Right...
I was once able to do this but had it driven out of me by my first teacher(well meaning of course) who insisted that I never take my eyes off the sheet music and seemed really against it. Of course now over the last few years at a stage in my pianistic development where I feel that its almost crucial to be able to do this, I seem to have fierce trouble with it. I mean I just cant do it at all. Im not completely sure where im going wrong here. This is really holding me back now and has been for ages so I have to get it sorted. I managed to memorise one movement of a mozart sonata somehow but I dont know what I did. With other pieces its usually just random snippets thats all I can play back without sheetmusic. I dont think its because I havnt got the pieces 'internalised', I think I have. Il admit that practice might have something to do with it as at the moment on a 'good' week all I manage to do is play through my pieces a few times, its hard to get any decent practice done in my house at the moment. If being able to completely analyse them harmonically, structurally, and in every other way could help, then il admit im lacking somewhat in that area too. If it could be a 'confidence' thing like that my own insistence that I cant do it might be holding me back, il admit im lacking there too.
Any ideas? How does everyone else manage this? What should I do? Any advice at all will be appreciated.
Full Version: Memorising
I've sent a PM as it's long. Hope it helps.
Pick a piece that is easyish for you but not one you will get bored with, divide it into short sections, get as relaxed as possible, play a couple of sections over and over but don't try to memorise these. Keep playing until you get the sound and rhythymn locked in your head, start to play, look away for a bar, look back and keep going. I've found the reverse psychology of not deliberately trying to memorise it usually works. Good luck. 
If you look back through the last few weeks of the forum you'll see that there has already been a long and intereting exchange of ideas on this subject in the context of memorisation v. sightreading
I am curious to know how you recall the mozart sonata when playing it. Do you visualise the sheet music of the piece in your minds eye and play from that, or have you memorized a long and complex string of muscle movements and your hands just seem to play the song back as a sort of reflex?
I seem to have the opposite problem to you in that I can memorize a song perfectly, but decoding notes on a piece of sheet music is a long and tedious task for me. I suppose each skill has its advantages and disadvantages. Sight readers will have a much larger repertoire and be able to pick up and play almost anything in their skill level, wheras memorizers might generally be able to add more feeling to a piece once the order of the notes comes naturally to them.
I don't see why either skill can't be learned over time. Perhaps it is your method of memorizing that is the problem. Instead of visually memorizing the sheet music, like remembering the words of a poem (if that is what you do) you could try remembering the muscle movements, like learning to juggle or ride a bike.
Just a thought
I seem to have the opposite problem to you in that I can memorize a song perfectly, but decoding notes on a piece of sheet music is a long and tedious task for me. I suppose each skill has its advantages and disadvantages. Sight readers will have a much larger repertoire and be able to pick up and play almost anything in their skill level, wheras memorizers might generally be able to add more feeling to a piece once the order of the notes comes naturally to them.
I don't see why either skill can't be learned over time. Perhaps it is your method of memorizing that is the problem. Instead of visually memorizing the sheet music, like remembering the words of a poem (if that is what you do) you could try remembering the muscle movements, like learning to juggle or ride a bike.
Just a thought
QUOTE(jax @ Dec 30 2007, 04:08 AM) 
"I seem to have the opposite problem to you in that I can memorize a song perfectly, but decoding notes on a piece of sheet music is a long and tedious task for me. I suppose each skill has its advantages and disadvantages. Sight readers will have a much larger repertoire and be able to pick up and play almost anything in their skill level, wheras memorizers might generally be able to add more feeling to a piece once the order of the notes comes naturally to them."
I am exactly the same as jax. I can memorise a song perfectly but when it comes to using the music to sight read, I am awful.
I think it is an advantage to be able to memorise rather than to sight read as sight reading can be learnt quite easily over time. But...
