, you have to explore it creatively, not just repeat it all the way through over and over again.  If you follow these principles, you can memorize something for years, not just until your next recital.

Walter Ramsey

[cmg]

My suggestion is to take all the areas of memory and confound them somehow. 


Walter Ramsey

Thank you for this excellent advice, but how can one reconcile this with:  "In te Domine speravi:  NON CONFUNDAR in aeternum?"

Please advise soonest.

[ramseytheii]

Thank you for this excellent advice, but how can one reconcile this with:  "In te Domine speravi:  NON CONFUNDAR in aeternum?"

Please advise soonest.

O, Lord, in thee have I trusted!  Let me never be confounded.

Well, 'tis different if we temporarily confound ourselves for the sake of more perfect music, than if the Heavenly Father were to cloud our judgment and lead us astray.

Walter Ramsey

[mlckitt]

thanks, ramseytheii, but your method of transposition, improvisation and switching the registration sound to scary to me....

I'd like to add one more method for visual memory, don't know if it works for others as well.. I would simply look at the piano while playing and memorize the places of different notes by the allocation of the black and white keys. It helps when playing running passages.

[cmg]

O, Lord, in thee have I trusted!  Let me never be confounded.

Well, 'tis different if we temporarily confound ourselves for the sake of more perfect music, than if the Heavenly Father were to cloud our judgment and lead us astray.

Walter Ramsey

Bless you, brother.  For now I have seen the light!

[ramseytheii]

I was excited to read this in the autobiography of one of my favorite Americans, Benjamin Franklin, and it relates very much to what I wrote above.  A bit of context - he was trying to train himself to be a poet by reading prose, writing down the basic idea in every sentence, and later translating the ideas into poetry:

===
"...I found I wanted a stock of words or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual search for words of the same import but of different length to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it.  Therefore I took some of the tales in the Spectator and turned them into verse, and after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.  I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the best order before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper.  This was to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts.  By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and corrected them; but I sometimes had the plasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language..."

===
The italics are mine.  They are the ideas which I refer to above.  He wanted to be a master of language, and have ideas and phrases ready at his memory, just like we want in piano.  He tried all different things in different contexts in order to secure the best solution through variety (going on the principle that the composer has already found the best solution, but through variety we can strengthen our understanding).   Then he jumbled an orderly procession of ideas into random occurences, and tried to reconstruct them, in order to master language and memory through a creative fashion ("I had been lucky enough to improve [the original]..."). 

Happily, I didn't read this passage until after I posted above.  But I am glad to see I am not alone in my philosophy.

Walter Ramsey

[pianochick93]

I usually memorise pieces by playing them many times, and then by taking away the music, first maybe a page at a time, and I go page by page from there. When I use this method, I remember the melody and notes and sometimes just where my fingers go.

If I'm not trying to memorise something, but I find I'm somewhere with a piano, without music, then I try to not think about the piece, and let my fingers remember where to go. I can tell if I hit a wrong note or harmony, but I can't always figure out what it is meant to be. Especially if it is a difficult song.

The way(s) Walter suggests sound like they would work really really well, but it would take ages.

I might give it a try though.

[ramseytheii]

I usually memorise pieces by playing them many times, and then by taking away the music, first maybe a page at a time, and I go page by page from there. When I use this method, I remember the melody and notes and sometimes just where my fingers go.

If I'm not trying to memorise something, but I find I'm somewhere with a piano, without music, then I try to not think about the piece, and let my fingers remember where to go. I can tell if I hit a wrong note or harmony, but I can't always figure out what it is meant to be. Especially if it is a difficult song.

The way(s) Walter suggests sound like they would work really really well, but it would take ages.

I might give it a try though.

It won't take ages, because it isn't a mechanical process.  If you look at the suggestions I gave, and think, these have to be applied to every page, every phrase, every bar, every beat, you didn't read closely enough.

Any piece of music has passages that are easier and that are harder.  In this incredibly banal statement, I mean to say that the work has to be done always on what is most difficult.  If you have a 4 page Bach fugue, and you can memorize all of it except for page 2, which is insecure, well your task won't take very long will it? 

This is about having secured performances, and to do that, you can't ever, ever, not even once, skim the surface of music.  You always have to find a greater reason for any passages existence.  Does that mean you have to turn every passage upside down like I suggested?  Of course not.  Some passages will display their meaning clearly to you at first listen, or first touch.  Others will not be so generous, and it is up to you to put forth the work necessary to unlock them and master them.

Also: there are no shortcuts.  If you have a method of learning a piece that you consider to be faster - faster as opposed to just more efficient - you are probably learning music in a very superficial way.  Everyone learns at different speeds (there I go again), but there will never be a substitute for true creative investigation of music.

Walter Ramsey

[nick]

I think the most common cause of problems in performance is concentration, following the music without mind distractions. To be good at this requires concentrated practice. For me, once the notes are learned well, starting a large section at a moderate speed, and if one clitch or wrong note, STOP, then start over. (In performance of course you keep going). This process increased my accuracy tremendously. We often get so used to "getting into the music", playing with emotion, that we overlook these clitches, and then get used to them! I hated that.

