tips on memorising????

i tend to have sooooooo much difficulty memorising.. i hafta spend soooooooo much time..

i remember during my 1st ever performance a few years back, in 2002 i think, i thought i had this Pam Wedgewood piece memorised. i was at her masterclass, and after the masterclass we had this mini concert thingy, i forgot the notes halfway through!! my mind just suddenly blacked out!! luckily i had the book with me on stage, i had to stop, open the book, and go on.. OMG..

that event really made a huge scar in me.. till now, im always short of confidence when i gotta memorise pieces. i try not to always.. haha..

so i wonder.. how do you peeps out there normally get a piece of music memorised?? is there any standard procedure to follow?? or you just have to practise till you are fully familiarised with the piece and the memorising comes in naturally??

I practice it a few times, so that I know how it goes, and then I put the music down and try to get through it without the music, no matter how long it takes me to get the notes right

Eventually you'll get it :]

Practice makes perfect

Yes the more you play a piece the better you know it. I know this sounds obvious. Classical Sonatas are usually the easist to memorise. I surprised myself recently by playing Mozart K330 first movement straight through from memory. I hadn't previously attempted to do this, it just happened! A few small mistakes however. K332 Ive been playing from memory for 45 years. With pieces like this I would just try to learn the exposition section (assuming conventional Sonata form), then the recapitulation, which is often just a slightly altered vertion of the exposition, then add the development section between the two.
Nevertheless as I dont play in public, my repertoire from memory is very small. I do have more diificulty with more romantic or 20th C music, though I can manage a couple of Bachs '48'

I thought that I played most things from memory, without reference to the music - until I try to play without the music in front of me! It's obvious that I do refer to the music, even though I'm not aware that I'm doing it.

The problem with playing in this way is that if I slip up, it is a major collapse. For me, playing notes x y and z depend on having just played u v and w if you see what I mean. So if u v and w go wrong, I can't pick up with x y and z.

I'm sure it's just a matter (for me) of getting the balance right between memorising and reading the music. Having the confidence to go for those out of reach notes without looking.

This method of playing probably explains why I'm better at scales that sight reading.



A

yes: there is memorising for playing at home and memorising for playing in a concert/class

i'm far too good at the former, things get onto auto-pilot far too quickly, and I have to really struggle
to memorise the piece at all the levels necessary to make it stable under pressure conditions
eg if someone else is listening (!!!!!!!)

levels are 1) muscle ( unstable on its own..this is the problem) 2) visual patterns of hand movements, and
3) photographic memory of score (depends on the person as to whether is available let alone if stable or not)
4) the emotional journey of the piece (stable) 5) harmonic structure (need good theory for this
to be stable), rhythmic structure (stable), melodic structure (stable)


hopefully others can contribute the ones I've missed, or amend whether things are stable for them or not

People who train their memory learn to remember things in terms of sequences of events like journeys.
So there is an overall structure and then when you get to a point in the "journey" there is recall of the detail
needed for that part (think of describing a complicated car journey....when you get there you remember,
but usually not before)

Compose your own music.
Over the years, I have discovered that those students who compose their own music, are much more able to memorise. The students who don't compose, find memorising more difficult.

Danemann.

Interesting. presumably because they understand the score at a far deeper level

yea i seriously agree with the "there is memorising for playing at home and memorising for playing in a concert/class" part..

I'm generally terrible at memorising, but some pieces I can remember pretty easily Like the Chopin Mazurka on the G7 list, and the Soler sonata on the G8 list. I think these probably have quite strong patterns in them, which i must subconscioulsy learn or something, or it could just be that i had to play them over and over again before i could play them right. lol

I have always found memorising difficult, no matter how many hundreds of times I may have played the piece! Over the last few months I have made a concerted effort to memorise, in order to get the continuity and accuracy that has been my downfall, and I'm finding that it's working. It started with my teacher advising me to memorise certain parts of the programme I'm doing for my Trinity Guildhall First Concert certificate next week. Some parts are obviously easier to remember than others, and I analyse the structure and harmony of the piece and remember sequences. The difficult bits are the joins between sections, and the places where the music is similar, but not the same. Some of it I just do by rote until I can remember it. I am now finding it easier to memorise new pieces, though there is still nothing that I can get all the way through without fumbling or referring to the music somewhere. The accuracy is certainly improving now. If I can do it at my age, then there is definitely hope for the younger non-memorisers! I wish I had tried properly years ago.

yeah, I definitely agree about memorising in sequence and about composition playing a major part in musical memory. The latter being particularly because you begin to gain an understanding on compositional devices and the form of a piece, like for instance where a diminished chord is used in the development to favour modulation in another key or where the original thematic material is transposed. This is the way I memorise music anyway, I find that using this approach I was able to memorise entire movements in the mozart sonatas along with Beethoven and other composers who use a similar approach. It also helps if the melody is catchy, assuming you are musical (and it's something you like) you should remember it.