One tip for you welltemperedklavier is to take your time. Look at the music and as lostchord said, divide it into sections. Then play that section with the music, and then try without. If you simply can't do it without the music try playing the same section over and over again untill it is engraved into your head! (Not litteraly
) Try looking at your fingers when you play, that is what I do. This allows to see what notes you are playing, without having to refer to a piece of paper all the time. Practice and Practice untill you have the sections in your head and then combine. Listen to the pieces perhaps played by someone else and get how it should sound in your head.Remember; START SIMPLE
Regards,
Ben
QUOTE(dorfmouse @ Dec 28 2007, 09:14 AM)
I've sent a PM as it's long. Hope it helps.
Could I possibly have that PM as well?!
I know there have been many threads on memorising but I still keep reading in the hope of having a Eureka moment. (No, it's not my forte either...) As long as it's not personal, I'm sure others wouldn't mind it being long either if you were to post it here.
QUOTE(Mad Tom @ Dec 30 2007, 01:16 PM)
Very interesting! The single biggest thing I got from that was 'memorise before you learn'. Definitely food for thought all round, though. Thanks, Mad Tom!
Could I possibly have that PM as well?! I know there have been many threads on memorising but I still keep reading in the hope of having a Eureka moment. (No, it's not my forte either...) As long as it's not personal, I'm sure others wouldn't mind it being long either if you were to post it here.
[/quote]
The document I compiled is based on stuff that I've read, in books and on various forums, and on observing how my own teacher works. So I don't want to present it as my own work but rather a summary of what has worked for me, when previously I would panic at the idea of trying to learn even a few bars around a tricky page turn!
For me the big help was learning how to identify what constitutes a small section, and the huge reassurance of finding that it's quite normal to have forgotten it by the next day!!
How to memorise a piece for non-memorisers
The essentials boil down to;
a) creating as many different associations/pathways into your long-term memory LTM as possible
b) knowing how to organise the music to be learned into small enough chunks that your short-term memory STM can hold. (This amount is around 7 + or – 2 items of information; this could be for example seven separate notes, or seven pages depending on the complexity of the music and your level of musical knowledge.)
(To begin with choose a piece that you haven’t tried to learn before. Otherwise you’ll be battling with previous mistakes and frustrations)
Ingredients
Photocopy of score to use as working copy.
Coloured pencils, small post it notes
A way to record your memorising progress for the piece, eg a notebook, or use the back of the photocopies or make a squared chart or …
Preparation away from piano
Listen to as many different recordings as poss. Think about what you like/find meaningful in them
Familiarise yourself with the score. When listening, read the score. It often looks very different to how you expect.
Identify main musical sections, themes, developments and such like and mark on the score. These may be just letters or numbers but the more meaningful to you the better e.g. give each section a name, might be an emotion or visualisation it evokes. Use colours to highlight dynamics, write key words describing mood or colour or interpretations of sections on post-its (saves erasing as your interpretation modifies as you learn)
Do some basic analysis of the piece; at least know its predominant key and key changes
Number the bars
Find all the repetitions you can; phrases, lines, whole sections often repeat. Cross them out or bracket them. This is highly rewarding … the total number of bars to be learnt can diminish dramatically
At the piano
Sightread through as best as you can to find which bits will be most difficult for you. Make a note of them
Make a practice plan. How much time do you have each day? In what order will you learn the piece? It’s a good idea to start with the sections you have identified as most difficult, as they will need the most practice. You could start with the last line or section and work backwards, this way you are always playing towards something you know.
Practice session nuts and bolts
Choose a small chunk that you think you can memorise. Let’s say it’s a six bar musical phrase. I’ll call it 1-6 (Also add one or two notes from the next bar as an overlap. This helps when you start to join up the small chunks later)
Investigate this chunk;
Work out the fingering and arm movements for each hand separately (HS). If the piece is a fast piece, make sure that this fingering will work at a fast speed. If you have chosen a small enough section, you should be able to test this at speed. Very important to do this otherwise you will hit a speed wall eventually if the fingering chosen is not suitable. Spend as much time as necessary on this, trying to find the movements that are easy and comfortable. Teacher input is really valuable at this stage.
