Interesting thread, AP! Also interesting to see quite a lot of votes stacking up to suggest playing from memory is very important. I have voted for the first "Yes" in each category, although I'm not really sure about the exam answer - I just think it's important enough to be considered. The mechanics would be challenging though. I definately would not want a requirement that the set pieces all be played from memory as good players would be ruled out/ set back by such a requirement. However you could have a shorter, simpler piece to be played from memory. For some people this would be a doddle, but that wouldn't matter because it would not impose that much on their time. For others it would be quite difficult, but perhaps they would be the ones who stood to gain the most from it.

I had some further thoughts yesterday on the sight reading vs playing by ear debate which sometimes pops up on these forums. Whilst obviously it is possible to be good at both or bad at both, I did have an instinctive agreement with those posts that have suggested things like learning Suzuki or learning from a book of printed music will tend to make you better at one or the other.

Although my daughter doesn't have piano lessons, she can find C as "Doh". When she came back from Kodaly class yesterday they had been doing "Frere Jacques" in Solfa, and she went to the piano and gave quite a confident one finger rendition from scratch with no wrong notes. I could never have done that without some trial and error first, because although I can sing the tune, I can't relate that easily to the relative positions of the notes on the stave or on the keyboard. It occurred to me that learning tunes in Solfa (whether Kodaly's version or not) has the potential to bridge the gap between playing by ear and sight reading; On the one hand you are not dependent on the written page, because the music is in your head. On the other hand neither are you making reading the music more difficult, because by naming the notes as you sing them you are creating a sense of their relative positions on the stave which should actually tie in with sight reading.

I suppose for piano playing the assistance this approach can give, particularly in terms of learning pieces from memory, may be very limited according to how simple and melodic the lines for each hand are, but with less "notey" instruments I really can see Solfa helping in the "learning from memory" process, as well as bridging a very important gap between the two disciplines of sight reading and playing by ear which in some ways seem to sit in opposition to each other.

I believe that playing with a score in front of you is like acting with a script. It holds back the musician somewhat.

That is all

Exactly - just because one learns best in one style doesn't mean one should take the path of least resistance and never attempt to enlarge one's horizons.

As I said earlier in the thread - I am naturally an aural learner, I find memorising comes naturally, and I have to work at my sight-reading - but that doesn't mean that I just go "oh, I can't sight read" it means I practice it! And thus, I can learn a piece without ever hearing it played by someone else because I have strengthened a weak area through practice.


Not at all a bad idea

And re the bit in bold - one can say the same for sight-reading... some people find it easy, others find it hard, but you don't hear people suggesting that sight-reading should be taken off the syllabus!


Depends entirely on the particular musician: some people will find memorisation free them up - others will play much more freely and expressively with the score in front of them.

I suppose it helps to have the music just to remind you of dynamics etc. especially in an exam situation where one's mind can go blank.
I can play a pretty wide repertoire of pieces by memory but I like having the music there especially for similar bits in the music that then do different things (does that make sense?)
Having a memory section in exams would be interesting - I certainly wouldn't mind it! Maybe, seeing as people are either memorisers or sight-readers, it's only fair...
Either way, it's a useful skill.

Music can be annoying too - in my AH flute performing exam last week I had to play from a photocopy of the piano part which had about 6 pages so when I got to the end of one, I had to literally throw the music off the stand and carry on. And at one point there really was no good place to turn so I just had to play the last page by memory. It must have been fairly entertaining for the examiner watching me play with a flurry of white paper floating to the ground around me!

On the YMOTY comp. (woodwind section I think) the other night the judges were discussing this, weren't they? They seemed to feel that there was no real advantage to all the memorising competitors had done or something to that effect.

Playing from memory scares me.

I normally learn everything from memory and could probably play it all perfectly well without the music, but I like the security of having the music in front of me. When I play from memory, it makes me panic about forgetting it, although I never have...

I do think it is a very important skill though, especially for pianists. We are the ONLY instrumentalists who don't have to worry about intonation so pianists often don't actually listen to themselves while they play (apparently... I read that in a book called Piano Notes).

There are 3 main different ways of learning - Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic. The best way to learn something is to engage all three styles, although most people have a preference for one. I'm a visual learner, I like to see what I'm doing - in music, that means I rely a lot on reading the music. If you're a kinaesthetic learner, you probably rely a lot on "finger memory" (which is important but shouldn't be relied on alone) but it is especially important in music to listen to what you're doing which is where auditory learning comes in. Learning a piece from memory really makes yourself listen to what you're doing. In theory, it should improve the musicality of the piece you are playing, if you've learnt it properly.

