Time to memorize

[musictchr]

How long does it take the average person to memorize Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue?

[Hmoll]

How long does it take the average person to memorize Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue?

There's no "average." Everyone memorizes at a differently. Also, in many cases, it's impossible to say because lots of people memorize as they are learning the music.

[thierry13]

Also, in many cases, it's impossible to say because lots of people memorize as they are learning the music.

Some people do not ?

[timothy42b]

Some people do not ?

Some people memorize from the score, before playing it at all.

Others play it until they've learned it, which results in half memorizing it, then go ahead and make sure it's completely memorized.

I try to memorize before I've learned it, I'm not that good at it yet but that's the plan. 

[pianowelsh]

? just a thought (i dont mem before i play - as such) but how can you know its memorized properly until you play it. I know people who have photographic memory who can look at a score and 'memorize it' but when they play it first they spot gaps/mistakes - so i find it odd for people to say they can 'totally' mem a piece before they play it out - though true MUCH of the work can be done before you begin thumping the old ivories and indeed probably should be done. Memorizing is extremely personal but i dont believe anyone cannot memorize music unless they have somekind of memory deficiency! because it should be a result of good practice technique!

[nicko124]

? just a thought (i dont mem before i play - as such) but how can you know its memorized properly until you play it. I know people who have photographic memory who can look at a score and 'memorize it' but when they play it first they spot gaps/mistakes - so i find it odd for people to say they can 'totally' mem a piece before they play it out - though true MUCH of the work can be done before you begin thumping the old ivories and indeed probably should be done. Memorizing is extremely personal but i dont believe anyone cannot memorize music unless they have somekind of memory deficiency! because it should be a result of good practice technique!

I second this. I'm not sure how you can memorise before starting to play it. I can understand how it is possible but it sound very difficult. Do you have to visualise the notes playing at the piano before even sitting down to play it. If i could learn to that than essentially i could be doing piano work without even having a piano with me.

[Hmoll]

I second this. I'm not sure how you can memorise before starting to play it. I can understand how it is possible but it sound very difficult. Do you have to visualise the notes playing at the piano before even sitting down to play it. If i could learn to that than essentially i could be doing piano work without even having a piano with me.

It's a skill you develop.

[thierry13]

Some pianists learn the pieces they do in concert in the plane to go to the place their concert is. Yes it's a hard thing to do, but trying to do it before you begin any new pieces could develop this skill enough to be able to do it fairly good in some years.

[nicko124]

Some pianists learn the pieces they do in concert in the plane to go to the place their concert is. Yes it's a hard thing to do, but trying to do it before you begin any new pieces could develop this skill enough to be able to do it fairly good in some years.

That is incrediable, i never new that. Does anyone know if this is covered in Changs book on Piano Practice?
I am going to give this a try because it sounds very useful.

[bernhard]

I second this. I'm not sure how you can memorise before starting to play it. I can understand how it is possible but it sound very difficult. Do you have to visualise the notes playing at the piano before even sitting down to play it. If i could learn to that than essentially i could be doing piano work without even having a piano with me.

Are you familiar with Edna Mae-Burnan set of exercises for children “A dozen a day”?

Here is the first one from book 1:



Get someone to record it on tape for you. Now sit at a desk, have some music paper and a pencil/pen handy,  and a tape recorder with the tape of the exercise.

Look at the score. Notice the following:

1.   Both hands are exactly the same throughout.

2.   Hands are one octave apart.

3.   The only notes used are CDEFG

4.   The fingering is 12345 throughout – so the hands never move.

5.   The first line is an exact repeat of the second line except for the last bar where instead of two minims (half note) you have a semibreve (whole note). This means that we only have to worry about the first line.

6.   All the note values are identical (crochets/quarter notes) except for the last bars of the two lines where you have respectively 2 minims and a semibreve.

7.   Notice the time signature 4/4 and the key signature (C).

8.   Now concentrate on the first line. The first two bars are simply the five notes CDEFG in sequence going up and then down. In the next bar m they again go up and down, but this time they only reach the E before going down. So, make a mental note of that: C-G-C-E-C.

9.   Now that you have noticed all that, put the score away, get some music paper and see if you can write it from memory. When you finish, check that it is correct by comparing it with the score, if it is not see where you have made mistakes, and go through steps 1 – 8 again, with special care on the bits you made mistakes. Write the score again, and check it again. Repeat until you can write the score without mistakes three times in succession.

10.   Now go back to the original score. Read it and try to hear in your mind how the tune goes. If you cannot do that (it is a skill you learn – no one is born with it), turn on the tape recorder and listen to the tape as you follow the score.  Now turn the tape off and try again to listen to what is in the score, in your mind. If you get lost use the tape again. Use the tape as much as necessary to be able to “hear” the tune as you look through the score (this is the same as reading a book and being able to “hear” the words being said aloud.). When you can hear the tune as you read the score, go to the next step.