Try to do some analysis of the harmony. Even if you’re pretty incompetent at this have a go! You can probably identify some basic chords, bits of scales that appear, this bit's going in thirds, here the pattern of notes is repeated but a fifth up, or whatever. … the professionals say this is at the heart of secure memorisation.
Now work on this small chunk HS with the score. Each time you play it you must give it full attention. Best way to keep attention sharp is to focus on a different aspect each time; eg
-fingering and arm movement
-what does my hand position look like on the keyboard eg lots of black notes/ fingers close together/ pattern of black and white keys …. (Very important if you’ve always been drilled to keeping your eyes glued to the score)
what do the movements feel like/close eyes
--rhythm
-articulation (staccato, legato etc)
-dynamics
-relaxation, does it feel comfortable
-sing as you play, am I bringing out the melody
-name notes as you play
-note what’s happening with the melody /harmony
-anything else you can think of e.g. which notes of a chord to bring out; is there something particularly interesting in this little section …
Take a few moments at the end of each little play to mentally note what you just did. Don’t just rush headlong from repetition to repetition
Moment of truth
You have now played this small section with full attention several times HS. It’s probably taken less than 10 mins. Put the score away and play it from memory.
If you can’t do it, the section was too long for your short term memory to cope with. Cut it in half. Go through exactly the same procedure with only three bars. Test again. Still not remembered? So be it, do just one bar.
(sounds horribly laborious? But if you have to do the pruning procedure, it takes much less time than the first try. Also you quickly get better at recognising what size chunks work best for you and depending on how complex the music is. Better to err on the side of choosing very small bits first if you are not a natural memoriser.)
This chunk is now somewhere on its journey into your long term memory (LTM). You now strengthen the memory trace by practising it without the music correctly 7 times. (many more and you start to lose concentration) This means playing slowly, correctly, relaxed and with full attention. You are only putting correct information into your brain, and ingraining correct movements. Again, to keep concentration, focus on a different aspect of the music each time as you did above. Pause, relax and refocus between each play. When you have played it correctly 7 times, leave that chunk alone for the rest of the day. Don’t go on and on with it; any further time spent on it is superfluous to the learning process and actually harmful because your mind starts to wander. Do not try it again later that day. During overnight sleep the journey into long term memory continues.
Keep in mind that your aim at this stage is to get clear uncluttered messages to your brain and to ingrain relaxed, efficient movements in your body. Any and all tension in your body will hinder your playing in some way.
You are practising musically, because you are paying attention to the musical aspects separately, but because you are working in a somewhat detached way, the frustration level is kept low.
Repeat procedure with other hand.
Now your first chunk is learned, leave it and go on to the next and however many following chunks you decided you could tackle in same way, (remembering to include an overlap note or two at the end of each chunk into the next bar) Resist the temptation to join up the chunks. By the end of your first practice session you’ve got a few chunks parcelled up and shunting along on some sort of brain conveyor belt on the way to LTM.
Next day session;
Full of hope you go to piano and try to play chunk one and you can’t remember a single note. Doom and despondency set in, all that hard work yesterday …
Don’t despair, this is normal. The parcels have come undone, the conveyor belt was wonky …
What you have to do now is repeat yesterday’s procedure with each bite sized chunk, but it will now take less time, leaving you time to add some more small chunks either from the same section, or a different section of the piece. (You don’t have to work sequentially; you can actually be learning chunks from completely different pieces but depending on how much time you have this will obviously take longer to finish one piece.)
Next day it’s either woo-hoo! I know it, or rinse and repeat the procedure. If you’re a brain dead memorizer like me it can take four or five days, but often the real reason is that I’ve missed a session, or I’ve been tired and not concentrated properly, or I’ve cheated and started to look at the music again. The key principles are consistency, concentration and playing with relaxed movements.
Then suddenly your hands seem to know where to go by themselves and you can start to join up your chunks into longer and longer strings … but again beware of making your joins too long.