This is precisely the sort of situation for which I feel memorising should be more encouraged. You can play from memory, and I suspect that you'd be a lot less scared of performing from memory if you'd been encouraged to right from the start and not been told by others that you would forget if you did it. At least I feel this way: I've always been able to memorise things, but haven't done any exams officially from memory (not that I think I've actually looked at the music in any of them, but it was there). At the earlier grades taking the music with me wouldn't have made a difference at all: I wouldn't have thought anything of it. However, because I've become so used to the idea that memorising is an unnecessary risk and so many people tell me that I might forget I've become conditioned to think it's bad . I don't th
ink it is bad at all, and think it should be encouraged more .

Exactly the situation in which not having the music may well mean a worse performance!

I do think it's a good idea to practice playing from memory till it doesn't scare you any more though!


I agree absolutely - I can't buy into this "learn the way that's easiest" - yes, realise which is the way you find easiest, and take advantage of it, but don't let it become a crutch, or always take the path of least resistance. I think we can all become better at our weak areas if we would actually try!

An interesting thought I came accross on the CT course today is playnig from memory has different levels. Many of us play from memory with the music there, but don't really look at it. I have to admit for me this is true.

However I ask my kids to learnt o play from memory as they can show off at school

For me the worst thing at school was saying "er can;t play ... not got my music with me" Kind of killed the effect and the facility to show what I could do. This in turn could also account for my nerves in performing today - which tbh are an annoyance.

When I did my last exam my fingers shook for the two pieces i half new from memory whereas the one I could play backwards and with my eyes closed went very well and i forgot all my nerves totally.

Interesting thoughts and a very interesting thread ...

To force it upon people is wrong and makes many uneasy, - the safety net of the music isn't there, but it is a good skill and well worth developing - most modern groups - i.e. pop and rock bands don't read from music - but the way they compose thier songs sometimes isnt the same as classical music.

A question has been asked about memorisation in the Adult Learners forum. I've been looking into memorisation threads because I have to memorise a piece for my summer homework, and I came across this thread which I think makes a very interesting read. I've resurrected it to see if anyone wants to add anything to the discussion.

I saw Daniel Barenboim playing Well Tempered Clavier and he didn't memorise at all. It was a bit of an odd experience, he seemed to pause and flick through his pages as if he was deciding which one to play next. It was a bit like watching him practice on his piano at home, it didn't feel like a performance. I actually felt a bit let down that he hadn't bothered to memorise (however busy he obviously is!)

Good idea to ressurrect this thread skylark, I find memorising very hard but it is worth it I think to feel a bit free of the printed music now and then.

All the French children I have taken over from French teachers have been obliged to play from memory.

The first result is that none of them can read, let alone sight read to anything like the standard we would expect.
The second result is even more worrying. The teaching repertoire used here consists of pieces which are often extremely repetitive and often musically very boring. That makes them easier for the average child to memorise.
The third result is that the children play fewer pieces.

If people can and want to play from memory I think that's fine. If they find it helps them to concentrate on interpretation that's fine too. But to make people play from memory, particularly for exam purposes is not on. It adds stress to an already stressful situation.

French children are also obliged to learn a lot of poetry from memory. It's learnt up the night before they recite it in class and quickly forgotten. I have yet to meet a French junior school child who likes poetry.
I wouldn't want that to happen to music.

That doesn't mean I am totally against training the musical memory - for page turns, the odd party piece etc.
and for anyone who seriously wants to memorise.But I am totally against forcing it in stressful situations. I don't care if the soloist playing a concerto has the music or not. I care about the result.

I don't know how to do links but there is an interesting item on "You Tube" about Derek Paravicini - a autistic young man with a phenomenal musical memory.

I've found this thread very interesting. Unfortunately I find it nigh on impossible to memorize which annoys me - sometimes at friends' houses someone will say 'play us a tune' and my answer of 'I can't - I haven't got any music with me' sounds pretty pathetic.
I am not sure whether my inability to memorize is because I'm not naturally very musical, or whether because during my formative years at school, looking at one's hands was a Cardinal Sin and I still find it virtually impossible to drag my eyes away from the music.

I've had that and it makes me look so stupid. I can't memorise at all, I'd love to be able to but I just can't.

Me three!
Music should be a social thing as well as a thing for formal performance, and unless I carry a box of music with me everywhere I go, I just can't participate in the type of scenario where a few friends are having, say, a few glasses of wine, and somebody says 'Play something'... And if there's lots of music there on the spot I sadly tend to forget that the afore-mentioned few glasses of wine doesn't always improve my sight-reading either....

I am reminded of the scene in the film "Green Card" where the Gérard Depardieu character finally plays them all one of his compositions. When he has finished he looks around their appalled fixed grins and say "It's not Beethoven!"

I do think that not memorising tends to make you better at sightreading, so I don't think children should be encouraged to play from memory initially. For years I thought I could not remember anything without the music, but have recently found that if I make a bit of an effort to remember the first few notes of a piano piece, the rest tends to follow on. I still have no idea how people memorise a whole concerto though!

