How do you memorize

[mojohk]

I really need tips on memorizing.  A teacher once told me the only sure way for anyone to remember a piece was to play it ten times a day continuously without mistakes.  If there were any, one would have to begin from number one again.  I memorize by hearing the music in my head, feeling the exact position of my hands on the keyboard, and seeing which keys to play.  Fingerings are very important to me--if I forget a couple, I'm lost.  I play automatically most of the time, and I have a hunch it's not the best way.  Some theory background, singing out loud, or photographic memory would help, but I have very little of any of them...Help!  

[bethie]

Focus on memorizing in sections. Don't worry about mistakes too much unless they are the same ones. Refer back to your music once in a while to make sure you aren't memorizing it wrong. If you get stuck at  particular sections, focus on those the most. Try memorizing the last line of the piece, then the next last line, etc... working backwards.

[mojohk]

Dear Bethie
Thanks for your input.  I guess I should have made it clearer--memorizing is fine at home, but when I need to perform, I get memory blanks.   When it is THE moment to play a piece perfectly, I tend to focus so much that I start questioning every one of my actions, and I get no answers since I have memorized it and practiced it automatically.  Also, about the backwards memorizing--how/why does it work?

[robert_henry]

Mojohkm,

I have struggled with the EXACT problem.  The solution was and is simple.  The problem is not with your memory, but rather your focus, specifically your LACK of focus during your preparation.  For years I played on "auto" and the past couple years of my life have been a painful but rewarding transition from that kind of uninvolved playing to one where I am thinking about EVERYTHING at all times.  Many times, I would practice and not look at my hands, then when it came time to perform, I would look at them and be like"where does my right hand go now?"  Believe me, I've had enough of that.


I think the turning point was when I started STUDYING the recordings of Radu Lupu,  Pogorelich, and others for hours at a sitting, trying to understand their concentration and control.  I realized that my kind of automatic playing and practicing wasn't going to cut it.  When I started my transformation, sometimes I would sit and practice a single triad for two and three hours at a sitting until I heard it and controlled it to a fine degree.  Another thing that contributed to my success with this issue was playing literature that required more detailed listening and control, like Mozart.  

Ours is not an easy problem to fix.  You are going to have to really think about what you want in a practice session.  Move beyond learning the notes and believe it or not, move beyond putting emotion into your music.  Those two things need to be (a) given.  You need to take a step outside of the music for a moment and learn what you are doing with your body.  I remember a story my former teacher told me of a pianist who was a prodigy in his youth and could do amazing things, but one day in his 20's, he looked at his hands and said to himself, "How am I doing all this?!"  He started analyzing every move he made until unfortunately he couldn't play anymore.  He had been playing on auto for so long that when he became "self-aware" it paralyzed him.  I can't remember who the pianist was, but it would have been me had I not persevered these past couple years.  I have thought a great deal about this subject, and I even considered counseling to help me clear my mind and focus during my practice.  That was unneeded, but the work I've done was necessary.  As an example of the type of work I'm talking about, about a year and a half ago I learned the 2 part-inventions, which of course seemed like a huge step back, but playing something that "easy" can give you a lot of time and space to think about your mechanism and pianistic control.  I chose to work on those pieces because of the technical freedom they allow.

I would say I'm maybe 75% percent past this now, but I also know that it can be a good thing sometimes too.  There is no way I could play some of those Godowsky things and think about the 20 things he requires at the same time, so to play them I have to just let my hands run free.  Playing on auto can sometimes produce some really exciting playing, but it is nice to have the ability to rein my mind in.  My former teacher told me that the main thing I needed to do was to slow down.  She didn't mean speed, she meant am I hearing everything and am I AWARE of what I am doing at all times.

The questioning my actions thing is familiar too.  I've come to the conclusion that any place that I have questioned my hands or my interpretation is a place that I have taken for granted in the practice room.  It could even be the place that I've worked on the most.  Maybe it got so comfortable to play that I got in the habit of daydreaming during that part.  Bottom line is, have a plan for everything.  You didn't mention this, but I bet that you have a problem beginning a piece too.  You get out on stage and sit there not knowing how to begin; even the silence makes you uncomfortable.  That feeling comes from not preparing right also, from not having a plan for even the first note.  In my music, FOR EVERY PIECE, I have instructions to myself on how to physically begin the music.  In other words, I have a plan.  I'm not just hoping that things will turn out alright by the third measure.  Then I take that plan and practice beginning the piece.  As you begin to work in this kind of detail, you might think that it's ok not to have a plan for the easy passages.  It's not.  A plan for every note.  Concentration on every note, every finger, your back, wrist, foot, arms, the space and resonance of the hall, awareness of even the creaking of the bench as you move.

