Hi

I'm fairly new to this forum, so please excuse me if this subject has been covered before.

I'm an adult restarter and I'm currently working towards my Grade 8 piano proabably looking to take it next year.

I have two of the three pieces well under way and just started the third. But I would love to be able to memorise them I feel that this would help with the fluency but just can't seem to be able to get past the lst bar!! I'm finding it infuriating - does anyone out there have any tips - or do I just have to face the fact that I'm never going to be able to memorise anything. I'm sure I could do it when I was younger.

With memorising as with most things i think that unless it comes naturally to you then it's something you have to develop.
Start with easier/shorter pieces and work up form there. Having an understanding of how the piece is structured can help.
I'm not a memoriser but find that the few pieces (or sections) I do manage to memorise usually have a fairly obvious harmonic structure and this is what, for me, makes them easier to remember.

I find it easier to listen to recordings of the piece until I know it well enough to sing it without the recording (more or less) then I learn to play it (preferably by ear first, checking later against the score - although it doesn't have to be that way round). I then find that the notes I play on the instrument tie in with the mental image I have of the sound and a connection is formed - I rarely forget a piece that I have learnt this way.

Sttart with simpler stuff, first, though if you're going to try this. Hope it helps!

Allan

For me, it's easier to work out what chords the pieces use and how often they change in a bar that makes some sort of sense to me. And then a general overall picture of it's form, how often the main theme appears, and where etc... Before, I was like you I couldn't remember more than a few bars and it was only the beginning part too.

But for the violin, Allan's method works better for me, as you only play the melody.

I think this is one of the methods I adopt without even knowing though....before I read Rosfrog answer I was going to say:'I don't know how I memorise pieces but I 'just do'', but after reading Rosfrog I realised that that is what I do. Either I know the piece because I've heard it so many times or because I've 'played it' so many times that I just remember it! I think I also have some sort of good 'musical ear' or whatever it is that I have because even before I learned scales/arpeggios etc I KNEW instantly if a wrong note was played, not because I knew the scale or the arpeggio, just because it 'didn't sound right' to me. Is this having a 'musical ear'?? I don't know!
Anyway, yes, I think I learn through repetition, I just end up memorising pieces whether I want to or not.

I think it is something that comes naturally once you know a piece of music well enough. For me I always start new pieces of music and break them down into small sections. I do this especially with the piano and find that I automatically learn from memory by doing so. Take one or two bars at a time and play them over and over again until you don't need to look at the music. It will come to you eventually.

Never has for me.
I can't memorise - and goodness knows, I've tried - I can find myself able to play a piece without mistakes, but still unable to remember any of it without the dots...

Hi

Thanks for all of your suggestions, I will definately try and put them into practise.

One thing I never have any trouble memorising is scales, I have learnt them all by ear (only using the book for finger referencing)

It's only really the piano I have the problem with, I also play the flute although I've not picked it up for a while, but in the past I have been able to memorise short pieces with little hardship, which is why I am completely baffled by my lack of memory when it comes to the piano.

Is it because you only have to learn one line of music?

Perhaps I'm expecting too much to soon.

Hi Poodie

I'm an adult learner and my teacher has given me a piece to memorise over the holiday, so I've spent some time researching all the threads that have been written about memorisation on the forum to find out what techniques work. I haven't quite finished that exercise yet, but if I can add anything useful to help, I'll post again when I've finished.

In the meantime, I came across a thread which discusses whether it's beneficial to memorise music or not. I'm going to resurrect it as it was started a year or so ago, and some additional thoughts on the matter might be interesting. This is the thread - Memorising, is it taught enough? or is it a waste of time?.

I like to memorize the music as well, as i agree that it helps with fluency of the piece. The only way I can do it is by repetition and memorising the patterns and shapes of the music. I usually break the piece down into sections, the size of which depend on the difficulty of the music.
for example, for Chopin nocturne in F minor, I had to memorize hands separately for the last page (loads of triplets), but for Bach toccata in e minor, had to learn hands together but 2 bars at a time in places to figure out where the fingers actually go.
I really just keep plugging at it until it clicks into place.

I don't really try too hard to memorise - I just can't imagine spending an hour a day for several weeks or months playing the same few pages of music, practicing the difficult bits in isolation until you get them right, slotting the thing together and getting it smooth, dynamically right, emotionally involved and generally up to performance standard and not being able to remember it. Having said which, I regularly play pieces I know by memory with the music anyway, just to check I haven't mis-remembered, especially dynamics and phrasing.

me too!! Despite memorising the music, I just dont trust myself to not lose the plot half way through!!! I like to have it in front of me, even if I never so much as glance at it!!h

i jsut constantly play it, sometimes i put my music stand (which i use for 'flooting') next to the piano to the side with the book on, so i can read when i need to. But most of the time, i can just keep playing it through and it will come in no time.