When you start to put hands together it can feel very dispiriting as you now have coordination issues to sort out and the whole thing feels completely new. If the piece is relatively simple for you, you can put HT from the start but be sure you’ve got fingering and arm movements that will work at final speed. I start to put HT as soon as a few bars have been memorised HS. If the piece is complex, you can be sure that the HS learning you’ve done will pay off because incorrect movements learned HT are very difficult to change.
With polyphonic music it’s recommended to learn each voice separately, but using the correct fingering for each voice even though this feels weird.
Consistency
This is very important. You need to record each separate bite you practiced every day, e.g. on a chart you make, or as ticks on your score, or in a log book or whatever. I just put a pencil tick over each chunk I’ve worked on that session, and a heart when it’s memorised. Corny!
It’s important to be realistic and not work on ten chunks one day when you’ll only have time to review four or five on the following days. (Not that they’ll get completely forgotten but as a convinced non-memoriser you’ll get discouraged and give up)
Encouraging thoughts
If you think you can, you can…. (Philip Johnstone.)
Practice with a quiet mind. Trust your brain. Cast your mind over what you practised before going to sleep, but without making any huge effort to remember the music. You might be surprised what starts to pop up of its own accord!
I know there have been many threads on memorising but I still keep reading in the hope of having a Eureka moment. (No, it's not my forte either...) As long as it's not personal, I'm sure others wouldn't mind it being long either if you were to post it here.[/quote]
The document I compiled is based on stuff that I've read, in books and on various forums, and on observing how my own teacher works. So I don't want to present it as my own work but rather a summary of what has worked for me, when previously I would panic at the idea of trying to learn even a few bars around a tricky page turn!
For me the big help was learning how to identify what constitutes a small section, and the huge reassurance of finding that it's quite normal to have forgotten it by the next day!!
How to memorise a piece for non-memorisers
The essentials boil down to;
a) creating as many different associations/pathways into your long-term memory LTM as possible
b) knowing how to organise the music to be learned into small enough chunks that your short-term memory STM can hold. (This amount is around 7 + or – 2 items of information; this could be for example seven separate notes, or seven pages depending on the complexity of the music and your level of musical knowledge.)
(To begin with choose a piece that you haven’t tried to learn before. Otherwise you’ll be battling with previous mistakes and frustrations)
Ingredients
Photocopy of score to use as working copy.
Coloured pencils, small post it notes
A way to record your memorising progress for the piece, eg a notebook, or use the back of the photocopies or make a squared chart or …
Preparation away from piano
Listen to as many different recordings as poss. Think about what you like/find meaningful in them
Familiarise yourself with the score. When listening, read the score. It often looks very different to how you expect.
Identify main musical sections, themes, developments and such like and mark on the score. These may be just letters or numbers but the more meaningful to you the better e.g. give each section a name, might be an emotion or visualisation it evokes. Use colours to highlight dynamics, write key words describing mood or colour or interpretations of sections on post-its (saves erasing as your interpretation modifies as you learn)
Do some basic analysis of the piece; at least know its predominant key and key changes
Number the bars
Find all the repetitions you can; phrases, lines, whole sections often repeat. Cross them out or bracket them. This is highly rewarding … the total number of bars to be learnt can diminish dramatically
At the piano
Sightread through as best as you can to find which bits will be most difficult for you. Make a note of them
Make a practice plan. How much time do you have each day? In what order will you learn the piece? It’s a good idea to start with the sections you have identified as most difficult, as they will need the most practice. You could start with the last line or section and work backwards, this way you are always playing towards something you know.
Practice session nuts and bolts
Choose a small chunk that you think you can memorise. Let’s say it’s a six bar musical phrase. I’ll call it 1-6 (Also add one or two notes from the next bar as an overlap. This helps when you start to join up the small chunks later)
Investigate this chunk;
Work out the fingering and arm movements for each hand separately (HS). If the piece is a fast piece, make sure that this fingering will work at a fast speed. If you have chosen a small enough section, you should be able to test this at speed. Very important to do this otherwise you will hit a speed wall eventually if the fingering chosen is not suitable. Spend as much time as necessary on this, trying to find the movements that are easy and comfortable. Teacher input is really valuable at this stage.
