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.
How about closing your eyes for the rest of your life? How about never having seen at all? Your brain develops in a completely different way. Try wearing a blindfold for an entire day and see if you can function. Blind people have to adapt and use what they can in order to function.
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?
If sight was so powerful one could learn a piece merely by thinking about it and looking at the piano without touching it.
Actually, I've heard there's a teacher that sometimes requires students to study a score for 3 days without touching a piano. Then they are to perform it from memory. I'm not sure about the merits of this, but most certainly it proves it's possible. Irrelevant to what we're talking about though.
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.
I never said muscle memory isn't important. Just that it's incredibly unreliable on its own. Muscle memory is pretty much why we practice technique, although I suppose you practicing technique could also involve training your ear and training your sense of touch.
As for this touch you speak of, wouldn't that be touch memory as opposed to muscle memory? Last time I checked, your sense of touch has nothing to do with your muscles. But I admit, I forgot about touch memory. It's how it feels. In terms of the real world, it's not as useful as the sense of sight, but on the piano, touch is much more important than sight.
Of course muscular memory should not isolated from our musical interpretation. With stronger muscular memory one can focus on the sound production more intently.
All muscle memory does for your interpretation is your ability to play it.
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.
And yet your original post said that memorization comes from muscle memory. I'm saying we need a combination. I'm analyzing each part of this combination, not saying one is the only one you need. Anyway, I'm glad we agree on something.
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).
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. Fingers don't have brains. Fingers don't have emotion. You let muscle memory be the only thing then it's not worth listening to. I'm not saying muscle memory is worthless, just on it's own. You need muscle memory so you don't trip up on a passage. 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. Sorry if that was a bit repetitive.
As for sightreading, now my sightreading is decent, but it's not phenomenal. So no I can't sight read every piece known to man. Actually I probably can't sight read most of piano literature. Bull through them at 50% tempo yes, but not sightread them brilliantly.
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.
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.
My point is that don't let your muscles be the only thing playing the notes.
We haven't exactly discussed aural memory. You agree that it's vital to good performance?
Topic: "Sightplaying", memorizing? Something in between?