Is memorizing bad?

[oscarkimball18]

           
      I'm having trouble with my sightreading skills, especially following the treble and bass
clefs at the same time. I have the urge to try and memorize a piece, whereas my teacher says to read the music by intervals. I just find that difficult when the beat is going at an accelerated pace. Like when I'm playing the Entertainer, I look at the music maybe half the time, and that's when I screw up, because I'm scrambling trying to find out where I am.    Are there any trills or exercises I can do to remedy this problem, or is memorizing in some cases really not that bad?   I would appreciate any feedback

                                                                     Thanks,
                                                                     Travis

[alzado]

Travis--

In order to get the mistakes out of new material as I practice it, I discover that I semi-memorize parts of it.

Specifically, the places where I keep making mistakes -- e.g., certain measures --  I tend to memorize.

Also, fast runs where there's no time to study out the notes by sight reading.

I don't know about memorizing entire pieces if you have no reason-- no recital coming up, and so on.

It may be more of an investment of time that some pieces would justify.

[kghayesh]

I think memorizing lets you concentrate more in the music itself and how to get the composer's thought through it. Because when you are sightreading, most of your concentration is lost in figuring out the notes and translating them from your eyes to your fingers to play on the piano.

Sight reading is important for learning and memorizing the music quickly. When you try to memorize something you already played from sight many times, you will find that it takes much less time.

[allthumbs]

Travis--

In order to get the mistakes out of new material as I practice it, I discover that I semi-memorize parts of it.

Specifically, the places where I keep making mistakes -- e.g., certain measures --  I tend to memorize.

Also, fast runs where there's no time to study out the notes by sight reading.

I don't know about memorizing entire pieces if you have no reason-- no recital coming up, and so on.

It may be more of an investment of time that some pieces would justify.

Ditto here, although I'll add that with difficult pieces, it takes me so much longer to master the piece, that by the time it's up to any kind performance level, I've already memorized the thing.

Cheers

[quantum]

One of the issues of sight reading is looking down at the keys momentarily to place a hand then looking back at the music.  The more you practice this the easier it will become.  Just as you have to deal with hand jumps on the keyboard, your eyes have to deal with eye jumps from a bar of music to the keyboard and back to the next bar of music. 

For sight reading try to find your way around the keyboard using your tactile senses as much as possible, which will reduce the amount of looking up and down from the score.  Obviously for those odd big jumps and low plunks in the bass range one may need to look down. 

Memorizing is not bad per se, it's just you have to coordinate your memorizing skills with your reading skills to become a more efficient sight reader.  Good fluent sight reading involves a great amount of skilled and coordinated short-term memorizing. 

[princessdecadence]

At the moment I'm still depending on my memorizing skill.  I can memorize pieces quite easily but that's only to compensate my sight reading skill.  I would call memorizing a bad habit that spoils you a bit and let your sight reading skill stay at ground level.

In my opinion, sight reading skill is most important because once your sight reading skill is above grade 6 you won't need to look down to your keys anymore since you automatically memorize the places of the keys on your piano. 

I have a pianist friend who is amazing at sight reading.  She can sightread a piece and play it almost perfectly, or so it seems to me, without looking down to the piano.  Her eyes are always concentrating on the music.  I can tell that she bluff a few chords but it sounds great because she doesn't stop to find out where she is. 

[journeyyourmind]

I find that I have ok sight reading skills, i could look at the music and play through, but at a very slow pace, memorizing is essential for me because it is the fastest way for me to learn a piece. I will sit down and tell myself that I will learn this page of music "right now" and find that memorizing is essential in doing that. With excellent sight reading you could play through a piece bunches and bunches of times and eventually memorize the piece like that, but I find that this makes it more difficult to perfect sections and work on dynamics because the manner in wich you learned this music was by repetition, and in this repetition I would have probably made several mistakes. If I memorize, I can work on each individual section, slow it down, speed it up, and only need to look at the music for the dynamics, phrasing, etc.

[clef]

One of the issues of sight reading is looking down at the keys momentarily to place a hand then looking back at the music.  The more you practice this the easier it will become.  Just as you have to deal with hand jumps on the keyboard, your eyes have to deal with eye jumps from a bar of music to the keyboard and back to the next bar of music. 

 

I think i have outgrown that band habbit.  In time you should be able to sightread simple pieces with fairly small intervals without looking at the keys.  That is useful becuase you can keep all your concentration onto the reading

[steve jones]

I tend to use the music just as a guide, reminding me where I am, and more importantly whats coming next! This is probably a result of my background in guitar - its extremely difficult to sightread guitar music.

So I dont rely on the score on a note by note level. My sightreading is pretty poor even on piano.