I think it would be helpful if teachers began to encourage pupils to perform shorter pieces from memory at about grade 6. Then this could be built upon at the higher grades. I don't think it should be required in AB exams though - they are quite scary enough without that!

I so wish that I was encouraged to memorise I too am always getting asked to play something and have to reply "I can't, I don't have any music with me" Very considering I am a piano teacher

I have no idea. I used to have big problems memorising pieces on the piano. I still have problems memorising sonatas and longer works but it's not as bad as before. I do it by remembering chord progressions and sections.

As for the violin, I found it easier to memorise ( I have no idea why!) and have so far memorised all my exam pieces, although I still have the book open to remind me of the rests and stuff.

I do think this is true as I am hopeless at sightreading but have always memorised music without knowledge of me doing it. But i do think it all depends on the individual as to whether they memorise music or not because although sightreading is not optional, it is almost essential at some point in the learning of piece.

i think that being able to play from memory is an important skill to have, and comes in useful. for example, if you're a pianist, people always want you to play something for them at parties, weddings, etc, and want a certain style. i'm forever being asked to play for people while at parties and stuff, and some people are'nt half picky about what i play. everyone wants something different, so i think its good to have a few pieces up your sleeve(something classical, some baroque, some jazz, etc).

But on the other hand, some people just can not play from memory, or find it very difficult, and i dont think it should be included in the abrsm exam syllabus. it adds extra stress and worry to people who are already going to be worked up about the exam, without the thought of having a complete mind blank half way through the exam, and breaking down. If you can play your exam pieces from memory, great, but i dont think it should be comulsory.

I'm amazed at the number of people writing that memorising shouldn't be in the exam as not
everyone can do it and exams are stresssful enough!! Exactly the same could be said about
sightreading.

Why do the exams only test sightreading and not memorising of pieces?

It's great being able to sit down and play anywhere you happen to find a piano.

[quote name='Robodoc' date='Jul 26 2007, 07:08 PM' post='559707']
:
[/quote]
I am reminded of the scene in the film "Green Card" where the Gérard Depardieu character finally plays them all one of his compositions. When he has finished he looks around their appalled fixed grins and say "It's not Beethoven!"
[/quote]

He wasn't memorising one of his compositions though was he? The point was that the character"Fauré" was a song writer and didn't actually know how to play an impressive piano piece which was what the social gathering wanted. so he improvised in the truest sense of the word! I think it's a fantastic scene and I love the last note!

Well said.


Some might say that the scales section of the exam is to some extent already a memory test, & as such memory is tested already in the syllabus.

yes, that's why I said memory of pieces Scales come in relatively few patterns, if you crack the pattern you've got the lot. Memorising a piece is different.

And there are arguments as to why scales should be read as well as memorised.

To be honest, I'm all for options rather than everything compulsory...there's so much scope
for really interesting musical activities that are missed, the exams seem overly prescriptive and narrow
(to my mind anyway). I learned more music theory harmonising a melody in a week than I did
in a year doing textbook exercises.

some people that I know can memorise a piece very quickly.
I can memorise a grade 6 (even some easy grade 7 pieces) with natural normal practice, but not as quickly as some.



I think it is importaint though...

I mean, with a concerto or something solo and proffetional, they usual memorise it don't they? (not all the time, of couse, but...)

I dont know how many people on here read 'MUSO', but we get it for free as music students and in the July issue (I think) there was a very interesting article about playing from memory and tips on how to imporve your memory. It was very interesting. It said that its down to Clara Shumann and Franz Liszt that instrumentalist, pianists in particular are expected to play from memory. Singers have been taught to do it for centuries so its generally an expected skill. Short term memory is one that everyone whould be able to do and probably all do without noticing and we have been doing it for a long time. Take playing the piano for example, it would be very difficult to play several succesive runs and the more demanding passages if we were to sit staring that the manuscript and not watch our hands. Go to any primary school concert, and when the young musicians play, they are so focused on playing the right notes that they never look at the music.
It depends on who you are as to how you learn memory skills. But it is generally thought that the best time for improving memory is not the best time to practice and vice versa. Like I know a guy who just can't sing in the morning, but is fantastic in the afternoon, so he does his memorising in the morning. They should also be done as two seperate activities. I have to go now and wash, but if anyone wants more about this article, just let me know.

I think memorising is a more musical skill than sight-reading, but sight-reading is a more valuable skill if you want to play chamber music, or in orchestras.

Musicians across the world have memorised for centuries; personally I believe it the ability to memorise is strongly connected to actual aural abilities, and as music is aural...