I'm sure that you will conquer your mind, but it will take some time.  Work hard at this.  

Robert Henry
https://www.roberthenry.org

[mozartean]

I wonder how many pianists memorise a piece by just the process of practising it. For me, I find that by the time I have learned the notes, I have already developed the `finger memory' required for memorising the piece. In other words, I do not take a special concerted effort to memorise the piece after learning it - the memory process is ingrained in the learning process. I think that memory that is acquired in this manner tends to stay longer.

I also find that pieces that have been memorised in my teens tend to stick on longer than pieces memorised later on in life.

I know of friends who memorise by `visual' input. They `photograph' the score in their minds and play the music from their photographic memory. I feel that this kind of memory, while it may work for some, may not be as permanent as `finger memory'. There is a limit to the brain's capacity for conscious memory and memory can be lost by natural decay.

What are your views? I am unable to comment on `visual' memory because I do not know how to use it.

[rmc7777]

Robert,

I agree completely with your analysis on how to memorize.  The key points are focus and concentration.  For a long time I struggled with memorization and had a difficult time commiting pieces to memory.  Then I read several books written by well known concert pianists.  In particular "Piano Playing" by Josef Hofmann, "Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing" by Josef Lhevinne, and "Great Pianists on Piano Playing" by James Cooke.  I highly recommend these books for any serious pianist.  In every case these great artists confirmed what  Robert said in his message.  When practicing and performing you must have complete, utter focus and concentration on what you are doing.  LISTEN carefully to every single note, pay attention to where your fingers, hands, arm, and entire body are at all times, don't let your mind wander, and think hard about the music.  For me this kind of concentration usually means that I can practice "at one sitting" for no more than about an hour.  Then I have to take a break for sufficient time for my mind and body to relax, rejuvenate, and prepare for another round of intense concentration.  Hoffmann, Lhevinne, and many others also recommend this style of practice.  Also, try memorizing something almost every day.  By doing this memorizing becomes a habit - your mind becomes accostomed to memorizing.  These things have made a dramatic improvement in my ability to remember music.

Robert also makes a very good point about how to begin a piece.  I have an excellent piano instructor.  When he prepares me for performance he asks me to spend extra time on the very opening movement - how to walk to the piano, how to sit down, how to prepare for playing, how to play the first few notes, and so forth.  This part of the performance is not left to chance.  You will be nervous and having a plan as Robert says is very important.  My instructor will have me start over and over again until I know what I will do just before and during the opening bars.  This really helps.

Good luck on memorizing.

[franklin]

when im memorizing a song ill buy a cd and listen to it all the time.  I think it helps a lot.  Its even more productive if you think about the keys you would be playing while listening.  I know it sounds funny but it works for me.

[rmc7777]

There is another aspect of memorization that I'd like to bring up.  It reinforces some of the comments by Robert Henry, and is based upon my instructor's directions and the material in books written by Lhevinne, Giesking, Hoffmann, and others.  I'll use Beethoven's Sonata #15 , Op. 28, in D-major, the 'Pastorale' sonata, as an example.  

For the past 6 months or so I've been learning and memorizing the sonata, to bring it to performance level.  At this point I can play the entire sonata by memory, I can start anywhere in the piece that I like, I can play many passages backwards and forwards (this is a good exercise), I can play the piece staccato, legato, forte, piano, with and without pedal, and almost any other way you can imagine.  I can play it in my sleep!!  My instructor will often sit me down at the piano, pick a bar from somewhere in the sonata, and say 'play it'.  If you can do this then you have really memorized the piece.  

Now, I don't have a photographic memory and there is no magic here.  One thing that I do is analyze the piece at the piano and away from the piano.  First, what key is it in at the start (D-major) and where are the major key changes? I note these in the score.  What meter is each movement in and are there any changes?  I note these in the score.  What are the harmonic relationships in the piece (tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc.).  I also note these in the score.  What is the larger structure of the piece?  AABA, ABA, etc.

