What made me think of this topic is that this week my piano teacher has asked me to learn from memory the first three lines of Chopin Waltz, Op.69, No. 2 and the left hand on the following page by Thurs 21/12. I have just had to go up and look up the title of what I am actually learning to write it in this message, so that is a good start. I am really enjoying practising in this way. We did a little bit in the lesson where my teacher removed the book so I had to make a real effort with her assistance. There is no way I can get away without practising this week, not that I would want to anyway. Do any of you employ methods such as these?

I haven't yet, but it sounds like a good idea!

I think it is a brilliant idea.

That method would certainly make you think hard.

I don't insist pupils learn from memory although some do of their own accord. My pupils are nowhere near your standard though, so I'll save this practise tip for the future

xxx

I asked a pupil how she tackled learning pieces only to get the answer that she always started from the top. I suggested a different way to practice, she tried it, it worked and she got enormous pleasure from it.

I also have a couple of pupils who live very busy lives, so I sat down with them and worked out a way for them to fit in their practice. Again it worked, I showed the obvious pleasure of more progress being made and there were smiles all round.

Most of my pupils parents are happy for me to do this as they are paying for the lessons and like to see their child make progress. This also gives me the scope to show more understanding when a child's week goes completely pearshaped!

I always play from memory- I can't help it. After playing a piece two or three times, I end up being able to play without the book. I have to do exercises after that if I want to play with the music and not from memory, to make sure that I actually use the music... I can't sightread very well though, so it does balance out!

recently a parent was talking to me about her son's violin playing. We share the same recorder teacher and she has been teaching my daughter Violin. The boy learns through school, the mother is frustrated as he doesn't seem to be making much progress. Thinking about it I realised that my daughter's sound has developed thanks to her teacher who made her use the Suzuki pieces and learn them from memory. I don't think either of us really thought about the benefits of teaching this way (she's never taught violin to someone who could read music) although being a Suzuki specialist the teacher will be fully aware of why this system works. At the concerts last week the sound made by the suzuki's was much better than their music reading counterparts and some of them were considerably younger.

Hello...you sound as though you may have the same problem that I have in reading music...once I have learned a piece reading the music, I tend to play it by memory or by ear and realise that I am not actually reading the music...does this sound familiar?.maybe it gets boring reading the music if you don't need to do it and so you switch off and play by ear...does any of this sound familiar to you?
Can you tell me what you mean by exercises...do you mean scales or hanon or something? Do you play these by memory as I do?
Look forward to hearing from you

Well, nothing really helps because once I can play something from memory it's almost impossible to play it as if I haven't memorised it. But it's not as if I actually try to memorise it; it just happens and then I don't need the music at all.

Most of the time I find that I've learnt something properly, but if I find that it's just that my fingers are playing on automatic then I force myself to play really slowly without looking down at my fingers- that normally works.

I also play a lot of scales, Hanon and Bartok and loads of other sight-reading. I normally play each piece or exercise twice, straight through. By doing these exercises I find it easier to play a harder piece of music by actually following, if not reading, the music. I don't know how people normally follow a piece that they've studied- do they actually read each note or do they just follow the groups of note patterns?

With harder pieces (well, harder to me- they're probably not that hard) I try and learn it as a whole, rather than concentrate on, say, four bars at a time. I also force myself to look at the music and follow it at all times; if my mind is busy reading the notes then it can't jump ahead and remember what comes next (at least that's the theory).

I'm hoping that when I get to higher grades I won't have this problem- my teacher says learning from memory is fine at the moment because I'm doing it properly...

Anyway, I'm waffling.

I have a 13 year old student who does this. The trouble is that she doesn't spend enough time looking at the music and only part learns things or learns them with errors in.
It can be difficult getting the balance right between encouraging her quite good memory skills and pushing her to pay more attention to what is on the page.
She is quite resistant to looking at the music once she THINKS that she knows sonmething and then works by trial and error until it comes out right.

I have a few of them too - look once, then guess thereever after........

I find asking a pupil to memorise a short passage is a good way of encouraging at least some practice in a week, but they also find what I call jigsaw puzzle practising good fun. They are not to play the piece from beginning to end, but to find similar bars or phrases and practise only them first as you would sort out jigsaw puzzle pieces and only the night before the lesson are they supposed to put the "puzzle" together ie play from start to finish. Some are proud to report that they could play the whole puzzle early on in the week. Anything to encourage practice!!

Yes, Melody. This is how our daughter was taught to practise her violin - sorry, she's not a pianist. It's VERY effective and she has learnt amazingly quick this way. I swore to the head of her junior dept that she would never have been such a fast learner otherwise (I meant, had she a different teacher/method.) Her teacher breaks up tasks into small tiny movements so she can check on half a dozen things all at the same time. Multi-tasking. She minds her left hand's job first checking things are right all the time and then after it is only when she thinks she has mastered that job that she starts learning the right hand's bowing's job.

However, if I remember correctly, it was Daniel Barenboim who doesn't like this method. He criticises those who taught in this rather mechanical way in his semi-autobiographical book. Splitting the right hand from the left or the musicality from the technique, etc, is not, he thought, natural. Horses for courses, I guess ...