Great Sightreader, But Awful Memorizer.

[winsto7]

Hey guys!

I'm piano student whose taken lessons for only about 4 years. I taught myself for a year or two before that, though. Anyways, I'm at the point where I can sightread just about anything, from Beethoven to Liszt to pop or jazz, and I can do it well with very little "note" mistakes. While I'm blessed to be able to do this, it sucks when it comes to actually learning a piece, because I'm not spending as much time as I should on them, due to being able to play the majority of the notes the first time. I can't seem to refine anything I play, and get it to a spot musically that I want to be at. Memorizing is a whole other story. I've tried taking a piece measure by measure, and going at a slow tempo, but I think it's a mental thing where I think just because I play the notes, that means I don't have to/ want to spend time refining it. I've spent so long trying to get pieces to performance ready, but just don't have the patience because I'm not learning them measure by measure like other people might. Any advice on overcoming this mental hurdle and finally being able to take a piece to its full potential where I'd be ready to perform?

[anacrusis]

Oooh big question, maybe that's why you haven't received replies yet?

It seems to me like you are asking two questions actually, one question is how to memorize efficiently, and the other is how to polish the piece to be in top notch shape? And that both are hindered by you being able to read the piece very quickly and then you get bored and move on to something else since you've already experienced the piece to 80-90% and that's enough for you? Am I understanding you correctly?

[winsto7]

You're understanding perfectly anacrusis. Kudos!

[ranjit]

Interesting, and this is sort of the mirror opposite to my position. While I'm probably a slow memorizer in comparison to the people here, my teacher reprimands me for reading the page a few times, and then playing it by memory, basically memorizing "too quick".

Anyway, some thoughts:
Take up a new piece of music which you have not read before, and approach it with the mentality that you will memorize it from the beginning. That is, you need to wean yourself off the page as soon as possible. And I'm not talking days or weeks, what you should try to attempt is to play a few measures and memorize them immediately, within a few minutes. For that, you will need to try to get yourself to observe the patterns going on in the music and put them into some kind of structure which helps out with memory. (For professionals, this structure may well be subconscious, but it's there nevertheless imo.) Observe chords and harmonies, repeats, transposed elements, etc. which can help you memorize the music quicker because it reduces the amount of stuff you need to explicitly memorize. Figure out the melody if any and play it individually/hum it out loud. And so on. But the key is to have a certain amount of time for memorization where you are allowed to use the page, and then you should try to recreate it from memory. Give yourself a certain amount of time -- I prefer to do five minutes. Try to memorize 2 measures, or 4 measures, depending on the density of the music. Then, chuck the music aside (to another room if you have to) and play it from memory. Then, try to recall the bars of music after 8 hours, the next day, etc.

I think this also eventually primes you to memorize music more readily.

[j_tour]

Well, I only have the standard recommendations for memorizing (break things into discrete chunks, at times even make "interesting" little practice scores with random snippets from a given piece, out of order, using scissors and a glue stick).

For me, what it is is that I'm also a very good sight-reader, and I really need a reason to memorize a piece.  Just to have stuff to play for other people, pretty much (no, I don't give "big deal" concerts of legit concerts, but for friends and also for the kind of joy that comes from internalizing a piece — freeing myself up to put some more mental or emotive aspects to a piece).

So, I'm mostly happy to use the score as an aide-mémoire, but, yes, it's difficult for me as well to keep a bunch of things in my head.

[mad_max2024]

I'm also bad at memorizing but I found a method that works very well for me is to practice the piece backwards.
Start at the end in a small chunk (usually a musical phrase), practice that and then add another bit before and practice them and keep adding and doing that until I reach the beginning.

Another thing that might help is to analyze the piece and try to understand the harmony and structure so you can have that mapped out in your head.

Another thing to keep in mind is that mistakes will always happen and you need to find a way in a performance setting to keep things rolling and play through them. As long as you don't stop or hesitate and can steer things into the right path again you will usually notice a lot more blunders than the people listening.

[anacrusis]

Practicing backwards is one of my favorite tricks, either measure by measure or often a short section at a time. It prevents me from just going "ah it was good enough I wanna hear the rest of the piece" because I'm not allowed to continue going forward. It helps me work over each section more carefully before proceeding to the next.