Piano Forum



Remembering the great Maurizio Pollini
Legendary pianist Maurizio Pollini defined modern piano playing through a combination of virtuosity of the highest degree, a complete sense of musical purpose and commitment that works in complete control of the virtuosity. His passing was announced by Milan’s La Scala opera house on March 23. Read more >>

Topic: "Real memory"  (Read 2327 times)

Offline mjames

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2553
"Real memory"
on: April 07, 2017, 02:22:01 AM
About a week ago a friend of mine who recently got into piano music was listening to a piece I learned about three years ago. "Hey I can play this" I said. "Cool can you play it for me then?" she said. "Sure, I'll just have to print out the music and relearn it." It wasn't hard, pretty much everything in the piece was already within my level, but I still couldn't play it up to tempo on the first day. I could barely even manage about 10% of it. I can read music, I memorized the actual music rather than just using muscle memory and no luck. Next day, it was a bit better - but still too slow. Then magically on the 4th day I could play at about 80% of the indicated tempo, by now which is 6 days later I can play it however I want it to.

What irks is me is that even if the required skills are in my muscle memory, and even if I'm using music theory - I still inevitably have to rely on muscle memory to actually play music.It's incredibly frustrating to realize that the only pieces I can play on the fly are pieces that I recently prepared for lessons/recitals. I'm not asking to play ballades from mental memory alone, I just want to be able to play simple but lovely pieces like the Chopin waltzes without actually having to go through the "relearning" process. Is this achievable? If so how will I have to re-approach practicing and learning to achieve it?

Offline anamnesis

  • PS Gold Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 274
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #1 on: April 07, 2017, 03:05:12 AM
It's helpful to have some kind of cueing system that helps you recreate the sensations and corresponding physical actions necessary for the performance of the piece.  

Say what you will about the Taubman approach, but I've found the passages where I used their thought process in terms of deliberate practice , always the most secure and the easiest to bring back (and even improve).  I know exactly what I did (and also how I timed it) and the particular reasons why I did it. Not having to recreate the wheel each time is a time saver. 

Offline lostinidlewonder

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 7498
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #2 on: April 07, 2017, 04:43:19 AM
If you never focus on training your sight reading skills over many years unfortunately there is no way avoiding the drawn out process of learning a piece by memorisation. I used to only memorize music until I started teaching then I focused hard on my reading skills. I still can memorize music if I want but I find I pretty much can read most works straight away at tempo with predominantly all the expression I want. This of course is very empowering since your repertoire then explodes to tens of thousands of pieces rather than just a handful you have memorized. There is just no need to memorize everything, technically crazy pieces or very fast pieces will require some memorization but to totally abandon the score is not necessary even for performance. It is a trend Liszt made popular but that does not mean it is a requirement.
"The biggest risk in life is to take no risk at all."
www.pianovision.com

Offline rmbarbosa

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 453
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #3 on: April 07, 2017, 12:47:37 PM
You may thinl I am crazy but what I do is learning the pieces accordingly to the method of Lestivsky: I learn a bar or a musical phrase, then I repeat it 10 times. Then I learn the next phrase and repeat it 10 times. Then I reapeat the first and the second bar or phrase and repeat it 10 times and so on.
After doing that I never forget that piece. Even if I dont play it during months or years.
It is a slow method but... it works.

Offline indianajo

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1105
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #4 on: April 07, 2017, 03:08:43 PM
I've found that memory of movements, what you ignorant of anatomy call "muscle memory"  can last 55 years.  If I don't practice the piece and most I didn't since I had a career, I lose the link to the memory. Then if I look at the score for a few times, I regain connection with my early memories.  Then I can play the piece, ignoring the fact that my muscles are much stiffer now than they were when I was 12.
I find it interesting that, since I didn't write down my fingerings in many cases, using the fingerings in the arrangement works clunkily for a couple of run-throughs.  Then my brain makes the connection, and the original fingerings flow out the hands.  My hands are not shaped like yours, so the fingerings written on the page by Europeans typically are useless to me.  OTOH I can play up on the black notes including my thumb, without my 3 4 fingers banging into the wood like most northern Europeans.  

Offline chopinlover01

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2117
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #5 on: April 07, 2017, 04:45:51 PM
You probably have it in your muscles, sure. You can probably get by with that.