Here are some examples:  

1) The first movement starts in D-major.  So I've been practicing the D-major scale like mad - arpeggios, broken octaves, rhythms, etc.  This really helps with fingering and fixes the D-major scale in your mind.  The first note of the sonata is low D.  You might forget this if you're nervous on stage!  But if you remember 'This sonata is in D-major' that low D note springs to mind.  

2) The dominant of D-major is A-major.  There are numerous points in the sonata where it modulates to A-major.  For example, in bar 129 of the first movement.  Every time I reach this point in the piece I think to myself 'We're now in A-major' and the A-major scale, fingerings, etc. come to mind.  There are several bars of A-major chords and their inversions.  If I forget where I am at this point, the A-major scale and its diatonic chords and inversions come to mind, which helps me remember these bars.

3) The subdominant of D-major is G-major.  At bar 165 in the first movement there is a modulation to G-major.  Every time I play the preceeding four bars I think to myself 'Here comes G-major, the subdominant of D'.  Sometimes, even though I've played this piece hundreds of times now, my finger memory fails me.  I reach this point in the sonata and cannot quickly remember where my fingers should go.  Just tired or nervous I guess.  However, instantly the thought of 'G-major subdominant of D' comes to mind and I recover and play just fine.

4) Beginning at bar 217 of the first movement it modulates to (mostly) F-sharp major (and minor) and stays there for about 36 bars.  Whenever I play this part I think 'This is in F-sharp major (minor)'.  So even if my finger memory fails, I think instead about F-sharp scales and chords.  After a half-bar or so my finger memory returns and everything is OK.  

5) The first movement of this sonata is in AABA form.  The exposition (A) ends around bar 161, the development (B) is in bars 162 - 266, and the recapitulation is the remaining bars.  Knowing this larger structure gives me a broad mental picture of the piece.  This also helps with memorization because you always know where you are in the sonata relative to other sections.

6) I analyzed the second, third, and fourth movements in the same way - in great detail.  It really helps with memorization.

Finally, analyzing a piece like this is really enjoyable.  It gives you a deeper understanding of how the composer constructed music and how all the parts relate to one another.   Hope this helps some of you with memorization.

[phillipfawcett]

Knowledge of theory is crucial.  You must have a good understanding of the harmony, chord patterns and structure of the piece.  Your point about visualizing the keys is excellent and u should build on this by visualizing and reckognizing the chord clusters, arpeggios etc in the piece.  eg is it a g major chord? .. E 2nd inversion? .. f minor? ..  diminished chord? .. C7? .. and recognise scale patterns.
Do you know all 24 major and minor scales and arpeggios by heart in all their inversions, 3rds, in double 3rds, in 6ths, in octaves etc?  I beleive these are the foundation for developing a 'concept' memory of music.
Ultimately the ideal is to be able to sit away from a piano, close your eyes and visualize every single key you will be playing in the piece!  U can't do this without understanding harmony and being able to think in 'clusters'.
This is 'conscious' memory and u r correct ..it is not a good idea to rely on automatic repetition etc which is 'unconscious' and can fail u in the nerves of performance!

[ludwig]

I actually find it pretty effective to do quality practice as many times as I could to memorise. Of course there are pointers previously stated which are very good advices.

don't forget, there's always a relationship between practicing at home and performing. Practice your pieces, correct your mistakes, and then just as you are about to finish practice, treat it like a performance and play the piece once.

 You could try to practice a piece, and just stop abruptly, pick a random place and start from there, this helps you to get familiarised with all the piece's bits. Also you should always memorise in sections. Get some performing experience. Get some friends and have a small concert at your house, or be involved in other musical ensembles so you don't get too nervous when you're on stage by yourself.

my 2 cents. hope it helps.

[starpianist]

There have only been a few times in my life when I have actually tried to memorize a piece.
I find when you practice the song enough, the first time you memorize a piece, it is easier than just trying to memorize a piece. I'm not saying that it will come naturally; it will need practice.   
:-/

[nicco]

that post by robert henry was really great.

[imapnotchr]

this has essentially already been stated - but, if you rely on your fingers to automatically play for you, you will be in serious trouble in performance.  The best way is to totally analyze the piece, chord by chord, arpeggio by arpeggio.  What key are you in? How does the next chord relate to what key you are in?  what inversion, etc.  also, try memorizing as you are learning it!

[thalbergmad]

I have forgotten how i memorize.

Thal

[lostinidlewonder]

Good points by all, heres how memorisation works for me, and what to try to teach my students.