I don't like the fact that sight-reading is seen as more important in our culture than the ability to memorise; the fact sight-reading rather than memorising is required in Grade exams proves this point. I do find that my students who memorise are approaching music more aurally than the students who can't, or choose not to. They also tend to play more in tune as they're listening to themselves more. I also find it odd that anyone could practise a short piece to within an inch of their life and not find themselves memorising it as they go, especially on the violin where you only have one line to follow. I do appreciate that it's harder for pianists to memorise, although there are certainy plenty who can and do.

My teacher asked me to memorise as a matter of course and I do the same with my students, once they've learnt to play from the notated music. I also get them to sing their part - it all helps to develop their aural skills, which to me are crucial if you want to be a musician. I do find it odd that there are people out there who can play competently yet couldn't pick out a simple tune like Happy Birthday without notation. Most of us can sing it, can't we? If we call ourselves musicians but can't sing - well, one big hmm! It's not the quality of the voice I'm talking about here - just the ability to sing a tune, however croakily or waveringly. And if we have the ability to memorise and 'play' whole tunes with our voices, why shouldn't we able to do the same with our instruments? Especially single-line instruments like pretty much everything except the piano?

I'm sure the old 'interval recognition' tests that used to be a part of grade exams right from the earliest grades helped people immensely to play by ear. Once you know what an interval is in your head - you hear an interval and immediately know it's a fourth, for example, then it only takes a fraction of a second to work out how to find a note a fourth higher on your instrument. People who have learnt their intervals can play Happy Birthday (or any other simple tune they know) by ear without a moment's hesitation; people who haven't will struggle to do this - it's as simple as that really.

gaaahhh, written off as unmusical again

I wasn't taught how to memorize music, but I can memorize music well if I say so myself. It usually takes me a day to remember marching music but I usually pace myself so that I do a line or two a day then wake up and make sure I remember it correctly. I think memorizing needs to be taught more, not many people I talk to actually know how to memorize music the correct way.

I don't think playing from memory is that necessary, unless of course one is performing professionally. Musicians we see on TV/At concerts (not including orchestras) play from memory and admittedly it does look way better and more effortless. I usually learn my music first, and begin playing from memory when i) I can memorise it ii) I can't be bothered to take my music out. Of course, this does mean that some musical details are not interpreted as they might mean to sound...

i put 'yes, other reason'. i think it's important because it helps you concentrate on the music you hear, rather than the music you see on the page.

however i don't think AB should incorporate it into an exam because some people really can't remember a whole piece by heart. i can on the cello but not on the oboe but i'm better at oboe. also i think it is possible to get around said importance. you can concentrate on the music you hear even with the sheet in front of you, it's not impossible.

I can’t see for the life of me why memorising and sight reading should be seen as in opposition to one another. Music is a vast subject and the skills of musicians are many and varied. I can’t see any reason why someone who is good at memorising shouldn’t play from memory when they want to or when they deem it appropriate. Neither do I see why people who memorise easily should assume that those who read the page are bound to interpret less well. I actually think that one should not assume that what works well of one’s self necessarily applies generally.

In teaching the reading of music I think we need to make a distinction between memorising something read and the kind of mental short cuts some children make to avoid learning to read the stave.

I have never been good at memorising and I am not a brilliant sight reader either. Both skills are useful and I would like to be better at both. But they are different skills with different purposes, acquired in different ways. Just to take a kind of cross-purpose example, some sight readers are helped because their visual memory cues in what they have heard in other musical experiences. Some people memorise using a mental visual representation of the page. The human brain is incredibly complex and will use whatever pathways it finds convenient.

The rub seems to be that sight reading is tested in exams and memory playing isn’t. However musical memory is tested to some extent in the aural tests and – as some people have lamented in other threads – all those scales we have to memorise. I know that isn’t the same as memorising a piece.
But the point seems to me to be that reading music is a more essential part of western musical education than memorising.

To take issue with another point mentioned in earlier posts neither can I see any reason to say that someone who cannot sing isn’t a whole musician. I thought singers considered their voice to be their instrument. By analogy should we insist that singers who cannot play another instrument are not proper musicians? I don’t think so ! Of course it is useful to be able to sing a melody but the fact that some people can’t isn’t a barrier to being a musician. People can remember mentally melodies they can’t sing.

Wasn’t there once a one armed horn player – I can’t remember the details of the story but I think it was about a professional musician who changed to an instrument he could play with one hand because he lost the use of the other. I don’t think that made him any the less a musician than someone whose vocal cords won’t come up with the right pitch.

Thank you Aquarelle, for a very sensible post.
One thing - memory is tested in exams - namely the scales and arpeggios - and they carry about as much weight as the sightreading component - certainly for the ABRSM, though technical work for Trinity when I was doing grade 8 a couple of years ago carried more marks than the sightreading did (however, I managed to avoid using my rotten memory by choosing the non-scales option ).

