Memorizing intentionally

[bernadette60614]

My third year into focused study, I'd like to make memorizing intentionally a goal.  I've always memorized fairly much through muscle memory and never a complete piece.

Right now, I'm working on Chopin's 3rd prelude, where there is a lot of repetition as my first intentional memorization piece.

Any experiences, tips, guidance would be most welcomed. Thank you!

[chopinlover01]

Finding places with similar/identical fingering has helped me a lot in the past. Also, breaking it up into sections. Joshua Wright (who's auditioning for the 2015 Chopin Competition this year) has an excellent tutorial of this on Youtube.
Also, kudos for working on the G major prelude after only three years of study. It's quite a piece.

[diomedes]

It's my opinion that at the core of our discipline is the memorization procedure. Even ones with innate ability (perfect pitch, i suppose we call it) probably have to struggle with it at a certain level. Perhaps a little less, but those of us without it can compensate and work at it for long enough that our lack of it can be irrelevant, or even an advantage.

A natural physical approach is also absolutely necessary, close enough to the core or as much a part of it.

That said, I've struggled with the issue for years (had to teach it to myself entirely, no input from anyone, interestingly), and now control that topic after continual effort.

That said, I'd be happy to help but despite teaching for a rather long time, i never actually taught the procedure of memorization because it's more than a little demanding. I've had a couple students with that degree of maturity, and with them the results were favorable.

Maybe tell us more about yourself if you're very serious about it. I'd like to help, if possible.

[bernadette60614]

About myself:

I took lessons from 12 to 16 and practiced anywhere from 2 to 4 hours a day depending upon school work.  It started as my idea, but became my mother's project, so I would say that I truly enjoyed piano only the first couple of years.  I gave it up as quickly as I could come up with a rationalization my mother would accept.

I spent 30 years away from the piano, and didn't start again till about 3 years ago when I took an adult beginner class at the local college.  I took 12 weeks of group lessons (we did the Faber Adult Piano Adventures). For about 1.5 years, I worked on my own reading Chang's Fundamentals of Piano Practice and Graham Webb's site. During that time I worked on Bach 2 Part Inventions, some of the early Chopin Preludes and did 10 to 15 minutes of sight reading in some easy piano classic books.

About a year or somewhat more ago, I began lessons with a teacher who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory of Music. After asking me to play and then do some sight reading, she assigned me the Rondo Alla Tuca, and then after she was happy with that, the first movement of a Beethoven piano sonata, then a Schubert Impromtu.  We concluded with the Mozart Fantasia movement of one of the sonatas (the details of which I've forgotten.)

For the last 6 months, I've been working with a teacher who has focused more on the structure of pieces (chord progressions), working on my technique (I play fast and loud, I don't play with great finesse).  We are working on the Chopin Prelude, the Mozart sonata which includes the Alla Turca and a Schubert Impromtu.

I work, have a family and practice 45 minutes a day, 6 days a week.  My practice is 20 minutes on a work that is new, 20 minutes on a work in development, and 5 minutes of sight reading.

Thanks for any advice!

[bernadette60614]

Anyone?  Thanks!

[faulty_damper]

Recall is the least used learning technique but the most effective.  Another way to look at recall is self-testing.  Make it a point to quickly test your memory each time you learn a passage.  It's different from kill-and-drill (mindless repetition, muscle memory) and requires much more mental effort.

The main thing I'd be concerned with is that passages are learned without knowing or understanding musical meaning; i.e. learning a passage in terms of notes and keys instead of mood and emotion.  The association between musical meaning and performance will make recall easier since ideas have inherent meaning than a bunch of notes and keys.

[diomedes]

I'd suggest searching the forum a bit. I'm fairly certain it's been discussed by members with knowledge.

Recall is the least used learning technique but the most effective.

I agree. I refer to is as score study, myself. There are many benefits and it is much more complex than it might appear to someone who has no experience in making it an effective practice. I'd say that its most essential contribution to playing/performing is absolute control. Ultimately that's the final goal of any pianist outside of musical intentions.

Muscle memory is absolutely essential, and demanding passages will always require hands learning their part efficiently. However, most people rely on that exclusively, their efforts are rarely rewarded in relation to their work put into it.