The feeling we get when playing a Cmajor (CEGC) is much different when we play a Cminor diminished (CEbGbC) for instance. We can sense the center of our hand move when we play the white EG and then change to the EbGb when playing Cmajor to Cminor diminished. This movement between the two chords to a real beginner might feel arkward at first but eventually it will become easy, to those with a little experience it is no problems.

This highlights a concept of muscular memorisation , where our brain memorises a physical action and can produce the movement without conscious effort. This concept is applicable to many things in our lives, eating with a knife and fork for instance or chopsticks, driving a car, writing etc. In piano we are constantly adding physical movements to our muscular memory banks inside our brains. It is how hundereds of thousands of individual notes might be played by memory by a concert pianist and how huge amounts of musical data can be memorised and absorbed by one movement of our hands.

"Movement groups" are basically groups of notes in a piece which can be played wthout our hands having to determine a new centre. I wouldn't say that they are groups of notes where our hand do not have to move (although most of the time this is the case) because  large arpeggio's can be considered a single movement group (such as Chopin Etude Op10 no1) but our hand continually moves when we play this.

When practicing pieces we should always learn movement groups at a time. Observing when our hands find a new centre, acknowledging it, feeling what that change causes adds to our muscular memory banks. Repetition on these cause faster improvement than playing big chunks of music with no observation of when our centre moves. It is good to make a habit to mark all of this on our score for future refference.

Sound Memorisation is difficult to explain without mentioning the memorisation processes which lead to it. The way in which our brain takes in information is mysterious, there is no way a brain surgeon could point out to you and say, here is a bit of your brain that is used for your memory of your name. The brain stores our memorised throughout itself, in many places, and it is when we draw all these points together that we create the memory.

The memorisation process in music is as such, Conscious memorisation moves to Muscular memorisation which moves to Sound Memorisation. Conscious memorisation is where we play a passage of music by observing our physical movements at the piano with consious statements, such as, we must do a turn here on the A then play A major scale down to the C#, then back back up to the starting point at A. These conscious statements should not be written down because it is an extremely inefficient way to memorise our music, but we should keep it in the back of our heads while we practice and be able to thrust it into full conscious observation if required (if we forget our notes). Consious memorisation is aided with musical theory.

If you can consiously observe a piece by observing its chord/scale changes, observing general compositional devices used, observe general pattern in your music (things you have seen in other pieces) etc, these all will improve our conscious memorisation. Sight readers are excellent conscious memorisers, when they read their notes on the sheet music they are not reading every single dot, instead they read only a very few and use theory to fill in the gaps.

Muscular memorisation is a more advanced stage of musical memorisation, it is where we start to forget about the individual notes of a group of notes and learn to play the string of notes with one movement. When I say one movement I mean one overall movement, eating with a knife and fork has many movements (like the knuckles bending to grip the knife, the forearm moving side to side to cut etc,  but overall there is one movement to knife/fork useage. Things get too complicated if we try to see every single bit of detail to our movement, and we realise it is not important to consciously observe everything to produce an action. Some people cannot break away from conscious memory, they feel they need to observe every single note which needs to be played if they play it but this is not the case, not unless you do this even when you eat with cutlery. People who are oblivious to muscular memorisation at the piano are not making that connection between muscular memorised actions you already have (like riding a bike) and how to apply that to the piano. Why is it you can eat with a knife and fork without thinking about how to use them? It is because of a lot of SUCCESSFUL repetitions. The difficult thing with piano is that we do not sometimes know if we have been sucessful with our repetitions, thus this insecurity delays or removes muscular memorisation altogether. Musular memorisation is again improved and studied by working on Movement Groups and feeling the centre of gravity of our hands while we play.

Sound memorisation thus is a more advanced utilisation of Muscular memorisation. Where muscular memorisation efficiently places many consciously memorised elements into a singular movement, sound memorisation takes many singlular movements and memorises them in the overall sound of a peice. What I mean is that we use the sound in our heads to cue what our hands has to do! I think of it as a CD player inside our heads and our hands are the speakers. I find that muscular memorisation might control the notes but the expression, when to get louder, softer, faster, slower, we control this with our ears. The sound memory within our heads. People who are deaf have this internal sound memory but find it hard to perform because they cannot analyse if the sound they produce is like what they are hearing from within!

This all sounds fancy but it still won't make you any better at the piano. Consistient practice, determination and above all a personal interest in the music you learn gets you somewhere. However it is useful to understand a logical, measurable method to guide your musical development and see how you should focus your efforts to refine your techniqe.