11.   Now get some music paper and write the exercise again from memory. But this time, let your memory of the tune guide you. If you forget the next note, recall how the tune went. If you forgot how the tune went, look at the score you are writing and let what you are writing guide your inner hearing.

12.   Now just look at the score. Imagine your hands at the piano in the proper position see your first finger depressing the C, the second the D and so on. See yourself from the outside – as if you were in a cinema watching a movie of you playing the exercise. Put all your attention on this “seeing”: You want to remember what you looked like. Make sure you wee yourself with great posture and impeccable technique/movements.

13.   Now see yourself again, but this time from the inside. You are inside your body watching your hands play the exercise. At this stage you may or may not need the score anymore. The score you use maybe in the table (real score), or it may be in your imaginary piano (there: you just got an instant photographic memory!). Since you are inside your body now, do not just watch your hands and the pattern of black/white keys you are playing, but also feel the physical sensations of playing: the resistance of the keys, the muscles tensing and stretching, the motions.

14.   Now do this again, but this time as you play your imaginary piano, “hear” the tune you are producing – which of course must be the tune written on the score.

15.   Now, leave the score on the table, go to the piano and actually play it. If you followed all the steps above, I guarantee that you will be able to play this tune from memory and perfectly straightaway.

I have used a very simple exercise to make it easy to write about it. I would not dream of suggesting that you do this with Mae-Burnam’s exercises: they are not repertory. What I suggest you do is that you repeat the process above for fairly easy – yet superior – pieces of music. This way you will be training your memorisation and at the same time acquiring repertory.

This is exactly the same process you use to memorise a whole sonata. The only difference is that the sonata is more complex. The analysis bit (items 1- 8 ) will be lengthier. So you may start to see the importance of things like theory and aural training. Memory is based on association. Association requires meaning. Meaning is supplied by theory. You may of course develop your own private set of meanings – like watch the pattern of ascending and descending notes and compare it in your mind with mountains or rivers – which I suspect is what many jazz pianists who were musical illiterates were doing. But you must come up with a set of meanings, otherwise, all you have is meaningless dots on a page, and this is truly impossible to memorise.

I suggest you have a look at Walter Gieseking & Karl Leimer “Piano Technique” (Dover) which describes in much more detail a very similar process and provides several examples from the literature (Gieseking was famous for only going to the piano with the pieces completely memorised form the score).

The obstacles you will find have little to do with memory capacity. The approach above must be done systematically and consistently for a number of year before you become truly competent. This means 10 minutes a day everyday memorising a piece or passage. The size and difficulty of the passage will depend on your stage of musical development. The best approach is to stick to ten minutes. Anyone, even a beginner will be able to memorise Mae-Burnam’s exercise above in ten minutes following these steps. Soon you will find yourself being able to memorise similar passages in a couple of minutes. That is when you upgrade the stakes: choose a more difficult passage, or a longer section and see how you fare. Anything you repeat everyday following the steps without skipping any and without cutting corners soon becomes automatic, and soon you find yourself memorising even without meaning to.

But everyone is impatient and inconsistent. Everyone cuts corners, skips steps and after two days of regular practice they forget about it all.

Finally, as Cooke said, do not know a piece because you remember it, but remember a piece because you know it.

Does this help?

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[BoliverAllmon]

phenomenal description again bernhard.

boliver

[dinosaurtales]

Apparently Rubenstein was quite skilled at this.  He'd memorize a score for a piece he'd never seen on the plane and play it on the stage later that night.  I totally can't imagine such a thing.

I tend to memorize in a variety of ways because I am paranoid and really want to know a piece before I get in front of even my little piano group.  So once I go through a piece a few times and have the fingerings all figured out, and am starting to work through at a slow tempo, I start th ememory process.  I use any dumb tidbit I can to "remember" parts.  Like "I toss my 3rd finger over onto this b-flat" or I play the two white notes in the left hand and the two black notes in the right.  Some parts actually have nice patterns like measures 150 - 153 in Chopins g minor ballade.  Bits like that appear random at first, but 2 minutes of looking makes it easy as pie to memorize.  Believe it or not, the hardest things for me to memorize are straight chords, like in the first few lines of Beethoven's Appassionata second movement.  I think it's because I read those directly off the music without thinking, so maybe that's the key, eh?

[nicko124]

It sounds like a really useful skill to develop, i don't know anyone outside this music forum that uses it though.