Yes, I think it's a stretch to assume any kind of "this is musical, that is not" set of ideas on anyone. After all, someone could have brain damage that totally muddled their memory, and surely that would not automatically render them unmusical? Both IMO are useful skills to have.

I don't know if it's age, or if I am better at sight-reading so have to rely less on memory, but I don't memorise as automatically as I did as a youngster. I still get to the stage where I know pieces inside out and upside down, and I'm still very much an aural learner, but things don't stick as well as they used to. (most acutely with piano - I can remember things I learned 15 years ago better than things I learned 5 months ago!) It's probably a combination of things. But I still have an acute internal musical memory - I can sit for hours "listening" to my "internal iPod" - so I don't think I am less musical than I was as a child. (And, weirdly, I remember my scales _better_ these days - possibly because I care more and practise them harder.... )

I'm also much more likely to remember my jazz pieces than my classical ones. Partly, I am sure, because they are shorter! But partly because of the nature of the beast - I'm deliberately trying to get _away_ from the notation, else my improv becomes wooden. But the small amount (I'm a bit frightened of it still!) of improv of ornaments that I'd do on baroque music is whilst I'm reading the dots.

All this said - I may just be going (even more) crazy....

Aaargh - no! Memorising does depend on having a good memory, that's for sure, and memory per se isn't a specifically musical skill. Of course you can play musically from dots - you can interpret beautifully etc etc, no question. But I do think all musicians should try and cultivate the ability to play at least familiar tunes by ear. Isn't it a bit strange only to be able to perform any music with a piece of paper in front of you? If we can all sing tunes from memory (forget about the quality of voice, that's not relevant), then surely we should be able to do the same thing, at the very least with a single line, on our chosen instruments.

I'm not saying if we can't do this we're not musical! But it's a very basic musical skill that we should all have, and it's worrying to think that all this focus on dots can leave some of us unable to play simple tunes by ear. It's a bit like being able to cook from a complicated recipe, while being unable to boil a saucepan of pasta and know when it's al dente, or know when to remove cheese on toast from under the grill.

In other words, we've got into a situation where too many of us have been learning music the wrong way round - symbol before sound rather than sound before symbol, and it's suppressed an aspect of our inborn, natural musicality.

Ahhh - I would put "playing by ear" and "memorising" in different boxes, personally & it is easier to transfer "knowing what it sounds like" to "being able to play it" on some things than others.

Some instruments lend themselves more to playing by ear than others do - for a strings player, the intervals are made by placing a finger in a new position on a string - the interval is everything. On a keyboard the intervals are plain to see, and interval memory uses fairly fixed spacing of fingers; those using their voices are also focusing on pitching intervals - on a wooden tube with idiosyncratic combinations of fingering, the business of playing by ear is not so straighforward, especially in remote keys. It is not simply a matter of uncovering the next hole in the sequence.

I play mainly baroque music, and no, I don't find it strange that I cannot play anything much without the music - there's no particular need for that in that genre. I do wish I could memorise, but I'm a GP, a parent (and therefore a taxi service for the kids), I do most of the household organising, I go ice skating a couple of times a week, go to my music lessons every couple of weeks.....and don't see my way through to spending three months learning to play a piece and another six months trying to memorise it, because that's what it would probably take. For me the biggest disadvantage of not being able to memorise is that the recorder has a lousy press out there - it would be good to be able to show what even an only moderately advanced amateur can do with it when asked.

An interesting topic....

Memorising is great! I've never convinced myself to actualy play from memory but it's surprsiing wahat the brain picks up without realising. For example I could play half a peice from memory without knowing I could do it!

I'm not convinced about it coming into exams though, particularly for early grades. The scales seem to be enough of a challenge for some. Perhaps the option could be there though?

I went to a weekend course with Wissam Boustanny and he said that memorising was important for everyone, not just professionals. After all it will improve or revive the memory, keeping it active.

I would love to be able to perform a few pieces from memory, but perhaps with the music on standby!

Surely with the recorder there's an additional problem though: it's not entirely unusual to find a piano lurking around a hotel, or to be able to run into a music shop and play one if one is feeling courageous. So being able to remember piano music may be more useful: one may get an impromptu piano performance opportunity. With the recorder, however, one would have to have one's recorder there to play so keeping some music with the recorder could probably solve that one ; unless I've missed an obvious source of recorders .

I've been thinking again about the issue of being a 'musician' or 'musical' as brought up in this thread. My thinking was as follows: most people wouldn't consider a computer to be musical, and would probably define musicality as that something special about a person and their connection with music. That something special must go beyond the mechanical abilities of, say, a computer. Yet many of the things that we consider to make a 'musician' rather than an instrumentalist are actually simple processing tasks that a computer/robot could do.

