play in your mind...

[casparma]

In C C Chang's book, he mentioned the best type of memory for memorizing scores is mental play.

He said you only learn the piece when you can play it in your mind, on either hand, both or individual, and on any part of the score.....


However, often, the bass often does not "sound" normal on its own. I can only play it in my mind with the right hand accompanying......

Mental play is too theoretical for me to practice... Does any one have a practical suggestion??


thanks

[casparma]

  No one?


Can any one who is capable of memorising large amount of repertoires please help?


thanks

[zheer]

Mental play is too theoretical for me to practice... Does any one have a practical suggestion??

thanks

  Its really not all that difficult.

  Ok lets pretend that we are memorizing a poem. kNow imagin that you are memorizing this poem in french and you know nothing about that language, sure you will be abe to memorize, but it will take longer since you ahve to remember all the letters and not the words and the sentence. Hence if the poem was in english this process will be a lot faster, because not only will you not need to remember one single word at a time but you can remeber a sentense or a phrase at a time.

    now if you apply this rule to music you will see that by understanding basic music theory and the structer of a particular piece hearing the music in your head from start to finish should be equivalent to hearing a poem in your head. This will take longer for me to explain and i can suggest ways to test this theory, but you will have to let me know.

[casparma]

thanks for ur suggestion, zheer 



Ok... I can hear the music in my mind.... but I want actually "play" it in my mind...

sometimes I just forget how to play it despite I know how it sounds like.

Or, I cannot start  to play the music I "memorise" at random section, but to start from the beginning. And, similarly, it's easy to hum at any place......

Maybe it's neccessay to have perfect pitch in order to memorise like I said?

[jkristiand]

I dont think you need to be able to "play" the whole piece in your mind in order to memorize it. I agree that you have a great theoretical advantage if you can though, and it will certainly stick better that way.

[zheer]

thanks for ur suggestion, zheer 



Ok... I can hear the music in my mind.... but I want actually "play" it in my mind...

  O i see, well in that case learn Chopins prelude Op.28,No 7, the first 4 bars away from the piano. Then without the music try playing it at the piano, if you can do this there is no reason why you cant learn all of this prelude away from. Good luck.

[alcatus]

Hmm...!

Well, whenever I want to memorize a piece, I do it in short segments. I take the score, then I play a short segment of the RH and then I immediately close my eyes and try to play it mentally. I literally just imagine my hand playing it on the keyboard, with the music. Then I repeat the same with the LH, playing a short segment and then playing it in my head. If I suddenly get confused when trying to play it in my head, I just play the same segment again on the piano. This time I will do it slowly, while paying careful attention on how my hand and fingers move and what keys they press. It usually works and does not take long at all.
I will just repeat this procedure until I have the entire piece memorized, then I stop practicing. It might take an hour for me to memorize a new piece, depending on the length of it. So, after I have quit practice, I will try playing it mentally to check how well I have memorized it. For long pieces, I almost ALWAYS forget one little thing!
It does not matter as I will just rememorize the forgotten part the next time I sit on the piano. I usually never forget it after that.

Um.. maybe I will sum up the method?

1. I memorize a short segment, usually consisting of 2-3 bars or something like that.

2. I pay careful attention on how my hand plays it and how the music sounds like.

3. I play the segment mentally, imaging my hand playing the same segment with the same motions as I would actually play on the piano.

4. If I get a black out when I try to play it in my head, I just repeat it by playing it again this time on the piano, paying more attention this time. It usually takes less than 15 seconds for me to do.

5. I repeat the same process, this time for the LH.

6. I repeat this entire procedure until I am finished.

The advantage in this kind of memory is that I do not remember the music as tadpoles on paper but instead as black and white keys on the keyboard! All the expressions such as crescendo become mental concepts of the music which I simply hear when I play the music in my head. I just memorize the music the way it is played on the piano, not written on the sheet of paper!

You said that you have a problem with the LH music often making no musical common sense when played alone. I have no problems with that when I apply the above method. Maybe it will help to just accept the music the way it is? 
I do not think you need perfect pitch in order to memorize. I don't have it myself and I am able to memorize easily.



I hope my advice helped you in anyway! I tried my best!

[freakofnature]

Now this sounds very interesting, alcatus!!! I will give it a try with some short piece - maybe the already suggested 28/7 by chopin. Just to clarify: Have you memorised the section after some repetitions in your mind - and do you know it still on the next day, or do you have to repeat this for some days with one section?

[alcatus]

Oops. I forgot to explain a few more things! 

