oh god lets hope not.. I was angling for that the other sites somehow had a higher google page rank by location - I guess that was voided by having half as many results.
This is what I was hoping you wouldn't notice.. didnt even think of the number of results at all..
Some people really should get a life...
Doesn't it seem like the fact that I didn't put the effort in to fix the problem suggests that I realise how futile an act it was..What I did do took maybe 10-15 seconds to create and upload so I'm sure the rest of my life won't suffer too much... Also, since most of the time I spend on PS is while I'm also reading and or producing content that I can use when teaching it doesn't strike me as being time used poorly. - even if I do occasionally (regularly) get distracted by humorous pursuits.
Should have used There are things I do sometimes that would make yours seem like you're saving the earth EDIT: This one's my favorite:How many hits do you get if you google your name (First Last) in " " ?Today I only got 1790?...What the ..ll??And this is important...Is the first one actually you?
yes.
Does that count as two questions?
Nearly 200,000,000, and no, the first one is definitely not me.
No way in hell am I looking for my name. I probably won't show up anywhere in there since I don't have anything under my real name on the internet, although it's not hard to guess my name based on my username
If I add the word "piano" I'm the first 6 results, and results 8-10. Boo ya.
I'm still first! How did I manage that??
Wrong thread
..you photoshopped a screen shot?
that was you
If this is any indication, you are 3/7ths evil, 3/7ths cool, and 1/7th grinning from ear to ear.Is this how you would describe your personality?
I would say that of all our senses, we get the most information from our eyes.... Thus, it's easier to memorize something visually than it is by any other sense.
Can you imagine a world without sight?
Their minds work in a completely different way than others in the way the sense the world. Unless you are blind yourself, I really don't see how anyone can speak for a blind person.
However, muscle memory is most certainly the weakest form of memory and the most likely to fail. You aren't even using your senses.
You are unconsciously going through a motion. Now is that really the way music should be made?
As for other forms of memory, I'm evaluating their strengths and weaknesses.
Now for the most ridiculous of your claims (not that your post didn't have merit, but I found this absolutely ridiculous)
If your own intellect cannot keep up with a piece, you've got practice to do. The human brain can send messages at roughly 1000mph. Human fingers probably travel at around 10-20mph at the fastest (rough estimate). You underestimate the brain my friend. The mind should always be faster than the fingers. Otherwise, you are depending solely on muscle memory and as I explained above, that's not the way to go. It's quite frankly an insult to the music.
I mean I can read a piece hundreds or thousands of times and still not remember a single note. I do not see this as a problem requiring intervention.
John Ogdon even with his legendary sight reading skills could not sight read ALL of Sorabji's OC with masterful clarity his recordings prove it (but that is not to say that he didn't do an amazing job of it).
you certainly might benefit being able to remember a single note to start with and try to build from there lol.
That may well be true, but no one yet has done it from memory. At all.
I doubt it. Remarkably few of the pieces I play start with a single note.
Well if it starts with a chord maybe you can remember one of the notes of the chord.
If sight was so powerful one could learn a piece merely by thinking about it and looking at the piano without touching it. We need to feel the movements and hear it, these are the most important issues from my experience (from myself and my students). Of course being able to see a pattern with our eyes and sight reading music is important but it is not a necessity you can still do this with the feeling in ones hands and the sound your ears listen to (blind pianist for example). Turn off the lights or play with your eyes closed you can experience it. Of course learning a piece you have never played before without sight is difficult to start with unless you had some braille type piano music or someone to read it for you. Many piece I play I can play without even looking at the keyboard.
If sight was so powerful one could learn a piece merely by thinking about it and looking at the piano without touching it.
Muscular memory is a sense, a Touch sense. Also we do not only consider muscular memory as the memory used to control pieces only, it also relates to our memory of what it feels like to play all sorts of scales, chords, co-ordinations between hands (x vs y notes), sharing of notes between hands, rhythms etc etc. If you do not have a keen sense of memory in your hands every time you sight a building blocks in music you merely will recreate the wheel every time and overload yourself with conscious/visual observations.
