Most efficient way of memorizing pieces

[comma]

I remember one of my teachers, who is a quite demanding lady, forced me to play the fugue of Beethoven's sonata op. 110 on the closed keylid. To make things worse, she added: Don't think you can cheat me. I hear when you play wrong

[william_ni_guang_xin]

I remember one of my teachers, who is a quite demanding lady, forced me to play the fugue of Beethoven's sonata op. 110 on the closed keylid. To make things worse, she added: Don't think you can cheat me. I hear when you play wrong

how does that even work? closed key lid?

[malcolmdominique]

For me memorizing a piece comes naturally with practice. I don't see how you can actually truly know the piece and be able to fully interpret it like its your own unless you memorize. All of my fingerings, dynamics, phrasing, pedaling, etc. is all planned out so by the time I am ready to perform the piece, it is naturally memorized. I think if you have problems memorizing, then you don't practice that well.

[dedolence]

apologies for the rambling here, i swear i'm usually more concise.

i am dealing with memorization problems at the moment, but it seems like most of the methods here are all kinda what i do already (and even where there seems to be disagreement i think there's actually a common idea at heart behind the specifics).

basically i try to memorize as little as possible, so i try to learn the piece as phrases, chunks that can repeat. when a phrase is altered, i only have to think about how it's altered, not each little note. it's just a process of grouping as many things together to reduce the overhead overall. i find that a well-edited score is going to provide a lot of information in how the notes are organized: i find it very helpful to memorize measure by measure.

i actually like the method of learning finger by finger. i've never done that specifically, but i think we can all agree that it's basically the same thing as dividing a piece into voices and learning each voice independently of every other, then combining them and smoothing out the seams.

i also think methods are going to vary according to composer, not just performer. beethoven sonatas tend to be much more easy to divy up into discrete chunks that basically adhere to a measure; but chopin or schubert might have much longer melody lines and fluid structure; and a bach piece is going to be all about the polyphony and compartmentalizing by voice rather than by measure.

just some thoughts. the more i practice, the more i think what separates me (and maybe other amateurs) from the professionals is the ability to memorize and retain a vast repertoire. and the whole point of memorizing is to secure that memory, right? so that should be what informs any particular memorization technique, i think.

[cuberdrift]

My method of practice is: whatever I want to do at the moment, I do.

In practice, this typically involves me picking a section, asking myself what I want to do with it, then doing that. It's usually just starting it slowly then speeding it up whilst adding emotion to it.

I do this process until I'm kind of tired with the section and/or feel like "that is enough for now."

I then either leave the piano momentarily or repeat the same procedure for another section.

I'm not sure if this is an "efficient" way to memorise, but it's the only method I tend to rely on.

I don't usually use other methods since they just feel too mechanical. My method is kind of impulse/stimulus-based. I feel like other methods leave out the emotional part which one has to do in the end anyway.


Does anyone else have a similar way of practising?


I've experimented before with others. I did hands separate but found out that I ended up still having to practise it HT anyway. I tried isolating the voices, which I still do but only if it's a tricky contrapuntal passage, so I do it sparingly. Takes up time. I tried the classic metronome method, but like I said that's too mechanical, and the learning doesn't "sink in" appropriately. I've even tried, for instance, telling myself I will repeat this passage x number of times (depending on its difficulty). Again, quite mechanical and doesn't seem to encourage deep thought.