When I start to memorize, I usually divide the piece into 2 or 3 sections, with the intention of simplifying the process. Lets say that I am trying to memorize a piece which I have decided to divide into 2 sections. In this case, each section contains 30 bars. I will memorize the 1st section for both hands using the method I have described above. Then I will just leave it alone and concentrate completely on memorizing the 2nd section. After I have finished memorizing the 2nd section, I will leave it alone and then I will try to play each hand separately of 1st section mentally to check how well I remember them.
I almost always forget something small when I do it. Actually, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it is GOOD that I forgot something! Because a forgotten memory, when regained, is always better remembered! So, lets say that I forget how to play bars 3-4 of the LH. I am able to play the rest of the first section on both hands mentally with no difficulties.
All I have to do is to reinforce my memory on bars 3-4 by simply playing them again on the piano. I might repeat them only 3 times, then I play them in my head one more time. Thats it! I don't have to play the whole section through in my head again because I already know that I remember it. Well, then I will try to play the 2nd section in my head. I may have forgotten a few things from it when I play it through. All I have to do is to reinforce my memory on them.

I don't really have to memorize the whole thing perfectly on the first day. The advantage of the second day is that I already have most of the piece memorized. I only have to reinforce the memory on the few bars I may have forgotten.
Once I finally have it memorized, I only need to conduct maintenance on both sections every now and then by playing them mentally. I usually do it 3 times a day. It does not take long at all because I can easily play it through faster than I can on the piano, WITHOUT ill effects.

[alcatus]

Now this sounds very interesting, alcatus!!! I will give it a try with some short piece - maybe the already suggested 28/7 by chopin. Just to clarify: Have you memorised the section after some repetitions in your mind - and do you know it still on the next day, or do you have to repeat this for some days with one section?

I don't really have to play several repetitions in my mind because as soon as I am able to do so, I have already memorized it! Of course it can be helpful to reinforce it a bit more by playing it several times in my head. However, there is no guarantee that I might remember it later on. This is no problem because if I actually do forget it, I can just further reinforce my memory on it. I usually never get any more trouble after that.

[dorfmouse]

Alcatus, using your method are you able to go straight to hands together from memory, or do you have to repeat the procedure bit by bit HT?

[casparma]

I have similar problem as dorfmouse does....

Alcatus's method does help me memorize but HS.

My mind can only visualise playing on one hand, and completely neglect the other.


I guess there's something tricky on how our mind works...

Please some one gives an advice on how to metally play HT.



Thanks

[alcatus]

Alcatus, using your method are you able to go straight to hands together from memory, or do you have to repeat the procedure bit by bit HT?

I have similar problem as dorfmouse does....

Alcatus's method does help me memorize but HS.

My mind can only visualise playing on one hand, and completely neglect the other.


I guess there's something tricky on how our mind works...

Please some one gives an advice on how to metally play HT.



Thanks

No, it is impossible for me to immediately start playing HT mentally after I have only memorized HS.
I must apply the same method for HT play. I will just memorize HT play bar-by-bar like I did HS. For me, it is a bit more challenging to learn HT mentally, but it does happen. However, I believe that if I have learned to play HS well, mentally, it will be a bit easier to learn it HT.
If I run into something so difficult to learn to play mentally HT, I can just simplify it by dividing the segment to even smaller ones. Let's say 2 note segments of a whole bar consisting of 10 notes. I will just slowly play the first 2 note segment HT and then play it in my head. If I can do this, it is memorized. Now I will slowly play the next 2 note segment and then play it mentally, just like I did with the first segment. After I have these two segments memorized, I will connect them.
So far I have learned to mentally play 4 notes of the whole bar, HT. I will just repeat this procedure until I am able to play all 10 notes mentally, HT.

I would like to give credit to Chang because he came up with the methods I have described above, not me. Everything I personally know about memorizing is learned completely from Chang's book. I suggest you read section III.6.l of the book. It has a step-by-step tour on how to memorize Bach's Invention #8, if you are interested.

[dorfmouse]

Thank you!

[lostinidlewonder]

The reason why it is important to be able to play a piece in your mind before trying to play it on the piano is two fold. Firstly if you know what it should sound like and you make an error you can immediately correct yourself because you can HEAR the error not observe it from the sheetmusic or from looking at the finger. In a piece that we learn playing a G instead of an F, the postion is not that much difference but the sound has a huge difference. So using the sound to guide our playing of course will make our venture to memorise/learn the piece a lot faster.

Secondly it is important to have a concept of what the music sounds like from within your head so that when you actually play these sounds prompt what you must do at the keys. This is playing with the ear and the highest level of piano playing (muscular memory is the second and conscious observation (sight reading) is the third). Still I have a long way to play everything that I hear from within without any repetitive practice sessions, but I really think that this skill can be developed as we refine how to hear music from within to how that effects what we do at the keyboard.