 

We are working on the Chopin Prelude, the Mozart sonata which includes the Alla Turca and a Schubert Impromtu.

I work, have a family and practice 45 minutes a day, 6 days a week.  My practice is 20 minutes on a work that is new, 20 minutes on a work in development, and 5 minutes of sight reading.

Well, the benefit of score study is one of my most favored principles that inform my daily decisions and goals: Win your battles without fighting them. You can memorize away from the piano and practice without practicing and actually practice better than actual practicing.

Start with something small, like a Chopin prelude. If you work at it continually and become insistent at improving the method, you will be successful.

[bronnestam]

My story is about the same as yours, bernadette, which you probably know by now.
I always have had BIG trouble memorizing pieces. Rather, it has never worked for me. I used to believe, for many years, that muscle memory was the only way to go, and of course it did not work very well. 3 years ago I also read Chung and got a lot of "aha moments". So I've tried to find a better approach ...
I've got quite a reputation for excellent memory in a lot of other contexts (even photographic memory), so it puzzled me that it was so difficult when it came to piano music. I guess it is because I did not learn it from the beginning; my learning algorithm for piano playing simply does not include memorization. Last year my concert pianist friend revealed to me that he starts by memorizing the whole piece, THEN he sits down at the piano and start working with the piece. Oops!    I guess I am not there yet. But it is true that you can speed up learning the whole piece in this way. Normally I "learn" a lot of mistakes as well while I'm sight read my way through the notes, and then I spend a lifetime trying to "unlearn" these mistakes, and of course this is an incredible stupid way to work. Better to read the sheet music away from the piano and play it mentally a lot of times before you touch the keys. (Unfortunately there might be a problem if the fingering is tricky.)

I am not very good at music theory, unfortunately. Well, I know the basics of course, but there is SO much more to learn - yet, this is the way to go for me. I am an analytic person and if I find a logical structure in the music (like there isn't always one ...    ) it is very easy to memorize. If I know that there will be a C chord here, followed by an A minor chord, or a chromatic scale, I don't have to struggle at all. I don't forget that.
Between these logical patterns that I know about, I can sometimes address a "beacon": this bar will open with an E. Or I memorize patterns on the keys. And of course I use my musical memory as well, I am slowly developing a talent for figuring out melodies without having access to the sheet music; my children really like it! They ask me to play a certain tune from a movie, for example, and after a few minutes I can do it fairly well. If you can sing it, you can play it ... with just one hand and no chords, but it is a start, at least.

BUT the best tip is still from Chung: when you work with a difficult passage, memorize it while you work. Memorizing ONE bar (HS) is not that difficult, and so you read that bar until you think you know it, and then you look down at your hand and watch it play this sequence until it feels good, and then - well, then you have it.

One more thing: when I log into my Internet bank, I have this little gizmo that generates one-time passcodes, in my case a 6 figure combination. I read it in pairs of 2 figures, and I read it ALOUD, like: "sixty-four, twelve, eighty-one" and then I look at the notepad of my computer keybord and type the combination while I repeat what I just said, sort of relying on the echo in my head. So I seem to need audio memory to strengthen my visual memory. Well, when you play the piano you have the music itself ... but you can, of course, also pronounce some difficult combinations out loud: "C sharp ... B ... E ..." while you learn.   

It is a typical thing that you easily memorize difficult parts, and have to struggle with the easy ones, and I suppose the reason is what I just mentioned. In a quick and complicated part you just CANNOT sight read, there is no time for that, so you instinctively memorize it at once.
Recently I really DID memorize a whole piece, "A Maiden's Prayer". It is built up by a simple chord sequence in your left hand and long leaps in your right hand, and you just cannot sight read them all the time, you have to learn the pattern on the keyboard instead. Therefore it was very easy to learn. (It is also a nice show-off piece, so I recommend it.)

Always memorize in short sections, because if you get a memory slip in one place, you can quickly pick it up in the next section, thus avoiding the major embarrassment of having to start all over again. 

There, my own experiences so far. I hope you got something valuable out of it.