For example I remember memorising k332 mainly by:

1) remembering the actual melody, it's quite singable actually (hence the 'cantabile')

2) rememberin the harmonic material (i.e. alberti bass at the beginning on f major, f dom 7th, Bb, or in the second theme the same on d minor, then using an A dom 7th chord on second inversion etc etc etc)

3) remembering what the form of the piece is and what he does with it (i.e. introducing a new theme in the development, using the same descending sequence as bars 56-57 but with different stuff or modulating the second theme in the tonic key later on etc..)


Much a similar thing when memorising the other movements as well. When playing from memory it is always important to understand what you are doing in my opinion, not just mechanically churn out a series of notes. Oh, then after all that I've forgotten how to play it (joke, not really..)

regarding the "remembering the harmonic material" part.. if i were to memorise a VERY long piece, like over 20 pages, wouldnt i have to remember TONNES of harmonic material??

hmm.. ive heard many pple mention about analysing the harmony to help in memorising the music itself, but i really do not understand how do pple really go about doing that..

are we supposed to really sit down and analyse what chords the composer used at every single bar? and find out what inversions they are in and so on? for the whole 20++ pages, and for numerous pieces??

it seems like learning by rote is the only method of memorising music ive ever used before.. and sometimes it isnt foolproof.. hmm..

I'm memorising K332 at the moment, and my main problem is recalling which inversion the harmony is in. I can hear what the chords should be, but sometimes I get the wrong notes in each hand!

It will come. I did play the opening movement of a Haydn sonata from memory in my Grade 5, so I know it's doable.

Even more fun is the Albeniz Rumores de la Caleta: there are several little motifs in the outside sections that appear in different orders depending on where you are. So easy to lose concentration and play the wrong one.
But I like a challenge!

well jas_eng, for me, memorising is something not to be forced, i just keep practising on the piece that should i memorised..

by the way jas_eng, just looked your signature and found a quote..
"without music life would be an error"
errr, is this from "gramophone"??
but, from gramophone is
"without music life would be a mistake"
hehehe
i once bought a CD there in singapore, nice music shop by the way.. hehe

I personally find that I remember better the passages that I used to make mistakes in.

For example, whilst practising a piece i might unexpectedly have a mental blank where i usually would rely on muscle memory to get past. I often find then, that after practising that bit particularly hard, it becomes one of the ones i remember best

so i guess you just have to practise enough times for all possible mistakes to happen, then all the bits will remind you that you have to be extra careful...... but then after a while they fade away from memory which is why it is always a good idea to practise with music many times to develop muscle memory and clarity before putting musicality behind it which i think is easiest done without having the score infront of you to distract.

there are many different methods as others have pointed out, but you just have to find some that suit you best and concentrate on those methods. I know that memorising the actual written notes then visualising them whilst playing is near imposible for me, so that is not one of my chosen methods.

Hope that was of some help to you!! and all the best!

Sometimes you can remember it but just not be confident enough to play without the music. This was brought home to me when I sat at the piano once, opened the music for the theme from Schindler's List (easy version) and was merrily playing away, almost to the end, when I realised the music on the piano was something completely different!!!! Clearly I'd been playing from memory and not paying attention to the music on the piano at all even though I can't memorise piano music!

Another time I videoed myself playing something and was amazed at how much time I spent looking at my hands rather than at the music.

All this leads me to believe that often the music is in our memories but actually getting to it is the problem. We are often able to memorise but finding the music in our head is difficult. I don't know what the solution is but the problem may not be what you think it is. You may well be memorising masses of music but simply having trouble finding it in your head.

hey.. i got that quote from the internet.. ha.. didnt know it's similar to the one from gramophone

are we supposed to really sit down and analyse what chords the composer used at every single bar? and find out what inversions they are in and so on? for the whole 20++ pages, and for numerous pieces??

Yes it is something like that.
I was thrown in at the deep end when we lost our church organist 23 years ago, coming from about Grade 5 piano( The teacher I had after Grade 2 didn't 'do' exams,) and a couple of terms organ lessons, followed by 20 years in folk song and classical guitar, and that's where analysing the harmonies was learned: If I wanted to sing a song I had heard I had to work out a chord sequence. I remember the excitement very early on of listening to a blues track and discovering by trial and error that the transition/ modulation from C to Am went through E, E7.

Transferring this to playing piano and organ, I often have to play short pieces at a couple of days notice for funerals etc, and so long as I know where the harmonies are going, often when I am not even playing in the original key, I am mostly OK. (At speed I transpose E flat to D, guitarists think in sharp keys!)