• Interval recognition: easy, in fact a computer could tell you if you were a 0.1 Hertz out even;
• Playing by ear: quite simple for a tape player (or computer);
• sightreading/sightsinging: done perfectly with great accuracy in seconds;
• Memorising: a computer could out-memorise the best human player in matter of seconds.

None of these things require the special touch of a human, they're simply mechanical processes (I'm not saying that makes them easy to replicate or not worthwhile): can a computer be 'musical'? This left me with the thing that makes a person 'musical' the one thing that is not 'mechanical', a computer cannot do it, is the ability to play expressively (and that is with one's own expression, a computer can do it given a CD of Alfred Brendel to reproduce). So maybe that's what being musical is really about. The other skills may help a human to be able to play musically, I'm sure some will find those skills useful and use them all the time; some will have those skills and still find playing difficult; and others won't have those skills and will play very well. I also thought that if being a musician is about being able to do those computer doable things; and being a pianist is about being able to play technically well and expressively then probably a pianist is what I want to be, not necessarily a musician. Those skills would be nice, but it is sometimes a case of what one has the motivation to work on (and I've been intending to be working on a few of those for quite some time and not got around to dedicating a lot of time to them ).

A slightly rant there apologies for that, but I did mention memorising in there somewhere .

I'm slightly confused - how could a computer play a tune by ear? You mean if you programme it to play 'Happy Birthday' when you issue the command 'Happy Birthday'? I can sort of see what you mean, but isn't interval recognition a musical skill, because it requires aural ability, and music is an aural phenomenon?

Also, I don't know what you mean when you say you want to be a pianist rather than a musician. Isn't being a musician about being able to play accurately and expressively on whatever your chosen instrument is? The CTABRSM's motto seems to be 'to teach music through the instrument' - in other words, you're supposed to be doing a lot more than teaching the technical aspects of the instrument, but you're primarily teaching music. In a way that's all very well, because certain basics have to be mastered before you can begin to play any actual music, but I do see what they're getting at. This is why I try to make singing an important part of lessons, to keep the purely musical side prominent.

For instance, even with the very smallest, youngest pupils, I get them sight-singing right from the beginning to help them to internalise the sounds they're making, so they never forget that they're trying to reproduce sounds they can hear in their heads. A little 7-year-old I'm teaching now always sings it through first and even sings along sometimes while she's playing, so if a finger goes wrong and she plays a wrong note, her voice (and internal hearing) will immediately tell her what's happened, so she'll be far more prone to correct herself. I just think it's terribly important to be able to hear the music in your head as, or just before you play it. I know some people think it's unimportant, but don't you then run the risk of a 'playing by numbers' scenario, where you see the dots on the page and think: finger here, finger there - and are then almost surprised by the sound that comes out?

I don't know if all that makes any sense, but I just think we're in danger of going too far from what music is primarily about - sound. And that the sound should come before the symbol, at the very least in our heads.

It's a bit like painting compared to photography - a camera can record a scene precisely, and reproduce it on demand. In fact, in many regards a camera is superior to a painter - accuracy, speed etc. However, painters don't paint exactly what they see - paintings would be very clinical. They embellish, 'artistic licence', and paint something which people will perceive as more beautiful than a precise, accurate rendition of what they saw before them. So, in that regard, good paintings are more moving than photographs.

For playing by ear, a computer can do it. Very well, indeed - insofar as a tape recorder can do it. Play it a tune, and it can play it back with stunning accuracy. Its ear is a microphone, and its 'aural memory' is a disk. This does not make it musical. Interval recognition - run the sound through a Fourier transform, and do peak detection to find that a note of 440Hz is followed by one at 660Hz, thus recognising a perfect fifth. Again, interval detection, but no musical skill - just maths, thanks to Mr (Dr?) Fourier.

So what we are left with, as AP was detailing, was all the stuff that computers cannot do. A computer has no sense of artistry - it can 'play by ear', but is only following orders - much in the same way that a pupil might 'slow down a bit here' if told to do so. If replicating Alfred Brendel's performance, it will indeed be producing an 'artistic' rendition (assuming your taste in music making is aligned with Brendel's ) but again, it will only do exactly what he did. A computer can play from a score, but will only do what is written on the page, pedantically following articulation, dynamics etc. What cannot be captured is grace and artistry - we can use tools for everything else, but the human element is an intrinsic part of performance.

OK I do see what you're getting at, but from the point of view of a violinist and violin teacher, intonation is of paramount importance. To me the players who play in tune have a musicality about them that the players who play out of tune and don't know they're playing out of tune don't possess. In the same way, the players who can hear the music accurately in their heads (and demonstrate that they can by singing it, whistling it or humming it - quality of voice or whistle immaterial) have a certain musicality about them. In my experience they are also the players who are far more likely to play expressively without needing to be reminded to.

