Am I bad at piano? beginner memorzing problems

[bunbuns]

Hi im learning piano privately and in school. I am just beginning and taught myself most of what I know. In my class there are other girls and I am at thier level even though they have been playing for a year. However when we have to play songs for our  teacher I feel like my songs sound bad compared to thiers... They memorize the little songs that we are using to learn from and know them perfectly I just can't seem to memorzie anything everything I play for a grade is sight read Is it bad that i cant memorize these little songs and dont really want to It is not that after practicing a song a couple times I can't put  the song together I just dont know what the trick is to memorzing and is it really important to memorize little practice songs such as the ones in the adult beginner courses by hal leonard. It sucks because they can sit down and play songs from memory and I cant what do you do to memorize any song at all!

[Glissando]

Ummmmm.......
I'm guessing you're saying you want to memorize, but can't?
Is that right?
If so, search these forums for memorization tips, there are a lot.
I can't give you any tips because I memorize really fast without trying. Which can be good or bad, considering how you look at it (the muscle memory vs. mind memory thing.....).

[jazzyprof]

However when we have to play songs for our  teacher I feel like my songs sound bad compared to thiers... They memorize the little songs that we are using to learn from and know them perfectly I just can't seem to memorzie anything everything I play for a grade is sight read

Do your songs sound bad because you're so busy just trying to read the notes that you can't put in any musical expression?  Now if you really do not care much for those little songs you have to learn then there is very little incentive to memorize them, especially if you sight read them easily.  Here are a couple of threads on memorization that may be useful:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2083.msg17227.html#msg17227

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,3858.msg34936.html#msg34936

[Spatula]

Ask yourself, what are the major areas of memory?

1) Hand memory - the most basic and works like autopilot, but is the most restrictive in terms of performance.  Rarely allows for on-the-spot interpretation
2) Chord memory and progressions
3) Harmony memory (goes hand in hand with chord memory)

Other "sources" of memory to follow ...if I remember what they are 

psst...Bernhard here's your queue 

Excerpt from CC's book:

2.   What is Piano Technique?
We must understand what technique means because not understanding technique leads to incorrect practice methods. More importantly, the correct understanding can help us to develop superior practice methods. The most common misunderstanding is that technique is some inherited finger dexterity. It is not. The innate dexterity of accomplished pianists and ordinary folk are not that different. This means that practically anyone can learn to play the piano well. There are numerous examples of mentally handicapped people with limited coordination that exhibit incredible musical talent. Unfortunately, many of us are much more dexterous but can't manage the musical passages because of a lack of some simple but critical information. Acquiring technique is mostly a process of brain/nerve development, not development of finger-moving muscles or strength.
Technique is the ability to execute a zillion different piano passages; therefore it is not dexterity, but an aggregate of many skills. The task of acquiring technique thus boils down to solving the problem of how to acquire so many different skills in a short time. The wondrous thing about piano technique, and the most important message of this book, is that piano skills can be learned in a short time, if the correct learning procedures are applied. These skills are acquired in two stages: (1) discovering how the fingers, hands, arms, etc., are to be moved, and (2) conditioning the muscles and nerves to execute these with ease and control. This second stage is concerned with control, not the development of strength or athletic endurance. Many students think of piano practice as hours of intense finger calisthenics because they were never taught the proper definition of technique. The reality is that you are actually improving your brain when learning piano! Acquiring technique is a process of developing faster nerve connections, creating more brain cells for the proper movements and memory functions, and for "speaking the language of music". You are actually making yourself smarter and improving your memory; this is why learning piano correctly has so many beneficial consequences, such as the ability to better cope with everyday problems or the ability to retain memory longer as you age. This is why, in this book, memorizing is an inseparable part of technique acquisition.