Nick

[ramseytheii]

I think the most common cause of problems in performance is concentration, following the music without mind distractions. To be good at this requires concentrated practice. For me, once the notes are learned well, starting a large section at a moderate speed, and if one clitch or wrong note, STOP, then start over. (In performance of course you keep going). This process increased my accuracy tremendously. We often get so used to "getting into the music", playing with emotion, that we overlook these clitches, and then get used to them! I hated that.

Nick

I love that you compare the addiction of playing "with emotion" with being sloppy and lazy about correcting mistakes.  I think it is a right-on observation.  What comes first is the music itself, in all of its glory: however it inspires us is what makes the emotion, but hopefully your playing is accurate enough to be inspiring.

I disagree with starting over when you make a mistake.  Mainly the part about starting over: our familiarity with a piece has to be organic more than anything else.  if you always start from the same point, you will never achieve that.  You have to be able to start a piece at any point, beginning of a phrase, middle of a phrase, or whatever.  The way to do this is as everything to use your ears; hear the first part of a phrase, and then start playing at some time. 

This is also an aid towards spontaneity: if you always start at the beginning of a phrase, in the same place, it is a guarantee towards square performance.  If you start anywhere, you will have control over all aspects of the phrase, and can be spontaneous in its execution.

Walter Ramsey

[lostinidlewonder]

If you at will summon forth the three memory states of your music  (conscious, muscular and sound memory) then you never will forget your music. The problem is that some people rely on one too much and when it fails the memory is lost.

The human brain actually memorises things not by storing a bit of infomation in one unique place, but by combining many common points of the brain to bring forth a unique memory. If you cannot consciously memorise your music by making verbal statements about the patterns the music puts you through, if you cannot play a phrase of music without feeling the muscular movements and forgetting about the notes and finally if you cannot listen to your sound and use your ear to affect the sound you produce, then your memory will fade as time goes by.

The only way to maintain memory is to practice. But who is to say what practice is right or wrong? What is common to all superior practice method, they train all three memory states.

And peformance is a mental struggle more than a musical one. I personally find it a challenge to keep the mind on the music, the only way I can do this is usually by humming the music in my head and under my breath, this way I am forced to listen to what I play.

[nick]

I disagree with starting over when you make a mistake.  Mainly the part about starting over: our familiarity with a piece has to be organic more than anything else.  if you always start from the same point, you will never achieve that.  You have to be able to start a piece at any point, beginning of a phrase, middle of a phrase, or whatever.  The way to do this is as everything to use your ears; hear the first part of a phrase, and then start playing at some time.
 

Walter, we may not be saying  much different things or we may just disagree. There is nothing "synthetic" about repeating a section of music with no errors. The size of sections is different for me. At times if there is a repeated problem spot into the section, that area will be repeated with no errors. Since concentration is so strong in this process, when performing, if there is any inaccuracy or clitche, it is not a problem to continue playing the music without being lost (oh no, I havn't started at that exact spot before!)  My main point is concentration is not mentioned too much. We all focus on this method, that method,do this, do that, but no matter what one does, without being able to follow the line of music without another thought intruding often leads to derailment. I've been there.

Nick

[totallyclassics]

I agree with learning to start anywhere in a piece!  Anywhere! 

I do NOT memorize prior to a recital......I don't have to!  It is something I will work up to, but I have had too many "Deer in the headlight" moments with the music RIGHT THERE!

I am a kinesthetic memorizer!  My fingers eventually know where to go after playing the piece over and over..........or SO I THOUGHT!   That is until 3 days before my performance, I was playing for my teacher and messed up an area that I had never messed up on before.  I was asked to "start from here!"   It was as if I had NEVER seen the score before!  I suddenly could not read music!  For my fingers to work right, I had to start from a certain point and work up to that point!   

The second occurence was DURING a recital and I got "lost!"    I was listening, and not paying attention to the score!  I landed with the wrong fingering, and suddenly panicked!  My fingers stopped spontaneously, and I had NO idea where I was in the music!  TWO things wrong with thinking you know the music when your fingers just "go" on their own!   NEVRVES do funny things to the fingers who think they know it all!
I have been working on practicing from different areas, and also analyzing the music and picking up cues in case I get lost again, I will know where to put  my eyes on the score!   It is a slow process, but, I agree.......the ONLY process that will truly help in memorization!  A thorough analysis using many techniques!

[mlckitt]

I"m having a friend, aged 16, having the following programme for his piano exam:

1. Bach: chaccone, Busoni's transcription

2. Chopin: sonata no. 2

3. Prokofiev: sonata no. 1

He really had very good memory that he could play several bars of a piece and then jump to other bars of another piece, like playing the Scherzo of the Chopin sonata and then jump to the running of the Chaccone. I"m doing this on my own programme. I think this really helps.

[leonidas]

The best memory method I've come across is the 'delayed sightreading' method.

Read a *digestible* portion without touching the keys, then without reference to the score, play that portion, and if accurate, repeat it.
This is playing from memory  albeit short term.

Repeat until that part feels secure, do the next part and the next, then add them all up.

Stimulate the memory by regularly challenging it.