how to memorize a piece?

[lorcar]

43yo here, far from being proficient and unfortunately far from practicing constantly.
I recently restarted again, with the Bach Prelude 924. Easy piece, my muscolar memory of this piece also helps, but i still needs to look at the score.
What is the technique/strategy to memorize a piece like this?
thanks

[indianajo]

I just play the piece enough that it becomes too much trouble to turn the pages. My eyes get bored with looking at the spots on the page.   
The only pieces I have trouble memorizing are ones where there are many variations with subtle differences.  Which one comes right now? Is it that one or does that come later?
Other than that, if I practice enough the music just comes out of the hands.  I think dissembling "muscle memory" is a waste of a precious talent.  Humans have much more cerebellum than monkies, and they said on the PBS "Neanderthal" program in October that we humans use it for repeating complicated motions that are very tricky.  Like catching a baseball then making a double play, or playing a 25 page piano piece. It is not your muscles that are repeating those movements, it part of your brain.    My brain is quite good at memorizing the movements and flowing the movements out, allowing me to think of the emotions and expression of the piece with my cortex.  The cortex is the conciousness, if you hadn't read up on it.  
So practice, practice, practice.  Enough so your cortex gets bored with these trivial movements and goes on to something else. Memorization tricks are IMHO for unfortunates who signed up for a music major and have to learn 14 pieces in 12 weeks or whatever.  Practice doesn't cost like tuition, room & board at a conservatory.  You were paying the rent and the utilities on your practice space anyway.  

[lorcar]

thanks for the detailed answer, however i am not sure i necessarely agree. Muscle memory helps and i agree it is supported by the brain. However it cannot be based just on this and endless repetition. There must be a better understanding of what you are playing, of why that set of notes come after instead of those other notes.
Muscle memory tells me that the hand should go in that direction and do that movement, however after few days of no practice if there is nothing else to support your memory, I believe you have your hand in the right spot but "ok which is the right key now?"
In my opinion, people who are able to memorize a piece are also able to sing it when away from the piano, therefore is not just muscle.
I was not talking about "tricks", rather about "method" and strategy.

[dogperson]

Just brute repetition does not work for me, except to get it into short term memory.  There have been many books and articles written about memorization the store and long-term memory. Below are a few that I use;  The general consensus is that you need to use all of your senses not just your muscles in order to retain it in long term memory.

-analyze the score: are there repeat sections? Are there  slight differences between them ? Some find it helpful to write in all the chords; I don’t do that
- hearing: can you sing the melody and voices?
- visual: can you picture the score?  Where your hands move? What is the change in interval; if an arpeggios or chord, does one note change?
For pieces with broken chords, I find it helpful to learn the patterns as a blocked chord
- memorize in chucks with time between the repetition of the chunk.  Can you leave it for several days and come back?
- look for safe havens in the score to which you can return if you have a memory lapse

Can you play just the last few measures by memory?

There has been a ton written; I am just an amateur student so I suggest you do some homework YMMV

[klavieronin]

Here is how I do it. It's a little difficult at first but it gets easier with practice;

1. Sit somewhere away from the piano with the score.
2. Study one or two bars at a time.
3. Close your eyes and imagine yourself playing what you just studied, first one hand, then the other, the both hands.
4. Repeat until you can play that/those bars in your head.
5. Move on to the next bar/s and do the same.
6. Go back to the previous bar/s and play again in your head.
7. Add the bars together and play in your head.
8. Continue in the same way through the rest of the piece.
9. Test yourself at the piano and away from the piano until you have it memorised.

For this method to work you must do it very frequently for the first few days. After that you can start spacing out your 'practice' at longer intervals.

[xdjuicebox]

Going to copy paste a response from an earlier thread:

[So here's my personal memorization technique as of right now:

1. Listen to the piece on repeat until I can recall the entire thing note for note in my head (Warning: you might go insane; I did when I was doing this with the Rite of Spring)

2. Obtain the score, and analyze it to literal death, make sure you know exactly what is going on in terms of the architecture, harmonic structures, melodic structures, appreciate the counterpoint if there is any, revel and bask in the piece, and just /study it to death/

3. (This step can be done concurrently with step 4, but I prefer to do it beforehand) Create "keyboard memory;" visualize yourself playing the piece in your head. I find it much easier to start in little chunks, hands separate, but see the shapes on the piano, and see the keys being depressed in your head. To make this even more accurate, feel your hands playing the bit in your head. (Though you must always check on the piano to make sure the motion is accurate!)

****[It might help to make diagrams, up to you]

4. Actually play the darn thing; here I do a lot of bar by bar, 2-bar by 2-bar, section by section practice, where I'll play the same bar like 20-40 times before moving onto the next one. Literally, as much repetition as possible in as small of chunks as possible. As the days go on, I make the chunks to be repeated longer. /No mindless repetition; must be played with purpose/. I also try to see the notes in my head a split second before I play it. I might try blindfold practice here and there. (Visualizing the piano in my head helps me hit jumps with my eyes covered for some reason)

Note: Usually when I am at this section, I already have the entire piece memorized theory-wise, and usually I can see the whole thing in my head already, so it's just a matter of fleshing out the motions. I separate steps 3 and 4 because to me, learning the notes and learning the physical motions was too much at once, so I separated them! (For more difficult music, that is)

5. Here and there, I'll pull out some staff paper and attempt to recreate the score from memory. You'd be impressed how good you are at this.

That's just how I go about it though. Best of luck!]

[themeandvariation]

All this todo...
It's only 18 bars..
The last 8 of which is only RH, except for 2 notes in the last measure...
Just keep playing it; you'll soon have it memorized before you know it..

[thirtytwo2020]

All this todo...
It's only 18 bars..

Exactly. The OP asked for advice on how to memorize 'a piece like' the Bach Prelude.

Nevertheless, I suppose the answer "just keep playing it" doesn't really help either, since that is probably what lorcar is doing already.
Here's what I think you should do:

1: Play and memorize the left hand, bars 1-7. Look for patterns.
2: Play and memorize the right hand, bars 1-8 as blocked chords, one bar at a time. Look for patterns: which notes change and which remain?
3. Play and memorize hands together. Analyze the harmony as much as you are able to (how do the separate patterns fit together - why do you play a certain note in the LH together with a certain chord in the RH?)
4. Practice and memorize the first two notes in each group of four 16th notes in the right hand, bars 11-15.
5. Practice and memorize bars 16-17, note for note.

When you've done this, the few remaining notes should be easy to add.

[lostinidlewonder]

I play large volumes of Bachs music through sight reading and can play it at concert standard. His music does not necessarily require memorization. It is very fast or tricky dense music (notes or rhythmic) that may require memorisation, or if you have very poor reading skills you may think that everything needs memory work (which of course it doesn't but one obviously can be trapped into that thinking). So don't for one moment think that you NEED to play Bach without the sheets.

You need to be able to hear the music in your head without playing or listening to the actual music. If you can do that then you have much higher chance of playing by memory. Since much of Bach is part writing simply trying to memorize the muscular memory will be more challenging if you don't combine that with a memory of what it should sound like before you actually play it.

I am not going to analyze the entire piece with you on this forum (if you want to you can PM me and we can organse something else) but yes there are patterns you can pull out and logic in fingering that will help you memorize what needs to be done. However the Bach Prelude 924 need to be able to be sight readable, it really isn't that high of a level to achieve this.