[invictious]

I don't try to intentionally memorize piece, it just occurs naturally, and it does help if you are synaesthetic 

Just practice, it will occure naturally, if you are ina rush, practice more.

[opus10no2]

Aside from the obvious - working in digestible sections, having aural familiarity with how it should sound, and general repetitious familiarity, the most important factor in memorization is extremely simple -

Our brains are lazy and work on a needs-must basis

after  a level of familiarity is aquired with the physical motions and musical content of a pieces, simply force your brain to memorize.

Choose a section, read through and repeat a few times, then do the most important thing, quickly take the sheet away and play it from SHORT TERM memory, then repeat it from your memory, dont go away and let it slip, repeat it from the motions that are memorized inside of you, and after some time, the miracle will happen and you will have instilled in your permanent memory.

then do this with another section, but always *remember* to 'keep up' the previous section, finally link them all up, and its done.

Then all you have to do is spend 70 years developing the musical maturity to truly make it come to life, which will irnonically occur just as you are about to die, Delightful .

[pianistimo]

if i've been practicing six months for 2-3 or four hours per day - the muscular memory combines with the aural memory - and basic theoretical memory (especially the form of a piece and the chords involved in each section/key).  but, there is another problem as you get older.  the sudden 'oops.  what comes next?  i forgot.'  i had to laugh at thal's response because unless you are practicing consistently eVERY day - you have these mind boggling break downs that require a need to have certain spots to resume playing from.  otherwise  - you have the 'loop.'    an endless piece of music.  so, i usually pick at least one spot per page to resume playing from.  better yet, two.  and, as you get more proficient at the piece, four to five.  we don't want to be skipping whole pages after playing 30 years.  it just looks bad.  skipping a measure or a few notes might look better.  have you ever had a fudge measure.  you just pray - 'oh, dear God, please help these notes to sound good.'  if you play jazz, you're all set.

also, after i practice at night - i turn all the lights off and play in the dark.  if i can't remember a section - i squint - but refuse to turn the lights on.  that has helped me a lot lately.  it has also caused partial blindness.

[infectedmushroom]

I don't really know how to explain the way I memorize pieces. It's something wich is very easy for me to do and probably my strongest point (my weakest point is sightreading though, I just can't do that).

To memorize a piece, I think watching your fingers work and hear what kinda sound "they" make is the most important thing.

[penguinlover]

I think that analysing the piece is crutial. Also, you have to use the same fingering all the time, if you don't, your brain gets confused.  I try the seven time method, playing it perfectly seven times in a row, then stopping.  Then I go on to another section.  This has helped me so much!  I learn the piece faster, and memorize it faster too.  Also, noting the similarities in passages and why they are different from each other helps.

I gave up trying the memorize the Chopin Valse in C minor.  I can play it, and I have the right hand memorized, but when I noticed that the LH changed slightly every time the theme was repeated, I thought, "What the heck!.  I'm never going to perform this thing anyway.  I will play by request, with music!"

[bradley]

This is one thing i do extremely well... 

It's simple: there are 4 types of memory involved in piano playing:
structural (analytical), muscular, audio and visual

Structural involves knowing the piece in terms of its structure; what form it is, the key at a given moment, chord progressions etc. This is very important and comes into play when your muscular memory fails you.

Musucular involves 'finger memory' (although this is actually a reflex thing, not a muscular thing, ie it involves your nervous system). This comes through sheer repetetion

Audio is knowing what the music sounds like (obviously), and being able to reproduce it. This means knowing EACH AND EVERY STRAND of the music, not just the given picture.

Visual is knowing what the music LOOKS like (ie some kind of photographic memory)



An important thing to do is to practice each strand of the music (eg a voice in a fugue) with ONE FINGER, so that you know exactly what the notes are, and not realying on your muscle memory. this is crucial.

Hope this helps   

Bradley

[gruffalo]

Robert Henry
https://www.roberthenry.org

ok, this might be a little late seeing as i havent seen you on the forum since i have been here, but DUDE YOU ARE AMAZING. i've just listened to your performances and they are fantastic.

Gruff

[lostinidlewonder]

Visual is knowing what the music LOOKS like (ie some kind of photographic memory)

I don't believe visual plays a big role in music memorisation, simply because I have seen brilliant blind musicians play and they have never seen their instrument with their eyes. Sight can always be replaces with sound and touch.