When I first met my violin teacher, she asked me to sing for her. If I'd sung out of tune she would have turned me down as a pupil, because she knew that being able to sing in tune is closely aligned to the ability to play in tune on the violin. Looking back it was perhaps a little harsh of her, and I take them on no matter whether they can sing (in or out of tune) or not. But I've found without exception that the ones who can sing in tune take to the violin much more easily because they know that it's not a matter of 'finger placement' but of listening very closely to themselves and knowing how the note should sound.

Do you really consider that to be a mathematical, rather than a musical skill? Given that musical intervals are fixed in nature (the octave 2/1 ratio, the pure fifth a 3/2 ratio etc) I don't know how you can separate the mathematical and the musical aspects anyway! With piano you don't need to be able to hear these pure (and relative) intervals because the piano tuner has done it for you, but in fact maybe the piano actually has the ability to destroy one's ability to hear pure intervals because of its (compromised) equal tempermament which means that fifths are actually narrower than fifths (although to a tolerable degree) and major thirds are wider than pure major thirds (but to an intolerable degree).

Anyway, do you think, then, that the ability to recognise pure intervals and play instruments like the violin, cello, double bass and trombone in tune is a mathematical rather than a musical skill? Obviously expressiveness etc are musical skills, no question, but do you really think good intonation is to do with maths rather than musicality?

Addendum:

I think what I'm trying to say is: a violinist, cellist, bassist, trombonist etc can't possibly play musically if they're playing out of tune. They can play in tune and put on a wooden performance, this is true, but an out of tune performance can't be musical no matter how much expression is there!

I think I would make the distinction between technical skills and being musical. On the violin, intonation is a technical skill - it involves a feedback loop from the ears to the finger placement. Yes, it involves the ears, but its an instinctive 'up a bit, down a bit'.



Yes, I could well imagine that this is the case. However, one shouldn't confuse correlation with causality. It would be quite sensible to expect that those with better intonation play more musically - practice improves both, so strength in both tends to be correlated. As for causality, I'd say not - although those who have the good intonation and produce a sound unlike that of a cat in distress are more likely to concentrate on interpretation, one could imagine a player who paid no attention to accurate intonation but lots of attention to playing expressively. Beautiful, sensitive rubato with the notes all over the place is a musical talent - and it is still a musical talent even if the intonation is skew-whiff. The intonation would be the technical skill to back that up and produce a decent sound, but without the rubato or whatever the performance would be devoid of musical content.

Sorry but I still think good intonation is more than a technical skill - it's not just 'up a bit, down a bit' because each note has nine 'commas' (microtonal subdivisions), and a crucial part of the violinist's skill is to know whether to play a note nearer or further away from the next semitone up or down - it's all about context and what you're trying to express. In other words, the intonation is an integral part of the expression, to the extent that you have a phenomenon called 'expressive intonation' where for example you might sharpen a major seventh note as it leads to the next note, for purely expressive purposes. This takes a lot more than technical skill but is very much about listening and making the sound absolutely right.

Joachim played with his own intonation; to our ears he might even sound out of tune, but apparently he played with the most amazingly pure intonation which he used for expressive purposes. I just don't see how intonation can be separated from musical playing when it comes to the violin.

I heard a teenage boy playing at a music festival recently. He had a good facility with glissando, speed of fingers and dynamic expressiveness, but he played out of tune! So for me - and for everybody listening, this put him right out of the contest. The intonation is the first thing that should be right, not an optional extra in any sense of the word! There is no point taking off with vibrato, other positions and fast runs if you're not playing in tune in the first place - it's utterly fundamental to musical playing.

So no, I strongly disagree with you that beautiful, sensitive rubato with notes all over the place is a musical talent. You can't be playing musically if the notes are all skew-whiff! I'd even go the other way and say the sensitive rubato could be achieved just by carefully following tempo markings but without any real, inner musicality at all! I do see what you're getting at, honestly, and it would be kind of nice if it were true, but I'm afraid to say that in the case of violin playing, good intonation is an absolute must. I also disagree with you that it's something that practice will sort out. If a player can't actually hear when they're playing out of tune, how can they start playing more in tune just by keeping practising? They're more likely to keep reinforcing the out of tune playing by aiding their muscle memory in playing out of tune!

I gave a lesson today to a student (returner) who has always had problems playing in tune. She can sing in tune, but I think it's the way she was originally taught ( learning and watching finger placement) that has made her go wrong by not listening to herself when playing violin in the same acute way as when she's singing.

Take speaking a language - I would call the French speaker who could just speak a basic vocabulary but with beautiful, authentic pronunciation as a far better and more 'French' French speaker than someone who had a lot of vocabulary but spoke with poor pronunciation. I'd think: why bother learning all that vocabulary and all those idioms before getting the pronunciation right?

