As a child learning the Piano, (more years than I care to remember!) my early recollections are of my Teacher discouraging me from attempting to play from memory. I suppose she feared that I wouldn't get used to reading notation, and may also memorise mistakes that would be hard to correct. Of course, later when she suggested that I should start to memorise repertoire, I found it extremely difficult. As a result, I have never been able to play very much from memory. However, she was an excellent teacher in many ways, and I consider this to be her only "misguidance" in my development as a musician. (I should point out that I have never had any trouble sight reading, which is probably as a result of this continual reliance on the score, and this has been an invaluable skill as an accompanist over the years).

Now as a Teacher, I am concerned that I do not make the same mistake of turning out "readers" only! Having not had my memory skills challenged that much, I would be interested to know how other teachers approach developing this skill? At what point do you usually start the process? Do you wait until you are really confident that pupils are reading notation well before encouraging it?

I have the same problems as you. Now I am playing more difficult pieces I find I can't negotiate huge leaps etc without memorising but the whole memorising thing is very slow and painful for me. I wish my teacher had encourage me to play from memory from day one. I was also taught to never ever look at my hands whilst playing the piano, which I think is part of the same issue.

I try and get my students to memorise from as early as possible and praise them when they do. Apart from playing the music more sensitively I do think memorising helps your general aural skills too. Part the problem is the good sight readers tend to find this difficult and those that struggle with notation memorise very easily. I don't know what the answer is, just in an ideal world we would be able to do both.

I wonder how big an issue looking at your hands is? I've realised recently that I absolutely never look at my hands. (I can't memorise music.) Do good memorisers look at their hands more, and might this add to the visual cues on which memory depends?

I too never look at my hands (except for the occassional "big leap"), but I have a friend who memorises really easily who does look at her hands a great deal when she plays, so I am beginning to think that the two probably go together. If you think about it, most people learn to play "chop sticks" (before any formal tuition), and this is always done by watching someone else's hands and then copying, and at this point people often haven't a clue about what the actual notes they are playing are in terms of notation etc..
I suppose if you could combine reading the notation with watching the hands, would this help with memorising? I also learnt to play things like Happy Birthday and the National Anthem from memory by remembering the chord sequences, but of course this might be difficult for more "complicated" music.

Thanks for your comments!

I think they do. When I'm sight reading I never look at my hands at all, but if I'm playing something from memory I do... maybe it's because I don't know where else to look when there's no music on the piano!

If I'm playing by ear I also look at my hands far more. I don't think it's a bad thing though. When you're sight reading, looking down can hamper the flow, but if there is no music to read, it doesn't matter whether you look or not?

I know I learned all my scales/chords from looking at keyboard and seeing the patterns they made, and if I'm improvising it's much easier to find those patterns by seeing them.

As soon as I see my students are able to play it fluently, I asked them to memorize the piece. And I forced them to memorized. Sometimes I even help them to memorize by memorizing from bar to bar or line to line.

If I it's a new piece and they had memorized, I asked them to see the book. After playing few times, I asked them memorize also. Memorizing is a must for my students.

Ohhh that's really interesting!! And really true!! As 'ad libitium' said, when I sight-read, I rarely look at my hands - only if I play a wrong note and have to check my positioning (probably more because I'm inexperienced!!) and when I memorise I look at my hands quite lot!! Especially if I don't have the score in front of me at all!

I think the easiest way to memorize something is to play it over and over again, and then gradually it'll stick in your head...and unlike sight-reading, play short sections of it over and over and then move onto the next phrase once the first one is nearly 'embedded'!!

How did you learn to play pieces by sightreading and not memorizing? Did you just play some pieces for a little bit and then leave them for a while...?? I might try it, I really want to improve my sight-reading!!

Like singerpianist, I look at my hands for piano - not all the time I guess because otherwise I wouldn't have spotted the examiner's reflection in the mirrored piano surface! The relationship of the white to black keys gives me a huge visual prompt - along with knowing what it should sound like so that I know when I've hit the wrong note.

Interestingly, when I first started with my current piano teacher, she was rather disparaging of my memorisation skills but over time she's come to realise that it is how I learn, and has actively encouraged me to continue - especially now that she realises it gets the desired results. Memorisation improves expression and it gives me confidence when I play. For each new piece, we now break things up into sections so that the first play is 'sight-reading' and what I have played before becomes 'memorisation' - more difficult than it sounds because the pieces that I'm playing now are way beyond my sight-reading level! But sight-reading is getting better.

With violin, I don't need to look at my fingers and I find it much easier to sight-read because I only have to follow one note. Only problem is, if I'm playing a different arrangement of a piece that I've already heard before, my eyes glaze over when I try to sight-read and I end up playing what I think it should sound like! Thankfully violin teacher is very understanding!

I was in Toronto recently and learnt about the RCM whilst there. If you don't memorise your pieces for the exams, points are deducted.......

Memorization is not required for organ for the RCM exams; not sure about string and wind instruments.

For piano, I know for sure that points are deducted for playing with the scores in the graded exams. In the performance diploma exam, not playing the entire programme from memory would result in a failure automatically.

This is all very interesting. I have always been a sight=reader and feel very insecure about memorising a piece - although I know I can do it if I practise enough. The problem then is in retaining what I memorised if I leave the piece and return to it again after a break.

Strangely, some of my pupils seem to be natural memorisers and I always marvel at how some of the older children seem to store a repertoire of pieces in their heads which once learnt are never forgotten -even after years have gone by.

The problem, if there is one, is that it is very difficult to make any improvements or revisions to the memorised piece - it's seems to get fixed in the brain as it was originally learnt and that's it - nothing more can be done to it except play it again and again. I notice the pupils who rely on the score are more receptive to different ways of fingering or interpreting the music - almost as if there is something almost mechanical about memorising the music. I am not saying that top/advanced pianists who memorise are mechanical - I know it goes a lot deeper than that at a high level - I am referring to my young pupils and the different ways they learn.

Start at the point your student is at. Children beginning to learn with you will probably memorise in ways quite natural to them - this gives you a chance to see which methods they favour - is it mostly kinetic memory from repeated playing? aural? or do they 'see' the page in front of them? etc. You then have a plan for supporting those skills, and perhaps after a bit you might get them to balance out their favourite way of doing things with other techniques.

If you want to introduce memorising skills into your teaching of your intermediate and advanced students, I suggest the first thing to do is to set yourself the task of memorising a piece you know. (Forgive me if you've already done all this)

I was taught a very systematic way of memorising, by working on very small sections at each session. Work from the printed score, breaking the piece into its simplest components, seeing patterns, memorising these, and gradually piecing the whole together again. For example you may just memorise four bars of melody, then add the first note in each bar from the bass line, and so on. Next session, check you can play those few bars from memory and add a few more. This works really well for me, and people I've shared it with have really surprised themselves with what they can do.

Other things to try are:

Listen to a recording of the piece as much as possible. Even as background, this helps get the thing really under your skin.

For pianists, check that when playing one hand you can sing or 'hear' the part of the other.

Check you can sing the whole thing through in your head - especially if its a larger piece that might involve taking different paths out of repeated sections and so on. Check you understand the structure.

Look at the keys you go through and the analyse the chords, making sure you really understand these.

I hope this is useful.