[netzow]

Mojohkm,

I have struggled with the EXACT problem.  The solution was and is simple.  The problem is not with your memory, but rather your focus, specifically your LACK of focus during your preparation.  For years I played on "auto" and the past couple years of my life have been a painful but rewarding transition from that kind of uninvolved playing to one where I am thinking about EVERYTHING at all times.  Many times, I would practice and not look at my hands, then when it came time to perform, I would look at them and be like"where does my right hand go now?"  Believe me, I've had enough of that.
 

I think the turning point was when I started STUDYING the recordings of Radu Lupu,  Pogorelich, and others for hours at a sitting, trying to understand their concentration and control.  I realized that my kind of automatic playing and practicing wasn't going to cut it.  When I started my transformation, sometimes I would sit and practice a single triad for two and three hours at a sitting until I heard it and controlled it to a fine degree.  Another thing that contributed to my success with this issue was playing literature that required more detailed listening and control, like Mozart.  

Ours is not an easy problem to fix.  You are going to have to really think about what you want in a practice session.  Move beyond learning the notes and believe it or not, move beyond putting emotion into your music.  Those two things need to be (a) given.  You need to take a step outside of the music for a moment and learn what you are doing with your body.  I remember a story my former teacher told me of a pianist who was a prodigy in his youth and could do amazing things, but one day in his 20's, he looked at his hands and said to himself, "How am I doing all this?!"  He started analyzing every move he made until unfortunately he couldn't play anymore.  He had been playing on auto for so long that when he became "self-aware" it paralyzed him.  I can't remember who the pianist was, but it would have been me had I not persevered these past couple years.  I have thought a great deal about this subject, and I even considered counseling to help me clear my mind and focus during my practice.  That was unneeded, but the work I've done was necessary.  As an example of the type of work I'm talking about, about a year and a half ago I learned the 2 part-inventions, which of course seemed like a huge step back, but playing something that "easy" can give you a lot of time and space to think about your mechanism and pianistic control.  I chose to work on those pieces because of the technical freedom they allow.

I would say I'm maybe 75% percent past this now, but I also know that it can be a good thing sometimes too.  There is no way I could play some of those Godowsky things and think about the 20 things he requires at the same time, so to play them I have to just let my hands run free.  Playing on auto can sometimes produce some really exciting playing, but it is nice to have the ability to rein my mind in.  My former teacher told me that the main thing I needed to do was to slow down.  She didn't mean speed, she meant am I hearing everything and am I AWARE of what I am doing at all times.

The questioning my actions thing is familiar too.  I've come to the conclusion that any place that I have questioned my hands or my interpretation is a place that I have taken for granted in the practice room.  It could even be the place that I've worked on the most.  Maybe it got so comfortable to play that I got in the habit of daydreaming during that part.  Bottom line is, have a plan for everything.  You didn't mention this, but I bet that you have a problem beginning a piece too.  You get out on stage and sit there not knowing how to begin; even the silence makes you uncomfortable.  That feeling comes from not preparing right also, from not having a plan for even the first note.  In my music, FOR EVERY PIECE, I have instructions to myself on how to physically begin the music.  In other words, I have a plan.  I'm not just hoping that things will turn out alright by the third measure.  Then I take that plan and practice beginning the piece.  As you begin to work in this kind of detail, you might think that it's ok not to have a plan for the easy passages.  It's not.  A plan for every note.  Concentration on every note, every finger, your back, wrist, foot, arms, the space and resonance of the hall, awareness of even the creaking of the bench as you move.

I'm sure that you will conquer your mind, but it will take some time.  Work hard at this.  

Robert Henry
https://www.roberthenry.org

Great post! I have recently started having this problem of "playing on auto as well" your post is  very  encouraging. The problem started (no surprise) when I started increasing my practice time. I need to listen to myself more. You can practice for a long time before you hear what you are acutally playing. Sometimes your ears make you think you hear what you don't hear just because that is what you want to hear. Anyway great post thank you!

[leahcim]

I don't believe visual plays a big role in music memorisation, simply because I have seen brilliant blind musicians play and they have never seen their instrument with their eyes. Sight can always be replaces with sound and touch.

Whilst possibly true, you'd probably expect [and AIUI the evidence there is suggests that] someone who can't see uses more grey matter processing on their other senses instead.

