Hands and Ears are learning, the brain is not!!

[peterb20]

Ok, firstly I know Im sort of flooding this forum with questions, so apologies for that!!

When Im practising a piece of music, My hands and ears pick it up quite quickly, so I seem to be able to play it. However I dont actually KNOW the notes on the staff corresponding to the notes im playing. Im thinking as im playing through the book that im progressing rather nicely because I can play all the pieces, but matter of fact if I turn to for example page 10 and pick a note on the 3rd line, it would take me ages to be able to identify it, find it and then play it! Im not learning notes im learning tunes!!

Does/Has anybody else had this proble, and if so what would you recommend to fix this? Play the bars in different orders than they are printed?!!

Thanks, Pete

[adodd81802]

Hi Peter, I'll take a stab at answering your question.

Firstly it seems you are doing nothing wrong. If you are successfully performing the studies / pieces as required on the score and moving on, then what you have done is correct.

There are two issues you have identified which I'll go over so you can understand why  you should not be worried.

The first thing is sight reading. The better you get at sight reading, the easier it is to go back to pieces and pick up the "tune" quicker, which helps your brain remember. Like reading a book. You read through a book you enjoy and you retain some of the bigger details that you enjoyed, you don't remember it word for word, but then if you was to read the whole book again, you start to remember different bits that trigger in your mind as you progress again through the book.

This is easy because (assuming here) we can all read fluently and so we do not think about the words when we read them, we just unconsciously make the connections between the words and what we remembered and start bridging those gaps.

Now if we come across a word we have not read before, we read it more slowly, maybe pronounce it, look it up to find out what it means. Music is just the same. the patterns could be considered musical words that we are continuously learning and storing away so that if we come across them again we can read them quicker and quicker, and although we are still calling upon our brain to help us identify those patterns, we are relying on the conscious aspect less and less.

Now how do we get better at reading? We practice reading! Sight reading is no different, and is something that you should definitely try and develop as soon as possible, but may not be essential.

Learning to sight read better, is a case of getting music much lower than your skill level to start and reading it for the first time at the piano and playing it as you read it. Play it as slow as necessary so that you can play as accurately as possible and rhythmically correct (that part is very important) Never go back if you get it wrong, and don't sight read the same piece over and over as then you're just memorizing, not actively sight reading.

The next part you refer to is memorizing. Going back to our book example again. A book is broken into chapters, different sections of the book as it progress's through the story, and we use the chapters as check points, we can summarize chapters, know where we are in the story, what's happening and what can happen next.

Memorizing in music can be done the same way, we can stop and start throughout the piece and use phrases or sections as check points to help us memorize better. This is something that can be quite important to practice, which you can do so by either randomly stopping and seeing if you can start again without forgetting what the next notes are, or it can be done by picking a bar, and seeing if you can recall from memory that section and the notes.

Practicing memorizing is the second skill that you can work on, and is usually more important if you're going to be performing pieces where you know you won't have the music in front of you, or if you cannot sight read pieces you want to learn to perform whenever you feel like it.

So this concludes why I think you are doing nothing wrong. Because assuming you are not trying to memorize these pieces and not trying to improve your sight reading, what it seems you are doing is using these pieces to accomplish technical challenges? If you are progressing through them you are improving your technical ability.

Memorizing should be saved for pieces that you actually want to retain and perform, and sight reading should be practiced on pieces much lower than your level.

[keypeg]

When we read a book, we learn the alphabet.  We learn how to form the letter Aa, what sounds it represents, and how it functions.  If we simply remember a familiar word because of a context in a story, that's not reading - though it can be an element of reading.  (We don't habitually sound out R-U-N --- the whole word "run" is there for us instantly).

I don't know how many of the people who give advice have themselves actually started as adults.  There are some definite traps. Advice in regards to "sight reading" leaves out a dozen important elements.  Sight reading is a specialized, advanced skill, which is used for example by accompanists.  Reading is a different kettle of fish.

You should work toward being able to recognize specific notes, relating them to piano keys.  It will not happen automatically through some kind of magic by playing lots and lots of music.  Yes, it will to some measure, but not necessarily reliably enough.

An added hiccup is that if you have any kind of ear or musical instinct, and with student music typically being what it is, you'll be predicting the music half the time and think you are reading.  I had to work through that myself.

[recnepspencer]

I agree with them. i was gonna reply until I saw that the pervious 2 people covered it. It is perfectly normal and there is no problem with it

[keypeg]

I agree with them. i was gonna reply until I saw that the pervious 2 people covered it. It is perfectly normal and there is no problem with it

That sort of leaves out the 3rd person and my post, which had something different to say about it. 

[adodd81802]

That sort of leaves out the 3rd person and my post, which had something different to say about it. 

If we assume the 1st post being considered as the OP's i'm pretty sure ours was the previous "2"

[keypeg]

In that case I wonder whether recnepspencer read my post, because his conclusion is not the same as what I wrote, when he is agreeing with us.