Try to do some analysis of the harmony. Even if you’re pretty incompetent at this have a go! You can probably identify some basic chords, bits of scales that appear, this bit's going in thirds, here the pattern of notes is repeated but a fifth up, or whatever. … the professionals say this is at the heart of secure memorisation.
Now work on this small chunk HS with the score. Each time you play it you must give it full attention. Best way to keep attention sharp is to focus on a different aspect each time; eg
-fingering and arm movement
-what does my hand position look like on the keyboard eg lots of black notes/ fingers close together/ pattern of black and white keys …. (Very important if you’ve always been drilled to keeping your eyes glued to the score)
what do the movements feel like/close eyes
--rhythm
-articulation (staccato, legato etc)
-dynamics
-relaxation, does it feel comfortable
-sing as you play, am I bringing out the melody
-name notes as you play
-note what’s happening with the melody /harmony
-anything else you can think of e.g. which notes of a chord to bring out; is there something particularly interesting in this little section …
Take a few moments at the end of each little play to mentally note what you just did. Don’t just rush headlong from repetition to repetition
Moment of truth
You have now played this small section with full attention several times HS. It’s probably taken less than 10 mins. Put the score away and play it from memory.
If you can’t do it, the section was too long for your short term memory to cope with. Cut it in half. Go through exactly the same procedure with only three bars. Test again. Still not remembered? So be it, do just one bar.
(sounds horribly laborious? But if you have to do the pruning procedure, it takes much less time than the first try. Also you quickly get better at recognising what size chunks work best for you and depending on how complex the music is. Better to err on the side of choosing very small bits first if you are not a natural memoriser.)
This chunk is now somewhere on its journey into your long term memory (LTM). You now strengthen the memory trace by practising it without the music correctly 7 times. (many more and you start to lose concentration) This means playing slowly, correctly, relaxed and with full attention. You are only putting correct information into your brain, and ingraining correct movements. Again, to keep concentration, focus on a different aspect of the music each time as you did above. Pause, relax and refocus between each play. When you have played it correctly 7 times, leave that chunk alone for the rest of the day. Don’t go on and on with it; any further time spent on it is superfluous to the learning process and actually harmful because your mind starts to wander. Do not try it again later that day. During overnight sleep the journey into long term memory continues.
Keep in mind that your aim at this stage is to get clear uncluttered messages to your brain and to ingrain relaxed, efficient movements in your body. Any and all tension in your body will hinder your playing in some way.
You are practising musically, because you are paying attention to the musical aspects separately, but because you are working in a somewhat detached way, the frustration level is kept low.
Repeat procedure with other hand.
Now your first chunk is learned, leave it and go on to the next and however many following chunks you decided you could tackle in same way, (remembering to include an overlap note or two at the end of each chunk into the next bar) Resist the temptation to join up the chunks. By the end of your first practice session you’ve got a few chunks parcelled up and shunting along on some sort of brain conveyor belt on the way to LTM.
Next day session;
Full of hope you go to piano and try to play chunk one and you can’t remember a single note. Doom and despondency set in, all that hard work yesterday …
Don’t despair, this is normal. The parcels have come undone, the conveyor belt was wonky …
What you have to do now is repeat yesterday’s procedure with each bite sized chunk, but it will now take less time, leaving you time to add some more small chunks either from the same section, or a different section of the piece. (You don’t have to work sequentially; you can actually be learning chunks from completely different pieces but depending on how much time you have this will obviously take longer to finish one piece.)
Next day it’s either woo-hoo! I know it, or rinse and repeat the procedure. If you’re a brain dead memorizer like me it can take four or five days, but often the real reason is that I’ve missed a session, or I’ve been tired and not concentrated properly, or I’ve cheated and started to look at the music again. The key principles are consistency, concentration and playing with relaxed movements.
Then suddenly your hands seem to know where to go by themselves and you can start to join up your chunks into longer and longer strings … but again beware of making your joins too long.