Which partly explains why people who are blind often have those brilliant skills. Especially if they've been blind at a time when their minds have the elasticity to take full advantage [i.e from birth or when very young]

It seems unlikely that closing my eyes I am going to achieve the same. Moreso in some extreme cases of blind musicians [one was on TV here the other day, IQ less than Australia, but he could pick out every note of 20+ instruments playing chords and then play them on the piano amongst other feats] but it's a completely different mind. Our minds just don't work in the same way. You may as well scream at the fridge and hope to echo locate the milk because a bat can.

Which suggests, if you can see and always have, then you'd be as well to develop and use that ability when you can as well as touch / sound etc.

Especially if playing a cliff top performance. "...nonsense, Mr Wonder didn't faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggg  <thud>"

[leahcim]

ok, this might be a little late seeing as i havent seen you on the forum since i have been here, but DUDE YOU ARE AMAZING.

Indeed, if he'd known about pancakes Bernhard would have been worried

[franzliszt2]

I memorise LH, and usually get the RH hand by ear, but thats not safe. You need to memorise the harmony's, fingerings, and have a solid image of the structure of the piece and exactlky where you are.  Every memory lapse I've had, I realised was bacause I couldn't play both hands from memory seperatly.

[ramseytheii]

I don't believe visual plays a big role in music memorisation, simply because I have seen brilliant blind musicians play and they have never seen their instrument with their eyes. Sight can always be replaces with sound and touch.

But it's well known that when one of the senses becomes defunct, the others have to compensate and become more highly developed.  The visual has helped me out many a time, as in a piece I have memorized I can always picture where on the page I am playing, and that gives a great sense of security.  Another poster talked about looking at his hands during performance but not during practice, and how that screwed him up; here too note the importance of the visual.

Cherkassky incidentally used to practice everythign in slow motion, looking only at his hands and the keyboard, and finding the places where the hands joined together to create one melody, or where a divded hand could produce alternative voicings.  This is polyphonic practice, and I think it is the best way towards a secure memory.  I advise against paying too close attention to the body, although somebody said that was "beyond putting emotion," as if directing the body were the next step up.  When people start paying too much attention to the mvoements required to produce the sound, you get a performance that sounds like a bunch of planned-out movements, with little to no music inside.  The music rather should dictate the movements, and the highest level of concentration should be reserved for the inner life, the inner tension which makes all music worht listening to and studying.  This is how Cherkassky practiced, and I believe ti is a lesson for us all.

Walter Ramsey

[lostinidlewonder]

The only reason why I say visual plays little role in MEMORY is because simply we can still function as musicans without it. However if we take away our hearing, there is nothing we can do to improve or maintain ourselves as performers. Sure there are movements that might require you to measure the distances moved with sight and I doubt a blind person could play say some terribly difficult complex music.

Practicing in slow motion highlights the careful investigation into sound. Picking it apart as well as noticing the FEELING you get from the hands while playing. The eyes may help as a guide, but it is unnecessary and we really learn the most from what we are feeling in the hands and hearing from the ears, again in my mind this all puts visual learning to a minumum by comparison.

I cannot say when I play memorised music I use visual observations to guide what I play. I might use very limited for large leaps or aquiring certain starting positions of both hands at the beginning of phrase. When sight reading of course you make visual observations which guide your hands, this is of course different to playing from memory.

The poster who mentions when practicing they dont look at hands and when performing they look at it, this highlights not a visual problem but rather a practice method problem. If you prepare for a concert you of course memorise your music, this means that when you practice you look at your hands not the sheet music. Unfortunately there is no one forcing us to look at our hands when we practice so we may never let loose our security blankets until we are forced to in performance, we just set ourselves up for problems in this way. This is a memorisation problem not so much a visual memory issue. The fact that the muscular memory has not been attained and we have used sight reading to patch up our playing is what is causing us problems if we can't play and look at our hands.

[pianohenry]

Most of the pieces i played recently, i played because i have heard them and loved them. but whats happens is i hear them, and i listen to them over and over again, before i have a chance to get the music. by the time i find the music and go to learn them, i know exactly how it sounds.

when i first look at the piece, it makes sense, it really just confirms what i had an idea of. like.. "ahh, those are the exact notes," where before i thought, "i think its something like this, but i dont know the exact chord"

after that, if i sight read it a couple of times, i seem to remember almost every single note exactly. so even if i cant play it, i know the notes - so usually i can learn a piece without the music, if i just listen to it beforehand and then sight read it once or twice.