Of course muscular memory should not isolated from our musical interpretation. With stronger muscular memory one can focus on the sound production more intently.
Often these weaknesses are only apparent if you isolate the tools and look at them if they where in action alone. Most of our learning experience however is a combination of these.
I said "Intellect cannot keep up with rapid pieces, you simply cannot sight read complicated fast music at tempo without muscular memory."Which means if you are caught up sight reading details of complicated pieces which are fast tempo you simply will reach a saturation point where you can no longer keep up. Or are you saying you can sight read everything? John Ogdon even with his legendary sight reading skills could not sight read ALL of Sorabji's OC with masterful clarity his recordings prove it (but that is not to say that he didn't do an amazing job of it).
The point is that you simply cannot play at your technical maximum if you rely heavily on sight reading and visual aids. If most of what you play is not absorbed into an automated muscular response you simply will overload yourself with information and be unable to deal with it.
I'm not saying it's the most important tool in piano. But there is no question that our most powerful sense and the one we rely on most (in everyday life). And since we have it, why not use it when we play the piano?
I never said muscle memory isn't important. Just that it's incredibly unreliable on its own.
As for this touch you speak of, wouldn't that be touch memory as opposed to muscle memory?
..but on the piano, touch is much more important than sight.
All muscle memory does for your interpretation is your ability to play it.
And yet your original post said that memorization comes from muscle memory.
Maybe I should have clarified. I was talking about performance and memorization. Not sightreading.
Even in fast pieces, you should always have an awareness of what you are doing. Relying solely on muscle memory means you are shutting your brain off and letting your fingers just go on their own.
You should always know what note you are playing and how you should play it. Sometimes when it's muscle memory doing the driving, you aren't always aware of these things.
Yes reading fast pieces requires muscle memory but also visual memory and aural memory. Visual memory allows you to recognize the patterns that your muscle memory knows so well. Aural memory let's you know when it doesn't sound right. But I wasn't talking about sightreading in my previous posts.
We haven't exactly discussed aural memory. You agree that it's vital to good performance?
Sure you can use sight but it is not necessary to playing an instrument at a high level where muscular and sound memory are.
I disagree. I do not think about my physical action when I ride a bicycle, eat with knife and fork, turn a door knob or play a phrase of music I know well etc etc. And because I don't think about it I don't fall off my bike, stab my eye with a fork, fumble to open a door or forget how to play a phrase.
Well a piano doesn't change physical properties or change temperature so you do miss some of the overall touch experience. Muscular memory is a more direct description of memorizing mechanical movement at the piano by movement, people who are numb cannot acquire muscular memory, I had one student who had one numb hand from an accident and he could not memorize via muscular memory but could with the other.
I don't however memorize exactly how to play a piece but just the notes and movement to produce the estimated volume control. Because we play on many types of pianos and room sizes it will not be good enough to always play the same way. So I find muscular memory when it is strong allows me to focus more on the sound production and less on the notes and technique.
Performing by memory or reading a score? If you perform and consciously consider everything you are doing you will simply overload yourself wi information. It is highly ineffective to me it is like playing a game of chess and considering every possible move even if it is a bad one. You just end up thinking too much unnecessarily.
But this is the joy of playing a piece you have mastered, to play without having to worry about the fingers, you simply enjoy the good relaxed feeling your hand produces and the lovely sound that comes forth. Thinking about it in logical details is just mentally taxing and only something I do when I am learning the piece. You can summon conscious thought to recover from mistakes and this helps keep muscular memory in line but to constantly bind muscular memory to conscious thought is silly IMHO.
I think this is ok when you are learning a piece but to remain in this situation is ineffective IMO.
I wonder if I can get any tips, using muscle memory, in the spatial movements in getting to a note which is a long distance away on the keyboard. Many times both hands have such widely spaced skips and one can only glance in one direction at a time. Is there a drill which helps in spatially memorizing the distance factor ? This is a problem for me when I have skips larger than 2 octaves. Any ideas from experienced sight readers ??
Topic: "Sightplaying", memorizing? Something in between? 