When you start to put hands together it can feel very dispiriting as you now have coordination issues to sort out and the whole thing feels completely new. If the piece is relatively simple for you, you can put HT from the start but be sure you’ve got fingering and arm movements that will work at final speed. I start to put HT as soon as a few bars have been memorised HS. If the piece is complex, you can be sure that the HS learning you’ve done will pay off because incorrect movements learned HT are very difficult to change.
With polyphonic music it’s recommended to learn each voice separately, but using the correct fingering for each voice even though this feels weird.
Consistency
This is very important. You need to record each separate bite you practiced every day, e.g. on a chart you make, or as ticks on your score, or in a log book or whatever. I just put a pencil tick over each chunk I’ve worked on that session, and a heart when it’s memorised. Corny!
It’s important to be realistic and not work on ten chunks one day when you’ll only have time to review four or five on the following days. (Not that they’ll get completely forgotten but as a convinced non-memoriser you’ll get discouraged and give up)
Encouraging thoughts
If you think you can, you can…. (Philip Johnstone.)
Practice with a quiet mind. Trust your brain. Cast your mind over what you practised before going to sleep, but without making any huge effort to remember the music. You might be surprised what starts to pop up of its own accord!
Wow!
Down to work, with thanks!
Down to work, with thanks!
Wow, fantastic! 
Thanks for all this! Plenty of reading to do now, all of this will really help
Thanks all
Jax-- Im not completely sure what I did with the Mozart sonata that enabled me to actually memorise it... I did some analysis of the form and the harmony and that with my teacher... I suppose I was alot more 'repetitive' when practicing this one compared to others... and it was a requirement for something I was doing that I have a piece memorised and this was what I choose. Next thing now is to have a Chopin etude, Brahms ballade, Liszt raphsodie espagnole, Debussy l'isle joyeuse, and Mozart fantasy in c minor all memorised by February for competitions and other stuff
Thanks for all this! Plenty of reading to do now, all of this will really help
Thanks all
Jax-- Im not completely sure what I did with the Mozart sonata that enabled me to actually memorise it... I did some analysis of the form and the harmony and that with my teacher... I suppose I was alot more 'repetitive' when practicing this one compared to others... and it was a requirement for something I was doing that I have a piece memorised and this was what I choose. Next thing now is to have a Chopin etude, Brahms ballade, Liszt raphsodie espagnole, Debussy l'isle joyeuse, and Mozart fantasy in c minor all memorised by February for competitions and other stuff
Thank you dofmouse - really useful to read this now (for which thanks to skylark who prompted me!) as I was feeling rather down and very unproductive during practise the last few days. Sometimes a structure to follow helps what is happening in the emotions so I will give it a try.
QUOTE(BachPensioner @ Jan 2 2008, 10:10 AM)
Thank you dofmouse - really useful to read this now (for which thanks to skylark who prompted me!) as I was feeling rather down and very unproductive during practise the last few days. Sometimes a structure to follow helps what is happening in the emotions so I will give it a try.
I do hope it helps. People have many different learning styles and preferences of course, but this approach has worked for me and now even if I decide that I don't want/need to memorise all of a piece, this structured way of practising takes out a lot of the angst and has improved the quality of my practising.
A poster on another forum often talks about having a quiet mind when you practise and this is so true. It's a state of relaxed awareness, when you focus on the sounds you are producing and the movements you are making in a non-judgemental way. In Tim Galloway's Inner Game of Music he talks about working in a state of relaxed concentration, which is largely achieved by focussing on your own experience in the present moment. As you imply, what's happening in your emotions is often a barrier, if it's the usual string of self-critical thoughts and frustrations that most of us seem to be prone to! I often think we just don't give ourselves enough time, and if we're not professional musicians who have to work to a deadline, then we just need to take as much time as it takes! Working on just one musical or technical aspect at the small chunk stage removes a lot of this tension and sometimes becomes so interesting in itself that you find you're happily spending much more time just exploring one little idea. Then suddenly it clicks! It's a joyful moment and frees you up to move on... with a quiet mind.
Good luck!
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