That's the worst possible combination as far as I'm concerned If the music is there, I'm bound to glance at it at times, and, as I don't follow it when playing from memory, I'm bound to see something entirely else than what I'm playing I think I messed up my pieces at some point every time I tried to do this
As for how to memorize, dunno, it just happens to me, so I'm afraid I can't say anything helpful

When I was playing at uni, my teacher told me that if you want to memorise a piece you actually start to do so as you learn it. So as you're learning each new section you memorise it as you go, so the piece is actually learned by memory, rather than learning it first then trying to memorise it.

I find memorising v. difficult anyway, but this has worked for me, wheras trying to memorise it afterwards definitely hasn't worked at all.

It certainly does improve the quality of performance, because you can really be part of the music, rather than reading - rather like 'telling' a story instead of reading it aloud from a book. (As a primary school teacher, I know very well how much more compelling it is for children to have a story told, rather than read!)

this is really weird I know....but I memorize much better piano pieces than violin pieces! so not sure about the one line or two lines thing, maybe yes, maybe some of us get on better with two and some with one? LOL

How to memorise? I think strong aural plays a major part, along with repetition. There are some pieces that I can't even start to play unless I have heard them first. After I have committed the tune (or part of) to memory, the notes are there only as a guide (I'm a terrible sight-reader) and the memorisation process for me is something that I can't avoid, which is probably why I am such a terrible sight-reader! After working out fingering a section at a time and making sure it sounds right - it's just there. I am guilty of playing a piece from New Orleans Jazz Styles with the wrong music in front of me (I didn't notice until my teacher pointed it out to me...it raised a smile). I do need to work on my sightreading (spectacular 11 in G5 piano - anyone wish to declare a lower score?) but on a separate note memorisation definitely pays dividends with the pieces (best=29 in G4 piano). My next challenge will be to (a) improve my sight-reading and /or (b) see whether I can memorise more than 4 pages of music as I carry on up the grades!

I mentioned this before, but still remain no further forward - there don't seem to be any resources available to help teach memorisation, and the strong impression I get from replies in this and other threads remains that memorisers can simply do it, but don't really know how they do so - I can understand that having a good aural grasp of a piece will help, but if I put one finger wrong and get a note out of line, it throws me off balance, and I "lose" where to go next; the effort of playing without music creates in my playing so much added tension and discomfiture that I'm better off with the dots in front of me - they actually set me free from the need to dredge my memory for all the detail in my music; but like others I would like to have the facility to rattle off something on request without being so reliant on a score.

Sure, the upside is that I do sightread pretty well, despite not counting very well either , and at least I know pretty much how a piece is going to sound from just reading the music...

What works for me is to first:

Know how the music should sound, e.g. from listening to recordings. Study the score first before going to the piano and try to hear it in my head while reading and absorbing everything on the page. Have done enough basic sightreading playthroughs, working out of fingerings, and being able to play at slow tempo before starting memorizing.

Then, some key principles helped me better memorize:

1. Trying too much, too fast is counterproductive. Take small sections at a time to be memorized. Be patient with yourself.

2. Our brains are associative devices: the more different associations you can make the better the recall.
- analysis is your friend: intervals, chord names, harmonic progressions: the more different descriptions you have for the same thing the better
- use kinesthetic sense: feel what it likes to play, how is your hand shaped and moving, feel the keys under your fingers, the length of the stretches, everything
- use aural sense: hear in your mind before you play the notes
- use visual: watch your hands play and dance on the keys, or try to see the score in your head
- talk to yourself: explicitly say names of notes or key modulations or cadences as you play

3. Use absolutely consistent fingering all the time. Our brains also never really forget (whether or not we can recall is another matter). Don't introduce confusion or doubt by having multiple fingerings.

4. Long term learning and memories are laid down while we sleep, reviewing something slowly and very accurately right before sleep promotes formation of LT memories.

Here is how I go about it:

Try first only memorizing small enough parts that your success is guaranteed.
Small enough may really be small in the beginning.

If all you can remember is that it is in the key of C major and your LH pinky starts with a whole note on the C below middle C, then just memorize that today. That's ok. That's enough for one day's work.

Then, before you go to bed at night, open your music, focus only on the starting note of the LH.
Say aloud the name of the note.
Say aloud the finger number.
Play it looking at the music.
Play it looking at your hand play it.
Play it looking across the room.
Close your eyes.
Play it with your eyes closed really hearing it while seeing both the page and your hand playing it in your mind's eye.
Now, go get a good night's sleep.

