There have been a few threads recently about playing from memory - the pros and cons - what I would be interested to know is how you actually go about doing it - what are the tricks and techniques? - because I just can't do it! I have a Grade 8 distinction and diploma, but playing from memory illudes me. I can memorise BITS of things, but I need anchor points on the music to look at - how do you get past this?

Hiya

I've always been able to play from memory so I don't know any tricks or techniques I'm afraid. Even though you've passed grade 8 with distinction (congrats by the way!) & have a diploma it doesn't mean that you should be able to play from memory, it just comes naturally to some people.

The only way I can think of learning a piece by memory is to practise it in sections so that you'll only have to remember a little bit at a time. Start with as many bars as you feel comfortable with & then work from there.

I wouldn't say it's a must-have for musicians but I must admit that it is helpful & allows you to concentrate more on the performance side of things, well for me anyway. Although saying that, my teacher has never been able to play from memory either & it hasn't ever held her back in any way so if you find you can't do it then I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Lisa xxx

Again, I don't specifically try to memorise so I don't have any specific techniques, but from what you've written I can think of a suggestion that might help. Observe the points where you look at the music (your anchor points) and practise playing from a few bars before then to a few bars afterwards, thus really concentrating on the bits that you need the music to get over; if you can get through the bit you need the cue to do then you're on to another remembered section again. Of course the success of this depends on how many points you have. I think there have been some threads in the past on this too, you could try a search if you don't get many suggestions . I recall some people suggesting that reading the score away from the piano helps as well as analysing the structure/harmony of the piece too . How about trying to start with something short and working your way up?

It's actually a shame for people who are natural readers, rather than memorisers (one tends to be one or the other), that there's very little focus on teaching people to memorise in the way people are generally taught piano. Those who don't read naturally, and indeed everyone, is taught the skill of reading; but memorisation is not taught to anywhere near the same degree.

The first thing I do when I memorise a piece is to make sure that I can hear the whole piece in my head, either by playing it a few times or by listening to a recording. Then I devide the piece in logical section and start to memorice them by analyzing the piece (what chords ar uses, are ther scales or arpeggio's used, what sections are repeated). I also look at the "shapes" my hands are making on the keyboard (for example; a f minor chord = white, black, white in a sort of triangle shape if that makes any sense). It is also important to be able to start at different points in the music (for example every fourth bar of the music) so if you lose track you are able to recover. I hope this helps. good luck!

I agree with what has been said above. Memorising a piece on the piano is achieved by a combination of factors for me, namely the following:-

1)Complete awareness of, and analysis of the harmonic progression and structure of the music both at the piano and from the score.
2)Re-inforcing the above by aural and visual repetition of both the music and visual references on the keyboard i.e. the shape of a broken chord or the flow of a melodic line.
3)Repeating the above methods with respect to phrases/sequences/recapitulations, modulations etc.
4)Aural and visual training of the ears and fingers to the point where they become a synthesis of each other.
5)Photographically remembering parts of the score i.e seeing the notes in your head.
6)Listening to recordings to help the memorisation process
7)Get to know the music totally and completely at and away from the piano.
8)Practice, practice and practice...repetition and consolidation of all the above.

Once all of these are achieved and the notes are finally learnt, then comes the hardest part....playing the music in an artistic and musical way that will communicate to and even move anyone listening.

Gae

My daughter has always played from memory. She is very nervous if she has to play with the music. When she takes music exams, she hands her books to the examiner, as they make her go to pieces if she has them in front of her. She has always played like this, first on the violin, but also on the piano. I think it is just an alternative way of learning. Her sight reading isn't great on the other hand, but she only has to hear something once to be able to play it.
Violinma

Wow, I wish I found it easy to play from memory, but I am definitely a good reader of music... helps with sight reading and learning pieces in the first place, but becomes difficult when I try to memorise anything.

If I'm memorising a piece, I get a recording of it and listen to it non-stop for several days (if not weeks) so that I have an almost unconcious aural awareness of everything that happens in it. I tend to sing along quite a lot as well.

Obviously, playing the piece over and over and over again is a good way to get your fingers to physically remember a piece.

Philip Johnston (www.practicespot.com) recommends trying to write a piece out on manuscript paper from memory, including all dynamics and phrasing etc!!!

For me, even when I've learnt something from memory, I still visualise the music (including page turns!) in my head.

Thank you for your answers - I'm detrmined to get my head round this! Do you think, by the way, that memorisers are the ones with better ears? I have yet to come across a person with perfect pitch who doesn't memorise very quickly. (I don't have perfect pitch - or even close.)

My mum's got perfect pitch and she hates memorising, but the main orchestra she plays with specialises in contemporary music, which is obviously quite difficult to memorise as the key signature and time signature often change on a bar by bar basis!

But, I think having a sound aural awareness of the piece you're memorising definitely helps with learning it as you'll instantly hear if something is wrong. Perfect pitch probably helps a bit with this.

If I play a piece in the "wrong" key (like if I transpose something), my mum often won't recognise it because it sounds wrong to her.

I suffer from Scleric Sensitivity Disorder and thus find it hard to follow my music when sight reading. Hence, I have struggled in practical exams ever since I got past the grade 5 mark (as they require sightreading).
Playing from memory therefore has become something that I have had to do to grow up doing.

The technique that I use is not to learn the finger numbers provided on the score, and as you are figuring them out for yourself you will find the music become more memorable as you are playing it over and over again until you find the most comfortable way of playing each phrase. Hope that this technique can be of some assistance to you.

I teach exam technique (amongst other things) to university students and have read around the topic of how memory works a fair bit.

I would agree with Gae that you have to *really* know the score in a conscious way, you can't rely on muscle memory that's for sure.

It helps to understand how long term memory actually works, which is, "memories trigger memories" also known as "chunking" or grouping things together. The more things you can link to a piece of music the better your chance of remembering it. At the beginning I look at the note patterns and hand patterns etc for certain phrases. Note that if there are two phrases with similar patterns it's extremely helpful to be consciously aware of the (sometimes subtle) differences or typically they'll be confused under pressure. Being a mathematician I like to look at the overall pattern, the "logic" of the piece. Later on I add associations eg to scents, colours, visual scenes... the richer the network of associations the better one's memory will work on something. After a while the associations are all you need to recall something. You've probably had the experience of suddenly remembering in vivid detail something from your past when you smell a particular odour such as a certain food or furniture polish.

Possibly tedious analogue:Think about making a complicated car trip. The first time you have to know alot of detail about the route, and you need all this detail the first few times. But after you've made the trip a number of times, you only need landmarks, and as you see a landmark that part of the route comes competely into mind and you know exactly what to do even though you would not have been able to describe it before you set off to someone asking directions. Thus, picking out a sequence of landmarks in your piece of music is a good idea.

Good luck and I'm interested to know how you get on