Maintaining repertoire

[dabbler]

I'd be interested to hear if people have any specific strategies to maintain their repertoire, or just keep playing pieces randomly from their repertoire in order not to forget. For me -- unfortunately -- without doing anything actively, I cannot play pieces from memory after a short time, except for some that I've been playing for years, so probably these might have entered some kind of long-term memory. Are you able to keep all pieces in memory on which you worked seriously for a while? Or do most pieces fall back to a state where you would need some additional work again to be able to perform them well?

[franzliszt2]

I tend to remember pieces that I have studied with my teacher quite well, but obviously if I havn't played them for a while, I have to spend a little time revising them. I never maintain a repertoire as I am usually working on stuff which keeps me busy. I am confident that I could revise most things I have done within a week and perform them if I ever needed to.

[tiasjoy]

I try and end every practise session with a few pieces I already know and love.  If I don't, I suddenly get 'rusty'.

[allthumbs]

I have all my pieces listed in a monthly spreadsheet. I check them off and try to play them once a week if possible.

Without this method, I have found that I've neglected pieces or even forgot about them altogether.

If I don't have a lot of time, I'll just work on keeping up/improving the sticking points in any of the pieces. I can get in a lot of quality practice then and the next time I play the entire piece, I see an improvement overall.


Cheers,

allthumbs

[ramseytheii]

I have all my pieces listed in a monthly spreadsheet. I check them off and try to play them once a week if possible.

Without this method, I have found that I've neglected pieces or even forgot about them altogether.

If I don't have a lot of time, I'll just work on keeping up/improving the sticking points in any of the pieces. I can get in a lot of quality practice then and the next time I play the entire piece, I see an improvement overall.


Cheers,

allthumbs

That's interesting!  I often try and earmark the hardest, or at least most problematic points of any piece and then even if you don't have time to run through the whole thing, you can hit that spot.
Though  - it is often the easier parts you don't remember.

Lots of people say that when you get older your memory goes.  I think this is partly not true.  It may be more accurate to say, when you are young your memory works by itself.  The older you get, the more creative you have to become, and not rely on automatic memorization.  Look at passages from all different angles: physical, harmonic, visual, structural, emotional.  Things which are distinct are easy to remember - fine some way to define things distinctly.

But to answer your questino more specifically, when I learn pieces, I think, "where will this fit in a program."  It may be good as an opening group, or as a major piece to close the first half, or the second, or a substantial work that is still not the focus of the program.  I group my repertoire like this, and when I make programs, I just substitute this for that, in the same category.  You can open with Scarlatti sonatas, or Bach Toccata & Fugue, or I don't know, Beethoven pathetique.  That way the pieces in your repertoire can be cycled through efficiently.  Never give in to what appears to be bad memory, or easy memory loss - find a way to work with your memory, rather than expecting it to do all the work for you.

Walter Ramsey