You should also try to get post practice improvement to start working for you:

15.   Post Practice Improvement (PPI)
There is only a certain amount of improvement you can expect during practice at one sitting, because there are two ways in which you improve. The first one is the obvious improvement that comes from learning the notes and motions, resulting in immediate improvement. This occurs for passages for which you already have the technique to play. The second one is called post practice improvement (PPI) that results from physiological changes in the hand as you acquire new technique. This is a very slow process of change that occurs mostly after you have stopped practicing.
Therefore, as you practice, try to gauge your progress so that you can quit and go to something else as soon as a point of diminishing returns is approached, usually in less than 10 minutes. Like magic, your technique will keep improving by itself for at least several days after a good practice. Therefore, if you had done everything right, then, when you sit at the piano the next day, you should discover that you can play better than the best that you did the previous day. Now if this happens for just one day, the effect is not that big. However, the cumulative effect of this occurring over weeks, months, or years can be huge.
Of course, the more you practice on a particular day, the longer the PPI will last; however, beyond a certain point, the increases become smaller for the same amount of additional work. It is usually more profitable to practice several things at one sitting and let them all improve simultaneously (while you are not practicing!), than working too hard on one thing. Over-practicing can actually hurt your technique if it leads to stress and bad habits. You do have to practice a certain minimum amount, perhaps a hundred repetitions, for this automatic improvement to take effect. But because we are talking about a few bars played at speed, practicing dozens or hundreds of times in 5 minutes or less is routine, and should be sufficient.
Don't fret if you practice hard but don't see much immediate improvement. This might be normal for that particular passage. If, after extensive analysis and you can't find anything wrong that you are doing, it is time to stop and let the PPI take over.
There are many types of PPI depending on what is holding you back. One of the ways in which these different types manifest themselves is in the length of time over which they are effective, which varies from a day to many months. The shortest times may be associated with conditioning, such as the use of motions or muscles you had not used before, or memory issues. Intermediate times of several weeks may be associated with new nerve growth or nerve connections, such as HT play. If you had developed certain bad habits, you may have to stop playing that piece for months until you lose whatever bad habit you had developed, which is another form of PPI. In most cases of bad habits, it is not possible to identify the culprit, so that the best thing to do is to not play the piece and to learn new pieces instead because learning new pieces is the best way to erase old habits.
You must do everything right to maximize PPI. Many students do not know the rules and can actually negate the PPI with the result is that, when they play it the next day, it comes out worse. Most of these mistakes originate from incorrect use of fast and slow practice; therefore, we will discuss the rules for choosing the right practice speeds in more detail in the following sections. Clearly, you will need to repeat the motion a few hundred times during each practice in order to encourage PPI. These repetitions must be correct. Any stress or unnecessary motion will also undergo post-practice enhancement. The most common mistake students make to negate PPI is to play fast just before quitting practice. The last thing you do before quitting should be the most correct and best example of what you want to achieve. Otherwise, the PPI either gets confused or is negated. The methods of this book are ideal for PPI, mainly because they emphasize practice on only those notes that you cannot play. If you play HT slowly and ramp up the speed for a large section of any piece of music, PPI is not only insufficiently conditioned, but also becomes totally confused. Once a certain pattern is sufficiently conditioned, you can move on to other patterns and all of them will undergo PPI simultaneously.
Making use of PPI is an art in itself. Therefore, as you practice from day to day, you must pay attention to what types of practice brings on the most effective PPI for you. If you have a section that doesn't improve noticeably during practice, you know that you must depend on PPI to make any further progress, and must plan your practice times accordingly. For example, you might practice that section (generally very short, perhaps just a few notes) for a certain time, e.g., two minutes every day, without any expectation of noticeable improvement, but just for conditioning. Then you can look for any PPI gain the next day. The parallel set exercises are the most useful tools for PPI.
PPI is somewhat analogous to what happens to a body builder. While lifting weights, his muscles don't grow; he will in fact lose weight. But during the following weeks, the body will react to the stimulus and add muscle. Almost all of the muscle growth occurs after the exercise. Thus the body builder does not measure how much muscle he gained or how much more weight he can lift at the end of the exercise, but instead concentrates on whether the exercise produces the appropriate conditioning. The difference here is that for piano, we are developing coordination and stamina instead of growing muscles. A better analogy may be the marathon runner. If you had never run a mile in your life, and tried it for the first time, you might be able to jog for a quarter mile before you need to slow down for a rest. After some rest, if you tried to run, you will again tire out in a quarter mile or less. Thus the first run resulted in no discernible improvement. However, if you wait one day and try again, you may be able to run a third of a mile before tiring out. This is similar to the PPI in piano practice. Now running is a relatively simple procedure compared to piano so that it is difficult to run incorrectly in such a way that you have more trouble running the next day. This can happen; for example, you might develop a bad habit of stubbing your toe if you push yourself too far.
For this type of difficulty, golf presents another excellent analogy. Golfers are familiar with the phenomenon in which they can hit the ball well one day, but terribly the next because they picked up a bad habit that they often cannot diagnose. Hitting the driver every day tends to ruin your swing, whereas practicing with the #9 can restore it. The analogy in piano is that playing fast, full tilt, tends to ruin the PPI whereas practicing short sections HS tends to improve it. This analogy works because both piano and golf are sufficiently complex. Clearly for piano, the conditioning procedure must be well understood in order to assure the desired PPI -- the wrong types of conditioning can result in negative progress. Therefore we will deal with methods for ensuring PPI in many of the following sections.
Some students are unaware of PPI and therefore become frustrated with lack of progress during practice and fail to take full advantage of PPI. The fact is, most of the basic technique is acquired between practices, just as most of the weight lifter's muscles grow between workouts. PPI is probably the most important component of technique acquisition.