A violinist who paid no attention to accurate intonation would make me want to scream, however great their rubato was. I'd want to say 'for heavens sake go away and learn to play in tune! Your priorities are completely skew-whiff along with your intonation. Aaaarrggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!'

Again, with 'expressive intonation' I would argue that deciding when to tweak the intonation was an artistic thing (e.g. painting something a slightly different colour) but knowing how to do so in terms of moving fingers is a technical thing (e.g. knowing which paints to mix and in what quantities). Artistry is about what and when, technique is about how.

I'm not arguing that intonation is unimportant, just that it's a technical skill rather than a musical skill. In your example, the performer was written off because his intonation was rubbish - in much the same way a pianist would be written off if he had wrong notes all over the place, held the pedal down all the time and didn't 'do' staccato. At the other end of the scale, a performance could have accurate intonation but be otherwise unmusical, and would be slated for being dry and uninteresting.

Yes, in your experience, those who have good intonation tend to be those who play musically, and I'm not arguing with that. But I'm sure there are players who have good intonation but aren't musical in their playing. Returning to blind technique, a robot could play the violin with perfect intonation, but it wouldn't be musical. I've heard plenty of pianists who are near note-perfect but play with no artistry, and I'm sure the phenomenon isn't restricted to pianists.


note to self, never play violin in front of Violinia .

Just jumping in, before jumping very quickly back out - I don't think that it is necessarily "deciding" when or "knowing" how to move your fingers; Jacqueline du Pre had by all accounts the most beautiful expressive intonation in her prime, but she didn't learn how, or think "ooh a rising 7th, I must sharpen it". It was an instinctive musical reaction to what she heard in the music. She suffered a crisis of confidence after her early success precisely because she had never been taught technique and didn't know "how".

Just something to drop into the conversation *runs away*

Yes, that's precisely it - instinct told her that she liked how it sounded when she sharpened rising sevenths, so she did it. When I said 'deciding when' I wasn't suggesting it was a conscious process: subconsciously 'deciding when' is analogous to instinct. Ergo, we agree <little square box>.

So after all this you're still saying intonation is a technical skill rather than a musical skill? So you haven't been listening to anything I've been saying! Grrrrr! Your example of the pianist being written off because of wrong notes, too much pedal and no staccato just isn't equivalent - intonation is absolutely central to music because without it, music isn't music, it's noise! So accurate intonation without expression is sort of 'undeveloped music' - good bread but without butter, or a well-executed painting without colour.

When you say
I think you've missed something, because if you know where the intonation needs to be tweaked, you'll do it. If you try and miss then you'll try again as long as long as you end up in the right place. If you don't try, then there's something wrong, because you heard what was wrong but made an unmusical decision not to bother to put it right. If you tried to put it right but missed again, then all you need to do is keep practising the passage because the main thing is: you heard what needed to be put right. Putting it right needs the technical skill, but hearing it in the first place is the musical skill.

Do you see what I mean? My student who keeps playing out of tune is less musical than my far less technically proficient young pupil who immediately corrects any out of tune note. Unsurprisingly, the young pupil also plays more expressively.

As for not playing in front of me, don't worry - in real life I never cringe (visibly) if I hear out of tune playing. I try to put it right if it's a pupil or a colleague, and respond politely if it's a performance and I have to talk to the performer afterwards (but then go home and wail)!



You don't have to run away, Sarah! You know I don't bite! Anyway, you're spot on about Jacqueline du Pre and playing with that degree of intonation: its barely a conscious choice. That's exactly what I mean by intonation being a musical thing - in fact it's an expressive device in itself.

*lol* Yes, I do know V - the conversation is just a bit high falutin' for my brain this week

Just had a thought last night: I have to say I agree 100% with Violinia that knowing whether you're in tune or not is a musical thing - and in fact, I think musicians are better at it than computers, because a musician may vary intonation due to the function of the note, even the mood of the concert. However I can see where YAP is getting at calling it a technical ability to be able to play in tune. On the violin, I can hear in tune far better than I can play in tune - the gap is caused by lack of practice! I'm wondering if the finer point is that the technical ability (playing in tune - including expressive intonation) is a technique that can only really be learned if one can hear when one is out of tune - definitely IMO a musical ability, especially in concerns of expressive intonation - and, for example, portamenti. Degrees of expressive intonation and taste are something that even musicians can disagree about... A computer could be programmed into oblivion, I don't know that it could then be able to exercise taste, sense an atmosphere, and react appropriately to those considerations and the function of the notes in the music - all things which a good violinist should do instinctively. IMO those are musicianly qualities, not technique.

I wonder if we can really so easily divide technique from music....