I teach my pupils to understand the progression of the harmony in all their pieces: It makes it much easier to learn, and more likely that those who give up the piano at GCSE time might find an ongoing use for some musical knowledge later in life.

For learning by heart: Start each practice playing as far as you can without opening the book. Day by day you will get further along, until you have made it your own.

(As soon as possible) all practice should be from memory. [Kendall Taylor]

Every time you play a piece from memory you re-inforce your recall. Every time you play from the score you increase your dependence on a written score, and reduce your ability to play from memory.


Most conventionally tuaght pianists claim to be terrible at memorising, generally correctly, and for the very good reason that few of us are trained to do it. The handful that manage to memorize everything despite their (lack of) teaching/training are then seen as exceptional geniuses.


If you intend to play a piece from memory you need to decide that right at the outset, before you start to learn it. Some pieces are not worth memorising. Simplified song scores, classical pieces that you never intend to be part of YOUR concert repertoire, etc. But many are.

Having made that decision, the trick is to memorise the piece as you learn it. Memorisation and acquiring physical skill are learned together, as parts of the same process. That is you NEVER play the piece by reading from the score, apart from maybe a quick once-over sight read to get an overview of the piece, and then a few bars at a time as you learn each small part. (I like to start with the most difficult passages.) You memorize a few bars. Then practice them over and over from memory. Then a few more. This way you never build up a dependence on having the score in front of you. Pretty soon you have the whole piece from memory, and can dispense with the score during practice and performance.

In parallel you should listen to recordings, visit live performances if you can, and study the piece from structural, harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and thematic viewpoints. Playing hands separately is also good. It may be essential for some of the more technically demanding pieces.

This way of working is very hard work, and is mentally exhausting at first. Your brain will really hurt - literally - you'll get headaches and have serious mental fatigue. The first few pieces that you learn this way may take what seems like a very disproportionate length of time. It takes a determined effort of self discipline to persevere in this way and not fall back on old habits of half-learning pieces and playing tolerable but ultimately lacking half-performances from the score.

But as you get used to it it becomes easier.

Surprisingly, a lot of technical (=physical) difficulties evaporate when you play from memory. The conceptual load of reading notation, and the split of attention between score and keyboard, take a lot of mental effort. Often a lot of the difficulty is in hard to read key signatures, or daunting looking sequences of notes or big chords, or big skips. By memorising you make that effort once only, and are freed from making it during performance. When a piece is properly memorised it is recalled almost effortlessly. And when you are freed from mentally grasping the score and transferring it to the keyboard, and give your entire attention to the physical patterns of hand on keys and the resulting sounds, then the task almost always becomes much easier.

You can re-inforce your memory by mentally playing through pieces (fully imagining and feeling all the physical movements) without an instrument.

If you forget the actual notes of a section try playing quickly and unconcsciously to get it back from muscle memory. Then repeat it a few times to re-inforce it, and bring it into conscious awareness. If you forget the correct dynamics try to mentally play-back a good performance. If that fails, then by all,means check with the score, but do not play with a score in front of you.


Much harder is to memorize pieces that you already play well from the score. Especially if you have played a piece for years, you will have deeply ingrained dependence on the score, so that it is integral to your physical movements, and taking it away is disorientating. You really have to re-learn the piece, as described above, as though it were new to you, though once you get into your stride, you will learn it much quicker than learning a genuinely new piece from scratch.

I speak with the wisdom of having practiced and studied incorrectly for more years than I care to remember, and only recently realising that my memorized repertoire is tiny, and way too small for any self-respecting pianist.

I think you have made quite a number of valid points here MT which I would mostly agree with.

Sightreading a score and playing is physically and mentally demanding. I make more mistakes when sightreading a piece of music than I do when playing it from memory. It might sound odd but occasionally I will sightread a score I have already memorised just to see if it 'sounds' similar. I usually do what you have described. I learn about 10 to 15 bars of the score at a time, not necessarily from the beginning. I tackle the difficult sections first. It will take, on average, depending on complexity, about six weeks for me to memorise a shortish score. I learnt Handel's Harm. Blacksmith in 3 weeks and the Moonlight Sonata in 14 weeks, utilising just 1 hour in the evening and two at w/e's. Another tip: try playing a score backwards. (i.e. start at the last bar of music and work your way back right to left, bottom to top) I played a Bach fugue from WTC to some friends the other evening and it seemed to make just as much sense played backwards as it did forwards. A lot of Bach's music lends itself to this anomaly but I don't think it would work so well with Beethoven or Brahms et al.

great post Mad Tom!

I do all of what you say. But since muscle memory for me is actually too easy, I've been told to
practice so slowly that I can't use muscle memory, but have to use the other sorts to reinforce
my overall memory. Hope that makes sense. (Try it! it's quite a challenge)