late starter on the piano

[betricia]

Hello all
I am so glad to have found this forum.  There are so many questions I want to ask and although I have a teacher, I am her first pupil and I feel embarrassed to ask some of the questions as I think I will sound stupid.  My first question is I am practising scales over and over and over and actually find them quite therapeutic.  I have some pieces which I have learned and I practise them over and over again.  sometimes they go smoothly and other times my brain disengages and I don't know where I am in the piece.  I learn the piece by reading each bar and playing it over till I get it.  Then I read the music as I play.  Once I really get the hang of the piece I find I am not really reading the  music and my brain (memory I suppose) takes over and the piece sounds good (to me anyway).  All is fine until as I said my brain disengages and I am lost and search the piece to find my place again.  then I can't seem to read it as easily as when I was learning it.  Is it wrong to play by memory and should I really be focusing on the written notes at all times?  I am getting on for a learner, 56 next birthday, but I am so keen to be able to play.  I am also very nervous and cannot play in front of anyone so taking exams seems out of the question although I would quite like to do my grades.  I am up to grade 3 scales by myself.
Any suggestions would be really really appreciated.
Thanks
Betricia

[richard w]

You should feel perfectly free to ask your teacher any questions you want. If the questions you want to ask your teacher are the same as you have just asked this forum then you seem to have perfectly sensible and valid concerns. Discuss these concerns with your teacher.

Anyway, you have made some useful observations about your own playing - namely that when you learn a piece you are actually memorizing it, even if the score is in front of you. If you have no desire to play without music, then one option could be for you to learn to follow the score as you play. This may well involve less looking at your hands, which in turn means you need to be able to 'feel' your way around the keyboard. Make sure you remain focused on the task in hand when playing and do not let your mind wander to other things. It may be quite difficult to develop this skill with a piece on the 'leading edge' of your ability, but you should be able to acquire this skill with easier compositions.

However, if you want to be able to play without music you need to develop strategies for good and reliable memorization. You will probably find lots already written about this subject on this forum, but there are a few things I will suggest while I'm here. First, when you say you practise each bar, do you overlap into the following bar? In any piece of music the difficulty isn't in the notes themselves - no one however new to the piano could fail to play any or all of the notes of the most taxing pieces from the repertoire (Rach 3?). The difficulty is in putting them together and joining them up. If you practise bar one, then bar two, you will have learnt how to get through all the notes in bars one and two, but you will not have learnt to connect the two bars, because you will not have practised getting from the last note in bar 1 to the first note in bar 2. It may be that often you can cover for this, but occasionally it will catch you out because you have not learned to associate the last notes of one bar with the first of the next. Realise that you memorize things by association.

You can exploit memory further by looking at your hands as you play. Not only will you remember how to move your fingers, but you will remember what it looked like too. With two forms of memory you playing should be more secure. You now have two forms of association, one to fall back on if the other fails. But for really good memory you really need to understand about how the pieces you learn are constructed. This is where music theory comes in. Can you identify the main themes and motifs of your pieces and identify what different keys they appear in? Do you know what all the harmonies are? To help with this aspect you could ask your teacher if she will go through some of the theory with you.

Finally, when you play from memory make sure you are fully concentrating on the performance in hand. Anticipate in your mind what bits are coming up next. This way you shouldn't be taken by surprise, and suddenly forget where you are. If you are playing and you have no idea where you are or what is coming next, even if you do manage to carry on (with hand memory), you may feel that your memory isn't secure.

Whichever route you take, focus and concentration whilst you are playing are really important.

My first question is I am practising scales over and over and over and actually find them quite therapeutic.

You may quite enjoy playing your scales in this way, but there is a good chance that it is not doing a lot for your playing, although it may be doing no harm. When you play your scales be very clear what the purpose of playing them is. In fact, this applies to everything you do at the piano. Question everything you do and rationalise it in terms of the benefits you want it to bring. If you aren't rewarded with those benefits in due course then look again at your methods.


Richard.

