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Topic: Learning by heart (Read 1347 times)

paulfechner

PS Silver Member
Newbie
Posts: 15

Hi there,
I always have problems with learning a piece by heart Embarrassed because of that i couldnt play any really difficult pieces until now Cry. do you have any tips/technics for me how to learn a piece by heart as fast as possible. >> by the way, how do YOU learn a (long) piece?

thx

paul

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Etude

PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 908

Re: Learning by heart

Reply #1 on: January 18, 2005, 11:54:36 PM

I must confess that I rely far too much on muscle memory, and from what I've heard, this puts you at great risk during performance of forgetting the music, and I've come pretty close to doing this sometimes. In a masterclass that I took part in as a student, I was taught that it is very important to memorise music in much more detail than this, because muscle memory is far too unreliable to solely depend on in performances. As I understand, memorisation that goes further than that of the movements of the hands and fingers involves knowing by heart what's actually on the score, and not just where your hands need to go next.

Aquiring muscle memory of a piece is however relatively easy. You can even do it without realising it. I find that all that is needed to be done to acheive this is to practice the piece. Eventually, what happens after a while is each part of the piece serves as a connection to the next part, and one series of notes leads to the next series of notes. I have found that one of the real disadvantages of muscle memory is that the hands are doing automatically what the mind should also be a part of, and this makes it difficult to keep concentration on the music. I find that I concentrate a lot more when playing from the music than when playing from memory, because the mind is active in the reading of the music and is actually a part of the performance while it is interpreting what is on the page into musical sounds for the hands to make on the keyboard. With muscle memory playing, this is not the case because of the way in which the hands have been trained to execute the notes almost subconciously while the mind is free to be flooded with irrelevancies.

If you are going to learn a piece by heart, don't take the easy option, (which I must also turn away from.) Study the score in depth. If someone gave you some manuscript paper, you should be able to notate the piece exactly without anything missing or out of place from the original score. This is how well you must know the piece to be completely safe in performance from memory. This is not exactly the fastest way possible but it is the safest and the most genuine way to do it. If you are in a hurry however, I would suggest that you simply use muscle memory, which you should already have to a certain extent if you have in fact been practising your pieces as much as you should

.

HTH

Etude_de_Concert

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anda

PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 943

Re: Learning by heart

Reply #2 on: January 19, 2005, 08:28:16 AM

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www.youtube.com/andapianist

paulfechner

PS Silver Member
Newbie
Posts: 15

Re: Learning by heart

Reply #3 on: January 19, 2005, 08:42:34 AM

thx!

i'll try it!

paul

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