How do you gain keyboard memory the fastest?

[dontcheeseme]

Is it just a matter of working your way up through whatever pieces you choose to master, and practising scales and arpeggios, and eventually there's much less chance of you missing keys, or placing a finger just a tad bit to the left or to the right of its destination ? This happens to me a lot, I'm at Grade 3 level, and am feeling disheartened. I can get the notes down easy, but I can never seem to master the piece no matter how the number of repetitions, somehow, there will always be a key that will not be hit properly or will be totally missed. Either that or the key will be hit a bit louder or softer than what my brain intended. 

Do you guys create your own exercises to deal with this?

[adodd81802]

I think the biggest thing people have problems with, and the reason why scales and arpeggios work (despite a handful of people telling you otherwise)

Is what we are really learning is not the note itself, but the spaces between the notes. As that space get's bigger the chance of failure get's higher.

Imagine for example standing on top of a really tall building really close to another building and being told you have to jump between them. if the gap was 1cm apart we could all do that, but we are not thinking about where we are landing, we are thinking about the gap.

Scales and arpeggios reinforce the learning of the gaps and helps you learn not to overshoot.

One thing I have seen suggested if you consistently miss notes is to practice grouping and blocking.

That is in your piece - get a group of notes that you would play in one motion of the hand (requiring no great jumps or thumb under etc) and just press all the notes down together like a chord, do that several times until your hand learns the shape, then practice it back as the piece and you will start to find your hand is learning it better.

You can do the same when practicing arpeggios, which effectively is just practicing chords (if you find that even your arpeggios are not great, this can be a good exercise to build upon)

As pieces get more difficult, what you tend to find is 2 things are increasing, the speed at which you play the notes and the gaps between the notes. As an example, twinkle twinkle is a slow tune with almost no deviation of the hand from the main 5 notes c-g then you have la campenella, requiring you to span 10ths very quickly.

You obviously can't block learn 10ths+ without big hands, but if you block practice octaves and 9ths long enough you will actually learn that tiny step further is easy to pick up.

Hopefully that makes sense - ultimately it comes down to muscle memory and the main slip ups for learners is - not being patient enough with practicing and also being too sloppy with their practice. if you practice hitting it right 80% of the time, you can be sure in the real thing you will hit it right only 80% of the time, practice with all your concentration and aim to get the notes right.

You point regarding dynamics, is control of your fingers in general, I would suggest just alternating between slow and fast practice so you can reinforce your brain how it feels to have control of your fingers. Note when practicing slow, it's good to do so in a fast manner, that is trying to arrive at notes as quickly as possible without compromising the sound so you can better prepare yourself for the fast practice.

[dogperson]

Everytime you make a mistake, your brain learns that mistake.  Rather than just repeating from the beginning over and over, identify where you are missing notes.  Practice that measure SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY over and over..  but correctly, so that you develop the brain/muscle memory to play the notes correctly.

If you consistently have a problem with an interval, try this:
Read the note on the score, then place your finger where you think the key should be but without actually playing it...  look down.  If the finger is in the correct place, play the key.  You are developing the brain/finger relationship. Repeat it until it is consistently correct.

As Adodd told you... if you miss the note 20% of the time when you practice, you will miss it 20% of the time when you play the piece.  Work slowly on getting it right 100% of the time.

[avanchnzel]

How to gain keyboard memory the fastest?
Slow practice. It's like eating your vegetables. Basically what the people above said.

Sometimes there may be an issue with fingering instead that makes you more susceptible to making that mistake. Find a better, more comfortable fingering and slow-practise that.