Mental play, memorizing away from the piano, and meaning

[mosis]

Hello friends. I've not been here for a while, and I can see that many of the most knowledgeable and helpful contributors have left this place quite some time ago.

Anyway, I bring a very specific question about mental practice and memorizing away from the piano.

I want to learn Chopin's Prelude in E minor, op. 28 no. 4. Now, this is a piece of ridiculous (technical) simplicity. I can sight read it perfectly, but I want to try to learn it completely away from the piano first. I've just started working on this approach after not playing piano seriously for a long time.

I can recognize patterns/memorize the sound of the piece quite well. However, I have difficulty memorizing certain sections. For example, the 8th measure has a very wide (somewhat random) melody, and other than a brute force "memorize each and every single note" approach, I do not know a more efficient way to go about doing this.

Likewise, with the chords in the left hand. These chords do not make sense to me. I don't know much harmony at all, and this is a harmonically challenging piece (jazz chords, anyone?) as it is, so I'm having a brutal time memorizing the left hand accompaniment. I've basically broken it down to memorizing which fingers move when the chord changes, without much meaning attached to them. I can identify the chords by name, but I don't really know why they're moving the way they are. Beating this into my head is taking a long time, and while at the end of the day I have it, it's not as secure as I'd like it to be.

In comparison, I'm learning Bach's C major invention using Bernhard's outline, and I have no problem with the memory. I can play it at light speed in my head, I can call out the motifs/harmonic changes as I play, I can play it slowly, quickly, blind, and deaf, and it is solid. I have a hundred and one different associations. I can write out the whole score, write it backwards, play each hand separately and sing the other hand. The mental practice approach has worked quite well for this piece.

The Chopin, on the other hand, is not going so well.

So, does anyone have any advice on how to learn seemingly random melodic lines and harmonic progressions one doesn't understand? The benefits of mental practice are truly incredible, but it is exhausting (in a different sense) and difficult to do if you don't know how to go about doing it. Nonetheless, I will persevere!

[robertp]

There's no one approach which works for everyone, and I've found I vary my approaches depending on the texture of the piece. For example, 'whiles back when I was having problems memorizing the JSB C major Sinfonia, I found moving RH up and octave and LH down an octave worked wonders. But JSB isn't your issue  .

As for your particular piece. People often say that analyzing the harmonies helps. There are times when that's been true for me, but it isn't a silver projectile. More regularly I make up silly little mnemonics or non-harmonic analysis type stuff like "middle voice ascends chromatically for this bar." Sounds stupid, but works for me.

More regularly, I split things apart. Abby Whiteside's idea of "outlining" is helpful. Learn the first and the third beat for a stretch. Then put in the second and fourth beats (for 4/4 time, obviously). Or in a four-note chord, learn the inner two voices (this is also very helpful in just getting it into your hands for accuracy and speed). Then go through and learn the outer two voices.

Above all, don't just start at the beginning -- in fact, save it for later. Take a place in the middle, and work backwards and forwards. And backwards from the end. Or if there are a couple of bars that you already have down cold, work outwards from there.

You have to slice and dice, both the music and the methods. And keep making up new ways to do it.

[lagin]

For random melody notes I sometimes make a sentence.  For example, say a melody went G D E Bb A F G (I have no idea what that would sound like btw, I'm just making something up).  I'd do something like Go Down Early Before Another Fellow Gets it.  Then I'd just have to remember the flat. 

Also, I would write in the score all the fingerings except where it's obvious, like in a chord.  This isn't cheating, and I still learn the notes.  I do this so that I don't change each time - so I can be consistent.  Then while my mind is learning the notes, my hand is learning the fingerings.  Just like you wouldn't want to keep playing wrong notes and practicing mistakes, you wouldn't want to keep using different fingering because it confuses your hands!  Then I would play on a table top, the fingers I would use on each of those melody notes while I say them out loud.  So while I'm saying Go Down Early Before Another Fellow Gets it, I would be playing 1, reach a bit, 2, 3, reach a bit, 5, 4, 2, 3, or whatever I decided on.  Then I would do it with my eyes closed and try to "see" the piano in my mind while I say and finger it. 

Something else you can do while you walk your dog or do the dishes or whatever is imagine the score in your mind and follow it along (where it gets thicker, just do one hand at a time), and "see" it.  When you can't "see" what comes next, look at the score and memorize that spot some more. 

P.S. I would also seriously recommend you taking some basic harmony lessons if you want to make a habit of doing this lots because they help TONS.  Then your memorizing becomes something like "Tonic chord to the third beat, then switches to the dominant key, and cadences ii to V to I (or even more simply put, I I V ii V I)."  It sounds like another language, but once you get the hang of the basics it makes memorizing so much faster!  The alternative of what I just typed would be CEGC CEGC GBDG D to G to C, which seems like a lot more work of memorizing individual notes which you mentioned you wanted to avoid.

[nightingale11]

have a look here:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,4954.msg46883.html
(mental practice)

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,10402.msg107930.html#msg107930
(about the Chopin prelude)

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,4016.msg36601.html
(About the Chopin prelude)

this piece is built upon voice leading (i.e. doing an harmonic analysis on this piece is quite useless)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_leading

most links and answers to questions is in here:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,5767.msg56133.html#msg56133
(huge collection of links)

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,9159.msg92755.html#msg92755
(m1469s index of the forum)

[lagin]

this piece is built upon voice leading (i.e. doing an harmonic analysis on this piece is quite useless)

I'd have to double check to make sure that I'm thinking of the same prelude that we're talking about here, but usually, unless it's later 20th century or impressionistic, or other such music, I've never yet found harmonic analysis to be useless.  Then again, this is coming from a student of a harmony teacher who happens to teach piano equally well, so I'm very "pro analysis."  Even if we (meaning me and my teacher) weren't using it to memorize, we'ld still use it to see which harmonies should be brought out and savored in the piece and to understand why they sound the way they do.   It's how I was taught to decide where to put the dynamics in even when I'm not at the piano (that and note direction, too, of course).   So no dissing the analysis   

[mosis]

nightingale, thank you so much for linking me to Bernhard's harmonic analysis of the piece. This will make learning the prelude a breeze.