Memorising Note's

[paio135]

I'm sure you can guess how basic a level i'm at by the topic...

I'm currently teaching myself to read / play piano, and was just wondering if there were any particular trap door's around the area of memorising notes.

I sometime's feel as though i'm playing more from memory than i am actually reading the piece.

But this may be a perfectly normal way to start, i don't know.

cheers

[landru]

I don't know if there are "trap doors" so to speak about memorizing - but there are some things to watch out for.

The first is that you are right - when you are getting familiar with a piece, your memory is starting to firm up and sight reading becomes less important. This brings up the notion of the different kinds of memory involved when we play piano. Do a search on Piano Street on muscle memory to get a lot of discussions of this.

In a nutshell, we remember pieces (or bits of pieces at times) in different ways. One way is through the muscles - your fingers seem to head to the keys before you are aware of them doing it - this is muscle memory. Another way is visual - we remember how the notes look on the page or the pattern of the keys on the keyboard as we play the piece. A third way is musical or intellectual - this comes with musical maturity. In this memory, we remember the musical structures of the piece, not just the notes. These could be the harmonic progressions, or repetitive patterns. And finally (for my memory anyway!) there is audio memory - we remember how the piece sounds and the brain can direct the fingers that way.

All of these can be used when playing the piano - the key is not to depend on only one way of memorizing because then we are liable to get lost. For instance if we only relied on visual memory and use different fingerings and hand motions, then we don't get the advantages of muscle memory. And vice-versa, if we only have muscle memory then we can quickly lose our place if we don't have a concept of the musical structure of the piece.

[Bob]

Use flashcards or make your own worksheets so you get all the notes.  Work on groups so you're not trying to learn them all at once if you want too.

And work on pieces using the same notes. 

I wouldn't worry that you're memorizing the music.  I don't think that's a problem.

[solstyce]

Well, I repeat parts so many times when i learn a song its hard for me to forget it. However, I occasionally have to go back and check out certain parts, but for me, memorizing comes pretty natural.

[reiyza]

How do you people memorize a song... Do you just remember the notes on the piece? or as stated above... muscle memory?.. I previously memorized 8 pieces back then.. then I decided to play them now.. and guess what! I Forgot them all! tough luck!!

[keyboardclass]

To memorize effortlessly (just about) you need to know harmony (and some counterpoint).  You then see the piece from a very different angle, kinda like - 'I know what he's doing here!'

[soundthumb]

When you first start out, training your fingers to hit the right keys is the hardest thing you are doing, so of course you will have the notes memorized before you get your fingers trained.  Don't worry about it.  As time goes by you build up a set of finger motions you have learned well enough that you can play them before the music is memorized. From a simplistic point of view, that is a large part of what it means to learn to play.