Test yourself the next day, before opening your music if you remember what key the piece is in and what note what finger plays on LH for what duration. If so, great. If not, open the music and remind yourself and keep that as your goal for today and repeat above.

Upon success, add the next, one or more notes. Nothing more than you can absolutely remember after giving it no more than 10 minutes of your 100%, undivided attention and going slowly enough to be accurate and doing no more than 20 repetitions. This is a critical rule.

You must work everyday.
You must always review the sections up to today and ensure total recall first before starting new sections.

See if following this process you can learn the first few bars of the LH. If you get the LH then work on the RH and then work on putting them together. I say 'learn' instead of memorize, because one way of looking at is that only when you can play it from your brain instead of doing fancy dictation from some piece of paper have your really 'learned' it.

In the beginning it will be perhaps excruciatingly slow, but you are also learning to learn.
It will go faster as you gain more experience.

I'm not very good at remembering pieces. But repetition works.

Play it over and over, eg. aim for 20 times. Don't worry about mistakes, just keep going and count to 20. As you play it, you will notice patterns and details, which you should latch onto as a way of remembering it. Then another 10 times without the music (checking it if you get stuck). Then, play it over and over until you can do it note-perfect 10 times in a row, just to make absolutely sure. If you do it 8 times and make a mistake, start again. As you do it, try to imagine the things which could go wrong (eg. forgetting a tricky chord) and decide how you would deal with them. When you've done all of that, you will reach a level of confidence with the piece that you didn't know existed. Any nervousness will completely disappear.

If you think that's overkill ... A few weeks ago I spent the best part of an hour memorising a 16-second fanfare duet, using that method. It was for the announcement of the beauty pageant winners at the local carnival. On the day, about half way through there was a gust of wind and the other guy's music blew away! My music flapped about aswell, making it impossible to follow. He forgot where he was, stopped, and got flustered. I continued to the end, and it sounded very good. The kids got their fanfare and their prizes.

I respectfully disagree with the advice to focus on repetition; especially repetition of mistakes! Unless you want to learn a hundred different ways to play it wrongly.

You might want to check this out:

http://www.practiceopedia.com/inside2/player.html

For me, playing *with* the music creates the same problems that playing without it does for you! I'm not that good at sight reading and, when I'm nervous, that's the first thing to go and so the music is actually very little help if it all goes to pot. Trying to follow the piece is just an added strain and it's much easier to play from memory! I'm also very badly co-ordinated and often find it helps my playing a lot if I can see my left hand, although this does seem to be becoming much less of a problem as time goes by.

I always remember playing "Farewell to Stromness" at a forum concert a while back. I was really pleased because I'd managed to perform a piece that I *hadn't* memorised and I had to have the music in front of me to be able to play it. Sitting there reading from a score really made me feel like a proper musician for the first time in my life!

I'd love to be able to sight read properly, but it just never seems to happen. I've a feeling that reading music fluently could be something that only comes to people who start music young, and even then it's pretty clear that it doesn't come to everyone.

This is edited to say a bit more.

I find that I have to put a "story" to the music to really remember it well. On Saturday I played I Giorni from memory. The title means "the days" and once you hear the piece it clearly goes through a couple of cycles with lots of activity in some sections and more quiet phases. One of the quiet phases is marked "sognante" which is italian for "dreaming" and it's a light and happy sort of piece and I started to get a mental image of those time in life (all to few) where there are no problems and one day just gently leads onto another.

Once that picture started to form I kind of made up a cycle of feelings in my head that matched the music but never really thought about trying to remember the notes themselves. If it all goes well I just try to switch off, play the feelings in my mind and hope that my hands will just go onto auto-pilot and the music will emerge. I can "think rationally" whilst this is going on - on Saturday I kept conciously thiking to my self "Andante....Andante" and at one or two points I did think conciously about the notes.

Having said all that I came slightly unstuck at the end and messed up the last few bars, so just jumped to the final cadence.

I would like to be able to sight read though!!

I am much better at sight reading than memorization. I am also a very fast reader of text.
Reading more in general can also improve your sight reading of music I believe.

Sightreading can definitely be improved simply by doing more and more of it.
You might want to start doing sightreading every day as part of your practice or in addition to it.
I would recommend you sight read material that is several grades below your current level; the level should be whatever you can play reasonably fluently prima vista at a steady tempo. As you are more and more able to work it out you can take more difficult pieces.

I find I sight read best when I am relaxed, don't worry about hitting all the notes but focus on the idea behind the music and getting an overall sound that matches my aural image. It is more like skimming a book rather than studying it in detail.