[betricia]

Thank you very much for replying Richard and for your helpful advice.  I take what you say about playing scales and now have to admit that I often practise while watching television so I am not really concentrating fully am I?  Now I have confessed.  Shame on me.
I will think about the linking of bars as you suggested and the other tips.  My belief for learning to play the piano well was that I should read the music as I play and I don't just want to play by ear but memory takes over.  there is so much on this site which is great and I should have looked through it all before posting my question.  I work full time and time is short so I just posted first.  I am grateful that you took the time and trouble to  reply as I am probably not the first to have asked such a basic question but you have spurred me on now.  My teacher is having a break as she has just had a baby but I will talk more to her once she is back to teaching again.
Thanks again

Patricia

[piano_luvr]

Wow Betricia!  Haha.  You sound JUST like me!  I'd almost say we were twins. LOL*  I have the same question about memorization. (by the way, thanks for your input on this Richard)  Before I ever started taking piano lessons, I always had a piano in my home, so I would always tinker on the piano and play songs by ear.  I got very well at doing this too.  But now, I think this "memorization" and "playing by ear" thing is coming back to bite me in the butt.  LOL*

When I finally did get my lessons, I noticed right away that I could hear a piece (I'd always have my teacher play the piece first  so that I knew what it was "supposed" to sound like) and practice it a few times, and within a short period of time, I would be mainly going by memory (auto-pilot) instead of actually READING every single note!!  This scared me, and still does, because sometimes (like Betricia said) I will play parts of a piece on auto-pilot and it will sound just beautiful.  But as SOON as my mind "snaps back to reality" and I realize that I'm not really looking at the notes, then my concentration fades and I start to mess up, or forget my place.  I HATE this!  It's a pain because while my teacher thinks that I'm playing all of the notes by sightreading, little does he know that I've actually just MEMORIZED how to play the piece, and therefore I never really got GOOD in sightreading!

Is this a bad thing?  I need help.  Is it bad to not READ every single note?  Maybe it's laziness?? How can IMPROVE my sightreading?  I need advice.  :-/

  I reluctantly quit my lessons early last year due to school obligations (not having time to practice) and financial problems.  HOwever I found that I really REALLY missed my lessons,  and now that I have a new job that pays a little more, I can't wait to start them up again early this year. 

[piano_luvr]

No advice?

[shasma]

i know that feeling too well, it usually happens when i perform in front of an audience. i start off real well and i'm not really thinking, and then i realize i'm not looking at the scores and i try to think of where i am in the song, and i mess the whole piece up... lol...

i'm by no means a pro, i'm not good at all. so, i guess my advice will be really newbie, but this is how i deal with it when it happens. usually i just start over, and try to focus more when i play. this is when i can't play the whole piece by heart. when i feel like i'm able to play the whole piece without looking at the scores i usually take a minute to read the score itself, without playing. just thinking through how i'm going to place my hands and so on, sometimes i do it in the buss when i've got nothing else to do. i find that it helps me memorize the piece.

 i don't think it's bad to be able to play part of a piece without looking at the scores, i think it's a good thing. usually i just have the scores when i'm not certain that i can play it by heart, but after a while i try to play it by heart only. because that makes room for me to laborate with the piece. it's easier to make the piece more lyric.

but sometimes when i'm practising to play by heart, some passages go real well and then suddenly i have no idea what to play next. i usually just back a few bars and play again with my eyes closed and feel my way through the part where i can't remember. another way for me is to play the part really slow and look on where i place my fingers and in what order, then play without looking and picture the bars i'm playing.

i'm always encouraged by my teacher to learn my piano pieces by heart,i don't think it's a bad thing at all...

[betricia]

Thanks for the encouragement.
Patricia

[dorfmouse]

Once I really get the hang of the piece I find I am not really reading the  music and my brain (memory I suppose) takes over and the piece sounds good (to me anyway).  All is fine until as I said my brain disengages and I am lost and search the piece to find my place again.  then I can't seem to read it as easily as when I was learning it.  Is it wrong to play by memory and should I really be focusing on the written notes at all times? 

Hallo Betricia
Just to add on to Richard's good advice I think you also might find help with your problem in this thread; https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4858.msg46087.html#msg46087
  Look at reply #41 by Bernhard which addresses exactly this issue in detail, especially paragraphs 5 and 6. There is nothing "wrong" with playing from memory and I personally envy those who seem to do it effortlessly. But if you're getting lost because your brain disengages then you haven't securely memorised the notes in the first place.
I'm not a beginner but just an amateur and have only recently begun to memorise. I was convinced I couldn't do this, until I found the advice on this forum and particularly Bernhard's stuff about learning efficiently at the little chunk stage. I still find it takes me a frustratingly long time to learn each short section but if I follow the guidelines and don’t cut corners (that’s the hard bit!) it does sink in. (I am 52, so don't despair!) Look at his comments here on how age is irrelevant and other useful links:
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4105.msg37603.html#msg37603
Good luck with your learning!