Do you have it completely in your mind? Can you sing the melody, accompaniment, inner voices, counter-melodies? Chances are, if you've listened to it enough, you probably can. If not, this is step 1 to be able to memorize repertoire in the mind.

After you've done that, you have to make sure your ear is connected to your hands. One of the best ways to do this is to sing a line while you play it; just play the melody, and sing while you do. Then, the accompaniment (if it's chordal, switch which voice you sing). Then sing the inner lines and the rest.

It's this process that allows me to be able to play a Chopin mazurka I haven't played in years at a moment's notice. It's also the process that jazz players use to keep thousands of tunes in their repertoire at any moment.

Offline j_tour

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 3791
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #6 on: April 07, 2017, 11:05:10 PM
I have to put in a plug for one my of new favorite books, The Hal Leonard *Classical Fake Book*.  I admit I'm pretty disappointed have looked through it in more depth since a few weeks ago when I first discovered it, and while I'm not very impressed on closer inspection, it resembles my corny technique for keeping things in my memory -- namely, jot down Roman Numeral analysis chords on a scrap of paper and so forth.

Obviously, this doesn't work really well for anything with lots of modulations, but it helps me to simplify things greatly if you want to keep things in your memory for a long time, and if you don't have a photo memory.  For me, a "vertical harmony" -type player, once you remember the chords and the bassline motion, it can be pretty easy to recall the melody.  Or close enough.

I don't have the references, but Mozart supposedly relied heavily on his ability to improvise in order to "play" things long-forgotten from memory or even sight-reading, although I don't think anyone disputes he was a strong sight-reader.  But, in practice, I agree -- you don't want to be one of those people who needs to have the music in front of you, just to play some light entertainment.

My name is Nellie, and I take pride in helping protect the children of my community through active leadership roles in my local church and in the Boy Scouts of America.  Bad word make me sad.

Offline mrcreosote

  • PS Silver Member
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 229
Re: "Real memory"
Reply #7 on: April 30, 2017, 06:52:10 PM
Lots of great advice on this thread.

My memory is far worse than yours but I can tell you my combination of what was said previous:

Sleep is when the brain hard wires the days lessons.  Lisitsa said when she has a problem area, after a night's sleep it is gone.

My problem is that sight reading has no useful purpose for me.  When I play, it is on an unexpected piano.  So everything has to be memorized.  (If there was a way to read music from a cell phone, I would consider that.  And you know, that can already be done with tablets - they have a little bluetooth boot pedal to "turn" the page.  Is interesting because you could carry 100#'s of sheet music in a tablet...)

Advice to sight read will make the sight to hand process faster - but that doesn't make he recall process any faster.  I've recently found that "concentrating" on the finger motion at faster muscle memory speeds can force the brain to recall faster.  It is a strange technique but I believe it has merit.

Jazz guys, well forget them.  They skills are mad.  Singing each note is great but if you don't have that innate ability to "play by ear," it is an arduous task to develop it.  How old are you and what is your life expectancy? 

One remark on muscle memory and remembering the finger movements:  What you remember are more than just the movements, it is the feelings in your fingers.  If you hit a wrong note or use the wrong finger, it upsets the sequence, and you stumble and perhaps blow up.  What is interesting is the faster you play you get feeling (forces actually) that are a result of inertia - the accelerating and deceleratin of finger/wrist mass on the way to the next hit.  THIS IS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION which is why when trying to recall something, if you play as fast as crazy possible, you will experience greater inertial feelings which brings you closer to what you remember.  CONVERSELY, if you play very slow, the loss of those muscle memory feelings will in many places will cause you to forget because you have remembered the place WITH the inertia feeling components.

I believe Gould used to practice at insane, ludicrous slow tempos before performing.  And I'll tell you what, THAT is how to burn something into your memory.  But keep in mind this is a method of reinforcing what you already have in your memory and muscle memory.

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT:  I believe more and more people are playing with music.  Let's face it, do you really want to spend 5 to 50x more time learning a Ligeti?  And there is also the reality you will be only able to take this so far given the amount of time you can spend and with what innate ability you possess.
For more information about this topic, click search below!
 

Logo light pianostreet.com - the website for classical pianists, piano teachers, students and piano music enthusiasts.

Subscribe for unlimited access

Sign up

Follow us

Piano Street Digicert