[pianowelsh]

Bernard do you mean to say that you can only do this with a piece you already know well aurally or have a cd/recording of? As someone pointed out this is not alway the case - as with Rubinstein! It should be noted too that it was a concerto that someone pulled out of at the last min (not his choice) and he was not best please with his performance - although by ordinary standards it was phenominal! Generally your plann of learning a piece sounds well thought out and theres no doubt that disecting a piece (even one youve never heard) gives not only a better understanding of the work but also create an imprint on your memory but whether the skill can indeed be developed to such a degree in MOST individuals to the point that they can avoid practice at the piano completely and learn their music on the way to their lesson and give faultless performances in lesson and concert I fear may be slightly beyond all but a minute percentage of pianists - and for those who can Im sure their teachers know them well enough to spot it and give them hell for just being lazy because they have SO much potential they should be doing even greater things! Granted it works for some but you need more. I would call your plan a process of enculturation - which many students who are enthusiastic about music do naturally (getting score out of library and listening and putting in fingerings etc) which is very useful and may indeed lead to an enhanced memory ability but i would seriously advise a student against a pupil giving a performance from memory in the lesson withhout having done sufficient 'sond' work - you don't know it form memory  till you know all the infinite shadings and chord balancings and feeling in your muscles of how you will take this chord etc. this is why it is fatal to change things in the last lesson before a memorized performance because when things come out different to how you 'imagined' you can get in a mess.
Simply ... I agree much good work can be done pre play which will pay dividends but would caution that 'succesful' memory IS reliant on 1.Visual, 2.Digital(muscular) AND 3.Auditory senses as well as the 4.analytical process

As I see it your method is excellent in preparing 1.and 4. but may fall down in 4. and fails to connect 2. - 4. which in the way in which I have been taught is the most crucial and indeed the most personal aspect of giving the performance (using your body to make the desired sound)? Maybe if you explain the detailed outworking of your method we would find we agree more closely ?

[bernhard]

Bernard do you mean to say that you can only do this with a piece you already know well aurally or have a cd/recording of? As someone pointed out this is not alway the case - as with Rubinstein! It should be noted too that it was a concerto that someone pulled out of at the last min (not his choice) and he was not best please with his performance - although by ordinary standards it was phenominal! Generally your plann of learning a piece sounds well thought out and theres no doubt that disecting a piece (even one youve never heard) gives not only a better understanding of the work but also create an imprint on your memory but whether the skill can indeed be developed to such a degree in MOST individuals to the point that they can avoid practice at the piano completely and learn their music on the way to their lesson and give faultless performances in lesson and concert I fear may be slightly beyond all but a minute percentage of pianists - and for those who can Im sure their teachers know them well enough to spot it and give them hell for just being lazy because they have SO much potential they should be doing even greater things! Granted it works for some but you need more. I would call your plan a process of enculturation - which many students who are enthusiastic about music do naturally (getting score out of library and listening and putting in fingerings etc) which is very useful and may indeed lead to an enhanced memory ability but i would seriously advise a student against a pupil giving a performance from memory in the lesson withhout having done sufficient 'sond' work - you don't know it form memory  till you know all the infinite shadings and chord balancings and feeling in your muscles of how you will take this chord etc. this is why it is fatal to change things in the last lesson before a memorized performance because when things come out different to how you 'imagined' you can get in a mess.
Simply ... I agree much good work can be done pre play which will pay dividends but would caution that 'succesful' memory IS reliant on 1.Visual, 2.Digital(muscular) AND 3.Auditory senses as well as the 4.analytical process

As I see it your method is excellent in preparing 1.and 4. but may fall down in 4. and fails to connect 2. - 4. which in the way in which I have been taught is the most crucial and indeed the most personal aspect of giving the performance (using your body to make the desired sound)? Maybe if you explain the detailed outworking of your method we would find we agree more closely ?

I am not suggesting that one should never memorise at the piano, or that one should only go to the piano once they had memorised a piece to the point where they could just sit down and play it.

However there are many pianists that do just that.

Someone manifested surprise and astonishment (and perhaps even disbelief) at this piece of news. And s/he wanted to know how could someone do that. So I supplied an answer.

If someone asks: how can you strangle someone in such a way that they faint in six seconds or less, I may well be able to tell you the answer, but that does not mean that I am suggesting you should go and do it. All that it means is that it is perfectly possible and if you want to do it, there is a way.

Now, a number of people love intellectual argument. They can go all night nitpicking a method, and proving in what circumstances it will not work.

I would like to suggest that is not in a person's best interests to adopt this attitude. Instead I suggest you try the method. It will take you only 10 -15 minutes. Print the exercise I provided (if you do not have Edna Mae Burnam's book), sit on a table and go systematically through the 15 points above. If you truly understand the instructions (some instructions are difficult to understand from the written word) and if you follow them faithfully, you may be surprised at how many of your intellectual assumptions may turn to be false and how many of your objections may vanish.

I am not asking you to believe me. I am asking you to try it out.

As for your objections:

Rubinstein did not need a CD: he could hear the piece as he read the notes, just as you can "hear" a person speaking as you read a newspaper. However not everyone has developed this ability, so in order to acquire this skill, the shortest way is to listen to CDs as you read the score. Once you acquire the skill you will not need the CD. If there is no CD of your piece, ask your teacher to record it for you. If your teacher cannot or will not, get a notation program, copy your piece into it and listen to the midi.

Intructions 13 - 14 - 15 will take care of the digital memory (I have explained why elsewhere).

Instructions 10 - 11 - 12 are specifically designed to develop aural memory.

The whole process is designed to integrate all four memories.

Jut try it. Only 10 15 minutes...

Best wishes,
Bernhard.