[Spatula]

Here goes Bernie! 

Memory is based on association. Therefore in order to remember something you must make a strong association with something you can already remember. Strongest associations are usually visual but you should try to involve other sense as well to make the associations even stronger. (e.g., if you want to remember to buy toilet paper you can picture a giant toilet roll rolling out of the supermarket door. Then it shouts: "buy me!". Then it rolls over you. Ther you have visual-aural-touch. Add smell if you wish.  So when you next pass in front of the supermarket, that absurd image – because of its absurdity – will flash in your mind and remind you that you need to buy toilet paper). Most good memorisers do these things unconsciously, so if you ask them how they can remember, they usually will not be able to explain. They will just say “I just do”. Or they will come up with some far fetched explanation that has little to do  with what they actually do.

You can also regard memory as food in the refrigerator. You can only retrieve the food you put there in the first place. People many times complain that they cannot recall things, when the problem is that they never remembered (put it in memory) in the first place. In order to place something in your mind  (so that you can recall it later) you must use full consciousness and awareness. Absent mindedness will simply not do.

Keeping these two principles in mind, memorising music has five different aspects, that most people integrate, but if you are having difficulty you will have to treat them separately for the time being.

1.      Aural memory. This means remembering how the music sounds, how the tune goes. Repeated careful listening of the piece (and your playing and practising of it) should take care of this. You can also try to hum it (or sing or whistle) the piece trying not to miss a single note. People with good aural memory and a good ear will “remember” a piece basically by playing it by ear.

2.      Visual memory. This means having a photographic memory of the score. For good sight-reading this is essential, since the process of sight reading is basically memorising a few bars while you play the previous ones. It is not necessary to be able to retain this memory for ever, but you should be able to do it for a few moments if you are going to be a good sight-reader. This also means looking at the keyboard and having a visual image of the sequence of black/white keys needed to play the piece.

3.      Touch memory. This means remembering the sequence of touch sensations needed to play a piece. The way to develop it is to play with closed eyes, or in the dark. You must use the black keys to guide you. (This is also essential for sight reading, since when you sight read you r eyes should be glued to the score, and you should find the keys by touch).

