How to keep a piece fresh and not memorize it?

[Bob]

The problem:  Playing a piece so much you don't have to think about it.  Then when you're performing, things are different and you might start thinking or might start reading the music if you're using music.

Is there a way to avoid this?

I'm thinking...
Practice reading more, so if I do read during the performance I can read the music, reading music while performing, not just glancing at the page while performing.  I'm not memorizing this stuff.  It's not that kind of performance, and that still won't solve this issue.

Or, analyze the music enough so it's still in the mind (or at least in larger chunks) rather than let the mind wander off while it gets engrained in the fingers.

Any more ideas?

[zheer]

Or, analyze the music enough so it's still in the mind (or at least in larger chunks) rather than let the mind wander off while it gets engrained in the fingers.

Any more ideas?

  That's the one, usually a good teacher makes you aware of how the music was constructed, so playing is never automatic or a mechanical thing. This we need to learn it has nothing to do with musicality.

[jgallag]

I agree with zheer, but it seems the things you're worried about have to do with performance anxiety. After all, you wouldn't really be doubting yourself if you weren't performing, would you?

Solution: Practice performing. You have family and friends, and now they are your guinea pigs. People may think it's showing off, but that doesn't matter. When a piece is ready, and sometimes even before, you need to start sharing it with people. Everyone. They say you can't really perform a piece to the best of your abilities until you've performed it at least three times. It's great to practice theory, movements, interpretation, whatever, but you must also practice performing if you want to get good at it.

[Bob]

It's not performance anxiety.  More of a concern about messing up because my mind will wander off the piece... becaues the piece has gotten boring or that my fingers have it engrain and I don't have to think about it anymore, to the point where if I do think about is, esp with more awareness during a performance, I'm liable to mess it up.  Maybe I wouldn't be able to read the music while performing because I haven't been reading the music while practicing.  I don't have to read if the fingers know it.

[iroveashe]

Don't know if you've read it but Bernhard has talked about muscle memory and how it needs to be backed up by other sorts of memory, and how you can achieve that with slow practice (really slow, like staying for 10 seconds on each note). The problem with reading at performances is that you simply can't sight-read some pieces at speed, unless you're extremely good at reading, and I don't think it's a solution to the problem, since you wouldn't know the best way to physically play every passage if you're figuring out the movements on the spot, unless you have really good technique; so until you get both of those, I think the most practical solution is to get to know the pieces inside out, so you don't have to rely on muscle memory alone.