As to playing from the score versus playing from your brain. I find that when playing from score I must keep my eyes focused on the score and not switch to looking at my hands etc. or I will lose my place.

Before I only played from score. Now I am memorizing some pieces.
Once I have a piece memorized and I go back to trying to play it from the score I find it very confusing and I often make mistakes. So, I can sympathize.

I really like your suggestion to put a story into music to remember it well. I also find that this extra association (especially when tapping into emotional feelings) helps enormously with learning / memorizing.

This was an article from MUSO written by Murray McLaughlan, a leading British pianist with an extensive discography. He is head of keyboard at Chethams's school of music.

We have Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann to blame for the expectation that instrumentalist, and pianists in particular, must perform from memory. It is somewhat easier for singers, in that they have been trained in this department for centuries, but for many musicians this poses a significant and ongoing challenge.
Nowadays it is largely a matter of choice whether or not a performer should sing or play without the dots on their music stand, but connection with the music will almost certainly be stronger if a performer is able to play without looking at the printed page. It is all down to feeling at one with the score, losing one’s ego in the magical performance process and thus connecting organically with the instrument and the music in a single, remarkable fusion.

It all sounds a bit new age, but do not underestimate the purely artistic benefits of fine-tuning the memory skills. Of course the circus-like glitz of memory for memory’s sake has its place too, but it is surely wrong to insist upon performing from memory when insecurity could lead to disaster.
It is worth suggesting to everyone, except those with infallible photographic memory skills, that works such as Sorabji’s three-and-a-half-hour atonal contrapuntal Opus Clavicembalisticum for solo piano are better tackled with the score rather than without. Clearly the risks of ‘blanking out’ are far stronger in contexts like this than when playing Chopin Nocturnes, for example. I have yet to hear a sheet music-aided performance of one of Chopin’s night pieces which would not, in my opinion, have been stronger if been played by memory. It is very hard to recreate quasi-improvisatory inspiration and intimacy if your eyes are fixed upon the page.
In a broader context, it is often nearly impossible to execute technically demanding runs, leaps and jumps if you need to stare at music while attempting to play. Short-term memory is therefore an essential asset for all, even if you have no intention of ever performing works completely by heart.
So how can you cultivate and develop musical memory? The first thing to mention is that many musicians find that memory often develops by default in the sense that as they get deeper into the study of a piece, as they continue to listen to and refine their sounds, phrasing, balancing and so on, gradually they stop looking at the score. This can be seen at music festivals with very young children, who often perform their tiny pieces with the music up on the stand, but never look at it. In order to arrive at a more systematic and reliable methodology it is worth separating memory into five categories: Aural, visual, analytical, tactile and rote. Work on each area will lead to the ultimate memory goal – completely secure ‘internalisation’ of all you repertoire. By this I mean the ability to literally ‘play through’ music in your head perfectly. Clearly this ability needs to be developed over a considerable period of time. In order to do this, each memory category needs to be examined and practiced systematically and regularly.

·Separate work on memorising your repertoire from practicing your repertoire.

·Find the best time of day for you as an individual to work on memory. This is often different from the time of day that you feel happiest practicing (many find that last thing at night the most effective place to schedule in memory work)

·De-stress! It is extremely difficult to work on memory if you are tense, anxious or impatient. Begin your memory sessions with some relaxation techniques and meditation.

·Work in ‘bite-size’ segments that are well within your capabilities. Never try to cut corners or jump ahead to memorise large sections.

·Attack memory on all five fronts: aurally, visually, analytically, physically and by rote.

·Internalise. Total confidence and security will emerge in memory when you can literally play through your entire repertoire inside your head, away from your music and your instrument, while walking down the street. This is the ideal aim for anyone who really wishes to be secure in their preparation for a concert performance.

·Sleep, eat, drink and exercise like an athlete.

·Be philosophical. Realise that memory takes time, is mysterious and will often defy orders. It is often when you least expect success and have nearly given up all hope of ever being able to memorise a passage that security and fluency emerges.

isn't it funny how differently we all see things like this??

Interesting thread. I am always deeply envious of skilled sightreaders.

After many years of bashing away on piano before taking proper lessons I became extremely good at memorising pieces, or for modern pieces just playing by using the chord charts.

In fact it is such a problem that I deliberately jump through about 10 pieces when practicing before I find myself memorising them.

I find the memory is combination of a visual journey over the keys together with muscle memory - sometimes the hands remember how to play even if the brain doesn't.

It is almost like musicians can be divided into two camps, the sightreaders and the memorisers, and each camp thinks the grass is greener in the other!