4.      Hand memory. This is when your fingers “know” the music. You may even be amazed that you can play the piece and not “know” it. This is a very necessary kind of memory (you cannot play fast passages without it), but it is very unreliable. Because it is based on sequence of events, any mistake and you will have to go straight to the beginning. If you have only hand memory, there is a good chance you will have a blackout in performance. Hand memory is acquired through endless repetitions hands together. And that is why that you must always repeat the correct thing, otherwise you will end up with wrong notes/rhythms/etc. inbuilt in your hand memory.

5.      Music memory. This means remembering how the music is built up, how it is structured. This is usually the aspect people pay the least attention to, since it involves knowledge of musical theory and harmony. Take care of this aspect by writing out the harmonic progressions, examining how the melody is built (ascending/descending scales, jumps, etc.). You can also try copying the music (several times) until you can write it from memory. If you don't "understand" the music it will be difficult to memorise, since it will be (to you) just a random sequence of notes.

After you work on each of these aspects separately, you must now integrate all these in what people call “memory”.

Try this method. Put your music book with the piece you are trying to memorise on a desk near your piano (but far enough so that you cannot see it). Now you can look  at the score as much as you want, but you cannot take it to the piano with you. Go to the piano and see how far can you play from memory. When you get stuck, go back to the desk, and figure out from looking at the score where you got stuck and why. Then go back to the piano and try again. If you keep at it, and observe the principles above, you should have your piece memorised in no time at all. However this is a mentally intensive process. Mentally lazy people hate it.

The first time you try all this, it will be overwhelming. But if you keep working at it in a systematic, disciplined way, each subsequent piece becomes easier. Then it will be so natural for you to memorise that  you will be doing it without even noticing!

[Sketchee]

Just a more general tip. Try not to be discouraged!   If there is a problem just remember that it's most likely due to a skill that you need to learn.  The most important thing I've learned from playing piano is learning how to learn.  As a beginner, it's a good time to develop good learning habits.  It may take a lot of reading and trial and error and plain hard work to get a good memorization routine developed but it'll eventually make playing piano feel easier.  It's also a skill that for many people continues to develop over the course of experience.  Read around the board as there are some current discussions on how different people tackle memorizing.

[bunbuns]

You all are so sweet! AND I am so sorry I posted in the teacher forum instead of student I made a mistake =[ I have only been using this piano forum for two days. Thank you I understand that I have sooo much to learn I got a headstart for my classes by teaching myself things but then again it set me back ALOT because I ignored fingering and lots of things I considered small or unimportant which I am totally wrong and learning now  I don't have any learning handicaps besides spelling =/ and my friend who plays with me she does have learning disabilities and has been playing for a year and I keep wondering how come she can do this but not me... I practice VERY VERY Hard so I do get frustrated when nothin happens the PPI does make sense because I have had post improvement on other things I do such as drawing I think subcounsioucly your body is still learning I think maybe the fact that she owns a piano? and has always had an organ in her house might be a reason why I m really not sure.. I use a really cheap keyboard but I am planning on getting something better from santa =p also is it normal to not think at all when your playing a song from memory or are you suppose to think about whiche note is next and name em in your head.Do you just go with it and atuomatically feel it?

(OH AND I also know the notes. Notation is definately not an issue most of the music my teacher gives me I can sight read that's why I never practiced memorizing till now.)


 Thank you all!! -Bun buns

[Glissando]

also is it normal to not think at all when your playing a song from memory or are you suppose to think about whiche note is next and name em in your head.Do you just go with it and atuomatically feel it?

(OH AND I also know the notes. Notation is definately not an issue most of the music my teacher gives me I can sight read that's why I never practiced memorizing till now.)


 Thank you all!! -Bun buns

Ack, I wish I could sight read better. It might help me with the nutzoid chords in my Chopin!
BTW what music are you playing?
I started a thread about what to think about when performing, it's in performance I think- basically you should be listening to yourself play and bringing out the music.